Obama in Long Beach
 

Here's the (very amateur) video I took of the Presidental Activity in Long Beach.

(Please tell me which upload works best for viewing)

Vimeo
Flickr

they both worked fine for me.

A few people gathered on Spring and Lakewood.




But, this is where I was headed:


Air Force One is there somewhere.



The helicopters heading North to LA after the OC visit. (Down to 3 from 5)



A few more (bad) photos are here.

well, for me:
The Vimeo one worked without a hitch,
the Flickr one kept stopping every 15 seconds to cache.

Flickr loaded 5x faster for me.

Using my spiffy new Internet Explorer v8 they both load in about 7-8 seconds.

Cool video, great view! I'm glad one of us got that close.

How great to hear the crowd and their enthusiam, just the plane landing. Of course, how cool you were really pretty darned close (I love LB airport). Although the helicopters have now infected my brain with the Ride of the Valkures from Die Valkure!

So, thus evening I'm driving about LB/Lakewood going from house to house as if I was Santa on Christmas, when I end up by the airport. There was some sort of hubbub going on and I figured that people were gathering to see AF1 take off. I continue on my merry way, turning up Cherry from Spring when I happen to see AF1 posing for pictures on the tarmac. So, knowing the backroads of LB like I do, I took a turn onto Wardlow where it deadends at Boeing and the Airport and, Waa Laa!, AF1 was RIGHT in front of me. I pulled out my camera, opened my sunroof and did some random shooting-while driving-with-many-of-cops-around just as the bease started moving faster and faster. It took off in the "wrong" direction (going South/East). Then I went on about my merry way again.

A few minutes later I was at a client house when LOOK! UP THERE! IN THE SKY! IT'S AF1 CIRCLING BACK.

It was cool.

It's funny, even living here I have never seen air force one. Marine One flies over all the time, but I really do need to catch sight of Air Force One one of these days...

I live about two miles north of LB airport and was going to be home so I drove down the street just after 5:00 in hopes of seeing Air Force One take off. I wasn't going to go to any great effort to get close to the airport but I thought the parking lots of either Walmart or Kohls (about half a mile from the runway) should be a good vantage point if the plane used the usual flight pattern. I parked near Kohls and then watched other cars pulling in and people jumping out of their cars and heading down the street. Two big helicopters flew just a little to the west of where I was standing and I could see all the dust flying up when they landed. Then a huge helicopter flew over from the north, directly above me and quite low. A fourth one flew in a few minutes later. I've decided Marine One was the one that buzzed me just because it was enormous and because I like believing that.

The helicopters obviously got everyone's attention because cars really started coming in but the street was blocked just a little way ahead. I waited ready to take a picture of the plane taking off but there was nothing and then everyone started coming back so I knew the plane had gone the other direction. Oh well, seeing the helicopters was fun.

It was incredible how many people came walking back from close to the airport. I like that kind of spontaneous mass event.