oh.. and if you go to amarillo college website, you can find what Dusty Green is up to.
www.actx.eduhere is the article
AC Success Story: Dusty Green Costa Rica is 2100 miles from Borger, Texas. Somewhere in the middle—well, pretty close to Borger actually—is Amarillo College. For Dusty Green, AC was a pretty important step in the journey he’s taking now. He credits AC for his entire career, which is now making it possible to follow a dream in Central America and beyond.
“Everything I own is in an attic in Dalhart and in the back of this car,” laughs Dusty, as he drives toward Red River, NM. “We sold pretty much everything we own.”
For the past 18 months, Dusty and his wife Nikki have been living very frugally, saving every bit of money they can and selling everything they can get rid of—including a house, a boat, two vehicles and a hot tub. It’s part of a plan to criss-cross the globe, beginning with Costa Rica.
If you’ve lived in the Texas Panhandle very long, you know Dusty Green. For most of his 14 ½ years at KVII, he was on the air, reporting stories from around the area and giving viewers the day’s news from the anchor desk.
“I started out as a newsroom assistant,” says Dusty, “And I think they finally promoted me because I just wasn’t going to give up and go somewhere else.”
That’s the same tenacity he had as a student at Amarillo College. Dusty arrived at AC in 1991, after a couple of semesters at Western Texas College in Snyder. He wanted to be closer to his hometown of Borger, so AC was a natural choice. He settled in right away, making a home away from home out of the college’s journalism lab.
“I lived in the journalism lab,” Dusty says laughing. “I really, really lived there. I had no friends, no social life—probably because I never left the building.”
That dedication led to an inside joke.
“They had those clocks on the wall that gave the time in different cities,” continues Dusty. “But next to New York, Los Angeles, London, there was one that said ‘Dusty Time’.”
“Dusty time” at AC proved to be pivotal. After graduating, Dusty began a long tenure at KVII, Amarillo’s ABC affiliate. Over the years, he did a little bit of everything in the newsroom: shooting and editing video, producing newscasts and yes, reporting and anchoring. In 2001, he was promoted to the position of News Director, responsible for all the staffing and content of the station’s 25+ hours of newscasts each week.
But over time, and over a dozen or so trips to Mexico, Dusty and his wife Nikki began to hatch a dream of leaving Amarillo behind. The question was: could a love of travel and a career in TV be combined? Sure it can. It’s called The Travel Channel. And The Travel Channel was developing a show called “1,000 Places to See Before You Die.” They were looking for a young couple willing to experience the far reaches of the earth together and let the rest of us watch; Dusty and Nikki thought they’d be perfect. They sent in an audition tape and managed to land two callbacks. Another couple was eventually chosen, but a staff member involved with the show suggested that Dusty and Nikki go out on their own—try to develop a vehicle for themselves—then shop it around. That was the nudge the couple needed.
“We had been to Mexico a lot and we had been to Costa Rica, so that’s where we decided to start,” says Dusty.
The couple traveled to Costa Rica over the summer, spending a busy week shooting as much footage and as many interviews as possible. A 30-minute program was written, voiced over and edited after the Greens returned home. Dusty decided the time was right to make the big move. He told his colleagues at KVII that he would be leaving, then he and Nikki began making final preparations to leave the country.
“We won’t be in Costa Rica permanently, though,” explains Dusty. “We’ll spend some time there, then move on to countries in South America, like Argentina and Chile. We’ll spend several weeks in each place. Then we’ll come back to the states and put the shows together. Hopefully by then we’ll have a buyer and we can move on to Europe. Eventually, we want to visit every single continent.”
The Greens are calling their show “Two for the Road.” They’ll be following a dream living out of backpacks, with no solid plans. Dusty says they’ll just be moving where the wind takes them.
“I credit AC totally for the career I have now,” he explains. “If it wasn’t for people like Mike Haynes, Paul Matney and Danita McAnally, I would not be doing what I’m doing. Nikki and I are really looking forward to future. It’s scary, but it’s exciting, too.”
The first episode of “Two for the Road” aired on KVII in August. The Greens are developing a website and blog to go document their experiences. You can find them at
www.twofortheroad.tv.
