The Oracle

With our nation in crisis mode, I thought it was only prudent to suspend my blog through these difficult times. O.K., enough of that, I’m back.

I was driving home from an assignment the other day and for some reason I thought of Dan Quayle. Yeah, don’t ask me why, I have no explanation for that. Anyway, I’m assuming I thought of him because of the ongoing talk about Sarah Palin and how many think that she isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. So, I thought that it might be good to start calling her Sarah Quaylin. Alternatively, you could add an “E” to the end of Quaylin to commemorate the famous Dan Quayle “potatoe” gaffe.

It’s been a week of shooting technology leaders that have been speaking at the Oracle Open World conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The Oracle convention is one of the bigger ones that comes to SF. They shut down a main thoroughfare to pitch huge tents for convention attendees to have lunch and occupy 3 huge halls of the Moscone Center. This year, Oracle has gone out of its way to promote the convention as a “green” event. One of the highlights was stationary bikes that you could hop on and charge your cell phone by pedaling for 15 minutes. The press release about the bikes made it sound like there was going to be several bikes that could possibly generate enough power to help power the convention. I thought that would be a fun thing to shoot as a “green’ feature, so I headed down to check it out.

Well, there were only 4 bikes that I could find. Then I had to wait for someone to get on one of them. I sat there for close to an hour. Some people would walk by (many of them overweight), look for a second, shake their head and move on. Grim.
With no takers on the bike front, I went for my second “green” option, the biodegradable food trays and utensils. All the food at the convention was served on trays made from plant material as was the water cups. The forks and knives were made from potatoes. There were people who would help you sort out your trash into the appropriate recycling bins. I met a “green team” member named John who appeared to be either homeless or part of a rehab program. I had been watching him for a while and noticed that after people would dump their trays into the bins he would take some of the leftovers for himself. He even offered me a brownie. I had to pass on that. One of the sides for the day’s lunch was a barley salad, which went untouched by most. John quipped “I guess people out here don’t care too much for barley” and with that he took a pinch and popped it in his mouth.

The keynotes over the next few days included Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle and Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel. Otellini is one of the most boring speakers on earth. It’s really tough to stay awake when he is on the mic. I would give anything to have Craig Barrett back, at least he was funny.
Mega-rich and eccentric Ellison is a weird dude. The guy is so full of himself. And what's up with that swarmy little beard he's got going? He opened his speech with a MTV style video of his new Oracle Trimaran racing boat. He then went on to talk about it in length. Does anyone care? Then he broke into the tech talk. I never have any idea what he is talking about. I’m not even sure what Oracle does. The tech talk is not only boring, but it is like listening to a foreign language. He went on to announce a joint effort with HP to produce some new server database thingy. It came out of the floor with fog machines going and dazzling light show. Don't ask me what it is or does. I had a hard enough time captioning the photos since it had two or three names.
People pay huge money to come to these conferences, I wonder what they get out of it.

Wino

Its 1:45am as I make my way down a dirt road. My high beams illuminate the dust from the vehicle a ways ahead of me. I should be in bed. “It feels like fall, doesn’t it?” asks vineyard manager Josh Anstey of St. Supery Winery. I am here to shoot the night harvest of Dollarhide Ranch old vine cabernet grapes. I love cabernet and the wine that comes from these vines is fantastic.
The crews are set to start picking a small parcel of the cab grapes beginning at 2am and should be done by 4am. Tractors pull lights to bring daylight to the night so the workers can see what they are picking. Some of the workers wear headlamps. It always amazes me how fast these guys pick grapes during the harvest. On some of the bigger parcels, a single worker can harvest nearly a ton of grapes on his own. The curved blade darts in and out of the vines producing tight bunches of purple grapes. They drop then grapes into plastic bins and move on down the row of vines, sometimes running to make better time. I ride on the bin trailer being pulled by a tractor. Grape vines are hitting me as we moves through the tight rows. A sticky substance on the vines is now all over me. My hands feel glued to my cameras. Dirt is clinging to every sticky part of my outfit. By 4:30, the parcel is picked and the Latino crew is heading back to their cars. I am far from done with my assignment. I have one more winery to visit which will be harvesting chardonnay grapes at 7am. It’s still dark as I make my way towards Napa. I came close to running over a skunk that darted across the road. A few minutes later a deer stood confused in the middle of the road. It paced back and forth before slipping on the street and then darting into the bushes. I hit a deer once, its no fun. Not good for the car either. At least I was in a rent a car when I hit it. Good for me, bad for the deer.

