What I missed out on in Amarillo

So I didn't go to Occupy Congress in Washington, D.C. this week, as I planned.

I originally planned to join the folks from Occupy San Diego on their cross-country Greyhound bus ride. I was going to take the bus down to New Mexico, or to Amarillo, Texas, and join their convoy. I had even contacted the organizer in San Diego about joining them, and donated money so that others could buy bus tickets.

But I got signals in my guy saying not to go to D.C. right now, for various reasons, among them being my discovery that the Occupy Congress thing was going to be just a one-day event. I thought they were going to try to set up an Occupy encampment on the National Mall.
I thought that would be the end of it.

As it happens the big story of the entire Occupy Congress event has not been what happened in D.C. on Tuesday (the day of protest), but what happened to the Occupy San Diego people on the way there. The entire group was kicked off the bus in Amarillo by the Greyhound driver, who stated that he disagreed with their politics and did not want them on board.

The entire S.D. contingent spent the night stranded in the Amarillo bus station, until they got an apology from Greyhound and were given an express bus all the way to D.C.

It was a huge thing in the social media, and made the national news in multiple outlets. Keith Olbermann called the driver, Donald Ainsworth, his "worst person in the world" for that day (not that I'm a big Keith Olbermann man). The "Amarillo 13," and the stranded occupiers came to be called during the event, were greeted with a hero's welcome when they got to D.C.

Here's one article on what happened.

So that's what I missed out on. That photo in the article of the Occupiers in the bus station was probably taken about the same time as the one at the top of Bear Mountain that I posted. I traded one experience for another, I suppose. Quite an adventure they had in Amarillo---yet one I felt like I wasn't mean to participate in. How weird.