I've seen Obama's stump speech probably three dozen times by now, and each time I hear it, I get goosebumps. But tonight I had the pleasure of actually seeing Barack speak up close and in person, and OH... MY... GOD!!! It was absolutely unbelievable. And when I say up close and personal, I mean up close and personal.
The story and pics are after the jump.
When I found out that Senator Obama was going to be coming to Dayton last Thursday or Friday, I immediately made plans to go to the rally. I won't say I was so excited by the prospect of being able to attend a rally that I lost a lot of sleep over it, but I did lose a little, especially today.
I got up at about 6:15, which some nights is about the time I'm going to bed. But I planned ahead and went to bed early, setting all three of my alarms (no joke, I'm a heavy sleeper) to make sure I got up in time. I wanted to be at the campaign office and in line as soon as they opened to get tickets. By the way, tickets aren't required, but you'll see why I wanted them in a few minutes.
Anyway, I woke up before my first alarm even went off, showered, got dressed, packed some extra clothes and blankets in the car, ate a big breakfast, and headed out. Keep in mind the campaign office is only about 20 minutes from my house during rush hour, but I wanted to be prepared.
I made it downtown and realized it wasn't even 7:30 yet and the office wasn't supposed to open until 8 am, so I waited in the car for about 20 minutes and walked the 2 blocks to get my tickets. I walked into the building and the line was snaking around the entire inside of the lobby, at least 150 people there waiting in line already, probably more.
I forgot to take my camera in with me, so unfortunately I don't have any pics of that, but the really cool part is that I only stood in line for about half an hour. The volunteers and staffers were seriously on the ball, and the line was moving extremely quickly.
Since there was already a long line at the campaign office, I decided not to take any chances so I rushed back to my car and headed off to the Ervin J. Nutter Center at Wright State University. I made it there by about 8:45 (after stopping for coffee) and here's what I saw.
I know. Not much to get excited about. A dozen people had beat me.
I ended up deciding to stay out in the cold with the other die-hards who were in line and braving the sub-freezing temps, and ended up meeting several great people. About an hour after I got there two young men who were stationed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base showed up and they were extremely excited just to be able to be there. They said they asked for the day off as soon as they found out Obama was going to be in town, and that tons of our airmen are going to be voting for Obama in Dayton on March 4th.
Around 1:00 in the afternoon or so I was getting pretty cold and in need of a restroom after standing outside for four hours already, so I headed across the street to a gas station for relief and more coffee, while my two Air Force buddies saved my place in line.
When I got back, I noticed that the line had grown considerably, but was still a little disappointed that it wasn't longer than it already was.
But by about the time it was coming up on 3:00 pm, I took this shot.
The picture is a little confusing because while it looks like there's more people there walking up on the sidewalks. Actually, those are the people standing in the line that had wrapped around the building.
A little after 3:00 the Secret Service came out and put up police tape and sectioned off three lines to go into the building, and the volunteers came out to sign up even more volunteers and remind everyone that tomorrow it was there job to go and vote early. Shortly after that, the doors were opened (about half an hour early) and I was on my way in.
Security was tight, very tight, for those of you worried about another Dallas like scenario. There were police from five different jurisdictions that I counted, plus the State Troopers, plus the TSA, plus the Secret Service. But all in all it seemed to be moving rather quickly, although it's hard for me to judge since I was one of the first dozen or so inside.
After the security check and another restroom break, I followed the volunteers instructions and headed to the far end of the arena and proudly showed off the ticket I got up so early to get. This ticket got me onto the floor, right up in front of the center of the stage in about the second row. I couldn't have been much closer.
Since we still had a couple of hours to kill, a lot of people just hung out, some even sat down on the floor to take a break after all the time we'd spent outside.
And this is what it looked like from the floor as people were just beginning to enter:
But before long the place started to fill up, and by the time Senator Obama came on there didn't seem to be an empty seat in the building.
Finally, at about 6:15 pm. After an extremely long day standing on very sore feet and knees that wanted to buckle, the man himself stepped out onto the stage.
The pain went away, and I completely forgot about almost everything else. But I didn't forget to take pictures. Unfortunately these aren't the greatest pictures because the stage lights were shining right down on me from behind the Senator, but they turned out fairly well in spite of that, I think.
This one is one of my favorites because I see a lot of determination in those eyes.
This one I think is particularly awesome (I took it right after the one above) because their faces seem to be saying exactly what Barack's is saying.
And two final pictures... this one was just before a 40-something couple from Japan gave Barack a hand-made tapestry I overheard them telling him they'd brought with them from Japan. They were Japanese citizens here in Ohio working for Honda, but wanted to show that Japan is pulling for Barack just as much as we are. Sadly my camera was too slow to get a picture of the tapestry before it was handed off to an assistant.
And this last one shows Barack in what I think is perhaps one of his finest moments, just before he shook my hand.