Hanging Out in Barack Obama's Motorcade

Oops.

I am not really a Barack fan. In fact, until yesterday, I'm pretty sure I didn't know there was a C in his name. Oops.

Now, however, I have had a brush with potential future glory.

We drove up to Santa Fe after work yesterday to attend a Barack Obama rally. He had been in Albuquerque earlier in the day, but, alas, I was working, so we had to wait until the evening one in SF. Some miles outside of SF, we ran into a couple buses on the freeway, with a few cars in between. Started to speculate that Barack was in one of the buses. Freeway traffic was pretty slow, so as we approached the necessary exit, Matt was forced to merge in between the buses. Somehow the other cars between the buses disappeared. As the buses started exiting, we realized that the 4 cars in front and the 2 cars behind were all unmarked cop cars. We were, in fact, in the middle of the motorcade.

The bus behind us started flashing its lights at Matt, but we were on a 2 way road with no shoulder. Where were we supposed to go? Finally a passing lane of sorts appeared, so Matt pulled off and the bus passed. When he put on his signal to merge back in, the copy behind his bus turned on his sirens and lights and passed us. Somehow Matt got in before the last cop car, though. Finally, at the next stop sign, the cop car behind us turned his lights and sirens on and swung out in front of us through the stop with the rest of the motorcade, with Matt following. Forgetting that it was a 4 way stop and the people waiting the other direction should have gone.

We were so close to the venue. If we had just stayed in the motorcade a few more blocks, we could have had prime parking! Alas, as it was, we didn't get there early enough to make it inside. Instead we stood outside and froze for almost 2 hours. We did get close enough to Obama to nearly shake his hand. He looks like he's maybe 30. I think he's lying about his age.

Tonight, Hillary.