Obama in Melbourne

Our flight was delayed to Melbourne and after the time difference we landed at about 5pm. The ABF rep meeting us on the ground Grant Weir got lost on the way to the rental car place and we ended up getting there after it closed so my hopes of catching the second day of the Australian Open were pretty much done. We got a quick tour of the suburb we’d be staying at called Williamstown which is a really nice spot right by the beach with a lot of shops and restaurants. Grant took us to a Greek restaurant where we feasted on a bunch of meat, half which I couldn’t really describe if I wanted to. After that it was about 10pm, and I headed back to the 2 bedroom apartment I am sharing for the week with Bob Voight, long time MLB exec.

I really wanted to find a place to watch the Obama inauguration which started at 3am local time. Google was no help, so I called up some hostels thinking they might have heard something…nothing. The last trains to the city ran at midnight and they didn’t start again until 5am, so I was going to be stranded in the CBD. I got downtown at about midnight and exited the train station to a festive atmosphere of the exiting Australian Open crowd. I went to a bar right next to Federation Square and asked the bartender if the inauguration would be on the big screen that was showing the tennis, he said “probably but not sure.” After taking a lap around the city asking bartenders and bar goers no one seemed to know anything and not much seemed to be going on.

As I contemplated biting the bullet and taking a cab back to the apartment I stopped by Fed Square one last time. All that was there was a cleaning crew and one girl sitting on the steps reading a book. I asked if she was there to watch Obama and she said yes and that she had just spoke with the security guard and that the channel would be set at 3am. I was glad to finally have concrete information but was a little disappointed that there was only two of us (Laney is from Baltimore and was over here teaching Roller Derby of all things until that gig ended recently and she’s now looking for work to stay a little longer). A little bit later, about eight 17 year-old aussies rocked up taking swigs of cheap vodka, and it was cool that they were genuinely excited about the event. As we got closer to 4am when he was actually sworn in the crowd had grown to about 75 people and everyone was cheering and jeering (the usual suspects). It turned out to be exactly what I was seeking: to be able to watch the historic moment with like-minded interested people and feel proud to be an American for 10 minutes. It would have been cool if it were a big crowd but with the numbers we had everyone was talking to each other and joking around. It was probably 80% Australians which was very cool to see how excited they were about the transition of power(the front page headline of the Melbourne paper that morning was “Bye Bye Bush” and the following morning the sports radio station was talking all about Obama to the chagrin of some of the callers). The first train headed my way wasn’t until 5:25 so I talked with Laney about job prospects for a while and finally made it home a little after 6am getting a couple hours of sleep before being picked up at 8:45 to go to the Baseball Victoria offices to get to work on the weekend’s games.