Burnin' Gas

I've been in a car for twelve hours today.

Seriously. The Christ.

Today was a day of "doorknocking"... er, "drop and dash." Instead of doorknocking as it were, we are putting a bag full of "lit" (campaign materials) on member's doors.

So Chaz and I hit the road at about 10am, aiming to go the furthest out and work our way back in. The drive was actually nice, we saw the "Wine Country" part of Washington, and like Napa, it was gorgeous. Set in the bare mountains, the vineyards seemed to pop out of nowhere, lines of tall trees scattering the landscape. It was kind of just nestled there. And it was a nice change of scenery.

After about two and a half hours, we reached our first door. Well, we had to find it first. And that included passing a Llama farm. That's right, a Llama farm. At first glance, I thought it was a horse, but after seeing the strange hair on them, I realized I was looking at a damn llama.

By our maps, we should have been finished with our first thirty houses in two and a half hours. Four and a half hours later, we finished and finally were able to get some food at around 4 in the afternoon. The maps and directions were not terribly accurate - they didn't take into account things like land masses. So we fought our way to about ten of the thirty houses on the list, getting terribly lost, and getting incredibly annoyed.

But we prevailed and only missed about two houses. Then it was some food and back to the next list which was twenty miles away. That list was a little bit easier, with the exception of this particular direction we found a few times on the second list: "Turn right onto (insert name) Street. Go .2 miles and turn right on local road."

Yeah, you try finding a local road in the dark. I'll bet it's really hard. Because it is.

But the highlight of the trip was meeting this member named Bertha. She was so excited to see us and asked why no one told her about the door to door because she would have helped and would have gotten a whole lot of volunteers. Why wasn't she on our call list for volunteers yesterday?

But she was exactly what we needed today to make us feel good. We loaded her up with signs, pins, shirts, bumper stickers, and she invited us in for a chat. She was an incredibly active member and plans to show a screening of "Farenheit 9/11" in her home for members and friends of hers who haven't made up their minds or are unregistered. It totally made our nights.

Oh, and two things that were of interest on the trip? A whole building that was the home of the "Mosquito Prevention Center" - are you kidding me? That's such a problem that they have an entire agency inhabiting one whole building?

The other interesting/scary thing I saw was definitely the Gospel School that looked like it was on lock down with these huge and imposing gates. Definitely was in God's country today. Might explain all the Bush signs...

But on the way home, I definitely was pulled over by a cop for going over 75 in a 70. But he was really nice about it (probably because I was in a rented car, or he saw the Kerry signs, or he saw the union materials) and since we were so close, just asked me to watch it. I've got some sort of guardian angel or something like that.

So that was my day. What will happen tomorrow? More of the same, but this time in Yakima itself, so it should be a little easier than where we were. The places we went to today were a strange mix of things, some very rural and run-down places and some really huge and beautiful homes in a nice slice of suburbia. I think that if I had to live anywhere in this part of Yakima, I would choose some of the neighborhoods we visited in the valley today. Just gorgeous places. And the sunset over the valley was pretty impressive; if I could have stopped to get a good picture, I would have. I think the picture above is a nice artistic slice of what we saw today.

Good news, though. We get to leave here on Sunday and head back to Seattle. So after yet another day of the drop and dash, I get to go back to the other hotel, take in some of Seattle on Sunday and then two days before the Primary. So I'm really excited about that, I finally get a day to hang out in Seattle!

'Till tomorrow...