The iBook fiasco.

I woke up at 5:00a, unintentionally an hour early. I tried to go back to sleep, since the doors weren't supposed to open at RIR (Richmond International Raceway -- where the iBook sale was taking place) until 7:00a, and all reports had implied that no lining up prior to that was going to be allowed. I couldn't go back to sleep, so I turned on the TV at about 5:30a, where I learn that hundreds of people are already lined up at RIR, some as early as 1:30a (in direct violation of the explicit "no camping out beforehand" rule Henrico had set). Traffic is slow and a bit crowded once I get within about 2 miles of the track. I get to the raceway a little before 6:00. The line is about a quarter-mile long. (I figured this out in retrospect using Yahoo! Maps -- the line went from the star along Laburnum between to Florida and Walnut.) The assumption had been that people would drive to RIR and park in their massive parking lot starting at 7:00a, but what those in line had done instead was park on the side streets in the neighborhoods surrounding RIR (many partially on people's lawns, as the streets surrounding RIR are very narrow and not at all made for street parking). I, shockingly, quickly find a parking spot about three blocks from the end of the line at a local park.

I get in line about 6:05a -- not the safest line, either, since on one side of it is a four-line road and on the other side is a ditch. "They weren't supposed to let anyone line up until seven," one woman almost cries to anyone who would listen. "I can't believe the police are letting this happen." Another couple complains that they were going to be there at 4:00, but they thought the no camping rule would prohibit that. Everyone is unhappy, especially because speculation among us is that we're at least 1000 people back in line. The line continues to form -- by 6:20, it's made it to Carolina and is starting to snake up a different side of RIR. Laburnum is bumper-to-bumper traffic as far as the eye can see heading to the raceway by the time I get in line, but by 6:30 it's virtually stopped moving altogether -- a semi on the road (probably not looking for an iBook, but I use it because it was easy to spot) makes it about 500 feet in 20 minutes. A car overheats right next to us, and a few of the guys in line help push it onto the grass median. About 6:50, a guy walks down the line and says, "Hey, forget it, someone counted 1300 people in line up to [a spot a couple hundred feet in front of us], so your chances aren't very good." No one leaves the line.

At 7:00, when the gates open...well, since I wasn't anywhere near the front, I'll give you the report from the Richmond CBS affiliate:

"Several people were injured when crowds stampeded into Richmond International Raceway at 7 a.m. Tuesday, anxious to purchase used $50 iBooks from Henrico County Schools. Although officials said camping was not allowed, some Henrico residents got to the gates just after midnight Monday. The line those people formed fell to chaos when the gates opened and people began sprinting to form lines for purchasing the iBooks."

When our part of the line -- which stayed nice and orderly, thank you -- made it inside the gates about 7:15a, we saw maybe 100 people next to one door, and way more than that next to another door, with a feeder line going into the second group. Rumor had it -- and I haven't been able to substantiate this one way or another -- that the first group had been lining up somewhere else on the complex very early in the morning, and that when the "official" line was designated later on that morning, they were forced to go to the back of the "official" line, even though they had been there before many of the people in front of them. Anyway, it's clear to me that there's more than 1000 people in front of me, so I leave my place in line and start walking up the line to count. I stopped at 1200, which was about the end of the actual line and beginning of the bigger gob of people (which using my sampling and estimating skills, was probably 400-500). I figured there was no way that 600 people in front of me had missed the Henrico-residents only notice, so I decide to leave. There's probably 400 people behind my place in line that made it into the gates of RIR, and as I walk back, I see about another 1000 outside the raceway (estimated from the fact that the line went almost all the way back to where I'd started 90 minutes earlier). The people at the end ask me if I think they have a chance. I tell them there's 1000 iBooks and 2000 people already in the gates. They walk back to their cars. Laburnum is still incredibly crowded. Aside from the 3000-person line, there's probably another 3000 people ready to buy iBooks who either left the line or never had a chance to get out of their cars. And I'm nervous that half of those 2000 people who made it into RIR are going riot after they realize that the police let in twice as many people into the speedway as they have iBooks for. Fiasco, I think, is an appropriate noun.