Photos to Restore Sanity and/or Fear
For those who haven't already seen this via FB or Twitter, I have photos from my trip to the Rally up at Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chris_newell/sets/72157625294212566/with/5138276307/
The rest of my family drove down from Philly for it (the gent with the hat with all the pins and the young lady with the Eddie Izzard sign are my father and sister respectively. The latter was based on a rumor that Izzard would be one of the guest performers; the fact that said rumor turned out the be baseless really only makes it more perfect. I did have to explain to my folks why the random young lady with the "Moderation or Death! ...or Cake" sign was so enthused by the Eddie Izzard reference.)
Unfortunately, my plans to meet up with friends in the area fell through - we headed over a bit early, and as we found a place to settle we were hemmed in so quickly I knew it'd be a nightmare to get out and back in. Predictably enough, my iPhone was a desperately confused brick for the duration, which didn't help, either with staying in contact with folks or getting that much-treasured Rally Foursquare check-in.
You have no idea how cool it was watching The Wave approach - for several seconds - before passing over when Adam and Jaimie from Mythbusters were doing the warm-up "experiments".
One of our local journalist/blogger hybrids came back damning the rally with fairly faint praise. My personal opinion is that the thought of anyone from Seattle knocking anything organized by, oh, pretty much any East Coasters for "lack of organization" can keep me giggling randomly for days, but we seem to have been in about the same place and I think I - and the folks around me - managed somehow to have a much better time than our correspondent feared. "Oddly enough," as he would say. I wouldn't have minded if the camera tent wasn't the obstruction that it turned out to be, but all but a handful of VPs were always going to end up watching the Jumbotrons anyway, and the Park Service did apparently end up opening up several blocks of Mall that weren't in the original permit. (Honestly, what did he expect them to do about the metro melting down under the load, build a few more metro lines for the event? And really - it was disappointing that they didn't have someone like Bruce Springsteen so they could really nail the young demographic?)
After the festivities, we headed off to the Spy Museum (great fun, if a bit crowded with other Rally-goers who had the same idea) and then managed to get into Chef Geoff's for dinner. Sunday morning was a touristy blitz run on the greater Lincoln Memorial (particularly the Vietnam and Korean memorials) amidst a maze of road closings for a bike race before running me back out the airport for my flight.
Unfortunate post-script: I set up my DVR to record the Comedy Central broadcast, which was one of the reasons why I didn't worry so much about the lack of a view. Alas, my local Comcast saw "live broadcast from noon-3:00" and kept it in their schedule as a noon-3:00 (presumably tape-delay) on the West Coast, while Comedy Central ran it live from 9-12:00 Pacific. I came back to a brief flash of aerial shots of the crowd, and three hours of Scrubs re-runs - which I must say is a hell of thing to do to a guy right off a cross-country flight under the best of circumstances.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chris_newell/sets/72157625294212566/with/5138276307/
The rest of my family drove down from Philly for it (the gent with the hat with all the pins and the young lady with the Eddie Izzard sign are my father and sister respectively. The latter was based on a rumor that Izzard would be one of the guest performers; the fact that said rumor turned out the be baseless really only makes it more perfect. I did have to explain to my folks why the random young lady with the "Moderation or Death! ...or Cake" sign was so enthused by the Eddie Izzard reference.)
Unfortunately, my plans to meet up with friends in the area fell through - we headed over a bit early, and as we found a place to settle we were hemmed in so quickly I knew it'd be a nightmare to get out and back in. Predictably enough, my iPhone was a desperately confused brick for the duration, which didn't help, either with staying in contact with folks or getting that much-treasured Rally Foursquare check-in.
You have no idea how cool it was watching The Wave approach - for several seconds - before passing over when Adam and Jaimie from Mythbusters were doing the warm-up "experiments".
One of our local journalist/blogger hybrids came back damning the rally with fairly faint praise. My personal opinion is that the thought of anyone from Seattle knocking anything organized by, oh, pretty much any East Coasters for "lack of organization" can keep me giggling randomly for days, but we seem to have been in about the same place and I think I - and the folks around me - managed somehow to have a much better time than our correspondent feared. "Oddly enough," as he would say. I wouldn't have minded if the camera tent wasn't the obstruction that it turned out to be, but all but a handful of VPs were always going to end up watching the Jumbotrons anyway, and the Park Service did apparently end up opening up several blocks of Mall that weren't in the original permit. (Honestly, what did he expect them to do about the metro melting down under the load, build a few more metro lines for the event? And really - it was disappointing that they didn't have someone like Bruce Springsteen so they could really nail the young demographic?)
After the festivities, we headed off to the Spy Museum (great fun, if a bit crowded with other Rally-goers who had the same idea) and then managed to get into Chef Geoff's for dinner. Sunday morning was a touristy blitz run on the greater Lincoln Memorial (particularly the Vietnam and Korean memorials) amidst a maze of road closings for a bike race before running me back out the airport for my flight.
Unfortunate post-script: I set up my DVR to record the Comedy Central broadcast, which was one of the reasons why I didn't worry so much about the lack of a view. Alas, my local Comcast saw "live broadcast from noon-3:00" and kept it in their schedule as a noon-3:00 (presumably tape-delay) on the West Coast, while Comedy Central ran it live from 9-12:00 Pacific. I came back to a brief flash of aerial shots of the crowd, and three hours of Scrubs re-runs - which I must say is a hell of thing to do to a guy right off a cross-country flight under the best of circumstances.