A Day in Tiger Country

No, I haven't been on any safari in an exotic country. I just took a day trip to Detroit. But it is home to the Tigers and since they are in the playoffs and their best pitcher is from Goochland, VA (where Brian's grandpa and family live), I'm a fair weather Detroit Tigers fan! :)

POTUS hosted another state visit and dinner yesterday with the President of Korea (Mr. Lee)and I missed the whole thing. My assignment was to fly to Detroit because POTUS was bring the POK to see a GM factory. He used to be a car company CEO so it makes sense. If I could go to Graceland with the Prime Minister of Japan back when Bush was POTUS, then why not take the Korean president to GM. No offense to my friends from Detroit, but Graceland with the PM Koizumi, the Bushes, and Priscilla and Lisa Marie was much more fun.

But as far as trips to car factories go, it was pretty good! I'd love to say that I got to enjoy all that the Motor City has to offer but honestly, I'd be lying. We flew in yesterday, stayed at a random Courtyard Inn halfway between the airport and the car factory. The highlight might have been dinner at the Bob's Big Boy. We really know how to have a good time wherever we go!!

Today we went to the GM factory in Lake Orion, MI. They make the Sonics there. I had never heard of that car. I just thought it was a fast food restaurant where I could get a cherry limeade. The interesting thing about this trip is that the POK was along for the ride and he was very energetic about cars and about the Tigers. He was so cute! At least for a world leader!! They both made comments about the trade agreement with Korea and the economy and before I knew it, the event was over. And everyone went home. Just like that. We still had a lot of work to do before we could leave.


My correspondent and I raced to the airport to hopefully make our flight but for the first time in the history of my travels, I missed my flight. At least I'm pretty sure it was the first time. By the time I battled traffic and took the rental car back, I showed up at the airport 9 minutes before the flight was leaving. If it hadn't been for the need to take an express train to the gate, I might have made it. Luckily, I had already come to terms with the fact that I was going to miss it so I was mentally prepared. At least the Detroit airport is a nice place to hang out!

Hurry up and wait!!

I'm sure that's exactly what you're thinking about waiting for pictures from my trip to Moscow but you'll have to wait just a little bit longer. Due to my wacky schedule along with Audrey being out of town, I'm still in the process of getting it all together.

But I thought I would take this time to play a bit of catch up. I didn't want my trip to New York City for the annual United Nations General Assembly to go undocumented. But it's been so long that I have almost forgotten everything. But then I realized that I posted something on my network's blog that laid it all out. Of course I couldn't add in too many snarky, sacrastic comments so just pretend. But this is a pretty good overview of the day which was a good thing because I really don't remember a lot of that day!! For those of you who are faithful blogreaders, some of this is too elementary for you!

As President Obama scurries around downtown New York City attending various events for his official visit to the annual United Nations General Assembly, only a handful of journalists are actually right there, to cover his every move - or at least every move the White House will allow. And as usual the theme to the day for the travel pool, especially when the President has a busy schedule, is “hurry up and wait!”

The “travel pool” is a small group of journalists who accompany the President on Air Force One, in the motorcade and to the many events where the entire White House press corps cannot be accommodated. It’s made of representatives from the wires services, still photographers, one print writer/reporter, and a 3-member team representing one of the five U.S. television networks- ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, and NBC. The travel pool producer is the eyes and ears on the ground for all five networks and shares information in frequent reports back to the rest of the group.

The TV networks have pool responsibilities on a five-day rotation, and Tuesday was our turn to follow the president.

So I, along with a cameraman and audio technician, started my long day by meeting up with the rest of the travel pool first thing in the morning at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. There we prepared to get “swept” by the US Secret Service. As usual, our bags were searched and officers used hand-magnetometers on bodies, to make sure we weren’t carrying anything suspicious. Once the entire group was finished with security, we were officially ready to begin our day.

The first thing on President Obama’s schedule was a trip to the United Nations building to meet with the new chairman of the National Transitional Council of Libya, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, and to have a high-level meeting on the situation in Libya. So we walked down four flights of steps through an internal stairwell of the historic hotel. Parts of the trek were through dimly-lit stairwells and hallways until we end up on the street level where the president’s limo, the Beast, was waiting. Some times making it to the motorcade requires running so that we can be in place before the President gets into his vehicle. We can always wait for him, but the rule is that he will never wait for us!

We jumped into our designated van within the motorcade and after waiting a few minutes for the president, we set off for the quick drive through the streets of downtown Manhattan to the United Nations. All the streets were shut down and people lined the streets to get a glimpse of the motorcade passing by.

