Eli's First Political Rally

Life is full of firsts these days, and yesterday was Eli's first political rally. Colorado is one of those Super Tuesday states that is suddenly so important, and since we're a "purple state," the candidates seem to be paying special attention to us. In fact, the Democratic National Convention is here in the summer. Anyway, because of this newfound status of Colorado as somehow important to the electoral politics of the US, we received word a few days ago that two campaigns were stopping at Eric's school: the Obama campaign yesterday morning, and the Clinton campaign (Bill, not Hillary) last night. We never made it to see Bill Clinton, although we wanted to. It started snowing (4 inches), and we didn't want to put Eli through another long wait outdoors. But we did get a chance to go to the Obama rally. Here's the photographic report:
You can't tell because of the bib, but that's a Obama Baby onesie on Eli there. He had to get all bundled up to be out in the cold....
....but there were obviously a few technical difficulties.
Eventually we made it to the event, which was being held in the university's hockey arena. We arrived about 15 minutes before the doors were supposed to open (got there at 8:15), and we found this--a line stretching somewhere between a quarter of a mile and a half a mile. So we got in line and waited.
Eli was patient as we waited in line...so patient that he quickly fell asleep. Rumors were swirling: the arena only held 8,000 people, some said. Others said 18,000. At any rate, it was clear that not everybody would get in: the Obama volunteers said they had over 18,000 web reservations alone, not counting the people who just showed up.
We waited, and Eli slept, off and on, for two hours. The line barely moved; security, they said, was slowing things down. Eventually, we made our way around the block, around the corner, around the block again, down the long sidewalk, and up the stairs to the arena....and then....tragedy struck.
This is where we ended up, about 5 people from getting into the doors. The fire marshall had shut it down. There were still thousands of people waiting to get in, but there was just no more room. They opened an overflow room with a live TV feed; that quickly filled up too, leaving thousands more of us stranded outdoors.

The remainder of us were herded onto a lacrosse field, where we waited, en masse, for something to happen. Eli got his picture taken with a couple of bona fide Secret Service agents. Then....
....the wait paid off! After two hours of standing in line in the cold (mid-20s) only to not get in to the building, those of us on the lacrosse field had a chance to meet Obama before he gave his speech in the arena. He came out for about 5 minutes, apologized for not being able to seat us all (like it's his fault half of Colorado came out to his rally), and gave a short version of his speech. It was like being at a rock concert...the crowd was incredibly enthusiastic, even for a bunch of half-frozen people standing on a lacrosse field.
They were going to pipe the sound from the arena out onto the field, but we decided to skip the speech and call it a day, since Eli was tuckered out (as you can see). Like we said, we had intentions of going to hear Bill Clinton in the evening, but with the snow and the general exhaustion, we decided to call it a night and head to bed early.

Not all of you share our political leanings, but those who do will be glad to know we're indoctrinating Eli well.