There's something whispered out here among the crackling and the buzzing. It's something simple. This is life on the wire for NV Energy and linesman Todd Waymire.
They're 200 feet in the air, thick lines of power with 500,000 volts running through them. Lines that have to stay powered up to repair them, says John Saychich, "This is so critical to us that we can't take it out of service. So we learn to perform all our maintenance activities with it energized."
Their suits are part metal, part cloth, all designed to keep the energy away, "The metal on the outside of the suit conducts everything around their body and nothing's really going through their body."
But 500,000 volts? What if something went wrong?
"You would have a big ball of fire and chances are whoever was in that ball of fire is going to be dead," said Saycich.
So you've got to be courageous, right?
"There's three things I'm afraid of, heights, electricity and women," said Waymire.
With life hanging in the balance, Todd and the guys like to keep things light. But beyond the jokes and the stunts there's a unique kinship on the lines.
Todd's father was a tramp lineman, going wherever the current would take him, "He traveled town to town and was never home."
Now, it's a second generation climbing the lines, having some fun with dangerous possibility coursing through their veins and buzzing around their bodies.
Because Las Vegas has few sources of power, the lines must be powered up at all times, even during repairs. If they weren't, the entire valley could see brownouts.
