On the road

So T and I are driving from Seattle to Denver in a kind of reclaim-America-after-7.5-awful-long-years-in-the-urban-archipelago road trip. At least, that was the theory. But then we got hit with construction over the passes, fog, thunderstorms, and pouring rain. Plus, when we arrived in Missoula, all the hotels were booked with returning university students plus skeet-shooters. And, no, it wasn't these skeet shooters.

Still, it worked out. T is in a freak-folk phase, so we listened to Natalie Portman's skinny boyfriend and others. There was an entire song where the lyrics were "Swans, swans," if I'm not mistaken. When she tried to sleep, I put some of my Obama mix (which is apparently predominantly made up of the O'Jays).

We also listened to a good portion of "Team of Rivals," which is especially fascinating in the context of going to this current convention. Here's an excerpt, in case you want to check it out. (And, no, I didn't know this poster of him with the book existed until I did an image search for this blog post.)



During the quiet, late-night portion of the drive, I started to think about the (literally) 1,000 people who would be in my place. I thought about a training I attended in Greenwood before the primaries, and how everyone in the room raised their hands to the question of: "And who here is going to run to be a national delegate." The odds just seemed so slight.

I definitely spent a good part of the trip last night thinking about all the people who, by rights, should be here with me. It was impossible to go through the delegation process and not feel moved by all the stories of the people who should be here: people suffering from our stop-loss policy, the delegate who ran who is a member of the Winter Soldiers, the person running an AIDS hospice in the most remote region (as far as I can tell) of the state. All the people -- including folks I work with closely -- who have put their heart, soul, and hours and hours of time into working to get Obama elected. They should be on their way to Denver, too. In my own small way, I'm trying to carry them with me, too.

Along with a suitcase so overstuffed, T refers to it as "a black hole filled with dark matter."

On to Yellowstone.