On the Road to Denver

Carol and I packed our little blue car last night. We’re headed for Denver. I spent most of the first 10 or so years of my life in Colorado. Denver was the big city and seemed far away even though it was less than two hours from Woody Creek where we lived over a red stone creek bottom, between sage brush and pine mountain sides. My sister and I walked an irrigation ditch to school and our family left for Idaho when it all got too big and crazy in the 70s.

Not only have I never been a delegate, I’ve never been to a National Convention before. My clearest images of political conventions come from brief TV glimpses featuring oceans of signs and placards. Hunter S. Thompson’s dispatches covering one particular Republican National Convention liven up several still photos of Idaho delegates, including fellow 2008 national delegate, TJ Thomson as a very young man in a silly hat with Senator Malepeai smiling behind him in a stadium seat under bright lights..

I actually watched parts of the 2004 Democratic Convention including Senator Obama’s very moving address, the one where, for the first time I heard a national political leader so successfully transcend traditional political division and still genuinely include gay people like Carol and I in his vision of America. We both cried watching and I’m sure we were not alone.

But really, I knew nothing of Political Conventions until I ran for delegate this year. I know that is true of more than a thousand of us nationwide. And today we are streaming by car and plane and bus across the West to converge on Denver.