Protesters stay up late for megaload

SANDPOINT - Despite a small crowd of protesters facing down the megaload shipment around 1 a.m. Friday, the convoy passed through town without incident.

A U.S. flag attached to the primary vehicle fluttered in the wind and rain as the shipment convoy crawled past the Long Bridge and circled its way onto the Sand Creek Byway. The massive transport vehicle, more than 320 feet long, 20 feet wide and weighing more than one million pounds when assisted by other vehicles for uphill pushes, was attended by a long retinue of Bigge Crane vehicles and Idaho State Police troopers in its trek along Highway 200. The shipment stopped for the night at a geological site pullout between Trestle Creek and Hope just before the Bridge to Nowhere.

Rain and flashes of lightning didn't stop protesters, onlookers, law enforcement and delayed motorists from milling around the Sand Creek Byway near the Conoco station. When the megaload vehicle itself lumbered toward the byway, protesters gathered near the road began heckling the vehicle, telling the drivers that there were better jobs out there for them. They found a certain level of irony in the display of the American flag, saying the governmental allowance of the shipment was about money and not democracy or the public interest.

After the megaload shipment passed through onto the byway, several members of the protest followed the megaload, catching it just as it exited the byway north of town. They followed the convoy through Ponderay and Kootenai, eventually passing it and rallying once again for a second protest off Highway 200. One, protester Ziggy Siegfried, even produced a megaphone to encourage the megaload convoy on its way out of Idaho.

Indeed, the megaload will be leaving the state within the next couple days if all goes according to schedule. It will avoid the Bridge to Nowhere by rolling through Hope Friday night and Saturday morning. It's expected to cross over into Montana sometime over Sunday-Monday or Monday-Tuesday en route to Great Falls, where the transported portion of hydrocracker will be used to refine tar sands oil.