motorcade

Someone important drove by this morning while I was waiting for the bus. First came the motorcycles, with lights and sirens going, then the little clump of black minivans and SUVs, then a police car bringing up the rear. It was coming straight up from the White House, but it wasn't a big enough hoopla to be the president.

You'd think we'd be used to motorcades by now, but an awful lot of people still stop and stare when they go by. The glass is too dark to see inside, but you never know, the veep might decide he should roll down the window and wave at the populace sometime.

The best one I ever saw was on the day of the Reagan funeral. I guess the motorcades were just taking every route they could think of to cross town from the Capitol to the Cathedral, so one went through Georgetown on M Street. First the motorcycle cops came through and held up the intersections. (At this point I actually had no choice but to stop and stare, because I couldn't cross the street.) Then came the SUVs - in a new twist, they had open windows so you could see the guys with the incredibly big guns. Then came four or five tourbuses with signs that said "HOUSE" on the door. Yep, I think I saw the entire House of Representatives zip through Georgetown on buses.

Do you think they divided it up by party? By state? Did Nancy Pelosi's friends carefully guide her away from the bus Dennis Hastert was on? Did the freshman representatives in the front of the bus buckle the seatbelts together across the aisle so their colleagues would trip and fall? I wonder....