another day in the right

Made it downtown again today after work, this time just to sight see a little and check out what might be going on the RNC land. Overall, it was pretty quiet. There was a small protest by the Code Pink ladies early on, it looked like a couple of them were arrested (or at least carried away by police) peacefully. I mainly was there to take people pictures, here's some of what I saw (note, there's even a tiny bit of bike content here! click on any picture for big):

Code-pink folks exercising their first amendment rights

This is a typical scene of the protests down there, not riots and tear gas

But the police were ready for riots and tear gas, quite a presence for a few odd protesters

Obvious anarchists here, I ran into Tom and Jen Fitch down there, these two look like trouble to me, check out how Tom's hiding something in his pockets. I'm pretty sure that guy on the bmx bike is part of the scheme too.

There seemed to be a much larger fanatical religious presence today too. They were hanging out by the MSNBC broadcast, I'm sure hoping to get this sign on national TV.

I love the all-encompassing theme of this banner, I wonder if the guy carrying it is included in the "all"?

Code Pink, they sure are everywhere, spreading their message. Props for perseverance.

Don't know what to say about this one, but how can you resist taking a picture

Bike content: saw this sweet recumbent pedicab parked out by Rice park. Didn't get to see it in action though.

Not sure who this is, or who the reporter is, but it was an interesting scene

I had to make sure to ride back home via the river path so that I could get some shots of the fleet that the coast guard brought in to patrol the river. I feel so safe now.

This one is my favorite. I saw these boats running the river Monday but didn't have a camera. I had to chase one down while on my bike to get a good shot of the front and rear guns. Watch out terrorists, we got guys with machine guns on the might Mississippi!

Just walking around downtown you feel a bit unsure of what you're "allowed" to do. There's three cops on every corner all the way across downtown. There's even parked state patrol cars at the freeway exit ramp by my place, which is about 2 miles outside of downtown. Not sure what they're all supposed to be doing though.
The gun boats on the river really do you feel a bit uneasy, especially when your on a bike and trying to photograph them. I could see the crew on one of the boats looking at me through the binoculars, trying to decide if they should wave or shoot me (fortunately they waved).

anyways, next post should have far more bike content. write at you later.

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