Anchorage

Well, it was a magical week in Alaska, where I went with my two friends Kate and Heidi to run in the Anchorage “Midnight Sun Mayor’s Marathon” in support of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. On the flight to Alaska, I sat next to a big guy who lived with his wife in a heated hangar that he’d built himself on a community airfield about an hour North of Anchorage. Flying seems a pretty popular form of transportation in Alaska; there are airfields everywhere filled with prop-planes and there are always bush planes buzzing in the sky. This guy owned two planes – a Cessna and a Piper Cub – and did all the service on them himself. His eyes gleamed as he described flying into the wilderness and landing in a field or on a dirt road and going hunting or fishing (I guess he wasn’t hunting for moose). Every fall, he would shoot an elk – “It’s the best meat in the world” - and survive on it through most of the winter, making it into sausage and tenderloins and such. I began to get a sense of the self-sufficiency that living in much of Alaska requires and of the satisfaction that can come from it. His wife said that she hoped that he would use some of that self-sufficiency to build the house next to the hangar that he’d been promising for awhile.

Anyway, we landed at 10 pm and the sun was still reflecting off the bay and off the couple skyscrapers of Anchorage. My two friends Kate and Heidi, who work at Project Homecoming with me, had arrived the day before and they picked me up in this crappy, aquamarine Kia rental car that they’d nicknamed Booger. Heidi is a self-sufficient 33-year-old who looks my age, leads a “boot camp” exercise class at 5am every morning before going to a day of construction work, wears funky, teal-colored eyeglasses and has two white pitbulls who she calls her “lady babies.” Heidi’s from Westport, MA. Kate is a year older than I am; is from Saginaw, Michigan; went to Michigan State and is a huge Spartan fan, and is the most enthusiastic karaoke performer I’ve ever met. They were a bit loopy as they hadn’t slept a wink the night before because of the light so we had a couple close calls as they took me to the campsite they’d found. At the tent was Heidi’s talkative friend Tom Tierney from Boston, MA. He was running the half-marathon, works at Fidelity and traveled with Heidi around Ireland a couple years ago. The place we stayed the first “night” wasn’t particularly memorable. There was a popular ATV trail about 100yds through the woods from our tent that people were on all night and the Air Force was conducting some type of training in the sky above so it was kind of like trying to get to sleep during World War III. Not exactly the wilderness experience.

Things picked up the next day, however. We drove out to Chugach National Park, which is a little South of Anchorage. It was our first taste of real Alaska - the road snaked out from the highway up into the mountains, soon revealing a valley below with an impressive green range on the other side. Booger whined and strained. At the Park entrance, there was a sign reading: “Warning: You are entering Bear Country” and, hand-written on the sign, were the most recent sightings of grizzlies and black bears. There had been one two days before. Heidi, whose only fear in life as far as I can tell is bears, gripped her hachet tight, which her boyfriend had given her as a birthday gift for her Alaska trip. We pulled into the camp host station to ask about bears and how to avoid them. An open meadow stretched upwards, turning into a steep, wooded side of a mountain. The sun was out and a nice breeze was blowing and Alaska was starting to seem like a pretty stunning place. The camp host was a thirty-something year-old guy named Erin who was originally from Malibu, California and had moved up here in December. “I’m here to stay, man,” he said. “There is no place like this, everything in Alaska is on a bigger scale. You can’t find this amount of wildlife anywhere else. You got wolves, black bears, grizzles (Heidi’s eyes widened), foxes, eagles, and the fishing, man the fishing’s incredible. And the people here are great; they’re real.” (especially compared to Malibu, I thought). “Most of them moved up here, are a little kooky, but are truly good people once you get to know them.” Kate, Tom and I were all nodding, try to soak up the essence of Alaska, but Heidi had other things on her mind. “So people see bears often then?” “Oh, all the time, you’ll probably see one, they make the rounds from campsite to campsite to see if anyone left food out.” Heidi laughed nervously and looked on the verge of tears. “So what should we do if we see one?” I asked. “Well, make sure to put all your food away in the car, even toothpaste, and then if you see one and you’re near your car, get in and honk the horn.” “The bear would probably just eat Booger whole,” we joked. “If your not near your car, just give them plenty of space and they’ll probably go their own way. Don’t make eye contact with them. If one does attack you, they say not to fight back, to just stay still, unless it keeps attacking you, in which case you should fight back.” I was a little unclear as to what point during a bear attack to decide that the bear had attacked you long enough and to begin fighting back but I decided it wouldn’t do Heidi’s nerves a whole lot of good to ask for clarification. “You guys will be fine,” he said, “Bears are all over, but there hasn’t been a mauling since I’ve been here, I don’t know when the last one was. Travel together and make noise and you’ll be fine. Enjoy this place, go hiking, go fishing, take it all in.”

