A Dispatch from the Edge

My mom recently told me that a friend of hers read Anderson Cooper’s book, Dispatches from the Edge* and thought it was something I would enjoy reading. When my mom told me this, I was in Nowheresville, Pennsylvania and it inspired my own Dispatch from the Edge:

Now that I’m unemployed I’ve been searching for things to do to fill my time. It’s hard going from working 12 or 13 hour days to having nothing to do. It’s like driving 90 miles an hour and slamming on the brakes. But luckily my aunt and uncle were there to help me with the adjustment. My uncle just got a promotion and his job moved him and his family to Pennsylvania from Texas. I’ve never had East Coast family out here with me so I was more than happy to take them up on their offer to go stay with them for a week.

I rode the Amtrak train up to Philadelphia and then out to Lancaster where my aunt and uncle met me at the station. Now before I go any further, let me clear something up. You are going to read Lancaster and want to pronounce it Lan.cas.ter, but you would be mistaken. The correct pronunciation is Langk.i.str. I didn’t want you to get laughed at by the locals because they can be pretty ruthless. Trust me.

Anyway, we left the station and drove out to my aunt and uncle’s new house. They live in a suburb of a very small town, so we were definitely out there. It had snowed a couple of days before so it was nice to be out of the big city and to see rolling hills and open fields covered in snow.

My uncle had work all day and my cousin had school all day so my aunt and I would just stay home and unpack boxes and flatten paper. The moving company they used packed every box with all of this paper and so we had to flatten it, pile it up and bundle it for the recycle bin. Just to give you an idea, this picture shows what we were up against.

This was our finished product:

This aunt and uncle lived in Logan, Utah while I was going to college so it was a lot of fun to catch up with them and spend time with them again.

Since we were so close to Amish country, we went on an adventure with the goal of seeing a horse and buggy. I thought the first step would be to drive further out into the country, but I was thrown off guard when I found out the easiest way to see a horse and buggy is to drive to the local Wal-Mart. Apparently the Amish are nuts about Wal-Mart. Who knew? Wal-Mart even has special horse and buggy parking stalls set up in their parking lot to accommodate any Amish people looking for one-stop shopping.

Other highlights of the trip included:

- Riding the Amtrak like Joe Biden through Wilmington, Delaware
- Finally getting the chance to sleep in
- Rocking out to the hits of the 60s and 70s all day while unpacking boxes
- Going to church and getting a personal invitation to the upcoming unemployment fair. Twice.
- A peaceful drive through Bird-in-Hand and Intercourse, Pennsylvania (insert obligatory joke here)
- My aunt backing up over a stranger’s mailbox

It was a great trip and it made me really excited to finally have some East Coast family. Any West Coast family looking to join the party knows where to find us.

*UPDATE: I read Anderson Cooper's book and loved it! I recommend it to everyone.

So Close to History, and Yet So Far...

A friend of mine was amazing and scored a ticket to Inauguration for me (thanks Molly!), so for the past week I’ve been mentally preparing myself for the long lines, the crowds of people and the hours upon hours of standing in one place. In my mind, I compare it to New Year’s Eve in Times Square: you know you are going to be bored, cold, miserable and crammed in with a ton of other people, but you have to do it so you can tell your kids one day that you were there.

The morning started out well enough. We squished onto the Metro easily and rode into the city. We followed the map to the street where our color-coded gate was and as we turned the corner, we started to realize how the morning was really going to be.

Four blocks straight down the street, we could see a huge banner marking the entrance we were supposed to take, but between us and that sign were thousands of people packed in like sardines between the buildings running down either side of the street. We joined the crowd and started making friends with those around us as we inched our way down the street (that’s not an exaggeration either; it took us an hour and a half to go one block). Of course, I quickly became the tall look out guy that everyone would ask for an update from. It was okay, because I had been prepared for the moment by years of school dances from junior high to high school. I would always get my hopes up when the cute girl made eye contact with me and walked my way, but inevitably it was always, "Hey you tall kid, can you see my friend somewhere over there?"

For the most part, the wait was pretty boring, but there were some highlights:

- Mariah Carey and her husband being whisked past us surrounded by a security detail.

- No less than four ambulances (ambuli?) and two police cars working their way through the crowd, forcing us even closer to each other.

- Standing right next to the cannons as they gave their 21 gun salute to the new president (the woman next to me screamed and started to run away thinking we were under attack).

- Getting all the way to the end of the street, running into a fence and realizing the actual entrance was two blocks to the East (can we get some better signage next time, please?).

Just as I checked the time on my phone right at noon, thinking of how my employment with the Federal Government was officially at an end, I looked up to see the gates closing, literally in my face. From where I was standing, I could reach up and touch the closed gate. If there was a more appropriate metaphor for the moment, I don’t know what it was.

Once the gates were closed, the crowd erupted in chants of “let us in” and “open the gates,” but soon everyone realized that it really was over and their chances of getting in were gone. People quieted down, some crying and some describing the event organizers with words I won’t use here. As the crowd slowly dispersed, one of the many vendors we had encountered throughout the morning came wandering through.

“Get your ‘I was there’ buttons! Get your ‘I was there’ buttons!”

Waiter! Can I get a little more salt for this wound? Or at least a two-by-four I can swing at this guy?


P.S. - Just to offer a little bit of perspective: Yesterday we went into the city and scoped out our spot. This is where I should have been standing for the event:

I would show you a picture of where I actually was for the event, but it was too crowded for me to reach my camera in my pocket and it probably would have taken too long to blur out all of the middle fingers being waved in the air.

Oh well, Happy Inauguration Day!