Joe Biden Amtrak Education

Wapo: "Joe came in here with a motorcade," says Daniel Thorpe, 44, a cab driver at the Amtrak station. A motorcade? For ol' Joe? Everybody here is used to seeing Joe Biden by himself, on his way to and from the train -- used to being able to go up and shake Joe's hand, talk about the grandkids.

Anyway, on Monday there he was. Big photo-op and a huge crush of press and Secret Service all around. Joe won't be taking the 7:35 a.m. Acela to Washington for a good long while, so he wanted to drop in and say goodbye.

He talked to the shoeshine man. "Sorta like a farewell," says Robert L. Jones, 63. "He told me, he said, don't stop speaking when he comes into the station." By which Joe meant, I'm still Joe. Which is pretty much how Jill Biden put it to the cashier at the newsstand when she ducked in to buy a copy of Newsweek with the newly announced Democratic ticket on the cover: Barack Obama beaming, Joe with that squinty grin.

"I'm going to miss seeing your husband," the cashier, Joanne Johnson, 44, says she told her. "And she said, 'You know he's the same ol' Joe.' "