Election Night 2002

    Presented by
    The Republican Leadership Council

    Chapter 1: Getting there is Half the Fun. Maybe Even More.

    Speaking engagements come in fits and starts. It would be terrific if speeches could be scheduled on the third and fourth Thursday of every month, but it doesn't work that way.

    In the run-up to this election I have been in Sharonville, Ohio; Birmingham, AL; and San Francisco, CA before coming to rest in Miami, FL.

    You probably didn't know that there is a San Francisco, Argentina as well as the one in California. I tell you this so that if you go to Weather.com and to see whether you need a rain coat and you not paying close attention and you click on the wrong San Francisco and you see that the high is going to be in the 80's and this map comes up you will know why you are confused.

    Dear Mr. Galen. You were only 56 words into this Travelogue before you drifted off topic and took us on a trip through the Andes. Please try to stay on point.
    Sincerely,
    Everyone

    This business of things happening in clumps also occurs with cell phone calls. I believe there is some mathematical formula which describes this: No one will call for four hours. As soon as either I call someone, or someone calls me three other people will beep in.

    The plane flights were pretty easy. I didn't get chosen for a wanding at the gate prior to any of the 12 flights I have been on in the last eight days.

    Two incidents to report:

    At Dulles Airport, a TSA agent wanted to poke through my very manly shoulder bag. She was going to peer into it while it was sitting on top of the grating at the end of the x-ray machine.

    I asked her to please take it to a table and do it, so none of the tiny pieces and parts of highly sensitive electronic gizmology fell through the grate and got ground into iron filings in the x-ray belt.

    A burly guy (one of the 48 security people in the gate area) came over immediately and asked - in that way that people in charge do - if there was a problem here.

    I told him what I just told you and she took my VMSB to a table to investigate further.

    I know there were 48 security people because I had plenty of time to count them: Here's what she found: 



    One VERY official looking reporter's notebook
One pair of clip-on sunglasses in their case
One ball point pen with the name "Business Advisory Council" on
    the side
One weekly schedule
One monthly schedule
One paper clip thing with a rhinoceros head (from my brother and
    sister-in-law's trip to Africa last year)
One set of keys
One bottle of nitros
One hands free attachment for a cell phone
One cell phone
One AAA battery (used)
One Blackberry
Eight Mullings business cards
One swiper card for my downtown office space
One set of earphones
One MP3 player (very cool)
One 64 MB smart card for MP3 player
One 128 MB smart card for MP3 player
One passport (you just never know when you'll have to hop a plane
    to Paris, or Tangiers, or West Virginia)
One swiper card for the Alexandria Health Club (used once)
One tiny flashlight (the kind where you squeeze the sides to make 
    the light come on)
One ear thing to wear when doing television (which I sometimes
    put on just to impress people - no I don't.  I just was
    kidding about that.  Really.  I don't put it on so people
    will ask me what that is so I get to tell them I'm on 
    television. Really.)
One PowerShot S300 digital camera.

    The other time came at Washington National Airport when all my stuff was in the x-ray machine and it just stopped.

    I waited patiently, thinking they were examining all the crap in my VMSB or in my briefcase which has enough wires, connectors, plugs, and related items to star in a Mission Impossible episode.

    Finally, someone said that a celebrity was at the Delta Shuttle counter which is just outside the security area. I asked who it was, and the person said it was Jane Fonda.

    All right. I'll put up with being inconvenienced for a couple of guys trying to figure out what they hell their looking at in my briefcase, but I will not wait for eight additional seconds for Jane Fonda.

    So I clapped my hands and said, "Hey, guys? How about we pay attention to our jobs here and let someone else worry about the movie star?"

    At that point some burly guy came up to me and said, "Is there a problem here?"

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