Thursday, February 17, 2011

Part 1 ... SWAC bloggers road trip to Richmond ... great adventures and high expectations

 Heading up Afton Mountain. SWAC bloggers David Karaffa, Jason Bibeau, Bob Kirchman, and Lynn Mitchell took a road trip Wednesday to participate in Lt. Governor Bill Bolling's Bloggers Day.
SWAC bloggers approaching Capital Square.

Four SWAC bloggers left the beautiful Shenandoah Valley early Wednesday morning to attend Lt. Governor Bill Bolling's 4th annual bloggers day in Richmond along with more than 30 fellow bloggers from throughout the Commonwealth. Unfortunately, Fishersville Mike and Yankee Phil had conflicts in their schedules and were not able to join us. We missed you guys!

Augusta Conservative, The Journey, Augusta Water Cooler, and SWAC Girl had met at the parking lot before daylight, our merry band of political writers, and we piled into the car armed with note pads and cameras for a day at the Capitol.

Rowdy could best describe the trip east on I-64 with this spirited group. With the sun peeking over the horizon, the music selection began with everything 80s followed by patriotic music only to have that followed up with a Ronald Reagan speech and then theme music from various 80s television shows which found us particularly enamored with the music from "The A Team" and everyone was assigned a character from that 80s show. I never watched that show (although I certainly knew of it and knew who Mr. T was) ... they assigned me the character called "Hannibal." A mixed bag of musical selections followed along with spirited conversation about everything but most importantly political.

Adventures in Richmond when attending the General Assembly always begin with the search for parking and yesterday was no different. This parking lot is full, that one is permit only, another is private ... some things never change. We finally ended up at MCV's parking deck and hoofed our way back up to Capital Square where we arrived an hour early for the morning start of our great adventure. Thankfully, we were able to find a comfortable seating area outside the Governor's office which provided the opportunity to see each of the early-bird bloggers as they arrived.

It was just the beginning of our great adventures and high expectations on our road trip to Richmond....

See my recap of bloggers day at the Washington Examiner: "Virginia Bloggers go to Richmond ... Bill Bolling's 4th annual bloggers day."


Photos by Lynn R. Mtichell
16 February 2011

1 comment:

Mike said...

Hopefully I can join you guys for the 2012 event.