flight

a week later

a week later, and i'm still kind of hoping that it was a bad dream that i have not woken up from. there was a point where i was certain, a certainty perhaps that i did took for granted until I began seeing lots of red.

the worst moment of the election though - 'cause honestly I was too tired to process much worry over the outcome - was when i happened to take the call for a different adrian; an adrian that was supposed to pick some volunteers up from god knows where in pennsylvania. i wasn't able to do much, no one was forthcoming with any numbers that they felt were any help, and I had to let him go... half of me wants to call and see what happened, half of me keeps thinking about what else i might have been able to do (not much i don't think given how well my brain was working then)

election day for the most part passed in a dull haze where the only challenge was staying awake. by the end of it i wish i had obsconded for a while and slept a good sleep, but alas.

tb and i were the first there and the last to leave, we worked late cleaning up and trying to take down some of the work we'd done, helped move some equipment to the hotel, went to the hotel party in a daze watching the place packed with chatting democrats looking around for people we knew, stopping to watch the not quite promising results appear on tv screens. PA goes blue and everyone is ecstatic. we leave the party just as california was called for kerry to wild cheers. we pick up our stuff from the office and are the only ones there. seems a wierd and anticlimatic leavetaking.

we head back to tb's house and fall asleep watching returns come in. i sleep blissfully.

the next day we know it is lost but have a pleasant day wandering around a bit, having lunch, we bump into the deputy political director who notes that despite the loss he feels reinvigorated, he was taken by surprise by the life in politics in Philadelphia, compared to the jaded eyes of New Yorkers.

I bump into another fellow volunteer trying to buy my train ticket, she was one of the get out the vote phone bankers and remembered me, and helped my find my way from the uncooperative ticket machine to an actual person. a nice little peice of serendipity to end my stay.

By the time I'm in Chicago though -- a long three hour layouver -- i realize a cold is coming over me. Unavoidable, I thought. I knew the moment I walked in the Democratic HQ I knew it was my destiny. Lots of viruses running around there.