Johnny Five and the bomb squad

After a long day of meetings and protest-following, a police officer informed us that the road to our car was closed. A half a block away, we found a small group of re-routed pedestrians staring across the street -- enchanted by an odd little robot that was inspecting a "suspicious package."  The wheeled machine, which bore some resemblance to Johnny Five (the star of Short Circuit), danced around the brown cardboard box that had been abandoned in the parking lot next to Union Station, eyeballing it, approaching it hesitantly, then backing away.  We were the only media outlet on the scene, so we captured the action on video.

As we strolled by twenty minutes later, the Boulder County Bomb Squad was suiting up an officer in gear that looked like something out of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.  Things were moving pretty slowly, so we didn't stick around long enough to see the resolution.

This morning, however, we passed by the scene on our way to the office and found a blown up cardboard box and thousands of sheets of paper scattered throughout the parking lot.  Apparently, the bomb squad blew up the box.  We chatted with an attendant who was cleaning up the mess before swarms of convention-goers stormed downtown yet again. The contents of the "suspicious package": Barack Obama fliers.