Air Force One

My mom came up to WI today to pick up my niece and take her back to Florida with her for a week or so.  But this also meant she needed to be picked up from the airport.  A couple of weeks earlier, we had coordinated going to get her after work, and then my brother would come down to pick her up from my house.  Well that was all before I knew that the President was going to be in Milwaukee on Tuesday. 

He was out in Waukesha at WCTC touting technical skills education so it didn’t dawn on me until we were leaving for the airport that there may be roads shut down for the motorcade.  After his appearance, he was driving downtown for a fundraiser, but still didn’t think it was going to be a problem until we were going thru the Marquette interchange and a Sherriff’s car/SUV drove past as we were getting onto 794.  It pulled over to the side just before the exit that would have taken you downtown.  So apparently they were getting ready for the motorcade.  Then later as we were going down 794 toward Layton, the traffic report on the radio said something about traffic being tied up along the President’s route (they couldn’t say where exactly for obvious security reasons).

When we were driving around the airport to get in line to pick up my mom, I looked out over the runways and thought, oh yeah, there’s Air Force One.  Kris pooh-poohed me, but it was the President’s airplane.  Yeah, I know it isn’t a big deal, but that is about as close to the President as I’ll ever get, so it was sort of cool to see it sitting on the tarmac. 

As we were leaving for home, we did drive past a few police/sheriff’s cars with their lights on and barricades near the entrance ramps back on to 794, so it looked as if they were starting to prep for the motorcade coming back to the airport from the fundraiser.  Luckily we didn’t have to deal with the President’s motorcade, or that would have really gotten us in a traffic mess.