Can’t make it to the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear? The Daily Collegian has you covered. We’ll be leaving Amherst at noon tomorrow and have a full weekend ahead starting with the two rallies. Afterwards, we’re heading to Philadelphia to celebrate Halloween and watch the Massachusetts women’s soccer and field hockey teams take on La Salle on Sunday before heading back to UMass. On the trip we’ve got Nick O’Malley (our Sports Senior Producer), Dave Martin (women’s soccer beat writer), Matt Robare (Ed/Op Editor), Bobby Hitt (Assistant News Editor), Jeff Bernstein (sports photographer) and myself.

11/1- 2:02 a.m. (Adam) Home, sweet home.

The early shift got back to UMass at around 10:30 with plenty of pictures, stories and in my case, a nice sunburn. Regardless, the end of the trip was very nice. Nick and I had a great time roaming the streets of Philadelphia after the kids left us alone.

We checked out a party at the Bellavue, but decided to go to a sports bar instead due to the fact that the cover was $20 and it was a club scene. Quite frankly, when traffic out of Maryland is so bad, that biking to Philly is a serious option, going out to dance just isn’t that appealing of an option.

Regardless, it was nice to roam around by foot and do some people watching. There were some pretty creative costumes everywhere we walked so that was interesting.

The next morning, I went to cover my first field hockey game. It was fun to watch and went by really quickly. I was surprised by the pace in general and the game turned out to be a 2-1 UMass win so it was definitely fun to watch. I wrote most of my story during the game and then finished the rest at a McDonald’s in Connecticut off some rest stop.

To wrap up my experience, I guess I have to say it was nothing short of phenomenal. I enjoyed getting out of UMass for the weekend, despite missing my last Halloween weekend as a student here. Although I paid up the wazoo for this trip, drove through some of the most horrendous traffic I’ve ever dealt with and navigated through oddly structured roads, all of that was well worth it for this trip.

The paper as a whole benefited from our efforts; every single section got something out of this little road trip we took, and there is plenty of material to go around (see the Sports section later this week for a column I’m going to have on this weekend).

On a personal level, I got a chance to learn some definite survival skills (i.e. my little crisis in D.C.) and got to do some pretty cool things and meet a lot of great people. I couldn’t think of any better way to spend my last Halloween weekend at UMass then to leave the school with some friends from the paper and do something out of the ordinary.

And with that, it’s time for me to get some sleep. Hope you all had as much fun reading this blog as we did writing it.

10/31 – 7:13 p.m.  (Nick) After far too long on the road, it looks we’re going to be back in a couple hours.  We stopped at a Connecticut McDonalds so that Miller could write up his field hockey story and so I could send in my article to arts after forgetting to do so last night.

After staying up too late wandering around Philly and doing a non-sensible podcast, we ended up waking up around 9 a.m. Miller and I left a little earlier so we could do two things: 1) Get to La Salle to cover UMass sports like we’d planned. 2) Go down to 9th street past Washington Ave to go to Geno’s and Pat’s the imfamous rival cheesesteak joints in Philly. Now, eating two cheesesteaks first thing in the morning mind sound like a bad idea (Oh, don’t get me wrong, it is), but journalism stops for no man(‘s stomach). I could use a salad right now.

Field hockey won a good game while women’s soccer lost 3-0. Miller and I covered the wrong game. The best part about covering the game was once again running into field hockey coach Justine Sowry. After covering the team for a season, I’ve gone back to cover probably the best coach at UMass. The first couple of times, she did a double-take. But today, she just accepted it. I mean, we were just in the neighborhood, we figured we’d stop by.

10/31-3:44 a.m. (Bobby and Dave) Epic idea created for a new section in the Massachusetts Daily Collegian, the travel section.

10/31-2:53 a.m. (Bobby and Dave) We’re going out to rock Philly like a wagon wheel.

