We will...We will...Barack you.

1140 miles in 48 hours. I'd like to say though that it took us 4 days to get to Iowa...here is our weekend. Laurie has some of the best photos so hopefully I get those soon...but here are my photos!

Friday 2pm

The weather is kind of crappy and snowy in Denver, but nothing major. We head out 76 to Nebrasky. Cruising down the road and see some other folks from the Colorado caravan and give a little head nod. Pass Sterling, the mecca that it is. Then...the road literally turns into a sheet of ice. Like your car just kind of sits there and wobbles back and forth (i felt like i was on a boat). I get us slowed down to about 30-40 mph and its still really scary. Its about this point I realize we are seeing a lot of signs telling us not to go but I think that's just Hillary Clinton trying to bring us down (complete with a black cat crossing our path as we picked up Laurie). Sirens and emergency vehicles were everywhere and there was more than 1 car that skidded of the side of the road. I kept telling myself "Once we get to I-80 its going to be ok" and once we made it to I-80 it was definitely NOT ok.

Beautiful I-80

Turns out there was a big semi accident that closed the Interstate for 3 hours...we got there with about 2 hours left in the wait. At this point though I was happy to have a Prius because we didn't really need to worry about running out of gas. 2 hours and a bag of Twizzlers later traffic started moving again and let's just say it wasn't good. We never really made it over 45 mph and the roads were icy but not as bad as on 76. We crossed over into the Central time zone so we lost an hour and at around 9:45pm rolled into North Platte, Nebraska (birthplace of my mommacita). I saw a Taco Johns and realized this was a sign that our luck was changing. With the time change though we only had 15 minutes to eat...thank goodness we didn't get there after they had closed because I would have LOST it.

Laurie at Taco Johns

I'm a control freak (really?) and wouldn't let anyone else drive in these conditions so my wrist literally hurt from clamping down on the wheel so hard for so long. We called ahead to some folks who were near Lincoln and they said it was still snowing but they were ahead of the accident so they were making pretty good time. Needless to say we had people at home checking computers and it didn't really ever say anywhere that it was snowing in Nebraska...must be nice to never have to be right as a weather person. At this rate we would make it to Iowa at 3am. Anyway, the other Obama folks told us we didn't have to be in the office until 11 the next day so we decided to camp out in North Platte for the night and get on the road early where it would at least be daylight (or so we thought).

Before finding a hotel we found a liquor store and to celebrate being in North Platte drank Shmirnoff Ice and cheap wine (well, Mike had whiskey). We trekked to a gas station to get a deck of cards and realized blackjack is NO fun without rolls of pennies so we settled on BS and War. We got a room at the glorious Royal Colonial Inn where they have REAL keys to open the doors (REAL KEYS!). Our key worked like crap though, so every time we had to leave the room we had to have the front desk guy come let us in...how awesome. We turned in and survived a night of endless sink drips and other random noises...and resumed the trip at 6:30 the next morning. Time in car on Friday: 7 hours. Miles driven: 260+

Saturday

Apparently the sun doesn't rise in central Nebraska until about 10 am so the roads were still crappy, you still couldn't see anything and we were STILL in Nebraska. We though giving us 4.5 hours to get 200+ miles was plenty of time. WRONG. It was STILL snowing and apparently in Lincoln (home of the University of Nebraska so it figures it's f'd up) they refuse to plow the Interstate...but we made it through and hit Omaha and about 5 miles into Iowa got to Council Bluffs...our home for the next 18 hours.

Getting ready to canvass in Iowa (Laurie, Mike, Me)

We were surprisingly only about 15 minutes late when we rolled through the Bluffs and into the Obama headquarters (stopping first to flip off the Hillary offices). Council Bluffs had to have gotten about a foot of snow the night before and let's just say they weren't too quick to the shovel or plow either. We quickly got our canvass assignment and hit the road. Well, we hit the Mall of the Bluffs first for food (hadn't stopped for breakfast) and boots for Laurie. We hit up our first neighborhood and it went a little something like this:

Door 1: Not Home

Door 2: Not Home

Door 3: Not Home

Door 4: Not Home

Door 5: Door opens and we all literally get so excited with huge smiles...this is it! Our first conversation! And SLAM. Lady slams the door in our face.

Matchy, Matchy, Matchy

From here on things went pretty well with the exception that we had to literally climb snowy mountains to get to some houses. Met some awesome folks and hopefully our work will help Obama win our precincts in the Iowa caucus. The two biggest supporters we met were republicans...which was awesome. We were basically trying to find out who was going to caucus, who they were supporting and if it wasn't Obama who they were supporting so the staff could do appropriate follow-up. Its weird to me that Iowa is so important because truthfully they don't represent the rest of the country in terms of a lot of demographic stuff...but I applaud those who take an active role and say things like "Yeah, I'm going to a house party where so and so will be next week." There were some people who still didn't know what was going on and I can't believe in Iowa you have never heard of Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton...

At about 5pm after walking 2 precincts we headed back to headquarters to stuff some envelopes and then checked into the awesome Western Inn which was a pretty darn nice hotel for $49/night. Our feet were FROZEN so it was nice to change socks and shoes. We then went out with some of the Colorado folks and Iowa folks and had a good night of fun...I found out they are starting to do some outreach up in Wyoming and volunteered to help (and volunteer some of my friends up there to get involved ;-).

Sunday

I've never ever put a bumper sticker on my car. Ever. And I decided if I freaking drove to Iowa for Obama that putting a bumper sticker on the Prius would be an ok decision. So we had this nice ceremony but the sticker wouldn't stick because it was too cold. And boy was it cold.

We made it home in 7.25 hours (well 8 if you include our 45 minutes at RUNZA...which is awesome because I think RUNZA is hilarious and stems from way back in my college football road trip days). That is the way its supposed to be people. Mike had to listen to songs on my ipod that included things like Celine Dion, O Town and Nick Lachey, although we also rocked out to Journey, Def Leppard and the best was when "We will rock you" came on and I changed the words to "We will Barack you."

Yes, friends, this sign reads "Merry Christmas Eat Beef" and it looks beefutiful at night.

It was fun to be "part of the process" as my Dad says. And while we didn't get the Iowa Obama shirt we were hoping for (I'm going to make us some), it was totally worth it. It'll be a good day on January 3 when Obama wins the caucus and we can say we had an active part (and those snowy footprints prove it) in making that happen. Hopefully when Obama comes to Colorado I'll have some leeway to get to meet him (I drove in the snow, uphill, both ways for 4 days to Iowa...show me some love). I had good travel buddies as well. On Friday I kept talking about drafting a detailed letter to Obama about our trials and tribulations with the hope of getting on his Christmas Card list, but in the end I think it would read like this:

Dear Barack Obama,

We had a great time in Iowa. I was happy to help and am anxiously awaiting your presidency so I don't have to wait any longer for the world to change.

Me