How a spur-of-the-moment selfie created a chance encounter that put me on national television.

Screenshot by pdxknitterati

I travel a lot on business, training advertising salespeople at television stations across the United States. This means I spend a lot of time at Portland International Airport (PDX), standing and walking on the airport’s carpet.

For reasons difficult to explain to those who don’t live here, our airport’s carpet — known as #pdxcarpet throughout social media — is kind of a big deal around these parts. The airport’s decision to replace the carpet has created a significant local hullaballoo.

My wife, the lovely and talented pdxknitterati, took a photo of the carpet and used it to custom-design some shoes for my birthday. (You can read about how she did it, using Adidas’ iPad app, here).

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, we went to the airport to take a photo of my new shoes on that old carpet while it was still intact.

Photo by pdxknitterati

After getting the shot, we noticed a television cameraman near the ticket counters. He was on one knee with the camera on his shoulder, panning the carpet. I walked over and stuck my foot in front of his camera. He looked up at me, said, “You’re kidding,” and called his producer over.

The producer, Kristen Powers, introduced me to Harry Smith. Of  NBC News. NBC Nightly News, it turns out, was in town to do a story on our carpet. Harry liked the shoes and interviewed us. You can see the results below.

Only in Portland Would the Airport’s Carpet Reach Cult Status

As Lefty Gomez almost said, sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.