The morning after the night before...

There was a fresh feel to Washington this morning, and the election was on everybody's lips. We had a busy mornings broadcasting lined up with the UK desperate for the news from the USofA.

Guests were being shipped backwards and forwards between TV and Radio studios.

We did our last programme from the bar area of the hotel and disected all the stats of the previous night. After the show I had a few hours and was keen to nip around town whilst it was light.

I headed back to the White House and decided to head up to the Washington Memorial vaguly recalling the the Jerfferson memorial and lake were around there as well.

When I made it to the memorial I had a lovely chat to a park ranger who very kindly gave me a map of the area to identify the landmarks all around me. I asked him if he was happy with the election result, he said to me in a dour face, "well we've voted for him, but we don't yet know his policy on parks".... a man who clearly has a special attachment to parks.

The Washington Memorial is a fantastic place if you like your history and landmarks like me. The memorial itself is a landmark, but stand in the middle and you can also see....The White House, U.S. Capitol building, The Mall, Jerfferson Memorial, WW2 memorial and the Lincoln memorial.

I didn't have time for it all, so I chose to see Lincoln and the WW2 garden with "Reflection lake" in between.

At the Lincon memorial the human rights website avaaz.org had erected a huge white board congratulation Obama and encouraging people to sign it.

After seeing the rather impressive (Especially in size!) Lincoln memorial, I headed back to Georgetown to do a spot of shopping for my sister.

It was at this point I had remembered I wanted to pick up a newspaper to take home as a souvineer. I soon discovered that everyone in Washington DC had the same idea. Nobody had any at all, some shops had queue waiting for deliveies.

On the way back to the hotel I stopped at a shop and saw an empty rack, I brought a drink and on the off chance asked if they had any, the guy had them hidden behind the counter. I asked for two but it was one per customer. I then overheard that the Washington Post had three runs today with them all selling out. Some had queued at that shop for 2 hours.

Tomorrow we pull everything out......

More Pics here...

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=68386&l=20448&id=537771409

Election day...

Tuesday 4th November -

On the way to work this morning I saw some road kill... not a fox or rabbit, a full sized deer! I asked a guest later in the day who told me there is a national park nearby and it's not an unusual sight.

The day we've all been waiting for is finally here...after two years of hype, Americans can go to the polls. All though the day I've seen pictures of queueing people waiting up to four hours to vote, but every person is determined to wait and get their vote.

It's amazing to see this level of enthusiasm for an election, although we have heard of some dirty tricks going on. Republicans going down the queue telling people that "Democrats vote tomorrow" or that a special form is needed to vote.

Almost as soon as the polls opened the opinion polls started speculating, mid-afternoon we interviewed a pollster who said it will be closer that we think.

After the show I headed to Georgetown as that had been recommended as the most decent place to go in Washington DC. It is largely full of clothes shops but has some nice bars and coffee shops among some beautiful architecture.

I did discover this lovely photo oppertunity whilst I was there....A boarded up Starbucks with a poster of Obama and "Hope" written below.

We headed back to the hotel to watch the results come in, and around 9pm it was looking sure to be Obama. The people I was with retired to bed so I headed back to the office to watch the rest of the coverage.

Since 24 hour news has been standard, TV and radio reporting has stayed much the same with the broadcasting technology advancing year by year, but this election was the battle of graphics.
Each broadcaster this year (Including the BBC) went for big touch screens operated by the presenters. CNN's looked like a big iphone and smoothly enlarged a USA map in party colours with a pie chart of every stat you could imagine.

CNN were the victors by some margin though...especially with their party piece. In Chicago they had a tent with 32 cameras in for their reporter and guests. Once in front of the cameras they could beam a 3d hologram like image back to the studio like they were in the room. It was exactly like Star Wars!

The result came and I thought John McCain gave a great speech, a very gracious defeat, another rare sight in British politics.

Watching Obama's speech was watching history, here was a victorious American that knew it was no time for whooping and cheering and delivered an inspiring and "lump in the throat" speech. I felt very proud and confident that America has chosen a great world leader.

After the speech I decided to head back to the hotel, the streets were alive with beeping horns and cheering people all over the place. There was an amazing euphoric feeling everywhere. The soundscape was so amazing I recorded my journey back to the hotel.

As I neared the hotel I wondered how many people would be celebrating at the White House. As it's only a 10 minute walk I decided to check it out before heading to bed.

As I got closer and closer, the crowds and noise grew and grew, with people high fiving and dancing on cars. The White House was packed with people carrying banners and chanting Obama's name, every American face was beaming. One banner read, "why wait till January?" in reference to the inauguration being 2 months away.

The chanting crowds and anti-Bush songs were made all the sweeter as Bush was in residence, I imagine he had ear plugs in last night!

Monday 3rd November 2008

As I write, my laptop is dead....I'm using a work one right now...

I've had a quick look online and it looks bad...very bad...
I had all my notes from Sunday on there, so I'm going to write about today and if I ever recover it, I'll go back and post them.

Monday 3rd November 2008

I've rather enjoyed listening to the telly as I get ready in the mornings, I like to flick around for a variety of views and styles. This morning though, the news channel had as their 4th/5th story that they had interviewed 200 people over a year and found out that....wait for it....if you walk instead of driving, you can lose up to 8lbs a month! Truly groundbreaking news!

I've been watching quite a bit of "Comedy Central" as well, I've never been a big fan of American Stand-up but I am enjoying the satire. John McCain took part in "Saturday Night Live" over the weekend as did Sarah Palin last weekend, (She faced Tina Fey who does an uncanny and very funny look and sound alike of Palin). I quite like the way the politicians get involved in the lighter side and join in the satire.

