Biden country

"Lewis Collat walks regularly past the home of Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., in Greenville, De., but Saturday morning spotted media, so he grabbed his camera. Then he saw a helicopter and returned home to get his binoculars, only to miss the slight appearance of Biden as he left his home for the Democratic Convention. Presidential hopeful Barack Obama selected Biden as his running mate early Saturday morning."

Delaware was on my plate for Saturday. That is only, and only if presidential hopeful Barack Obama selected Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., as his running mate.

All week the nation awaited his decision for a vice president, only to have it pushed back again and again.

As I snoozed Saturday morning, I rolled over to see the light flashing on my Blackberry. With an original start time of 2:30 p.m., I planned on skipping into the office around noon and wait for the call to head up north.

But with my phone on silent, I had missed the call. As it flashed red in my light sensitive morning eyes, I instantly woke up and saw that it was on. Biden was chosen.

I snagged a quick shower and breakfast. Then jetted to Interstate 95 to Wilmington.

After getting into Delaware, I met up with the reporter at local tavern Biden often frequented in his hometown of Greenville, De.

Our plan was to get a reaction story of those who might be or have been in contact with the vice presidential hopeful.

As we started to strategize our game plan in the parking lot, we both saw a helicopter in the not so far distance. We made jokes about following the chopper to Biden and said in jest, "there he goes." It seemed to be a police looking helicopter, so we went on our way of interviewing some locals.

Not 10 minutes later I overhear outside a coffee shop a couple speak aloud about how good he looked. "He" referring to Biden.

The couple had driven to Biden's neighborhood after seeing on television that he had yet to fly to Illinois for convention.

So we missed the dramatic departure by a couple minutes, but found some interesting people throughout the day.

My favorite was the (above) older gentlemen.

Since we had also missed Biden, we still opted to see if anyone besides sleeping television crews remained at his residence.

I say sleeping because one station's crew said they had been camped out for 30 hours without sleep and one of their crew members at that moment laid upright in a camping chair in the woods sleeping.

Anyways, Lewis Collat lingered out front of Biden's home hoping to still catch a glimpse of the action. To his dismay, it was all over. He was prepared though.

A regular walker on Biden's street in Greenville, De., Saturday morning he spotted media, so he grabbed his camera. Then he saw a helicopter and returned home to get his binoculars. But from all the pacing back and forth, he missed the exiting of the man himself.

He was endearing and had some good views for the reporter's story. The best part was he didn't want any pictures taken of him, but I got about 25 frames of him on the scene eagerly looking over the gate by shooting from the hip.

I hope he doesn't mind if he ever reads Sunday's paper and spots his mug. I couldn't resist. He was an entertaining man that had tried to cover all his bases with his optics that he missed everything.

Don't worry Collat, we missed Biden, too.