10/31-2:30 a.m.  (Dave)  Today went pretty well.  Actually, scratch that, today was sick.  It was my first time into D.C. since I was in eighth grade, so I saw a lot of monuments and buildings from a completely different perspective.  The first problem I faced on the day, though, was a common theme throughout the trip.  Since I’m five-foot-four, seeing anything above five-eight is tough.  So, I basically had to listen to the event.  Luckily, the guy in the Irish Easter bunny suit in front of me sat down at  the right times to get great shots of Ozzy, Stewart, Colbert, and Abdul-Jabbar.  I also saw a lot of Canadians that came down from Montréal and Toronto in big party buses just to see the comedic pair live.  Signs like “Canadians for a Sensible America” and “9 out of 10 Zombies Prefer Canadian Healthcare” were strewn throughout the crowd, not surprisingly near the Canadian Embassy.  I also realized how much I hate subways, especially crowded ones.  They all suck, I don’t care, end of story.  I’m in Philly now, and I have to be honest, it’s pretty sick (for being Philly).  Can’t say what I’ll do yet, but I bet it’ll be something to remember for my first time in the City of Brotherly Love…

10/31 – 1:13 a.m. (Nick) Two parter: rally and then Philly. Also, I’m going to edit everyone else’s posts before I go to bed.

Early estimates are looking impressive for the Rally. At the time of writing, CBS News is estimating 215,000 attendees, Yahoo! News, which had a significant presence at the National Mall, handing out some swag,  has similar numbers. The low end of the estimates are at 150,000 attendees. The highest numbers are coming from CTV in Canada, with an estimate of 250,000. Glenn Beck’s rally during the summer was estimated at 87,000.

It’s funny, whenever I envisioned the crowd in my head, I thought about the scene from Forest Gump where he makes the speech and reunites with Jenny. It wasn’t to far off. The crowd where we were was packed shoulder-to-shoulder, so we had no way to gauge the volume of people. The only signs of the behemothic crowd came early on where the Mythbusters took to the stage to work the crowd before The Roots performed. The first experiment, a wave, showed that it took 56 seconds to send the popular sports arena maneuver from the from of the crowd to the back.

While we couldn’t see the crowd, we could see the effects. People were filling up staircases to buildings across the street from the grassy area, phone lines were jammed in all of D.C. and the streets were packed as far as five blocks from the mall. We ended up heading back to Alexandria, Va. to get lunch. I got some wicked sweet ‘za and called my mom. You should do the same. She misses you, you know.

The crowd had some characters, ranging from V for America to a group of kids from New York who continually yelled “sports!” while throwing foam footballs into the crowd. Surprisingly, they got thrown back. The amicability of these folks were really indicative of the crowd as a whole. As advertised, everyone was pretty sane and reasonable.

…

Stuff in Philly needs to stay open later. Otherwise, you’re stuck with $2.22 for two taquitos and $1.49 slushies at 7/11 and overpriced burgers at an inner city Wendy’s.

After wandering around Philly for a while, we ended up losing Bobby, Jeff and Dave, while the of-age Miller and I ended up going to a bar (Matt has a story to write. Good luck, sir). We ended up picking a random sports bar, with me getting a Long Trail Harvest while Miller got a pineapple upside-down cake cocktail equally manly drink. Hey, I’m just a guy writing in a blog.

Tomorrow, though, we’re covering some UMass sports at La Salle, but not before I get up early to sample some cheesesteaks. If my stomach’s up to it, I’m going to try both Pat’s and Geno’s. Wish me luck. Watch out for my cheesesteak review in The Collegian arts section this week.

10/31-12:27 a.m. (Bobby)

We have arrived back from exploring the Philadelphia night life. But before I get into all the events of the past couple hours I need to backtrack to part 2 of my 3 a.m. adventure in Virginia.

Part 2

I had left for the 7-11 early Saturday morning probably around 3:15 a.m. I made my way back across the shopping mall and took pictures of some of the store fronts in the mall. As I’m strolling along I hear a thick Latina accent calling, “Papi!” I look to my left and there is a white Toyota pick up truck with two busty Latina women inside of it.

“Papi, do you have a cigarette?” said the Latina women in the passenger’s seat, who was dressed in what appeared to be escort garb. She wore a low cut dress and fishnet stalking with heavy makeup on her face.

