Week 22: Secretary of State Visit

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures from my point of view of the Secretary Clinton's visit, but I did get a chance to participate. I was assigned as the baggage officer and was responsible for getting the advance team's luggage onto the official airplane for the trip back to Washington, DC. We had got back and forth on whether a bag handlers were needed, but we decided it would be smoother to get the advance team's bags onto the airplane while they were doing their work for the inauguration events rather than doing it at the end of the day when they were trying to get off the ground. I am glad to have had the experience because it gave me an introduction on the step-by-step planning that goes into a major visit. This was one only lasted one day, and it still took over a week of meetings and site visits to prepare.

After going to the hotel to pick up the bags, we returned to embassy to have the bags and the all of the motorcade cars inspected and sniffed by the bomb dog. Bomb dogs are way cooler than X-ray machines. Then, I spent most of my day for the inauguration at the airport waiting for the Secretary's airplane to arrive, get refueled and loaded for the return trip. I rode in the motorcade to the airport in an armored van with the other two members of the baggage handling crew. 

Since I was at the airport, I got to see the airplane land and listen to the reports from the site officers as they reported the step-by-step movement of the Secretary as she went to the pre-determined inauguration events. I even got to go up into the official aircraft and get tour. It's a well-laid-out aircraft that is very a much a place of business. It was interesting to me that other than a few technology upgrades, the basic plan was very similar to the Air Force One planes that are display at the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio.

My last highlight of the day was watching the motorcade of the former Brazilian president enter the air base for his last official trip out of Brasilia. Lining the street just outside of the entrance was a group of supporters wishing him well and thanking him for a job well-done.