Arriving at the Convention

I have never flown on an airplane as a conventioneer, so sharing the plane with other Republicans headed to the convention was quite a spectacle. I took some McCain stickers with me to Dulles and thought it would be fun to offer them to the other passengers on the plane. As we boarded there were probably 80% of the passengers tagged with McCain stickers. The flight attendants and the pilots all made a mention of it. Coming from Maryland, it's a great feeling to get on a plane with a bunch of like-minded Republicans!

Alex from Hagerstown is a freshman at American University and a contributor for www.race42008.com. He was enthusiastic about the trip saying it was his first time on an airplane as an adult. On his own dime, he is coming out to Minnesota to blog for the website.

The Maryland delegation is staying about 10 blocks from the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. The nice thing about this is that we can walk to the center and that we aren't in outer Mongolia, (See Bloomington, MN.) Shortly after having unpacking and going down to the lobby, I bumped into a few from the delegation that were headed to the convention center in Minneapolis to see a screening of "An American Carol."

The funny thing about conventions is that you do well by going with the flow, being extremely flexible and recognize that a window for opportunity is only open for a few minutes before it closes. I jumped in the cab with the other Marylanders and headed to Minneapolis.

The convention center seemed like it contained more volunteers than attendees. They ushered us into a hall in which Lee Greenwood, of “Proud to be an American” fame, was already singing. There were folks from all parts of the country and all are happy to chat with other Republicans. They're willing to engage and talk politics. To a one, everyone I talked with was excited about the selection of Governor Palin. We were ushered into the auditorium afterwards and the movie was screened for us. There was an introduction of a few of the actors in the film afterwards and among them was Jon Voight.

After the screening, CivicFest was opened up to the attendees. A grand collection of memorabilia and historical items has been amassed to complete the exhibit. Among other things included in the exhibit are the front half of Nixon's Airforce One, a scale model of the White House, Reagan's Limousine, and FDR's wheelchair accessible Cadillac Limousine. This was the last event of the evening and after a shuttle returned us to the hotel. Tomorrow is a big day.


With Hurricane Gustav headed towards New Orleans threats to the cancel the convention all together have been downgraded to curtailing the evening's presentations. Since President Bush and Vice-President Cheney were to be attending to hurricane preparation, they won't be able to participate in tomorrow evening’s activities. It looks like a little flexibility will come in handy tomorrow.