After I forked over 2 cigarettes the suspected escort in the passenger’s seat she asked me my name and where I was staying while continuing to call me, “Papi.” I plugged the collegian website and told her about my blog and wimped out of my journalistic duty to get the facts and left without confirming that she was actually a prostitute.

As I walked toward the IHOP in the Comfort Inn, I heard her calling, “Bobby!” I didn’t turn around. Now I didn’t turn around because I am above buying a hooker, but strickly for financial reasons. Show my man Eliot Spitzer some love. I had already spent way too much money that day.

However I did learn one thing, hookers are people too. And they can be really nice if you stop to talk to them.

I made my way back to the IHOP to see if I could get a picture with our server earlier that day. But I looked into the room with the check in desk and see a tall man dressed as a cat woman, another man dressed as a nascar driver and another young man in a stylish black dress.

Without hesitation I went in and asked the nice young men or women, whatever they prefer, if they would let me take a picture of them and they accepted. Apparently they were there for a Halloween party.

After I said goodbye to my new transvestite friends, I headed over to IHOP. The security guard let me take a picture of the host booth, but declined to stand in front of it with his arms folded looking tough for the photograph. I said hello to my server from earlier that day and learned that her name was Tsehay, she also declined to be photographed.

Finally I left and made it safely back to my dorm without anymore night walker encounters. I smoked a few cigarettes and read the chapter about carbohydrates in my biology textbook to put me to sleep. Sorry Professor Searcy, but at least I actually read the book for a change.

Back in the room Robare and Bernstein were already asleep. Robare sounds like a trash compactor when he sleeps, but that doesn’t really bother me because my roommate last year sounded like a chainsaw.  I did however have to sleep on the floor which I did not originally think would be a problem, but I could not for the life of me fall asleep. To tell you the truth I was too excited for the rally the next day, like the kid of a hedge fund manager on Christmas Eve.

I got up and took a shower and took care of hygienics and when I got out of the bathroom Bernstein was stirring. Shortly after Robare started to get up too.

After everyone was ready, we gathered near the elevator. The full team assembled me, the fabulous Bobby Hitt, the witty Matt M. Robare, the jolly Nick O’Malley, the sexy Dave Martin, and the pineapple Adam Miller.

I laid there trying to sleep until 6:55 a.m.

10/30- 11:15 p.m. (Adam) Well we just got to Philly after a long day in Washington D.C. The rally was a lot of fun and had a very similar setup to the Daily Show that I once went to last year. In other words, there’s entertainment, there’s a warm-up guy and then the man himself.

In this case, the warm-up guys were the people from Mythbusters. They did a great job at working the crowd (hey, it’s kind of difficult having 125,000 people do the wave).

Finally, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert came out. They started off with a bit on the demographics of everyone who attended the rally. Asaf Mandvi and Samantha Bee interviewed a couple people to find out their gender, ethnicity and heritage. I didn’t get interviewed, but I was off to the side that Mandvi was polling from so I got a chance to shake his hand (I should also add that I got to briefly meet Ariana Huffington from the Huffington Post so I really had prime real estate).

The rally featured guests such as Kid Rock, The Roots, Sheryl Crow, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, R2D2 (yes you read that right), Sam Waterson, Tony Bennett, Ozzy Osbourne, The O.J.’s and Cat Stevens.

Other things that were just as interesting as the rally itself included the signs and people dressed up. Nick should be making a photo slideshow which features those pictures, so you’ll get to see what I’m talking about soon.

After the rally, we struggled to do anything else in D.C. as the restaurants and streets were packed. In fact, we had to wait in line just to get on the train back to Alexandria, which was where our hotel was. Finally, we got out at around 6 p.m. and hit the road for Philadelphia. After some very aggravating traffic, we made it to our hotel and I have to say, I feel like I’m living in a palace.

The environment helped me rev up a second (or third) wind and I’m about to go out with Nick to enjoy Philly. Tomorrow is all about the sports section.

