The commute home was interesting -- I caught the commuter rail downtown in an attempt to bypass the inevitable traffic that hits owing to Lollapalooza setting up, and the Obama motorcade. Well and good -- the Metra's always comfortable and quiet, a soothing ride downtown. I love train travel. I get downtown and am hoofing it through the underground station (amusingly enough, it's part of what they used in "The Dark Knight" -- the chase scene where Bats is driving his motorcycle-hybrid and crashing about, so I've got flashbacks of that in my head as I walk through it), and I get up to Randolph and Michigan, and come up into a Thin Blue Line of burly cops staring me in the face. I pause and look around, see a large motorcade there and crowds. Ah, Obama's in the building there.
Because he's in there, they have a huge security dragnet around the area, and public transit is effectively hobbled at that point, so I just go back underground and come up on the north side of the intersection, and hang out in the crowd, taking pix. There are snipers on the roof, cops all about, Elvis impersonators loping around (apparently there was an Elvis 5K in Grant Park, so between all the Obama gawkers and rush hour grinders, there were these Vegas Elvis folks milling through, too), Amish wending their way, and people repeatedly asking what all the crowds were there for. I hung out for about 45 minutes, since there was no way to get home at that point because the crowds were too big, the security kept traffic from going through, so it was a very "When in Rome..." kind of moment, and I just chilled. Plenty of false alarms, what I called "Fauxbamas" -- folks who looked like him, or crowd reactions to nothing. There were a couple of "Matrix"-like moments, too, when I saw a guy in a crazy paisley shirt walk through the crowd once (heading east), and then, later, I saw him heading east, through the crowd AGAIN. WTF? He looked a little scrawny to be Secret Service, but who knows? I looked sort of Secret Service-like in my shades and work clothes -- people kept glancing in my direction as they'd make their way through the crowd, and periodically asking me "Why are all of these people standing here?"
Finally, Obama's motorcade whisked by, and that was that. My favorite moment was when some grizzled guy asked "What, are they filming more 'Transformers' here or what?" and somebody said "No, Obama's in there." and the guy grumbled "Obama? I was hoping it would be Optimus Prime."
Obamamobile (at right).
The crowds finally dispersed, and then they restarted the bus lines, and I was (eventually) able to get home, where apparently B1 was in a crisis because he'd lost this rubber eightball I'd given him (he liked pretending it was a black hole -- big shocker, right?) and Exene had either not understood what he'd said about it being lost, or didn't care (both?) and so I asked B1 where he'd lost it, and he told me, and I said "Well, let's go into the park and look for it. You can be our guide." and so he, B2 and I trekked over there and I began a zig-zag search for the ball, once B1 showed me where it had last been seen (apparently he let a kid throw it and the kid overthrew it and it got lost in the park). B1 found it about 30 seconds later, tucked in a shady nook on the ground. He was elated, and I was pleased that we got it back, since he was really upset about having lost it. Yay! A tiny victory, but a satisfying one!
