Tuesday
I did not leave Utah expecting to be a political activist. I didn't have any PETA pamphlets, I didn't have any anti-war stickers, and I didn't have dreadlocks. I had a well read Gore Vidal book, but people who read that sort of book don't really participate; they move to Italy and complain about pretty much anything.
I took a train, which arrived at about four in the morning, two hours late. had not slept in several days, and done other things that left me a little off guard, as those of you who were at my going-away party can attest. When I got to my seat, I found I was surrounded by people with the wild-eyed fanaticism I usually associate with religious zealots and my fellow Star Trek fans. These fanatics had a heroic looking cardboard cutout, so I assumed they were going to a Sci-Fi Convention.
After I had several hours of sleep and several cups of coffee, I realized that these were not in fact Star Trek fans I was talking with. They were not religious fanatics, either. Their cardboard hero was not Gandalf, it was Howard Dean. I looked down and saw that I was wearing a Howard Dean sweatshirt and my train ticket no longer listed my destination as Philadelphia. I was headed for Des Moines, Iowa, and I was a political activist
I remember our arrival in Iowa with perfect clarity, even if we were technically in Nebraska. It seems that in the flood of candidates, reporters, and activists that descend on Iowa every fourth January there were no rental cars left in the entire state. We were asked to get off the train in Omaha and drive forty rented minivans into Des Moines. A list of names and insurance numbers was taken, and the vans were decorated with DEAN FOR AMERICA bumper stickers. We set out in a caravan; thirty-eight vans all in a row, down I-80 to Des Moines. I rode in the passenger seat of the very first van. Unlike the stretch of I-80 that cuts through the mountains to Park City, I-80 in Iowa is flatland, so I was able to see the entire caravan behind us, a quarter-mile long convoy—van after van after van—rolling across the bumps people in Iowa call ‘hills.’ It was an extraordinary sight, and I marveled.
Later, the entire magnificent collection pulled off because my driver, Vicky, had to use the restroom. Iowa has the cleanest rest stops in the entire country, and I marveled at that, too.
I had not arranged for a hotel, and every room in the city was booked by the same flood of candidates, reporters and activists that had all the rental cars. Not to worry; the Dean campaign had arraigned a campground for three thousand volunteers who were going to storm the state and intimidate the Iowans into submission. The volunteers called themselves THE PERFECT STORM, and they were prepared to subject themselves to cheap tents, ratty sleeping bags, and bad food in their effort to change the course of our country.
I found a stormer named John who preferred to subject himself to $2999 a night at the Budget Inn and had an extra bed.
There were a lot of people buying a lot of other people things in the
posted by J'myle 10:57 AM
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