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GREENSBORO — Just before 9 a.m., members of the president’s press pool were ready to move, with the exception of two local reporters who needed to be schooled on etiquette.

“Stay with the group,” a Secret Service agent told us. When the group moves, you move, he said.

Got it.

Before we boarded the press van, the Republican Party sent its first email of the day criticizing President Barack Obama’s three-day bus trip through North Carolina and Virginia. As a gimmick, they’ve offered to tow his bus back to Washington, part of a Tow-bama gag.

Given the big black bus idling in the parking lot of the Proximity Hotel, various police vehicles, a second bus for campaign functionaries and local officials, and three press vans, it didn’t look like the president was going to take them up on the offer.

Cute jokes don’t trump motorcades.

Even those who didn’t vote for the president came out to see him, to hear what he had to say or gawk. It’s not every day the leader of the Western world rolls through town.

Obama set off Tuesday for Jamestown and Reidsville and a few small towns in Virginia. Congress isn’t listening to the people, Obama told an audience in Emporia, Va. They’re not working to pass his jobs bill, he said.

“So, I figured if I brought the press here, they could hear you,” he said to cheers.

By 9:30 a.m. the motorcade barreled down Bryan Boulevard. The third of three press vans contained print reporters from the Wall Street Journal and McClatchy Newspapers, as well as an NPR radio reporter.

And yours truly.

“Get ready to run,” I was warned. The first event of the day was an opportunity to see Barack Obama sit down with teachers and teachers-in-training at GTCC’s Jamestown campus.

Running really wasn’t necessary. After our sprint up the hill, we waited outside a preschool classroom door for a couple minutes.

“We are here to talk both to teachers and soon-to-be teachers … and talk about the importance of education to the economy,” Obama said.

Part of his jobs bill provides funding for school districts to hire teachers. After that introduction, we were ushered out.

While there, Obama talked to ABC’s Jake Tapper while he was in town for an interview broadcast later in the day.

His pitch for his jobs bill would hit a national audience.

When that interview was over, the motorcade was off again. Next stop, Ragsdale YMCA and a full gymnasium.

“Fired up,” rang out a voice at 11:16 a.m. “Ready to go” responded some in the crowd, recognizing the 2008 campaign call and response. The chant got stronger after repetition.

The president and his aides have insisted this is an official trip, but there’s no escaping the fact North Carolina is a potential swing state for the 2012 election.

As much as he was selling the individual items of his jobs bill — funding for public employees like teachers, money for infrastructure, a tax cut for middle-income Americans, a tax hike on those making more than $1 million — Obama was selling the idea that he wanted to do something while congressional Republicans put forward a plan that he said would cost jobs, not create them.

To drive home that point, Linda Phillips, one of the teachers from the preschool classroom, introduced the president at the Y. She’s a ninth-grade reading teacher at Ragsdale High School, in danger of losing her job because of an end in grant funding.

“We need to keep good teachers in our classrooms,” she said, prompting applause.

When the president came on, he noted that Jamestown and other stops along the way weren’t exactly the Blue State parts of North Carolina where he’d be expected to take home a lot of votes.

“I’m not the Democratic president, I’m not the Republican president, I’m the president,” Obama said, again drawing cheers.

Audience members were mostly GTCC students, faculty and staff.

“I worry about my kids like all fathers do,” said Wayne Simpson, 63, a Vietnam veteran who retired from the Army in 2003. He knows friends who have been forced back into the job market, only to find no work.

His kids, Simpson said, “aren’t afraid to work. They aren’t afraid to go back to school, to get new skills. But there have to be jobs out there for them. And that’s what these people in Congress need to do — help the president do something to create some jobs.”

Obama would deliver much the same message throughout the day.

By 12:34 p.m. we were barreling up U.S. 29, and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney hopped in the press van for an on-the-move informal news conference with print reporters.

“He has a real affinity for North Carolina,” Carney said of the president when asked why he was here.

“He just finds it to be a real welcoming state.”

On a question about a economic stimulus bill filed by U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat, Carney said he didn’t know about it and turned the focus back to the president’s jobs bill.

Another reporter asked about the Occupy Greensboro protesters’ effort to air their grievances on the economy with the president.

“There was no communication with any of the traveling White House staff that I’m aware of,” Carney said.

More questions came on a prisoner swap in the Middle East and a White House truck that was stolen. Those quotes would go to reporters writing stories elsewhere. Soon the focus was back on small town North Carolina. By 12:49 p.m., the motorcade rolled into Reidsville and we were getting ready to run again.

“The food here must be pretty good,” Obama said as he made his way into Reid’s House restaurant in downtown Reidsville.

He shook hands with people sitting at the lunch counter and in booths.

He ordered a cheeseburger, fries and a sweet tea to go.

At one point, he greeted a couple who had been married for 59 years.

“Michelle and I have been married 19 years,” he said. “We’ve got 40 more to go to catch up.”

On his way out, the president shook hands along a rope line. Carl Schmuhl, 36, told the president she works at the local Miller brewery.

“You got some samples?” the president asked.

By the time the motorcade left, 50 more people could say they shook the president’s hand, told him their troubles, shared a joke, saw him take a burger and fries on that big black bus.

Then, we were running again, back to the press van and off to Virginia.

Shortly after 3:30 p.m., the president was wrapping up a tour of Bluestone High School in Skipwith, Va. He had visited the robotics lab, complete with a demonstration of a one-time competition robot.

He shook hands with Justin Kirkland, a third-year teacher and former student who the president said had come “full circle” to inspire other students.

Outside, another rope line. He shook hands with other students at the school, those not on the robotics team. It was “Celebrity Day,” and many were glitzed up with makeup and flamboyant outfits.

The president asked for questions.

“Do you know Justin Bieber?” Kelsey Thornton blurted out. The 14-year-old ninth-grader, who wore a pink  tie-dye shirt, smiled broadly at the answer.

“I do know Justin Bieber,” the president said. “He’s a very nice young gentleman.” Although, Obama counseled, he already has a girlfriend.

Photographers snapped a group picture with those students, and we were rolling again.

Farther up the road, the motorcade stopped on the side of U.S. 58, and Obama shook hands with people gathered by the highway.

“Lord have mercy, you made my day,” said Patricia Feggins-Clary, the owner of Patricia’s Child Care Center.

While one of her young charges cried at the president’s approach, Feggins-Clary hugged the president.

Farther down the line, Shabaka Craytron, 33, a supervisor at Home Depot, was amazed.

“He shook my hand; you see that, right?” he told his friends, laughing. “Wow!”

Another stop, 50 more people could then say they met the president.

The press was running again, back to the van and off to Emporia. On the way, we passed tobacco and cotton fields, country stores, a Piggly Wiggly and an RV dealer.

Groups of people gathered every so often. At one Virginia high school, the football team turned out to watch the motorcade go by, along with other students who held Virginia state flags and U.S. flags as Obama passed.

One bowling alley owner posted on the marquee: “Presidents bowl free.”

Not all those the president passed were friendly. One lady stood in her yard to display a large Confederate battle flag.

At another point, a large sign riffed on the Obama campaign logo with the stylized O, reading “Not Again.”

By 5:30 p.m., we rolled into Emporia. Obama would give largely the same speech he’d already given in North Carolina twice this week and would most likely give again today  in Virginia.

“No we can’t is not a good motto,” Obama told the audience, once again riffing on a 2008 campaign slogan in a key battleground.

“Now is the time to say, 'Yes we can.’ ”

After all, as the president’s day made clear, 2012 is just around the corner.

Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark.binker@news-record.com