Mr. Obama is coming to town

Tomorrow afternoon at 1 in the afternoon, Barack Obama is due to give a speech in the gym auditorium of Rio Grande High School in Albuquerque. Due to security reasons, this was kept quiet until the very last minute on Friday evening. He will be arriving tonight into Albuquerque airport at around midnight. An advance party of 12 staff from central Obama HQ arrived yesterday to prepare for the event and swarms of police and secret service agents have already been sweeping the place and doing the background security checks.

As a full-time volunteer, I have been asked to staff the event. My job will be to usher people from the metal detectors at the entrance to the gym to their seats in the hall. Understandably, excitement has reached fever pitch amongst the campaign staff and volunteers. A scramble for tickets ensued straight after the announcment while field organisers tried to ensure that the most committed volunteers got a place. As you imagine, "volunteers" stared appearing out of the woodwork who tried to justify why they deserved a ticket over the next people. It was kind of funny but pitful in a way. Within hours, all the tickets were gone and although they're free, the tickets are now like gold dust.

This evening, all the event staffers had to go to a briefing about tomorrow. Here's a video of one of the advance staff giving us a briefing what we are going to be doing.

Like I said, I will be working as an usher tomorrow at the rally so we had to get briefed on that at the high school. The advance party ran through the strict security operation and then we had to lay out all the seats in the auditorium. Here's a video of the hall all ready for the morning.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't caught up in the Obama mania at this point. I plan to be up at 7 tomorrow morning like a child on Christmas morning ready to chant for the big man.