Soon we arrived at the UN and had to sprint from the motorcade to get inside as quickly as possible. We didn’t have to go through security because we had already been “swept” but we still had to navigate the crowded halls full of delegations from other countries. After fighting to get through the crowd, we got into place in the conference room where the meeting on Libya would be held. We again waited for the president to enter the room but once he got there, the event began.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon made some remarks followed by Jalil and then it was President Obama’s turn. While he was speaking, I was getting reports by email that Afghan President Hamid Karzai was leaving the U.S. due to the murder of the former Afghan President Rabbani. I checked in with White House sources to see if it was true and if that would affect Obama’s scheduled meeting with Karzai following the Libya meeting. I was assured by the White House that there were no planned changes to the schedule.

Once the President finished speaking, we were rushed out of the room and ran back to our van in the motorcade. Soon we were on our way back to the Waldorf-Astoria where many of the day’s events would be held. We went to the “pool hold”, which is the room where the pool works and files reports in between events.

The next event was a bilateral meeting with Afghan President Karzai. After a few minutes sitting in the pool hold, we returned to our “hurry and wait” positions. We were escorted to the meeting and waited in the hallway for about ten minutes when we were rushed down one flight of stairs and down a hallway into a room where Karzai and Obama sat at the head of a table and the two delegations stood behind chairs alongside their leaders. They both made quick statements about the bond and important relationship between the two countries and the murder of Rabbani. Before we knew it, we were being quickly ushered out of the room and back up the stairs to our pool hold room.

We hurried up and waited once again in a suite on the 36th floor of the Waldorf. After thirty minutes, it was time for the next movement and once again it involved the freight elevators and internal stairwells, definitely not the luxurious part of the hotel. This time we were taken to the Waldorf’s Grand Ballroom, a beautiful, ornate room where numerous celebrities and world leaders have held events for nearly seven decades. This time, President Obama was hosting a summit for countries devoted to the “Open Government Partnership”. We waited with the media from dozens of other countries, all there to cover their respective presidents or prime ministers. Before the meeting began, we lined up and waited to enter the “family photo-op”, a staged photo of all the participating leaders. The White House had given us a head start into the room but soon all of the other international media came charging in behind us! Lots of pushing and shoving ensued while the leaders stood smiling. Finally President Obama waved, indicating the photo-op would soon be over. We were unceremoniously rushed out of the room and back into the Grand Ballroom, the world media stepping trampling itself. Like every other class photo at every other international meeting, it always turns into a media circus no matter what level of planning has gone into it.

From our position in the ballroom we watched at the event began and eight different world leaders took turns talking about the importance of having an open government. The most unusual aspect of this event was that at three different times, aides crawled behind the row of world leaders to pass notes to President Obama. I asked the White House what those notes were about but even though it was in an “Open Government” event, they declined to give me a read-out.

As soon as the event was over, we were led out of the room, into the non-descript elevator and back to the pool hold on the 36th floor where we waited for yet another 30 minutes before a bilateral meeting between President Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan. A quick photo op and out. We repeated the exact same process from Karzai meeting earlier in the day: hurrying up to wait!

After about an hour of waiting back on the 36th floor, we were escorted one final time downstairs through the hotel kitchen to the motorcade. We waited in the motorcade until the President made his way to his limo. At one point during our wait the White House aides offered to take us to a coffee shop across the street. We had to go as a group and with a White House staffer or Secret Service agent so that we would still be considered ‘secure’ or rather "clean", as in we wouldn't have to be "swept" again. All of us were in need of a quick snack in order to have the energy to make it through the rest of the evening!

Our last event of the day was a DNC fundraiser about five minutes away from the Waldorf and once again, people lined the streets to get a glimpse of the motorcade. We arrived at New York’s Gotham Hall and entered through a back door. Actually, we found ourselves in a random office building and were ushered into a conference room where we would do the last “waiting” of the day. We had a quick bite to eat but soon it was time to go into the event. Or so we thought. We lined up to go in and then waited another ten or 15 minutes. After being together in this small group for 12+ hours, we were excited to see the end of the day in sight! First Lady Michelle Obama introduced her husband and then the president spoke to the group for about 25 minutes. Once the event was over, we were taken outside where the motorcade awaited. Again we hurried to the vans – this time it wasn’t to rush to another event, but in order to get back to our hotel!

After almost fourteen hours of being together in travel pool, we had experienced a UN speech on Libya, two bilateral meetings, one class photo, one open government event, one DNC fundraiser, and many hours of hurrying up and waiting in between.

