The Wheeler Family

So the news has been reporting for a few days that President Bush was going to visit Iowa and tour some of the flooded areas to see what was going on…

Anyways, this morning my carpool buddies picked me up at 0900 and we start heading up I-380 towards Cedar Rapids. At around 0915 we get passed by a state trooper. Big deal, you might say. Well, right after the state trooper is a black SUV, then another, then another. Holy crap, we realize it is the Presidential Motorcade. So the motorcade consists of the first state trooper, followed by about probably 8 of the black Chevrolet Suburbans, followed by probably 8 white vans marked “Media” or “Support” or something similar. Then a few other cars behind that. So they passed us and KC (our driver) pulled into the left lane, only for us to realize, we just broke into the presidential motorcade!!! OOPS! So he pulled back in to the right lane and let everyone pass, then at the tail of the motorcade was another state trooper, who promptly moved over to the center lane of the interstate, so both lanes were blocked.

Well, my carmates had to go to the uniform shop to pick up their scrubs that had come in, and when they were done we drove to campus. We pulled in and saw the main parking lot where we normally park was blocked off with huge military trucks and cop cars and such. The entire big parking lot. So we drove around to the other side and parked and started walking up to Linn Hall.

We went inside and picked up our Metrology take-home quizzes and went down to the tables where we congregate and started working. I was done in about 10 minutes but the rest of my friends weren’t, and since we still had more than an hour until class started, decided to go out and get some fresh air and see what the heck was going on.

I walked out the front door and talked to a few of my classmates who were outside talking and said I was going to walk down to the parking lot and see what was up. Not 10 seconds later I hear a helicopter so I walked out a little further and looked up and there is Marine One (technically, it wasn’t Marine One yet because the president wasn’t onboard, but really…). I quick whipped out my cell phone and took a picture while running towards the parking lot.

Well, I quickly figured out that the parking lot was a landing area for helicopters. Now, I’ve seen The Sentinel starring Jack Bauer, er, Kiefer Sutherland, and since I believe everything I see in TV or movies, I knew there had to be a second Marine One. And of course, about 2 minutes behind, was the second Marine One.

So we waited and waited and crowd started to gather. A few minutes later, a regular looking car with Iowa plates pulled in to the blocked off parking lot, and I was like, what the heck… until I saw two guys get out, each with a serious-looking sniper rifle. I figured that meant they were supposed to be there.

So we waited there for what seemed like FOREVER and a guy announced that we would have to move soon because there were going to be three more helicopters coming soon and each one of them blew way more wind than Marine One. He said each helicopter weighed 35,000 lbs and could carry an additional 40,000 lbs above what it weighed. Talk about some serious lift. Anyways, he said that there would be about 2 minutes between when Marine One took off and the other three helicopters would land.

Hmm… sometime in there the big presidential motorcade showed up at Kirkwood. Big deal, I saw that nearly three hours earlier, but for most people that was their first time, so…

Anyways… I fully expected President Bush to get back into one of the vehicles and be driven into the parking lot right near the helicopter, but as it turns out, he and Governor Chet Culver ended up walking across the street from where their meeting was. I didn’t expect that, because here we are all standing next to a big parking lot, none of us had been checked by security for anything, and there was plenty of room for something bad to happen, if you know what I mean.

Anyways, the “real” Marine One took off, then the “fake” one took off. According to the Wikipedia article previously linked, there can be up to 5 Marine(s) One(s), and during flight they frequently change position so you don’t know which one is the real one.

Here is the first cargo helicopter. Basically it landed, the big door came down, and about 20 people all climbed aboard, and the thing was back in the air in less than a minute.

And here are the other two giant helicopters.

So I know that not everyone is a huge fan of President Bush, I’m a semi-fan, sometimes, sort of, but regardless of what you think about him as a president, or a person, it really was pretty neat to see all of this in action. In fact, I overheard some teachers talk about how much they hated him, but still were amazed by everything.

By the way, in case anyone has ever wondered why there are so many vehicles in the presidential motorcade, especially the black SUVs, check out this YouTube video!

Anyways, my friend AW and I ended up walking in to class about 50 minutes late. I guess we lost track of the time. Worth it.