Workers had already started the chardonnay pick by time I arrived at Artesa Winery in Napa. The sky was getting light, but a low cloud cover kept it gray instead of letting the rising sunlight in. I spent close to 2-1/2 hours hanging out with the workers as they blazed through a big block of vines. My eyes are feeling heavy as I walk around Artesa’s barrel room. It’s dimly lit and really quiet. I watch a load of merlot grapes being processed and the tanks turned. It’s so nice to be able to wander around and see all the different steps that go into making a bottle of nice wine. The people at Artesa have given me free reign over the place.
I am dead tired, have been up for over 24 hours at this point. I need to go home. I fight to stay awake on the drive home. It’s difficult. I get stuck in traffic. Why is there traffic at 12:30 in the afternoon? I make it home safely. I nod off as I attempt to file pictures. It’s comical. I need a glass of wine.

Hike to Photo

I can’t for the life of me figure out why there is never any parking on the streets around corporate campuses. I have to shoot a fair amount of building mugs and signage when companies report their quarterly earnings and I always end up having to park really far away or illegally in some private parking lot. I mean seriously, would it hurt to have one little strip of parking, maybe a meter. Make some money for the city.

Take today for example. I was down in Palo Alto doing a sign shot for the story about Hewlett-Packard’s plans to cut 24,600 jobs over the next three years. After the hour-long drive, I made it to the HP headquarters, spotted my sign and then started looking for a place to park. No Parking signs lined the streets surrounding the campus. I drove around the block, well past the HP property, still no parking. I keep going and have now made a complete 1-1/2 mile loop back to where I started. Not a legal parking spot in sight.
For some reason I thought I might find something if I go in the opposite direction. That didn’t really pan out either. I headed south until I found a park with a public parking lot that was free. The only problem is that I am about a mile away from the sign I need to shoot. Thinking I can do better than this, I pass the parking lot and continue driving towards HP in hopes that a parking spot will magically appear on some side street that I might have missed. No such luck.

I head back to the parking lot and park my car there. I strap on my cameras and start walking. The blocks are long. My cameras keep firing as the shutter button hits my hips and ass. I now have a good collection of my legs and feet. I t took about 10 minutes to get to the sign. I shoot it in every possible way just to get the most out of my hike. I stand there for a good 15 minutes waiting for something to happen or for someone to walk by the sign. Luckily, a guy rode by on his bike. That was the pinnacle of excitement. I walked around the perimeter of the campus hoping to see something of interest. Not a thing. After working the signs for close to 35 minutes, I started to trek back towards my car passing all of the neatly lanscaped office parks. How do they keep their lawns so nice? The photo essay on my legs and feet continued.

Flippin' Off Osama

I am filing some photos at a Kinkos and there was this guy sitting two chairs away from me who keeps mumbling to himself. I think he is reading something that he is writing, but he is also making some weird sounds. He’s a relatively normal looking guy, appears to be a business man. I’m looking down at my laptop and all of the sudden he blurts out “we’re so involved in our laptops we haven’t even noticed all of these beautiful women in here.” I look up and over towards him. He’s looking at me and nodding. I look around and there are about 4 soccer mom types. I look back at him and nod. What the hell was that about?

It’s the anniversary of 9/11 today. I’m doing the proverbial anniversary feature. The search for the said feature has brought me to Lafayette, California. There is a privately owned hillside in Lafayette across from the BART station that is adorned with thousands of wooden crosses that honor the troops that have been killed in Iraq. Some see this as a disgrace. Others see the display as a harsh reminder of how ugly war is.
Today, there is only one man at the crosses. Self-described “pro U.S.A.” activist Mark Kirby is standing alongside in a costume that he says depicts Osama Bin Laden. He has Vietnam era camouflage pants and a dirty white t-shirt with O.B.L. and 9-11 written in black magic marker. His makeshift beard is crafted from a woman’s wig and he is using a grey sweatshirt as a turban. He is attracting a mixed reaction from passing cars ranging from the middle finger to honks as he waves a homemade sign on a broken hockey stick that says “never forget 9-11” and a Styrofoam airplane. The airplane thing was, well, creepy. The honks and flashing of the bird were about equal. As I was standing next to him taking pictures a car honked, he said “I think that one was for you.” I told him that it couldn’t have been seeing that I didn’t have an awesome costume.
My next stop was a few miles down the road where the Lafayette Flag Brigade had set up their annual flag display on the overpass across highway 24. Flags adorned the fencing along both sides of the overpass and people stood between them and waved to traffic on the freeway. An audio system blasted contemporary country tunes and every now and again some local person would sing a song. It was like a small town version of the republican convention. One elderly Chinese man came up to me and asked if I had heard him sing. I told him I had not. He said “that’s o.k., you can just watch it on You tube.” He went on to tell me that I “could tell my friends that I met that guy.” If only I could remember the name of his song. Oh well. The event received a lot of attention. So much in fact that on my way home traffic heading towards the flag vigil was backed up for about 5 miles. Glad I wasn’t going that way.

