Almost an hour late, Clinton kicked off her evening rally inside the arena of the Jackson County Fairgrounds here in southern Oregon by apologizing. She’d been in South Dakota and West Virginia earlier in the day, she said, and only then had headed west.

“I apologize that we were kind of flying against the wind,” she said. “But, you know, that’s the story of my life: fly against the wind, you’ll get there eventually.”

The crowd, filled with many hundreds of supporters (if maybe not the claimed one thousand), ate it up. They all seemed to want Clinton to stay in the race no matter what.

For the most part, though, her appearance was standard: A line about Clinton being more interested in solutions than speeches; details about her gas tax holiday proposal and her health care plan and her Iraq ideas; a (hopeless) challenge to Obama to debate her any time time and anywhere, perhaps even in Portland tomorrow morning when they’ll both be in the city.

The only new bit, to my ears, was Clinton’s closing, in which she explained her reasons for continuing on:

You know, people say to me all the time, ‘Boy, you’re a fighter.’ Well, yes, because you know there’s a lot in life that is worth fighting for and this country is worth fighting for.

People say to me all the time, ‘Well, are you going to keep going?’ Well, yes, of course I’m going to keep going.

[Huge applause.]

I’m gonna keep going because you keep going.

I look at that sign, ‘Single mothers for Hillary,’ I don’t know how single mothers do it. Every day, they keep going. When I meet somebody who’s lost their job, and they don’t know why, it’s just been pulled out from under them, they keep going. When I meet somebody who doesn’t have health insurance, and doesn’t know how they’re going to pay for their son’s operation, they keep going.

When people get up every day and face the odds that so many face in life, and they keep going—of course. That’s what you do if you believe that the future can be better than the present. I believe that with all my heart.

More Friday morning, including a lucky reunion with an old friend that ended in me being whisked inside Clinton’s Secret Service bubble to watch her sign autographs and field questions along the rope line.