Yesterday Kathy, Bruce (who's visiting from London), and I had a day of exploring different images of America.

In the morning we went to Wilmington, Delaware, to see Barack Obama. The President-elect was on his way to Washington DC for his inauguration, so we stood out in the cold for a few hours to catch a glimpse of him on one of his train stops. We got there about an hour and a half before the announced start time for the event, and we had a much better view than I had expected. We were way up front in the crowd, but it was hard for me to tell from there quite how many people had piled in behind us.

A little boy standing next to us couldn't see any of the activity, so Bruce picked him up to give him a better view. The boy said he still didn't see Obama, but Bruce figures it was just because he thought all the people on stage were just boring adults.

After the Obama event, since we were already in Delaware, we drove another half-hour down to Maryland to watch some bald eagles at Conowingo Dam. It was cloudy and gray and cold, but it was my first successful attempt to drag other witnesses to Conowingo, so I was happy about that. We didn't stick around very long, but we got to see 4 good flyovers in the few minutes we were there (including 2 soaring low over the car as we drove over the dam - love that panoramic sunroof!).

After all those images of hope and majesty, we needed to achieve some balance, so (joined by Jose) we finished off the day by watching the downfall of a president in the movie "Frost/Nixon".

All in all, a very enjoyable day in America.