We didn't find out until Friday that Obama would be speaking, and though we we were already planning on going to Charlotte for Phil Lesh & Friends along with the Allman Brothers Band on Saturday, we knew we couldn't miss this experience. So we dragged ourselves out of bed after a few hours of sleep and went down to get in line. We live about 2 miles from the stadium where the rally was held, and found parking with no problem.
When we arrived at about 10:15, with the gates opening at 12, the line already snaked around the campus of the local community college next to the Asheville High.
There was a festival atmosphere, with Obama gear being sold all around .. buttons, t-shirts, rally towels, everything was available both by roving vendors as well as some ez-up setups near the front of the line.
The line was raucous, everyone was in great spirits. It was amazing the diversity of the crowd. The family in front of us was from Madison County, a very stereotypically Appalachian area that you would not expect to find many Obama supporters. There were lots of high school kids and younger children alike.
This lady wrote a sing-a-long to go with row-row-row your boat, and she and her daughter led a bit of a round...
This guy (in the hat) was challenging people in connect four, if you beat him, you won an Obama shirt .. apparently he had only lost one, and beat this would be challenger..
Once the gates opened, we moved in very quickly. It was cool to see them using local junior marine corp ROTC group to help with security. These kids got to work with Secret Service and stand up on the hill during the speech. We made our way into the stadium which was reported to hold 10,000 people
I read on the live blog from earlier that MSNBC was reporting 2000 or something ridiculous .. well, the Asheville PD reported 28,000!! People were lined up on the hills above the stadium trying to get a glimpse.
This picture's not great but you can see Obama in the distance coming down the steps
He spoke, and you've probably heard the speech already, it was posted here earlier, I'm not going to go into details, but it was great .. some preemptive strikes against the mudslinging mccain promised, lots of detailed health care talk, we were impressed. Here's the a clip from Obama's website:
My Obama speech pics:
And here's a couple of bonus just for fun pics we grabbed..
this was a kid on his dad's shoulders:
Joe Sixpack was there! :)
The local TV station (sinclair broadcasting, yuck) showed a little of the rally, and then gave "equal time" plus a little more to the pathetic gathering of "almost 100" group of 50 or so blue meanies who did a counter rally in downtown asheville for mccain. Blah. THEY said we'd never win Western North Carolina....
UPDATE: some more Asheville Rally diaries.. this one with some more great pics
and this other one with a great summary of the event
more great pics in this diary!