1o/30-8:03 a.m.(Bobby)

Suck it O’Malley, this post is about to blow your mind. You can stick your AP stylebook where the sun don’t shine, I don’t get paid for this ish.

Now, because I make it my personal crusade to regain UMass’s title of a top party school and the fact that I enjoy taking shots at the administration’s attempt at reinventing UMass’s image (pun intended); I decided against all rationality and fear I had and went out into 3am Virginian night to procure a pack of cigarettes.

As I walk through the deserted strip mall, I spied a forklift chained to a guard rail outside of a Mexican type restaurant. The first but by far not the last weird thing I see on my adventure.

I made it to the 7-11 and while I wait for the cashier to take position, two tall black or arabic youths walk in making playful banter with the store clerk. While I purchase my cancer sticks a man in a tattered grey coat with eyes as red as the devil’s dick walks into the stores and makes his way over to the magazine stand.

I don’t know whether he was looking at a porn magazine or a automobile magazine. Either way I was too sketched out to look, and even if I did it would have just made me sad.

Back to business. I told the store clerk to “surprise me” with any kind of lighter he chooses. He picks up a white lighter. I don’t mind because I am not particularly superstitious, but the two young gentlemen standing behind me object.

“I feel good about a yellow one,” said the youth. I took into consideration his advise and saw the wisdom in it.

“Why tempt fate?” said I.

“That’s what I’m saying,” responded the youth, as the clerk handed me the yellow bic.

Part 2 is forthcoming

10/30- 7:50 a.m. (Adam) Hopefully today is a day with more treats than tricks. I’m currently ivying this low-quality coffee to my veins, but considering the fact that I’m up this early to go to a rally and then have another 140-something mile trip to Philly at the end of the rally, I’ll take what I can get.

The breakfast options aren’t great here. McDonald’s (gulp) is taking the lead due to its quickness and cheapness. Either way, today’s going to be really exciting and was definitely worth everything that came with last night. Off to the rally we go!

10/30 – 7:23 a.m. (Nick) Bobby, you screwed up the AP style on your time stamp. Take a lap.

So we’re wheels up at 8 a.m., then we’re going to get food at some diner or something, then grab the train into D.C. It’s an estimated one hour, 15 minutes ride in, hence the early start. Miller and Robare have the snazzy tickets, which apparently are first-come first-serve, so that’ll have to be taken care of. That, and we need time to mosey around the capital and take some pictures of important buildings. That way, we don’t have to run a wire photo whenever we run a story about national politics.

Oh yeah, we get to go to the rally today. Now, should we go to IHOP or that diner down the street?

…We skipped drinking for this?

10/30-1:53am(Bobby Hitt)

I woke up this morning undisturbed by my alarm. Upon waking I instantly said, “Oh, Shitaki mushrooms I’m going to D.C. today!” I had blacked out the night before from drinking too much soda. Captain Morgan’s should stop making soft drinks.

After texting my friend Diderot to thank him for carrying me back to my room, I went upstairs to the fifth floor of Field to say good bye to my friends Kerri, Colie, Sarah, and Audrey. Everyone was still asleep except for Audrey who had already left for the morning. Kerri, still in the guise of Britney Spears from the “Hit Me Baby One More Time” video from the night before, came out to the balcony with me to talk and say goodbye. Got to say, she made a convincing Ms. Spears.

The car ride was relatively uneventful. I read the Daily Collegian issue for Friday and checked for any mistakes made in the News section. As far as I could tell, flawless except for some messed up quotation marks. Then I made a call to Momma Hitt and then took a nap all the way to New Jersey, and for some strange reason I had been fist pumping in my sleep ever since we crossed the border into New Jersey.

We stopped on the Jersey Turnpike, due to the slow crawl of traffic, where I got a honey bourbon chicken sandwich from Quiznos. Robare had to spot me, because I had put a hold on my debit card since I thought I had lost it at the Monkey Bar Wednesday. Luckily, I had found it last night before I fell asleep. I hit up Robare back later by buying his meal at IHOP.