Return to the normal life

Well, I'm back from Russia and today is my first day back at work. After being off work since Sept. 23rd, it was kind of hard to be excited about work. I've decided that the longer I'm off work, it's that much harder to return. And it's even more difficult to come back on a holiday when pretty much everyone I know has the day off. But then I realized that I am blessed to A) have a job to come back to and B) it's a job that I mostly enjoy. And today we came back to a travel pool day and POTUS was taking a quick trip to visit wounded soldiers at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland. So it's really difficult to complain when you are hanging out at a hospital where so many men and women have sacrificed so much for our country. We waited in a non-descript classroom and didn't see any of the patients but then again, I think they'd rather have a visit from their commander-in-chief than from me.

So I returned from Moscow and had an incredible trip!! I had planned on blogging extensively the moment I returned but I came down with a stomach flu and many other ailments hours after my return and I'll spare you all the gruesome details. So for the past few days, I've basically not moved from my couch except for a trip to the doctor, a stop by Target, and then at the end of the Virginia Tech football game on Saturday when I nearly fell to the ground in anxiety over the last few moments of the game. The announcers at the end said it was the best game in the history of college football and while I think that might have been a slight overstatement, I wished nothing more than to have been in Lane Stadium at that moment.




Back to my trip.... I had an awesome time! I went with a couple of good friends from my church- my pastor and his wife, Don and Audrey. I consider them to be somewhat adoptive parents. I already have wonderful parents whom I love dearly and most of the time, I wouldn't trade them for the world :) but it's also nice to have "parents" away from home. Beyond being my pastor, that's who Don and Audrey are to me. We've traveled the world together before (all three of us to Kyrgyzstan and then Audrey and I to Azerbaijan together) and I knew we would all get along without any drama. This trip didn't involve any eyeball eating or any taking any horse pills. Just pure, unaltered fun!!


We went to visit some fellow believers who are at work in Moscow ministering to Central Asian immigrants. It was also kind of an educational/fact-finding mission to see how we can get involved in the future. And educational is an understatement. I learned soooo much about the region and the people of not only Moscow but many former Soviet republics. I wish I could remember 1/3 of what we learned because it is fascinating stuff. But basically there are many, many, many Central Asian immigrants from many different areas who have come to Moscow to find work and to send money back to their families. And they aren't treated very nicely by many in Russia.


So while we got to some of the touristy stuff in Moscow, our main goal was to see the work going on with these immigrants. I won't try to cram it all into one blog post (plus I have yet to get together with Audrey to coordinate our pictures since she took waaay more than me and we were just going to share) but suffice it to say that it was an eye-opening experience. We participated in several house groups, helped in English classes, fed the homeless and visited a women's shelter kind of thing for women to have a place to live with their babies instead of having to give them up for adoption. It was an amazing opportunity and I promise to share more once I get our pictures together!!

I'll be back....

In the words of the great Governorator/Terminator Ah-nold.... I'll be back!! I really do have several things I need to update the good ol' blog with but just no time. Don't worry, you're not missing any life events.... just a few POTUS related stories, including my trip to NY for the United Nations General Assembly last week. But I am leaving tomorrow for a trip, for fun, to Moscow!! I'm so excited! As you know, I've been there briefly but this time, I'll have plenty of time to see the stuff I missed the last time when I spent a day and a half there and had 45 minutes to explore. I promise to catch you up when I return!

9/11 Tenth Anniversary

This weekend, like most Americans, I was remembering 9/11 and the horrific events of that day. I blogged about my experience a few years ago here but when I went back to read what I wrote, it seems like that just touched on the experience. Watching numerous documentary and shows this weekend just brought it all back. In fact, I hadn't been able to watch some of those images for many years after it happened. Beyond the fact that they are difficult to watch to begin with, in those early days, I saw them over and over and over and over again at work for 15 hours a day. I really couldn't escape them so it took a long time for me to get them out of my head. Back in those days, I would have to fall asleep to the TV with something completely inane as possible which included a lot of Three's Company or other mindless comedies. I couldn't go to sleep with those images of the WTC getting hit and collapsing burned into my brain.

Well seeing them again this weekend brought it all back. I watched a Dateline special, a 20/20 special, a CNN special, and the ceremony at Shanksville on Saturday. Just like ten years ago, I didn't cry. I just watched in disbelief. It's amazing that it still seems unbelievable ten years later from real life occurrences.

I appreciated the speeches from George W. Bush and Bill Clinton and Joe Biden on Saturday at the Shanksville dedication. I'm not sure even then I fully comprehended what happened in that field. God had spared me from being an eyewitness to the crash at the Pentagon by me running late to work that day. But more than that, God spared the lives of countless friends and Americans who worked in the Capitol (two blocks from my office) or the White House that day. Who knows how life would have turned out differently had that happened? I'm glad we don't have to know and I'm sooo grateful for those 40 who took United Flight 93 down in that field. I've always known the sequence of events and that they were heroes after hearing the harrowing stories of last minute phone calls, decision-making, etc. but it really struck me this year hearing it all over again and once again thanking God for His protection and for those lives given in the air that day.

