Riding the Obama Express

It’s time to bookmark The Obama Express on your Web browser – or for those slightly more Web savvy, subscribe to its RSS feed – because The Santa Barbara Independent‘s reporter Ethan Stewart is off on his cross-country adventure riding the train to the presidential inauguration.

Stewart, who is joined on his sojourn by photographer and Big Sur native Kodiak Greenwood, left the Santa Barbara train station yesterday, January 15, took the train to Los Angeles, and then embarked last night on the first 40-hour leg of the journey to Chicago. Once in the Windy City, Stewart and Greenwood will spend about 30 hours seeing the hometown of Barack Obama before jumping on another train for the final leg to Washington, D.C. That train is supposedly full of Obama supporters and promises to be one helluva ride.

Once in D.C., Stewart will be interviewing Santa Barbarans who will also be at the inauguration, watching the ceremony himself (Rep. Lois Capps helped him secure tickets), and then heading out to as many inaugural balls as we can work his way into. All of that reporting will be rolled together into an article for the printed January 22 edition of The Independent, which Stewart has promised to turn in by Wednesday morning, just before deadline.

In the meantime, keep track of his adventures by reading The Obama Express. It’s the only way to ride.