We arrived in Washington earlier than the rest of the news team around 9 pm. Unfortunately, we could not check into our hotel room, because the rooms were under the names of Nick O’Malley and Adam Miller. A minor snag compared to the rest of the team with Creamer stuck in Newark and Miller and O’Malley stuck in traffic in Delaware.

We strolled into Bragg’s Tower extended stay hotel where the desk clerk sat behind a plexiglass window. After the clerk buzzed us in we exchanged pleasantries and explained our situation. The lady at the desk was extremely nice and spoke with a southern twang. She referred to me and the rest of the crew as “child” quite often. We had some time to kill so we went back out to the car to look up a movie theater on the GPS. I figured I’d use the bathroom before we headed out, so I went back inside. No public restroom. No problem. Though I could have gone outside, I decided to keep it classy. We took a B-line over to the Comfort Inn where they had an IHOP and I swiftly made my way to the little boy’s room.

The host at IHOP seated Robare and Bernstein before I had gotten out of the restroom. Our waitress was of Indian or Paki persuasion, and was a little hard to understand. Don’t worry we still tipped relatively well. Robare ordered the chocolate chip pancakes, and Bernstein ordered the all you can eat pancakes. I ordered the sirloin steak tips with mushrooms, onions, home fries, scrabbled eggs with cheese and two buttermilk pancakes mmmm. None of us finished our meals.The total came to $38.81 and we left a $7.00 tip. By the way this is the first time I have ever paid to cover anything wink wink hint hint Nick Bush.

After that we headed over to AMC at Hoffman Center. It was a beautiful theater with murals of famous actors and actresses like Audrey Hepburn, Brad Pitt and Bruce Lee. There were two levels. The first had the ticket kiosk flanked by automated ticket machines, and the upper level was mostly theaters and bathrooms. Both levels had their own concession stand, but the one upstairs was closed. Our tickets cost $11.00 each after tax.

The movie started at 11pm. Trailers included the first installment of the new Harry Potter movies based off of the seventh book in the series. There was an awesome trailer for a  remake movie directed by  the Coen brothers, the same dudes who directed “Fargo” and “No Country For Old Men,” called “True Grit” staring Matt Damon Jeff Bridges and Josh Brolin. Two trailers for the same romantic comedy were shown as well, but that’s OK because the star of the movie is Paul Rudd. I have a massive man crush on Paul Rudd. Call me Paul! The name of the movie is “How Do You Know,” also starring Reese Witherspoon and that guy who played Jackie Costigan in “The Departed.” What was that guy’s name again? Who is this IRA looking mother f@$ker in my bar?

But I digress, suffice it to say the “Social Network” is an instant classic.

When we finally got out of the movie at around 1:15am, just in time for us to hear that the eagle had landed. Miller and O’Malley were in the hotel. We discussed briefly who would get the last press ticket, and I won the day on the grounds that I have already spoken to Colbert in a telephone conference earlier this semester. The official Daily Collegian reporters at the event will be me, Miller, and Robare.

We then met in our hotel room, where me, Robare, and Bernstein will be staying and traded notes about the events of the day. Including some rukus a photographer had made at the University of Massachusetts hockey game at the Mullins Center. We suspect it may have involved some trash talking to other photographers. Which I personally find hilarious, but security at the game did not seem to think so.

Still wired from the pent up energy from the car ride and soda consumed during the course of the trip, I write to you now from our hotel room in Virginia which is accommodated with a stove, refrigerator, and a mini bar. Just kidding no mini bar, Rats! We plan on getting up in 5 hours to leave for the event at 8am.

10/30- 1:24 a.m. (Adam) We finally got to our hotel (see right). But not without some challenges. First off, $19 in toll fees, $58 in gas, $154 for a half-tank of pre-paid gas and a weekend rental from Enterprise in a Hundai Sonata and a lot of panicking. Due to our first few miscues, we ended up going through the Bronx (which is probably the worst traffic I’ve ever been a part of) and then got no more than give minutes of relief before we hit another traffic jam in New Jersey.