The Skinny on the New iPods

Fresh off of the political conventions, I am back to work in my town. Apple is having one of their special events where Steve Jobs announces the latest Apple gadgets. Today’s event is at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, a small theatre. Usually, the Apple events, such as Macworld and the WWDC are held in huge halls that fill up with a couple of thousand people. This invite only event will be much smaller with about 300 in attendance.

After sitting outside for about 2 hours with Bob Galbraith from Reuters, we were let into the building a half an hour before the event was going to start. As usual, there is tons of media and we all do our best to cram into a pretty tight space. Some photographers, who I will not name, bring just about every piece of camera equipment known to man in a giant roller and occupy enough space for three people. Despite having a huge piece of property, I am still being hit with their monopod(s).
The show, dubbed “Let’s Rock” starts at 10am. When Jobs came out on stage and you immediately notice how thin he is. He looks gaunt and weak. I’m not going to go as far as Bloomberg News and issue an obit, but he does not look well. Jobs did poke fun at the prematurely released obit by saying that "reports of his death are greatly exaggerated." The picture below is of two frames I have shot of Jobs. The image on the left is from today’s event. The one on the right is from 2005. What a huge difference. His wedding ring appears to dangle on his finger. I’m sure the health questions will be popping up in the coming weeks. An iTunes update was Job’s first announcement followed by a new version of the iPod Nano. New size and colors are being offered along with a new feature that allows you to shake the music player to activate the song shuffle. I hope you can turn that off or else the runners of the world are going to have a messed up string of partial songs. The iPod Touch also had a makeover. New prices and additional memory were some of the latest things to be announced. A man holding a small video camera behind let out an orgasmic gasp followed by a “yes!’ when Jobs described the new “Genius” feature that allows you to hit a button and create a playlist based on the genre of song that is playing. I wonder who he works for. Jack Johnson played a few songs to end the program. Such a laid back dude. I was surprised to hear Jobs say that Jack Johnson has sold more music on iTunes than any other artist. I still don’t believe it. Good for him.
Reporters and guests were now led to a room where they could play with the latest gadgets. Tables were set up with dozens of the new iPods. Jobs and Jack Johnson came by and left after a few minutes. Pretty cool products, just wish the Touch had more memory.

Goose and Maverick - RNC Fianle

After last night’s big Sarah Palin love fest, how was McCain going to upstage her tonight with his acceptance speech? He’s not really known to have the most dynamic personality out there.

I got down to the hall around 11:30. McCain was expected to do his walk through around 1:30. The stage had been altered for tonight’s show. A short runway led to a podium that they could lower into the floor. Unlike the moveable podium that Obama had in Denver, they couldn’t figure out how to get this one to completely disappear into the floor. The top part of the podium and the microphones stuck out.
Workers continued doing final adjustments to the podium and runway. It wasn’t until after 2:30 that McCain came out to do his sound check. Joe Lieberman came along with McCain, as did most of McCain’s family and advisors. Lieberman was like a lost puppy, he wouldn’t leave McCain’s side. I’m surprised they weren’t holding hands. He had the biggest ear to ear smile. He totally wanted that VP nod and this was as good as it was going to get, he might as well make the most of the moment. Someone tell this guy that he wasn't picked as McCain's running mate.

The cut riser (or pod, as they are calling it) is packed tonight. There has to be about 12 of us on this thing. I got into my spot early since I didn’t think I would be able to squeeze in if I waited until later in the evening. I have so much stuff, I could really use a Sherpa. I'm weighed down with too many cameras and lenses as I try to make it up the steep ladder onto the riser. Packed in like sardines, it was difficult to turn around to shoot anything behind me or to the sides, especially since my cameras were connected to those ethernet cables that were just a tad bit short.
A day after the sign of the day read “service”, today’s sign read “peace.” Hmmmm, that doesn’t really jive with all the war rhetoric I have been hearing all week.
McCain came on stage a little after nine. Illuminated by a single spotlight, The Mac made his way down the runway doing his best to get his arms as high as they would go. He was doing a good job, actually. The arena lights came up and it was a sea of McCain – Palin signs as the fans cheered on their man. It was exciting in a way that you wouldn’t expect from a McCain event, at least one that I have ever been to. Then he started speaking and it was back to the old McCain that I know.