The campground was near Eklutna Lake. We got out of our car and set up our tents in a little spot shaded by birch trees then strolled through the woods until they opened up to Eklutna Lake, a large, aqua-marine lake bordered by layers of dramatic mountains. The mountains in the background were covered with snow and were bathed in sunlight. A warm breeze fluttered through the tall grass surrounding the lake. We all just giggled out of joy. We were the only people in sight. “I feel like I’m in a dream,” Kate said and that really nailed it; it did feel like an entirely different level of existence, it was so peaceful and grand. We got some Alaskan beers out of Booger and returned to the rocky beach and sat propped up against boulders watching the sprawling peaks in awe. Clouds hovered behind the peaks, unable to get by. “This is the best beer of my life,” Tom said and we all nodded in agreement.

Soon, our serenity was interrupted by honking and whistles; apparently there had been a bear sighting. “Oh, god,” Heidi said, with a frantic laugh. Every hour or we’d hear some distant horn honking or whistle blowing and wonder which poor individual was being mauled by a bear. Nevertheless, we survived the night without getting eaten.

The next day, we hiked up a mountain overlooking the lake. The few other hikers we ran into all had guns; we began to feel like Heidi’s six-inch hatchet might be a bit insufficient. As we got higher up the mountain, we’d periodically come across steaming bear “skat,” or poop, on the trail. We all huddled together and huffed and puffed up the trail, trying to make as much noise as possible to scare off the bears. Soon, the trees thinned and were replaced by shrubs and seemingly hundreds of different types of hardy wildflowers of all different colors and shapes dotting the hillsides. The hike was much longer than anticipated but the nice thing about hiking in Alaska in the summer is that you don’t have to worry about it getting dark. As we got high up, we could see the bay way in the distance, glowing orange from the sunset. On the other side, was the sprawling Eklutna lake, a bright aqua marine in sharp contrast to the forest green hills around it. It was cool; we could see planes flying in the valley below us, little white, fast-moving specks. “We’ve climbed a long, f**king way,” said Tom in an Irish brogue, an accent we all adopted for some reason during the trip, perhaps because whatever you said in it could always be passed off as a joke if it was not well-received.

We lounged on the ridge for awhile, looking in awe at the lake and the valley of the river that fed it, carved out between snow-capped mountains. Thinking about how exhausting the hike up had been, I talked with Tom about how few great things come easy. The mountain kept going upwards and couple hundred feet above us grey clouds slipped over the hillside. We were definitely experiencing the world on a grander scale than we were used to. It was nice to be there together, to share the awe we were all in; it had taken awhile to rally the troops to leave the rocky beach by the lake and take a hike, so we left far later than I would have if it had been by myself, and there had been some complaining on the way up, but having people there to hug and to share the experience with made all the previous inconveniences worthwhile. I thought of that last passage written in Chris McCandless’s journal from Into the Wild: Happiness is only real when shared.

