I'm going to see Obama today  

He's hitting Missouri hard today. This morning in St. Louis then late this afternoon in Kansas City. With 100,000 people showing up in St. Louis, we know that the crowds and parking here will be bad. We're leaving about 3 to head up to the site. He is supposed to speak at 6.

I'll post pictures later! If you catch the news, look for the redhead in a blue sweater with black jacket and jeans. I'll be wearing my "Cat Lovers for Obama" button. DH is the tall, bald and handsome guy.

No opinions asked for. Since this is about a political candidate, I just put it in IMO.

St. Louis and Kansas City consider themselves rival cities and the crowd in St. Louis (100,000), beat out the crowd here in Kansas City (75,000). People in the crowd knew that he drew 100K on the other side of the state, and as we looked around, some thought we drew more. Alas, we lost that contest!

Here's a link to a news article with pictures from the Missouri rallies yesterday. There are better pictures of the rally here than what we were able to get. Even though we got there by the time the gates opened, we couldn't get any closer than about 100 yards from the speaker platform. As short as what I was, I only got a couple of glimpses of him while he spoke. DH is tall so he was putting children up on his shoulders so they could see.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/poli...ry/731877.html

But here's the cool thing. We were on a road close to the memorial and trying to find a parking space. A cop started to frantically wave at us to pull over. We did, unrolled the window and asked if we did something wrong. He told us the motorcade was about to come thru. So we quickly grabbed the camera and DH got 2 pictures as he passed us.

He had his face turned to the window with his big Obama grin and waving like mad. I was in the back seat smiling and waving, and I swear we made eye contact from 8 feet apart. It totally made up for the fact that we couldn't get closer to him during his speech.

Anyway, DH didn't have time to turn the fast shutter speed on the camera so he got the 2 shots. The second shot had the car on the other angle away from us and all you could see was his hand. Note the secret service agent eyeing us with suspicion (all they saw at first was a car with the windows open and something hanging out the drivers window, which happened to be the camera). This was done with a normal lens (no zoom) so you can see how close we were. As he got adjacent to our car, he turned his head and was looking straight out the window.

http://img368.imageshack.us/my.php?i...orcade1gu3.jpg

I have to crop and shrink down some other pictures. DH used his super zoom lens and even with that, the speakers were specs on the pictures.

The big names in attendance? Ike Skelton (congressman from MO), Kathleen Sebelius (governor of Kansas) and Obama.

Pics from the rally. DH took about 75 pictures. Here are some of the good ones.

Obama's car driving by:


A close up:


The second drive by shot (just his hand waving at the crowds):


The line to get in. Look for the tall cylinder tower in the background. That was close to where the podium was set up. The line started somewhere towards that tower, went a few blocks up a hill then back down all the way to the tower. It was about 6 people across. This was about an hour after the gates opened.


DH (Steve), myself and Jamie at the halfway point in the line:


Dogs for Obama!


The portion of the crowd that didn't make it on the news. The media got a shot of the main part of the crowd that could actually fit in front of the podium. This was another section of the park for the rest of us that didn't get there at noon for the 6PM speech. There were as many people behind us than were in this picture.


Both of these were taken with a super zoom lens at least 100 yards from the podium. We didn't have a tripod, so had a difficult time getting a shot that wasn't fuzzy from that distance, let alone with the back of someone's head in the picture!

Kathleen Sebelius, Governor of Kansas:


Obama speaking:


Pretty impressive turn out for a swing state, eh?

It's called the Liberty Memorial and it houses the National World War I museum. It is one of Kansas City's landmarks and the adjacent park is used for most of the outdoor events in the city such as concerts, etc. It's the Kansas City version of the Arch in St. Louis, Grant Park in Chicago, Central Park in New York, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Memorial

The 3 of us were laughing at our own dumb luck to be in that exact spot at the time he passed by. We left a little bit late for the rally, then got stuck at a railroad crossing for a freight train, then we tried to park further up that road only to find out that we would be ticketed. So we continued down the road until the police officer yelled at us to pull over. We unrolled the window to ask what we did wrong and he said the motorcade was coming thru. We had just enough time to yank the camera's out of the camera bags, turn them on, point and click.

I thought about the hybrid car thing as the motorcade came thru. There were a line of SUV's followed by 2 large buses that had the media. As any candidate flies from city to city, they are at the mercy of the local officials to arrange transportation. That would be a very cool thing if all the cities could provide hybrid SUVs. It would be even cooler if all SUVs sold in the U.S. were hybrids!

That would be cool to have been witness to a JFK appearance, even if the only thing you saw was his car go by. Things like these are history in the making.