It didn’t end there.

We hit traffic in Delaware. Yes, Delaware. Who knew that so many people would need to use the highway in such a state? We finally got to our nation’s capital a little past 11. And just as we all breathed a sigh of relief, we ran into yet another navigation crisis.

We made a wrong turn and tried to use my Blackberry’s GPS to get us back on track, and just as we attempted to do so, my phone died. Not only that, but within minutes, the low gas sign started flashing. Luckily, we weren’t in a bad neighborhood and people were more than willing to help us. In addition, we had some mild entertainment in watching the George Washington students walk around in Halloween costumes.

But back to the issue at hand.

D.C. is just impossible to navigate through and it doesn’t help that the drivers in Washington make you feel like your life is about to flash before your eyes every five seconds. We went around in circles time and time again, begging for half-way decent instructions from the cab drivers who were either feeling sorry for us or just thought we were pathetic. It must’ve taken at least a dozen cab drivers to help us find a gas station just in the nick of time.

Once we got to the gas station, we got the directions we needed to get to our hotel. Nick took shot gun once again, and we were back in business.

So where is the other group? Good question, last time we made contact with them, Matt said they were going to Ihop and then a movie, but I guess they haven’t returned. The good news is that we have three press “tickets,” which allow us to get close to the stage. Hopefully we can meet some big-name media people when we get to the media tent. David Gregory? Nice to meet you, is NBC hiring? Mr. O’Reilly, I don’t agree with any of your views but can I have a business card? Who knows what will happen?

This is supposed to be a consolation prize for anyone they denied for press credentials. So some of us are going to see Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart up close (including yours truly), however we have to get to the media tent extra early to get our ticket. Apparently admission isn’t even guaranteed. According to the email we got, the rally is going to close up once the National Mall is at full capacity.

So, it’s time for bed. Goodnight everyone.

10/30 – 12:46 a.m. (Nick) Well that sucked.

So, stupidly high tolls aside, things were going well until D.C. where Miller took a wrong turn in the city (not my fault since I relinquished navigation privileges — bad idea) and Miller’s phone, which we were now using for directions, died. So, for some reason, heading towards the monuments became a good idea, I don’t know why.

So now, we’re lost in downtown D.C. and the low gas light appears. The next 20 or so minutes was a blur of non-sensible one-way streets, Miller asking cab drivers for directions and the proceeding to go the wrong way and us yelling at Miller for not following said directions. Finally, we finally get directions to go right, right, three blocks and then left. This works, though we almost screw it up.

And then it appeared, our salvation: a BP gas station with a cashier behind bullet-proof glass that had a courtesy sticker over a bullet hole. Heaven is relative.

10/29 – 7:41 p.m. – (Dave) Just had my first microwaved Whopper, and I’m starting to feel why it was a bad idea. We’re listening to the Habs game on the radio and they’re beating the Islanders 1-0 after the 1st. Choice!
10/29 – 2:30 p.m. – (Nick) I may or may not have made us take a wrong turn — twice. But you know what? New york should make more sense.

We just got word that we will in fact not be getting media credentials, but are getting tickets to get up front from the media tent. So that means no video from the rally itself. Boo.

10/29 – 2:30 p.m. – (Nick) An hour into the trip, Dave points out that, in fact, not raining and that Miller should really turn off the wipers.

Also, after I’ve been answering Miller’s texts for a while;

Miller: You’re living vicariously through me. How do you feel?
Me: Jewish.

10/29 – 12:10 p.m. – (Nick) Well, we’re making our final preparations to head to D.C. and the Illadelph (That’s what the cool kids call it, I hear). Unfortunately, my expertise of these cities is limited to A: That trip I made with the boy scouts to D.C. in sixth grade and watching The West Wing and B) Cheesesteaks, Eagles fans and It’s Always Sunnyin Philadelphia. So this should be fun.

I suppose we’ll all be checking in intermittently, I’ll probably be doing a lot because Miller’s driving and I have the netbook. But for now, we got our camera, our video stuff and our journalisms. Let’s go cover some liberals!