Political adventure

Heather? Politics? is that possible? Well, Mr Bill Clinton made a last minute stop at UC Davis last night and I couldn't resist the chance to come that close to a past president, and well... I had nothing better to do.

I went with Miss Stephanie and her 2 friends Nick and Nikki. Clinton wasn't supposed to start talking till 9ish, and they opened the doors supposedly around 8:15. Lets just say that they in no way were prepared for the masses of people that came along.

The line was incredible! It went on and on, 5 -10 people wide all the way around the rec center, no small feet. People had been there for hours. It was freezing and the wind incredible.

In fact, I took this picture when the cops were trying to get the line to move back to open a way for the official cars to come through. They kept telling us to get back to the 3rd tree, they would arrest us if we didn't comply etc. When people finally listened (it literally took the guy getting in his car and driving up on the lawn toward the crowd), a huge gust of wind hit and the tree started raining crap. Not just little things either, branches were coming down!

So, to give you a perspective of how huge this line was, here is a campus map. You can see off to the right the downtown section of Davis, a town of 70,000 people, so you can get an idea of the scale. The red marking traces the line. It was amazing.

We looked at the time and the line in front of us and decided there was no chance we were getting in. I had found a back entrance when I was wandering taking pictures, you could see through the doors and at least get a view of things, so we hung out there for a while, hoping for at least a glimpse. Then all hell broke loose on the field and everyone broke formation and started running towards the entrance. Nikki decided to join them but we thought she was crazy so we stayed put. Then, someone ran up and opened the doors and a group of us ran in before the guards could stop us! So we snuck in the back entrance. tee hee. The amazing thing was, we later found Nikki.

Just the adventure of getting in made it worth it.

There were so many people there that people were literally climbing up the walls to get a better view. I think the capacity of that place is supposed to be 7000, but we may have filled it even more. Clinton speaking was just another political talk, with my head screaming, yeah but! But hey, he is a pretty entertaining speaker. So, I saw Clinton talk, yippie!