We basically ran the whole way down the mountain, hooting and hollering as we did so to scare off bears. We got back to the campsite around 10 or so and it was still light of course and we started a fire and had s’mores for appetizers as the water boiled for rice, which we mixed with our only other available ingredients: canned tuna and powdered broccoli cheddar soup. It was still the most delicious meal I’d had in awhile given how hungry I was from the hike.

The next day, we departed for the Kenai peninsula which is South of Anchorage and home to many accessible glaciers and fjords, which are bays formed by glaciers. We arrived in Seward, Alaska, a fishing town on Resurrection Bay that is the home of the famous “Mount Marathon” race in July where runners race up and down a 3000 ft mountain. We set up our tents on a windy campground right on the foggy bay and then strolled into what locals call the “Bistro District” which is a single, quaint street that has some surprisingly hip coffee shops and stores. The rest of the town consists of small houses and cottages with rugged looking fishing boats and cabin-cruisers parked in the driveways, It was cold and overcast and we all felt like we were truly in Alaska. Clothing stores sold fur winter wear that was, for the most part, more for warmth than fashion. There was the smell of chimney smoke in the air. The “bistro district” road ended at the bay, from which fog poured in. We slid into the “Yukon Bar” near the end of the street, and played pool and a bear-hunting video game (Heidi loved that one) then to another bar where we did karaoke. Alaskans aren’t particularly friendly or unfriendly, they are for the most part just uninterested; seemingly focused enough on their own lives and those close to them that they don’t see the point in making chit chat with strangers. Several times during the trip, someone – say a waitress – would feel obligated to ask where we were from, and we’d reply “Louisiana” and they’d nod and walk away, worried to be engaged in too long of a conversation. A few, however, did ask if we were from Ireland. Then we had some explaining to do. Anyway, we all got pretty drunk at another bar right next to the Yukon that was packed with locals and where ship steering wheels hung on the wall and where we did karaoke and poor Kate left her bag there at the end of the night and the next morning when we returned to look for it, someone had taken it. So she lost her ID, her credit cards, and her cell phone. Also, in our inebriated state, we forgot to zip close the door to the tent at the end of the night and it rained that night so when we woke up, we were all soaked from the knees down.

That next day, after looking in vain for Kate’s bag, we took a cruise out to see the Holgate glacier. It was cold and foggy and there were huge swells heading out towards the open ocean. Steep cliffs with trees somehow clinging to their sides rose up on both sides of us. There were few boats out except for us, and certainly no pleasure craft; the only boats out with us were fishing boats that looked as if they were going into battle, with steel hulls and thick bridge-house windows and massive antennas. Kate, Heidi and I stood outside the cabin on the bow and hung over the railing watching the racing water as the big ship rolled over the swells. “It’s like an amusement park ride with a view,” I said. We saw otters, paddling on their backs, seemingly quite comfortable in the frigid waters; and puffins, who would frantically flap their wings and skid along on their bellies to escape the oncoming ship.

The glacier itself was stunning. After a brief, bumpy stint in open ocean we went into this fjord and began to see chunks of ice in the water. The chunks of ice gradually got bigger and bigger and the air got colder. Clouds of mist glided over the tops of the cliffs on both sides. The fjord ended at the glacier, which was enormous and was a light shade of blue (because the ice was so densely packed that it only reflected certain spectrums of light). The glacier moved as much as a meter a day! You could hear it creaking and every so often you’d hear an especially loud crack and a big chunk of ice would fall off the glacier and make a big splash.

After staring at the glacier for a long time, we headed out to the ocean again towards the Chiswell Island, which are part of the Kenai Fjords National Park. On the way there, the sun came out and a humpback whale surfaced near us and the mist he sprayed out of his spout glowed from the sunlight. He did a couple jumps out of the water like in the Prudential commercials which was pretty stunning. The Chiswell Islands were absolutely magical. They are uninhabited and are clustered a couple miles out in the ocean. They have dramatic, jagged cliffs with tiny rock beaches and bright green trees bursting from the few flat patches of rock and soil on each island. They drove the boat into a couple little inlets where sea lions flopped up the steep rocks and where puffins and seagulls perched on rocks or floated in the water. The sun was out and hit the high clouds at an angle and made the aquamarine water radiate and the mist from the crashing waves glow. We were mostly speechless. I felt like I’d come across the islands from Jurassic Park or King Kong.

