The Obamas invited a couple thousand special guests to their backyard a week ago. By “special” I mean you had to be any old vagrant wandering around 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on a Sunday afternoon. As long as you didn’t have a fear of park rangers or wide-brimmed hats, you could get free tickets from them. I suppose they did have some standards, because I didn’t see the man in Lafayette parked dressed as an aborigini stuffing a ticket into his loincloth.

I believe the Obamas were out of town, which is the only reason I was able to wander this close to the Oval Office.

Or that I was able to glimpse the presidential basketball court, or rather half court.

But truly the highlight of the visit was this:

The Presidential swingset! It really is within view of The Oval Office, just like they said on TV. I bet I could have gotten a good 3 or 4 feet towards the swings before that nice man in black tackled me to the ground and hauled me off for a full cavity search.

It is odd visiting a place that I have seen on TV. Everything seemed so familiar – the portico, the rose garden, the colonnade – yet I’d never actually been here before. It was the same feeling I got when visiting Times Square for the first time, or when I walked past the David Letterman theatre. There it was! It was a real place! Not just a TV set! Ironically though, even as I stared at the white facade of The White House, I found myself thinking, “This is just like The West Wing!”

You can view more photos from my trip in my Flickr set.