History was made in Richmond this past election. On October 25th, 2012, President
Obama came to Richmond during his whirlwind two-day, six-state “American Forward!”
tour. Tickets were free, which meant one
thing: pandemonium. Now it was relatively sedate pandemonium, but
pandemonium nonetheless.
It happened to be a beautiful day- sunny with temperatures
hanging out in the lower 60’s during the early morning and eventually climbing into
the low-to-mid 80’s. The president was
due to start speaking at 11:00 a.m., so it was requested that all attendees
arrive by 9:00 a.m. However, by 11:00
the president had not even boarded the plane to leave Florida where he had just
given another speech. By the time the
president took the stage, it was just after 1:00 p.m. and it felt close to 90
in the middle of roughly 15,000 people.
And all that was provided for attendees (who waited around six hours to
hear the President talk for 20 minutes) were free bottles of water. But then again, what did anyone expect?
My experience was relatively…blah, mediocre, boring even...pretty
much what I expected haha. (Don’t get me
wrong, it’s exciting to see our President speak in person, but everyone knows
it’s also a hassle.) Since everyone was
told to arrive by 9:00 a.m. (two hours before Obama would supposedly start
speaking) and that if you did not arrive by that time you may not get in, I set
out alone on my adventure around 7:45 a.m.
Being born and raised in the city and well aware of the area surrounding
the Carillon, I thought of some good places I could park. However, when it came time to choose which
highway exit to take, I decided to be daring and take one relatively close to
Byrd Park. Bad idea. Most of my morning commute was spent waiting
in a single file line going past John B. Cary Elementary School, just to end up
parking near the area I had originally had in mind (near Boulevard and Cary
St., so no real complaints). But the
route event organizers forced attendees to walk made it quite a trek to a single-file
line that was an even longer trek (or at least that’s what it felt like). To say it was a mile long would be close to
accurate haha. And then after waiting in
the single file line, we then waited in a cluster f***, shoulder-to-shoulder,
10 person wide mass. Luckily this is
when I ran into some friends. Then we
just got to hang out while slowly inching towards security. Unfortunately we saw one many have to be
carried out on a gurney right before reaching the security tent (but he was conscious
and seemed alright). Security pretty
much continued the cluster f*** and was highly unorganized, but we got through
and then it was pretty much clear sailing…until our friend told us he was
checking Twitter and the president was still speaking in Florida despite being
due to take the stage in about 20 minutes.
We could’ve sat on the hills surrounding the main lawn, or some
bleachers set up at the very back of lawn, but we chose to get as close as we
could and go to the middle of the lawn.
It was a pretty good spot, not gonna lie. But by 11:45/noon, when it was starting to
get hot and we couldn’t feel a breeze anymore, people started to get a little
cranky. I don’t think I’ve ever been in
such a crowded place before (and hope I never am again! Haha). And after awhile no one could text or check
any websites because the networks were so jammed with everyone turning to their
phones to entertain them. I felt so bad
for the people who lived nearby that couldn’t use their internet (which I saw
posts about later).
Long story short, it was an experience that I’m glad I was a
part of…but I don’t think I’ll be seeing any presidents speak in Richmond in
the future unless I’m invited/hooked up with some VIP access J
(Me saying, "Obama where you at?!")
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