Monday, August 18, 2008

McLovin Obama and Pelosi


A crazy thought was on my mind when I woke up this morning. McLovin (from the movie Superbad) could be Michael Phelps’ twin. Think about it.

Our day started out relatively early with a 7:15 am bag call. We did three decent events in Reno before heading to San Francisco. The take-off from Reno was really bumpy, the landing in SF was terrible. O-Force One slammed down on the tarmac at SFO as if we had just hooked the third wire on the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan. The impact was punctuated by gasps and the sound of metal trays and who knows what else crashing in the galley.

Our stay in SF was brief, about 5 hours. Obama was in town for night of fundraising. Since photos aren’t allowed during fundraisers, the traveling pool ended up with three hours of downtime while the senator raked in $7.8 million dollars as he bounced from one event to another at the Fairmont Hotel. I wish I could make that kind of dough for 3 hours of my time.

A group of us had dinner in Chinatown. A few of the ladies came back to the press hold after shopping at Victoria’s Secret. We all got a good laugh when our press agent had to search their little pink bags during the sweep.

The best part of the night came when we were waiting to move in the motorcade to that airport. We had been holding outside in the pool van for almost 2 hours when the loaded us for our imminent departure. Our van was behind a Highway Patrol car and a staff van. A police car pulled out of the garage followed by two SUV’s and we quickly folded into the movement. Two blocks into it we stop. The officer in the lead car got out and started flailing his arms about. We had stupidly hopped into Nancy Pelosi’s motorcade. We were now out of the bubble – dirty.

We sat in the middle of Powell Street as Dean, our press agent, tried to maneuver us back into the correct motorcade. Alas, it was too late, it had already left. Now, on our own, we zig-zagged through SF trying to get to the airport as soon as possible. The conversation between our Chinese driver James and Dean with his Southern drawl was hilarious as they went back and forth about how to get to the airport. Dean told James to disregard traffic laws and “drive it like you stole it.” James was all over it. We even experienced a burst of flashes as he blew through a red light at a photo enforced intersection. I’m sure the judge will buy his story. “No, really, I was told by a Secret Service agent to run red lights.”

We made it back to the plane and eventually to Albuquerque.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

"Drive it like you stole it." Sounds like your having a good time.