His speech was pretty dull, not that anyone really expected anything different. He did say something about his opponent that none of his other colleagues (especially his running mate) had really said this entire week. The Mac made a very sincere comment about Barack Obama and his supporters, something that reminded me of a McCain from the past when he seemed to be a little more of a centrist. Here is the quote from the speech.

“Finally, a word to Senator Obama and his supporters. We'll go at it over the next two months. That's the nature of these contests, and there are big differences between us. But you have my respect and admiration. Despite our differences, much more unites us than divides us. We are fellow Americans, an association that means more to me than any other. We're dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal and endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights. No country ever had a greater cause than that. And I wouldn't be an American worthy of the name if I didn't honor Senator Obama and his supporters for their achievement.”
The night ended like most other conventions, the families came out and the Maverick waved with his new running mate. But, like the night before, it was awkward. McCain and Palin waved to the crowd only for a brief moment before disappearing to work the rope line. Rope line??? The balloons hadn’t even fallen yet (there was a TON of balloons). This isn’t a night for a rope line meet and greet session. Those two should have been out there in the confetti, hamming it up, kicking balloons and marveling at the fireworks...projected on the jumbotron. Awkward.
As the delegates filed out, taking their state signs and handfuls of confetti with them as souvenirs, Team Getty packed up shop. For the better part of 2 hours, 8 photographers, 4 picture editors, 1 tech guy and 2 runners wrapped up cables, took down the 4 remote cameras and loaded our bags. After two weeks of crazy politicians, It's Miller Time.

The Lipstick Wearing Pit Bull - RNC Day 3

It’s a big day today. Sarah Palin is scheduled to speak and her entire family, including the pregnant teen, will be there. We haven’t decided which will get more play, her speech or the pregnant teen. The first part of the day is like groundhog’s day. The delegates start filling the floor around 2 pm. Bored photographers hunt down another goofy hat or costume photo. Each day gets harder and harder to find something different.

Like previous days, the first 2-1/2 hours of the session is occupied with c-list speakers. I take my position on the perch. It’s packed tonight. They have 8 of us crammed into the top tier of the riser. Four people was pretty tight, eight is uncomfortable. With such little space, I am constantly getting bumped in the back of the head with lenses. It’s going to be a long night.

Three failed republican presidential hopefuls will be speaking tonight. Mitt Romney was the first to go. I really don’t have much to say about him, he’s just Mitt and he and Anne love all of you.

Mike “The Huckster” Huckabee went next. I loved covering Huckabee in Iowa and New Hampshire, he’s a very funny guy and always made for great pictures. Was good to wsee he’s out there. When he took the stage tonight, the giant screen behind him had a picture of a parking lot. Other people have had nice sunset vistas, a beautiful country road or a quaint American Main Street. Huck got a parking lot. Man, that’s rough. His speech was pretty bad. It was full of recycled stories from the Iowa days. He pulled out the old desk story. It totally bombed. Huck needs some new material.

Next up, Rudy G. Earlier in the day I had tried to get a betting pool going on how many times he would say 9/11 in his speech. I had no takers. Rudy was his normal arrogant self and started in on the Barack Bash almost immediately. He would belt out weird criticisms and then laugh at his own joke because nobody else was. It was bizarre. But, the most amazing thing was that he only mentioned 9/11 once or twice. I thought for sure it would be every other word. He did have to remind us a few times that he was the Mayor of New York City, just in case you had forgotten.

The catch phrase of the day was "we're winning, the surge has succeeded."

The pregnant teen and her gum chewing boyfriend were in the VIP box now. Every camera in the place was aimed towards them. He looked frightened. I would have been.
Sarah Palin hit the stage shortly after 9 pm. The crowd went nuts. She graciously waved to her fellow republicans and repeatedly said thank you. She seemed overwhelmed. I’m sure this wasn’t the size of crowd she had when she was mayor of the 9,000 person town. At one point during her speech the crowd went crazy and I saw her through my lens sort of gasp and mouth “oh wow.” She started out her speech really strong, this woman has spunk. It seemed like she knew what she was doing. Midway through the speech, Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin made an appearance so she could have her daily arrest. She needs to not be so predictable.
I think a lot of people were impressed. The crowd loved her hockey mom/pit bull line with the lipstick punchline. The bashing began soon after and continued for the rest of her speech in the same joking way as Rudy. She had lots of zeal, but no substance.
At the end of her speech, McCain came out to deafening cheers. It was a really awkward moment. They both seemed confused. McCain blurted out one line, stood next to her for a minute and waved and then seemed to shrug his shoulders and say now what as he stood with his back to the audience. He then went behind her family as if to hide. Great coordination. Bizarre.

