Saying goodbye and the political trail

Yesterday was Dave's last day working in construction. We worked out all of the details ahead of time .... since he was getting off about 3pm and would no longer have the work truck I was picking him up. I was scheduled to donate blood at 2 and headed his way after that. He turned in all of his personal effects (phone, camera, keys, truck, tape measure, etc.) and then we took the back way to the University of Oregon. The Barack Obama campaign announced this Tues. that he would be speaking on Friday at 9pm. The UofO basketball arena holds about 9,000 people and we figured they would have some people on the floor too. For us to get into the arena we needed some lucky breaks, since people had gotten into line the night before the event. Getting off early was a good start. Sneaking in the back way helped us avoid a lot of traffic and closed streets. The fact that Friday was the last day of finals and the start of spring break was huge. And lastly, the UofO basketball team was playing in March Madness. So, we got in line at 4pm. Doors were supposed to open at 7pm, but the line started moving about 5:30. I got a bit New York on a few guys that tried to use the gaps that happened as the line moved suddenly to jump into line. Needless to say they ended up not cutting. It took until about 7:30 or so for us to get into the arena. They had TSA equipment and workers doing full bag and metal detection searches. We were in the top section of the arena and not that many people behind us made it in. There were a couple of thousand people that didn't make it in, but the campaign had them all gather in a soccer field that was right there. Barack Obama made a short speech to that crowd before coming into make his main speech. The crowd was as diverse as you heard - college students, grandparents, and young kids. While OR is not known for its racial diversity, that diversity was also represented too. The speech was about 45 minutes long and I'd say we both felt it was worth the time and effort to see it.



Now that the Obama campaign has been to OR, the Clinton campaign says they will come here before the primary which is May 20th. We've seen McCain speak during the 2000 election when we were at Maryland. If it works out, we'll see Clinton - but I'm not sure that we'd get all the same lucky breaks as we did yesterday.