That night we returned to Anchorage and the next day was spent resting up and eating in preparation for the marathon. Also, it was Heidi’s birthday so we went out to dinner for that, but we were all a bit nervous about the marathon so it wasn’t exactly unbridled revelry.

The day of the race, Heidi and I woke up at 5:45 and loaded onto the shuttle which took us out of the city to a high school whose mascot was the Golden Bears. We waited in the gym and, painted on the wall, was “You’re in Bear Country.” It was quite chilly and a bit drizzly which I was pretty happy with since that is good running weather. People stretched and ate lots of energy bars. The Mayor’s Marathon is a big Team in Training event, which is the organization affiliated with the Leukemia and Lymphoma society, so there were lots of purple jerseys around from all over the country. A lot of them pinned pictures of friends or family members with cancer to their jerseys. One woman I was next to had a picture of her son. There were definitely a lot of stories behind the purple jerseys. The race (finally) started in the parking lot. There were about a thousand people running the marathon. There was one very skinny black guy who was standing next to me, perfectly still, looking straight ahead. His legs were the width of my forearms arms. He didn’t have any IPOD holder or “fuel belts” and was only wearing a tank top and running shorts. “There’s our winner,” Heidi said. (He ended up coming in second). The Mayor of Anchorage gave a short speech, the point of which seemed to mostly be to inform us that he, also, ran marathons. He told us to stay in groups (to avoid the bears) and to pace ourselves. Well, when the gun fired, people didn’t seem to take his advice, at least concerning the latter piece. Everyone was off to the races and, as I got passed again and again, I couldn’t tell if there were simply a lot of super runners in the race or if they would burn out at mile 10. As we jogged down a trail along the highway and even old guys passed me and the competitive part of me squirmed, I tried to remind myself that 26 miles is a very long way and that my pace would hopefully improve with the miles as I got stretched out and in a rhythm. Soon, we thankfully left the highway and entered property belong to an Army base. The road became two lanes and hilly, with no traffic, forest on both sides and mountains in the distance. We’d all been pretty scared of the hills before the race, looking at the elevation chart, but the uphills were actually a nice challenge and a time when I began to pass people. It also helped that there were lots of Team in Training supporters along the route, who recognized my purple jersey and would cheer me on, “You’re the first Team in Training person we’ve seen,” they’d yell and they’d rattle noisemakers.

Around mile eight, the course turned from asphalt to dirt and narrowed and passed through more rural territory with few spectators save for aid stations. The miles seemed to go a bit quicker at this point. After a couple killer uphills, the dirt road narrowed at mile 16 to a trail through the woods that was about one person wide. I was feeling pretty good and began to pass people pretty steadily. Around mile 17 was the high point of the course, and from there the dirt path changed back to sealed roads and began a wonderful gentle downhill through birch-trees. By this point the density of runners had thinned out a good deal and I had the road mostly to myself. Around mile 21, my legs started complaining and a mile seemed like a longer and longer distance. A Team in Training coach began jogging alongside me, trying to make conversation. “Where are you from?” He was trying to help but chit chat was about the last thing I felt like. My legs were running out of juice and the course, which was now on the outskirts of Anchorage, had changed into an annoying, winding bike path with lots of ups and downs. Eventually, the poor guy got the hint that I wasn’t too keen on talking and fell back. The last miles were definitely tough, especially the last mile that included a steep uphill to the finish line. But despite the discomfort, I kept thinking to myself, as I looked out on sun-lit meadows of the city park and snow-capped peaks in the distance and huffed and puffed, that this is what I truly enjoy. I felt uncomfortable but healthy and pure, like this is what my body was meant to do.