Back at the Sculpture Garden - RNC Day 2

The great thing about the RNC is that they start so late in the afternoon you get to have a few extra hours of sleep. Today’s show starts at 6:20 (odd time) and runs through 10 pm. We go to the event site in shifts, rotating the early morning shift every day. I’m with the 11:30 shift today. I also get a brief change of scenery. I am heading to the Minneapolis Convention Center to cover a press conference with the Robot (Cindy) and the Smoker (Laura). The two are going talk about their support of the ONE Campaign, a charitable organization that donates care packages for people doing humanitarian service in impoverished countries. They are going to pack a ceremonial box for the cameras. Laura raced through the assembly line process once and was done. Cindy went through twice, both times with a very determined look on her face.

Back at the Sculpture Garden, it was another day of stiff wax-like speakers. The only difference today is the addition of music. ACDC at the RNC? Yup. Contemporary country tunes also rocked the house. At least the crowd seemed to be having fun today. Yesterday was like a funeral.
The costume of the day is worn by the delegates from Alaska. Photographers go wild to get photos of them wearing orange construction vests and hard hats that have a message about drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. A photo on the back of their vest shows animals roaming in oil fields. Cute.
Today’s schedule is chock full of speakers whose names I don’t recognize. It isn’t until the last hour of the program that more familiar names appear. Joe Lieberman? What the hell is he doing here? George Bush Senior and Barbara are in the hall watching from the VIP box alongside Cindy and her adopted Bangladeshi kid. Laura Bush is back on the podium. What’s up with the recycling of speakers at this event? Not enough people to fill the slots I guess. The Smoker introduced her husband, the President. He couldn’t get himself to Minnesota so he phoned it in. Bush on the big screen. Yikes.
I do my best to not fall asleep as I sit atop my 12 foot tall riser as Fred Thompson told us tales about John McCain’s life. He made sure to use the convention’s slogan “country first” in just about every sentence. Lieberman was after him. He still calls himself a democrat. I thought he dumped that party. I need a drink.

Minnesota Nice at the Polka Bar - RNC Day 1

Day one of the RNC was amazingly dull. The session was cut down to about 3 hours, a perfect length for an event like this. The highlight of the evening, if you can call it that, was when Cindy McCain (the robotic Stepford Wife) and Laura Bush (The chain smoking librarian) gave brief remarks on how to donate to the hurricane relief fund. Aside from the gangbang to shoot the Texas delegates and their cowboy hats, the day was not very photogenic inside the hall. It was kind of like shooting a sculpture garden.

Outside the hall, all hell broke loose. So-called “anarchists” took to the streets of St. Paul, breaking windows and trashing cop cars. Pepper spray was deployed into the faces of protestors and photographers. People got arrested. My buddy Evan Vucci from AP had his camera smashed and was detained briefly by police. He walked away with some great footage and made a very solid video. His colleague Matt Rourke (who made fantastic frames) spent most of the evening in jail. Outside was definitely the place to be for photos on day one. Protestors 1 - Republicans 0.
With the abbreviated schedule, we were done by 7 pm. A big group of photographers and editors were headed to Nye’s Polonaise, an old school polka bar in Minneapolis. My friend Sam Morris had told me about it a few weeks ago and it sounded like a place that you have to experience.
Nye’s is a restaurant that features live polka music as well as a sing-along piano bar. It is an awesome place. Glittery vinyl upholstered booths in red and gold dazzle the main room. A trio of senior citizens known as “The World’s Most Dangerous Polka Band” perform in the adjacent Polka Lounge where they eek out all kinds of tunes from polka to country. Founding member, Ruth Adams, plays a modified accordion that doesn’t require her to squeeze it like a traditional accordion. All three of the musicians barely move as they perform. The music is exactly what you would imagine from three frozen elderly folks. It’s brilliant.
The manager of Nye’s volunteered to take us on a tour of the establishment since it was our first visit. It was a very nice gesture and a fun tour. Minnesotans are so damn nice. The New York guys are freaked out by all the nice people here. They’re not really sure what to make of it.

