Delivering in Downtown D.C.

[drcollie]

Thursday afternoon in the delivery truck, I've got my 15-year-old 6'2" 200lb assistant in the cabover to assist delivering that H&M Chesterfield I posted a photo of. We're tooling down Massachusetts Avenue at Embassy Row, and he's' marveling at the whole embassy gig, asking me a hundred questions about them. I of course, am glad to answer all of them as I have a Political Science education and keen interest in it, and he's never been in this part of DC.

As we pull up to the Islamic Academy Resource Center, about 1/2 a mile south of the Naval Observatory, the stoplight goes red and a man comes out to halt traffic. Looks like we are going to be here awhile but have a front row seat to whatever is coming down. Pretty soon, a half a gazillion motorcycle cops come blasting through the intersection on Harleys, making a HUGE spectacle of doing so. The six lanes of Mass. Ave. are totally closed off in both directions...and there are a lot of cops around. I tell Bryce 'Someone big is coming through here in a minute or two.' Must have been at least 30 Harley cops blocking up everything.

Here come the black Caddies behind another fifteen bikes. First a regular Caddy limo - then an even more important looking one. It's **** Cheney, it has to be, coming home from work for the day (his residence is at the Naval Observatory) and its about 4 p.m. Makes sense.

There was the most bizarre looking black Chevy Tahoe right behind Cheney's limo. This thing had antennas like I've never seen before....HUGE ones, like five or six black baseball bats sticking up from the roof. He was followed by two more Tahoes, and a few more Harley cops.

All turned into the Naval Observatory entrance, and we were allowed to go. Tell ya what, there is a lot of activity to move one our our leaders around - huge resources, and traffic was backed up for at least three city blocks in each direction.

Impressive!

[cuse69]

We had an out of town guest visiting 2 weeks ago and we went into DC to see some of the monuments. We were impressed by the WWII monument that we had not seen before and the Holocaust Museum was a very powerful experience. In any event we too saw a display of moving a high level dignitary around the District. In our case they blocked off Constitution Ave. for about 15 min. causing a huge backup of traffic.
When the motorcade passed through we also saw the vehicles you mentioned along with an ambulance near the rear of the procession. It certainly does not speak well of our civilization when so much security is needed just to travel around Washington.

Think of it another way, how difficult it is to be a public figure and need this level of protection, not just politicians but all levels and types of celebrities.

Larry