The course ended at another high school, in Anchorage. At the finish line I saw that my finishing time was 3:13, two minutes shy of qualifying for Boston. It was seventeen minutes faster than my Mardi Gras marathon time and I was pleased with it, though I wished I’d been wearing a watch so I could’ve shaved those last two minutes off. Still, I felt like I pushed myself about as hard as I could’ve. I ended up finishing 4th in my age range and 34th overall They had delicious fresh-baked cinnamon-swirl bread at the finish line which I ate a lot of while I waited for my team mates Kate and Heidi to finish. They both did quite well. Kate finished her half-marathon which was a big accomplishment for her and Heidi finished with a time of 4:20, better than she was expecting. That night, we went out to an Irish pub in Anchorage where a Cajun band was playing (what are the odds?) A bunch of the Lousiana contingent were there and we all danced and did a second-line around the bar to the familiar zydeco tunes like “the Saints” and “Jambalaya.” It was a blast. The next day I returned to New Orleans, which was steamin’.

Overall, the Louisiana chapter of Team in Training raised $120,000 for cancer research. I ended up raising $4300. Thanks so much for your all’s support. It was an incredible week.

gators

Well, just returned from a "Personal and Professional Development" retreat for all the AmeriCorps peeps in Louisiana. It was held at Lake Fausse Point State Park, which is an hour west of Baton Rouge in the Atchafalaya Delta. This is true swamp / Cajun country, the type I've been wanting to see since I got here. You get off I-10 and you follow "Levee Rd" by trailers, shacks, cottages and houses all set on the shady banks of bayous (small rivers through the swamp). Every yard has a couple olive green, flat-bottom boats parked on the lawn and a home-made sign with names like "Camp Wonder" or "Gator Cove". We stayed in these great cabins on the bayou with screened in porches and at night, when our lectures and team building excercises were over, we built bond fires and went on "Gator Hunts" through the swamp.

My friends Kate and Heidi and I all got more of a taste of the bayou than we'd bargained for today. At the conclusion of our retreat, we stayed at the park for the afternoon and rented kayaks to do some exploring. After paddling for about five minutes we saw our first gator sunning himself on an old log. We kept going, passing a couple shacks on the river and watching the knarled root systems along the banks for wildlife. The swamp teems with life; it seems like every square inch is squirming. We saw an enormous striped tan watersnake laying on a tree that had fallen into the bayou. A flat-bottom boat with three old Cajun men with camoflauge hats, tan skin and bright white beards came around a corner and slowed. "They'se gators bigger than those boats y'all are in. They'll eat the whole thing," one of them said. I wondered if this was a routine they pulled with tourists and perhaps it is, but shortly after we did see a gator about as big as our kayak, laying on the banks. Kate paddled close to take a picture and it slipped into the water towards us and disappeared under the murky water. Laughing out of pure terror, we paddled away.

We sat in a small cove for awhile. Kate and Heidi relaxed and I tried to fish. Fish were literally jumping out of the water all around and I didn't get a single bite. It didn't make me feel like the world's most capable outdoorsman. Eventually, we decided to head back. Consulting the fuzzy, xeroxed map we'd picked up at the Ranger station, Heidi suggested that if we went to the right, it would be a loop back to the boathouse. We paddled...and paddled...and paddled. Loops generally involve turns and the bayou we were on was in a straight line in the wrong direction. With no turn offs. The kayaks seemed to have been designed to withstand gator attacks rather than to glide through the water so progress was slow and our arms began hurting and the prospect of turning around was demoralizing that we kept going, hoping that a left turn would appear soon. The farther we got from the boat house, the more wildlife there was and there became more and more semi-jokes about a gator attack, which wasn't good for anyone's nerves. I pictured those three old Cajun guys hiding in the bushes, in absolute hysterics.