I was so grateful that the 10th anniversary fell on a Sunday and that I wasn't scheduled to work. I got to experience it just like other Americans, unlike ten years ago when I was working so many long hours and hadn't had time to process any of it. I went to church which had an incredibly moving time of worship and remembrance. I was able to contain my tears, unlike ten years ago when I sat on the front pew and cried my eyes out. This year, we focused on how even in the midst of pure evil, we were able to see the hand of God. And we remembered in prayer those families who were still experiencing such deep loss from those events a decade ago.

Pastor Don talked about a hypothetical school trip one day where maybe Todd Beamer's kids were touring the Capitol or the White House and looking up and saying something like, "yes, my dad saved this place and all the people in it that day." I hope that really happened or happens one day and those kids and family members realize how many people, like me, owe a great debt to their fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, aunt and uncles.

On Saturday while watching the ceremony in Shanksville, Vice President Biden, who was one of those people evacuated from the Capitol that day, paid tribute to those 40 heroes as well. "My prayer for you is that 10 years later, their memory is able to bring a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye," Biden said. I must say that I like that statement a lot. I hope that the fact that their loved ones are true heroes have brought some comfort to them over the years.

I know that this year's time of remembrance really brought it to mind how grateful I am, not only to be an American, but to live in a place that ten years ago, these average Americans sacrificed their lives for people they didn't know. Their part is just one part of that overwhelming story from that day and at the end of the weekend, I was glad that I had seen the images once again and taken the time to remember those many lives lost that day. Of course, I had to find an episode of Three's Company or some other mindless TV in order to fall asleep! It worked!

POTUS in the Old Dominion

On Friday, I took a little road trip to one of my favorite cities in America... Richmond, Virginia! POTUS had given a big speech on Thursday night in front of a joint session of Congress and he took his message on the road to the University of Richmond! As you know, I'm a Virginian through and through and even though I'm from Roanoke, I love Richmond. It's where my mom, older sister, and my wonderful boyfriend were born! Maybe POTUS chose VA because it's politically important state. Or maybe he just loves Virginia as much as I do! I don't know but I was thrilled to pieces to get to make a visit there, at my company's expense.

POTUS gave his speech in the U of Richmond Robins Arena which I'm pretty sure I was there in the early 90s for a statewide Youth Evangelism Conference and probably heard some contemporary Christian group sing. This time, it was POTUS talking about jobs and getting people back to work.
The cool part of being there was that I got to see my friend Missy. She's the one who came with me to see Marine One taking off a few weeks ago. She's a campus minister on the campus of U of Richmond and I was excited to get to see her for a few brief moments after the speech was done!


My correspondent and I ended up staying in Richmond so we could also cover an event of the House Majority Leader Eric Cantor who represents most of Richmond and Charlottesville and places between. I was a bit of a fish out of water with this because I am so used to events being set up for POTUS and dealing with several levels of security, etc. This event was basically a congressman holding an event with his constituents. We were at a cement factory which I wish I could tell you I learned all about. But in reality, it was a backdrop and I know nothing more about making cement than I did at the beginning of the day! A really good benefit of being able to spend the day in Richmond is that Brian was going to be in town to visit his grandpa that evening so it worked out for him to pick me up and we spent the evening hanging out with his family!

Parental Unit Visit!

So as soon as I finished my work trip to Martha's Vineyard and surviving two natural disasters, the next thing on my agenda was a visit from my parents! In no way do I equate spending quality time with my parents to either work or a natural disaster! They are the absolute opposite of those things!!

While I had of course seen my parents more recently, they haven't actually been to visit me in more than a year. I blame that on the fact that I have yet to provide grandkids for them. They blame my "wacky schedule". If they planned trips to see me, I would make my "wacky schedule" work out to see them but I digress. I'm not the bitter middle child, I promise. Really, I'm not. :)

Anyway, they were driving back to SC and stopped by to see me on the way home. Because there wasn't a lot of planning, my wacky schedule did indeed get in the way and I had to work in the afternoon/evenings of their stay. But it was still a really nice visit! I had prepared dinner and it was in the crockpot so that when I got home from work and Brian came over, dinner was all ready to go! I even made an apple crisp for dessert! We had a great time just hanging out and chatting! We didn't even turn on the TV for background noise! We just enjoyed being around each other!

Once I realized they were staying until Wednesday, I figured it would be great opportunity to take my parents to work with me to see the WH and where I work. The last time I brought my parents to the WH, my mom fainted after the WH Christmas Party. But I'm happy to report that she stayed upright the entire time and there was no passing out!