Editors Note: Being that I’m probably suffering from a mild form of heatstroke, my misrememberance of the Oregon governmental figure that spoke before Barack Obama at the rally yesterday might be excused. It was Earl Blumenauer, not John Kitzhaber. I regret the error.(and feel like an utter moron for making it in the first place)

I really don’t like The Decemberists that much. At all. I certainly don’t like them well enough to wait in line for nearly three hours just to see them. But, here I am, in the middle of a grassy lawn in Portland’s Waterfront Park, listening to “Oh, Valencia” and “16 Military Wives” with everyone else. Some are getting into it, enjoying the faux-rock sounds of Portland’s own Decemberists, but many are bewildered and disoriented. Like me, they’re probably wondering why we have to listen to a mediocre indie-rock band when we came here to listen to Barack Obama speak.

Oh shit, Colin Meloy is squawking at us to wave our hands a certain way. I really don’t like this guy. I just want to see Obama. Just shut up and sing your last song, Colin, then please go back to reading some 19th century Russian author that none of us are cool enough to have ever heard of. Then write a song about it.

The crowd is actually oddly reminiscent of music festival crowds, with a few minor changes. There are scantily-clad girls with Obama shirts wrapped around their heads and tube tops made out of even smaller Obama shirts, with Obama stickers adorning their bare torsos. There are also many “dude” guys, with their shades and visors, camo cargo shorts and scummy flip-flops, their Obama shirts tucked in their back pocket.

Being in large crowds of any kind is not really my forte’. I don’t really like people enough to deal with large masses of them. Inevitably, someone pisses me off for little to no reason and I sour on the whole idea. This time, it was some douchebag accusing my 5′6″ wife of cutting in front of his 6′4″ self and attempting to block his view. This was while the crowd was still milling about and filling in, and the flow of people ended up separating us. She got carried in front of this guy and I got stuck behind. By the time she fought her way back to me, he felt the need to needle her about “cutting in front of him, rudely.” She was aghast and I was stunned. It’s a freaking crowd of people. It’s not like we all had assigned spots on the lawn that we had reserved in advance. And anyway, he’s nearly a foot taller than she is!

The capper to this little episode was when he said, “Let’s just try to have a good time here. Okay? Thank you.” After accusing my wife of cutting he had the balls to tell us to be nice and civil? I responded with a curt, “No, thank you, asshole.” We picked up our stuff and moved 20 or 30 feet away, for sanity’s sake.

So, yeah, sometimes it just takes one ass to ruin a crowd experience. So far, we’d had to deal with The Decemberists and Douchy McDouche. Plus, it’s hot. Very hot. Not off to a good start.

Thankfully, the people we had moved near were nice and mildly conversational. I discussed the score of the Boston/Cleveland Game Seven, which we were both checking up on with our iPhones (meeting another iNerd in a crowd is always fun). Sara got into a discussion with a guy who had been volunteering for Obama in North Carolina and here in Portland who was headed to South Dakota to help the campaign there.

Soon enough, a community organizer for Obama took the stage to rile us up with some cheers. WHEN I SAY “PORTLAND,” YOU SAY “OREGON!” and WHEN I SAY “DEMOCRATIC,” YOU SAY “NOMINEE!” and, you guessed it, WHEN I SAY “BARACK,” YOU SAY “OBAMA!” Apparently, being a community organizer sucks all of the creativity out of you that is vital to coming up with a diverse array of chants. But they got the job done. 75,000 people were screaming “OBAMA!” back at her by the time she was done.

Up next was current congressman, Earl Blumenauer. I’m sure he had some very interesting things to say, but by now, the buzz was really starting to build that Obama was right around the corner. I don’t remember a word of his speech, except that he seemed very earnest and excited himself, as Blumenauer is known to be. The crowd had collectively tensed in anticipation. Conversations were cutting off left and right as people focused in on the dias.

About 15 minutes after the former gov had left the stage, a booming voice cut through the stifling, supercharged air. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN…the rest was drowned out by cheers and the flapping of campaign signs. Barack took the stage with Michelle and his daughters, waving to the crowd and taking in the scene. After a quick round of hugs and kisses from his family, he picked up a mic and declared, “Wow…wow…wow.”

Over the next half hour, he rolled through what was generally his stump speech, full of crescendos and declarations meant to inspire and inflame an already rabid crowd of supporters. Even though it was rhetoric that we all knew he had said a thousand times before in a thousand other towns over the last 15 months, we were still enthralled.

In all, it was a great experience. We can say that we were a part of one of the largest crowds to see a candidate speak ever assembled and certainly the largest of this campaign. He is an inspiring speaker and, despite my deep-rooted cynicism and pragmatism, I ended up feeling very moved by his speech and by the reaction from the people around me.

In fact, right in front of us, a proud mother was holding her baby boy. Every time Obama mentioned the future that and our children this, she turned to her baby, her eyes welling up and a gigantic smile on her face. She kept trying to get her son to look forward at Barack as he spoke. Every now and then, she passed him off to her husband, so he could lift their child above the crowd and see the man who was promising to give him a better education and a chance to make a bigger difference in not just this country, but in the world. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, my cynic would have said it was too sappy a scene to be real. But I did see it. I was a part of it, and my own eyes got a little misty looking at that baby boy, who, as Obama joked, had probably been born and started walking and talking since he began this campaign.

Apparently, Bill and Chelsea were in town, too. They stopped by an upscale breakfast spot downtown to kiss some babies and mingle with upper-middle class waffle and mimosa enthusiasts. It had to be a bit disheartening for them, since Mother’s, the restaurant they stopped at, is just a few short blocks from the Waterfront. There’s no way that they didn’t see the thousands of people waiting to see Barack speak or that they didn’t hear that 75,000 people turned out. I admire them and Hillary if for nothing other than their determination, but it has to be painfully obvious who has the overwhelming ability to motivate people this time around.