Thursday: Securing Credentials

Oh my gosh. What happened to Thursday? I blogged about Tuesday and Wednesday. You mean to tell me that my little blogging elves weren't typing away my thoughts as I tossed and turned in the middle of the night composing Thursday? They are definitely getting fired. Okay, you're right, maybe that is a little extreme. They are getting a strong talking-to. That's for sure.

So, Thursday. That's August 28, 2008. A day for the history books. The day that Senator Barack Obama accepted the Democratic Nomination for President of the United States of America.

And we were there.

And it was amazing.

When we left for Denver we didn't know what events we'd be able to get into: everything was up in the air. My mantra was that I wasn't going to worry about anything. Except, that is, getting in to Thursday night. I told myself that if we got tickets to INVESCO field that would make the whole trip worth it.

We thought we had one ticket. Earlier in August the Maryland State Party held a drawing for their guests (e.g. those who didn't get credentials because they were official Delegates) and Abel's name was drawn to win a credential for Thursday night.

We were pretty sure we had another ticket as well. On Tuesday we had traded two VIP tickets to the Boyz II Men event for one (or hopefully two) credentials for Thursday night.

The problem was that literally no one actually received any Thursday credentials until Thursday morning. So, until we had them in our grubby little hands we weren't counting on anything.

Thursday morning we made sure to get to the Maryland Delegation breakfast first thing. I'm glad we did because it was by far the best breakfast of the week. Howard County Executive Ken Ulman sponsored it and he invited his brother and president of the Lance Armstrong Foundation, Doug Ulman, to speak. (I'll tell you what, these are two incredibly impressive brothers.) The other keynote was Congressman Elijah Cummings. Wow. He's amazing. My first tears of the day flowed during his early-morning incredibly-rousing remarks.

By the end of the breakfast we had a piece of gold in our hands--one credential for INVESCO Field.

We got back to the house and found out that our other trade had come through--with not one but TWO credentials!

Then, a friend called who had an extra credential. Do we want if? Of course!

At 8am we had zero credentials. By Noon Abel and I had secured a total of four.

Wow!

That meant we could take the best of them for ourselves, two credentials that gave us access to the delegate transportation to/from the stadium and seating on the 100 or 200 level of the stadium. We were also able to give the other two to our host who gave them to his 16-year-old son and a friend, allowing these two African-American teenagers to be part of history.

At 1:30pm, with credentials proudly displayed around our necks, we were off!