On Wednesday, somehow it was my turn again already to be on Air Force One for a trip to Pittsburgh. My colleagues and I have somewhat of a rotation but occasionally somewhat back to back trips happen! POTUS has been traveling a LOT of the days that my network is travel pool! Anyway, I was lucky enough to get the quick trip to Pittsburgh! It just so happened to be on my sister and brother-in-law's 21st wedding anniversary and my BIL is from Pittsburgh. I could think of nothing better to celebrate their wedding anniversary than with a stop in the Steel City and the remote chance of seeing my sister's in-laws!
But I'll be honest with you. This trip was kind of lame. Ok, really lame. We did have a gaggle with the press secretary on AF1 and this time it wasn't at the very end of the flight. So I had time in the flight to type up my notes on my blackberry. BUT that meant missing the meal. (Of course there has to be a meal on a flight even if it is only 40 minutes long!) However, when they brought me the cheeseburger and fries, I knew I was okay with missing it. Not to sound un-American or ungrateful but it wasn't the most appetizing food I had ever seen. I was able to eat the fries as I was typing on my blackberry but I didn't even attempt to eat the cheeseburger. Just because it was on a plate that said "President of the United States of America" didn't make it look any better. Sorry USAF, I really do appreciate your hard work...
Anyway, it was soooo uneventful that I almost forgot to send out notes to the rest of the networks of our movements. When POTUS had been in Illinois on Memorial Day, they had had one of the most insane days in travel pool with a lightning storm canceling the event, a flat tire in the motorcade, another stop in the absolute pouring down rain, etc. I was just thankful that we didn't have any of that to contend with. POTUS gave his speech at Carnegie Mellon University to a rather boring crowd. I kind of felt bad for him. Those people in the crowd looked like they were either planning their Memorial Day cookouts in their heads, or playing Tetris on their iPhones. At one point before the speech started, I walked across the back of the room and my normally relatively quiet shoes made such an echo in the absolute quiet room that the crowd turned and looked at me. I think POTUS could have said just about anything and he would have gotten the same muted reaction. It was almost painful (and again, that is no reflection on him politically.)
Just as soon as the event ended, we made a bee-line for the motorcade and headed back to the airport. Still completely uneventful. By the time we were wheels up, we had only been on the ground for about 2 hours. This time on AF1, we had an egg roll and some chicken on skewers. And a lot of purple lettuce. By the time I got back, I realized I hadn't taken even one picture the whole trip. So if there are no pictures to prove it, you'll just have to take my word for it. I should have taken a picture of the enormous amount of purple lettuce. That was the most exciting part of the day!
3 comments:
LOL I think it's funny (not haha funny, just kinda interesting funny, ya know what I mean?) that there are boring days with the President just as often as exciting days. And I'm sure that's true of any President, so no reflection on our current one!
Save me some POTUS M&Ms! :)
It's a privilege to read these posts from someone from a news network charged with keeping up with the POTUS. You put your own personal twist on it which makes it even more interesting. Blessings!
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