Finally the bayou split and we took a left. Soon after, Heidi, checking the map, burst into laughter. And she couldn't stop. Such hysterics from our navigator wasn't particularly reassuring and Kate and I, laughing along nervously, threw in some, "So...Heidi (chuckle, chuckle), where are we?" But she just kept laughing. I was in utter misery.

Eventually, we got hold of the map and saw that we were right at the edge of it and that we were at the farthest possible point. Heading back was probably the shortest, safest option but paddling back all that way didn't seem doable. It looked like there was a shortcut – a very narrow waterway - that cut the loop in half and seemed to me the only way we’d possibly get back to the boathouse while there was still daylight. So, when the shortcut appeared on the left, we took it.

By now it was late afternoon and the weakening light injected some adrenaline into the whole thing. The shortcut immediately became narrower so that low hanging branches were close on both sides. There were constant splashes of some creature or another entering or exiting the water. A bend in the river revealed an old barge with a crane and a trailer parked on top of it. The only signs of life were hundreds of crushed Keystone Light cans. An old skiff with a pilot house with a dusty windshield was moored alongside, resting in the calm water.

All of a sudden, there was a splash very close by and Heidi screamed. I heard a thumping and she screamed, “Jesus Christ! Phil!” I looked back and Heidi was frantically hitting something in her kayak. I turned around and paddled back. A big silver fish flopped up and out of her boat swam off.

The little waterway continued to narrow and we soon had to weave around and under felled trees. Tall, thick marsh grass encroached on both sides further narrowing the channel and we could hear weeds scraping along the bottom of the kayaks. Up ahead the marsh grass closed to the width of a single kayak. We stopped.

“Gators wouldn’t have their nests in this type of area would they?” I asked, hoping for confirmation. There was none. I paddled up to the narrow opening of the marsh grass then imagined a mama gator sitting on her eggs in between the next cluster of the marsh grass and me stumbling across her and promptly being eaten. I backed up.

“Let’s turn around,” Kate said. But at that point I thought I’d rather be eaten by a gator than paddle for another two hours and plus, I was tired of doing the comfortable, smart thing and thought some bad choices might do me good.

So I backed up a bit then built up a head of steam and slid on through the narrow channel. Marsh grass brushed against me on both sides and all types of things - mostly birds – fluttered away through the grass. Every part of me was shakin’. I hummed really loudly, hoping to scare off gators and snakes with my offkey noise. There was this surge of adrenaline that made me ready to beat a gator silly with my paddle. I felt like I was in true nature.

The channel widened a bit and split and both paths were hopelessly shallow. “Well, screw it” I thought, looking down at the muddy bed now visible through the water. There was a fallen tree on the dried up part of the river bed and I thought if I climbed to the top of it, it might afford a view of how close we were to the bigger bayou. “It’s just mud,” I told myself and got out. My leg sank to the knee in mud as I trudged toward the tree. It was freeing to just let go and jump in and realize that nature wasn’t quite as scary or gross as it seems from civilization.

I made it to the tree and, eyeing the branches very closely for snakes, climbed up to the tallest point. There, about a hundred yards away, was the beautiful sight of silver water. It was a larger bayou that we could take back to the boat house.

Heidi and Kate got out of the boats too and we all trudged through the mud, dragging our big ol’ kayaks behind us, watching for snakes and laughing out of terror but also of the satisfaction of overcoming fear. I tell you, when we made it to the bayou and got back into our now muddy boats, it was an incredible feeling of accomplishment, I felt like Lewis and Clark. It’s very easy to be surrounded by nature and still not really be in nature, to still be somewhat insulated from it. But the proximity to it that comes from getting off the path and putting yourself in slight danger is incredibly refreshing.

We stopped at a seafood shack on the way back that was right on a bayou and ate broiled catfish and oysters from the porch and watched fishermen and hunters glide by in flatboats as the sun set. It was a magical end to the day.