Amongst the News and Comedy, I'd forgotten just how many ads you get on American TV, but more than the ads are the "Info-mercials" 10-30 minute programmes dedicated to selling you the most useless, pointless, unnecessary shit you've ever seen. The presentation and demonstrations are so over the top, but the save the best bit till last...the price.. Not $300, not $200, not even $100. You can have Pete Perfects Precise Purifier for $69.99, (Pron. sixty nine, niney nine).

We found out on air last night from our reporter in Florida that all sorts of dirty tricks are being used at polling stations. In the pre-votes (sessions for people that can't make the Tuesday session). Cues were so long, it took people up to 4 hours to vote. But Republican supporters were going along the cue saying the "Democrat voting day is tomorrow" or "you need this form to vote today" and other such lies to make the voters give up queuing and go home.

We went back to Culpeper today in Virginia for 5Live drive. It was a little busier today with The News Channel / BBC World TV and the Network News programmes coming from there.
We did the whole programme from the cafe, which for a coffee addict like me was heaven.

The drive there and back was quite knackering, so when we got back we just wanted to eat and crash, so we headed for a nice Chinese restaurant across the road. We just wanted light and healthy food. Even for me, I had just had to much rich food over the last few days.

Just as we were about to leave the restaurant we noticed a fuss as the door with a few people taking photos, we then realised that it was Stevie Wonder! He'd been eating a few tables away from us.

Big and exciting day tomorrow, can't wait for the results to start coming in.

1st November 2008

Washington this morning was a very different affair... it was very very quiet, everything shut. I imagined most of Washington's youth had a sore head.

We walked the short distance to the hotel and Bureau I would be working from and met with my boss Graham. We had a short tour of the BBC Bureau in Washington which was pretty chaotic. The whole floor had pretty much been ripped apart and re-wired to accommodate the Radio, TV and Online from London. it's a huge operation.

We (luckily) are in a hotel opposite, called St Gregory's. we basically have all the rooms on the 2nd floor and it's my (and two other peoples) job to rig and run 5 studio's.

My brief is to work for 5Live programmes, this means doing the Weekend News on Sunday, and "5Live Drive" on Mon, Tues and Wed.

We spent the morning rigging the studios in the hotel for the World Service, Local Radio and Network radio.

Monday's 5Live programme will come from a small town in Virginia called Culpeper, so today we drove out there to test the lines that had been installed for us there. We hired a car, and much to my joy, nobody fancied braving the freeway, so I jumped at the chance.

We've got a pretty ropey sat nav that points roughly in the direction you need to go but isn't that accurate, so we had a few missed turnings. The traffic in the city is terrible, it's gridlocked at most times of the day for no reason, just shear volume of traffic.

Some of my favourite signs included.."Wrong way" (How do they know where I want to go?), although I was introduced to this in Australia last year, and "Speed Enforced by aircraft" which countered up many images of traffic being shot down for speeding.

After leaving Washington, it's noticeable that you are travelling South, the landscape changes and the accent does to. Travelling though America in the fall is just stunning, the colour of the foliage is just stunning.

Half way we started passing signs for Delaware which just reminded me of the song featured on the Stephen Fry programme last week, "What did Delaware, Boys". That has stayed in my head all day!

Culpeper is a lovely small American town (The reason BBC News have decided to invade on Monday and Tuesday) so our coverage is not all about the big cities. The kit worked fine and after a coffee, we headed back, we return on Monday.

On the way back into Washington we drove though Georgetown, the place that had been recommended to me as the only place worth visiting. It looks beautiful and I hope to return at leisure before the week is out.

We had a hearty meal not far from the restaurant and to walk it off I thought I'd wander the short distance to the White House as I couldn't see much time for sightseeing this week. The streets were empty on this balmy night. i walked all round the White house and US Treasury (Which is a far more impressive building). I was quite surprised by the openness of the White house and the "jumpable" fence, although I image that once over, you'd be shot pretty quickly! I decided against giving it a go....for tonight at least.

Race for the airport.....

I've never missed a flight in my life, and for someone who will more than likely be late for his funeral this is an amazing achievement. Last month I flew to Dublin for work and got the closest I ever have to missing the flight. I was on the tube 45 mins before departure and ran every step of the way.....I vowed I would never put myself in that position again........

I meticulously planned each step of the journey and even checked in online (for the first time) giving me more time. Whilst I used up all the extra time I factored in, I actually arrived on time at each stage and from Home to Plane did not run once, a major achievement in my life!

I seemed to be on an aeroplane full of children, The people around me refusing to do as they were told by the crew, all these happened whilst taxiing to the runway.....

The man who protested he should have a row to himself refusing to let the other man have his seat.
The woman listening to voicemail on her two phones.
The man next to me with eye shade and blanket on during the safety briefing, when it was explained that he may wish to watch the safety briefing.
The man taking that one step further sat back in the reclining position, a position he retook for the actual take off practically squashing the small man sitting behind!.

The transfer to Washington was swift until we hit the city, when we were gridlocked. It then dawned on us that it was Halloween night, one of the biggest celebration nights in the US of A.

The crowds of people were enormous, bigger than Trafalgar Square on New Years Eve. It seemed like everyone 18-30 in Washington was on the town tonight. And to add to the atmosphere, about 95% of these people were in fancy dress, and good fancy dress as well. The most popular scary costume of the night?? Sarah Palin!

American Elections Nov 08

So I've been lucky enough to be asked to come to Washington DC to cover the American Elections. It's a huge operation and i'm chuffed to be part of it, so many things happened on the first day I thought i'd re-open the blog....

*****AMERICAN ELECTIONS 2008 *****