Since it was Labor Day, Nye’s was scheduled to be closed but stayed open to accommodate convention goers. Sadly, the restaurant only had on food offering, polish sausage. It was good, but I want to experience a full meal at this cool place. Hopefully we can return before weeks end.

The Fried Food Experience

I’ve been at the Excel Center since 9am. I’m trying to find features but am having little success. Photographers pounce when workers peel protective paper off of a mirrored riser. People are bored.

Word came midway through Sunday that the organizers of the RNC are thinking of making changes to the convention due to the imminent landing of Hurricane Gustav. They announced a press conference for 3 pm that would outline these changes. After running tests on our tether systems, I covered the press conference. The room was packed. There had to have been at least 40 stills or more. McCain would be speaking via satellite to announce the changes in the convention schedule.

When McCain came on the TV, the cameras went wild. Thousands of shutter clicks went off during his short appearance. Motor drives gone wild. I felt like I was under fire. Cease fire! Cease Fire!

McCain announced that the first day of the convention would be abbreviated and only tend to official convention business. All of the heavy hitting speakers scheduled for Monday had canceled. The list included George Bush, Dick Cheney and Ahhhnold Schwarzenegger. The six hour program had been cut down to 2 hours. Hurricane Gustav was killing the convention. Could it be karma for the current republican administrations lack of response to Katrina? Did the evangelicals who prayed for rain on Obama’s Invesco field speech get the date wrong? The RNC was getting washed out by a hurricane that was hundreds of miles south of Minnesota. McCain said during his satellite fed speech that “it is time to take our republican hats off and put on our American hats.” What exactly does that mean?

News crews began to trickle out of the convention. Some are heading to NOLA for the hurricane, some are just thinking that this story is dead and scale back their coverage.
With all of our work done for the day, a group of us head to the Minnesota State Fair. The 320-acre fair is a bad food mecca. The fair is known for its huge variety of deep fried food on a stick. You can get deep fried Twinkies, corn dogs, alligator, Oreos and pretty much any other bad food you can think of. There are carnival style food trailers everywhere. There is more food here than anything. You can also buy hot tubs, couches and grain silos. One of the grain silo sellers advertised the availability of “fall erections.” A group of kids took pictures and laughed at the sign. Yes, we did too.
Reuters photographer Brian Snyder had told me about chocolate covered bacon at the fair. I was intrigued. It was my mission to find this delicacy. We walked around for a few hours in search of the bacon. Along the way, a few of my co-workers “got their Twink on” and tried the deep fried Twinkie on a stick. Looked scary.
As the sun was going down we finally found Famous Dave’s, home of the chocolate covered bacon. For five dollars I got a cone shaped water cup filled with 5 pieces of “Sweet and Salty Pig Lickers.” Fairgoers looked on as a group of geeky photographers simultaneously photographed the cup of bacon. I took a deep breath and bit into the greasy confection. Hmmm, not bad. Seriously. Tasted a little like when you have bacon with pancakes and you dip it in the syrup. I wanted it to be more disgusting than it was.

Denver to Minneapolis

The Mall of America is the first thing I see as my Frontier flight descends into the Minneapolis –St. Paul airport. After a long Thursday and little sleep, I arrive in St. Paul for the round two of the political conventions.

After a day of much needed rest, the crew headed to the Excel Energy Center in St. Paul to do a walk through of the new venue. Everything in the small arena is red. A giant monitor behind the small podium projects a waving flag. The stage is boring compared to the democrats’ game show-like set-up. For the most part, everything is in place. Unlike the DNC, people aren’t frantically running around trying to put final touches on the stage and arena.
We weren’t at the site very long. A few of us decided to check out the media party before our Getty team dinner. We programmed the GPS to take us to the Guthrie Theatre. We navigated around all the road closures in St. Paul and finally got onto the freeway. Twenty minutes later, we arrived at the theatre – or so we thought. There wasn’t much going on except some weird art miniature golf in a big field of grass. We walked around for a few minutes and finally asked someone where the Guthrie Theatre was. It turns out that the theatre used to be on the site of the mini golf but was torn down 2 years prior and relocated. We were about 5 miles from the new site. With only 30 minutes before our dinner, we blew off the party. Thanks Garmin.

Chip knew of a sculpture park across the street from the mini golf so we visited the famous spoonbridge and cherry sculpture. At least the light was nice.