Anyways, progress on the house is going well – we are now doing bamboo flooring (the walls are all painted and doors are installed). We have AmeriCorps NCCC’s with us for three weeks. NCCC’s are the national branch of AmeriCorps and they travel around the country doing short-term service projects. We get to be their boss so that’s nice.

Also, the weather down here has been incredible. Last weekend we played beach volleyball on Sunday then my friend Duncan and I just sat out on the shore of Lake Ponchartrain fishing and talking for a good two or three hours as the sun set. We had a bite but my dinky fishing line snapped immediately so that was a bit disappointing but it gave us an excuse to just sit and talk and watch the sky. This week, we did karaoke on Wednesday – one of the AmeriCorps volunteers is a semi-professional singer and she did a duet with a woman she met at the bar who was also an incredible singer and boy, it was like being at a concert - and then 80s night on Thursday at a club called One Eyed Jacks in the Quarter. Friday was not the most productive day at work.

Inauguration

Well, the inauguration was the coolest experience of my life most likely. I arrived in D.C. Sunday night and the festivities were already under way. The U St. corridor, a historically black area I used to go to all the time while at GW for its bars and jazz, was filled with black couples in tuxedos and gowns going from one inauguration party to the next. I felt shabby in my jeans and t-shirt. Classically black clubs were all spruced up with red, white and blue ribbons and banners and with tents around the entrances so that the line of gussied up black folks waiting to get in wouldn't have to stand in the cold. Everyone, even younger black couples, was dressed up for the occasion with scarves and petticoats. As exciting as Obama is for all of us, it clearly means something special to black people and the sense I got from walking round U St. was that they finally felt like this was their country. About time.

The next day, I was at Old Ebbitt's Grill, a D.C. institution that's across the street from the White House. The place has got blue blood written all over it (there are mounted boar and deer heads and bronze bannisters) and when Bush was in office, the place would get really busy at happy hour and fill with young, almost entirely white, Republican staffers shooting the breeze over bourbon and cokes and martinis. When I walked in this time, the waiting area was filled with black families. I heard one black woman say, "I don't think they've ever seen so many of us up in here. They're not gonna know what to do."

At the bar, I began talking with a black guy who'd been a strategist with the Bush White House. The last couple inaugurations had been crazy for him; he was looking forward to being able to take it easy, especially since the candidate wasn't too objectionable. "I just feel bad for [Obama]," he said, "People are gonna give him six months then they're gonna turn on him." Anyway, it was fascinating to hear him reflect on the last four years. Red, white and blue banners hung over the bar and the brass lanterns came on as the sky darkened outside and inauguration day approached and hearing this strategist talk about what Air Force one was like (how when they were flying into Baghdad they turned off all the lights on the plane, inside and out, and made a, rapid swirling descent towards the green zone) and his personal opinions of Bush (that Bush, despite his aversion to seeming like an intellectual, was actually a pretty voracious reader of history) seemed a fitting way to experience the inauguration. The guy thought that Bush would go down in history as a much better President than his approval ratings reflected and said that the real reason we invaded Iraq was because, after Afghanistan, Iraq seemed the mostly likely new haven for terrorists; the WMD argument was pushed forward for Blair's benefit, to get his people on board. I wasn't convinced that this made it excusable.

The day of the inauguration, I woke up and walked down towards the mall from my friend's apartment, feeling a bit ridiculous and encumbered from the number of layers I was wearing. Sirens were a constant sound in the distance, as were drums from sidewalk musicians, but overall it was surprisingly quiet; you could hear the wind whipping down the streets. Tents and vending tables crowded several of the main streets near the capitol building, which were all closed off to traffic. They sold every Obama accessory imaginable from Obama-scented incense to Obama pins to gawdy Obama t-shirts with his face in rhinestones. Fried seafood was everywhere, making me feel like I was back in New Orleans.

Barricades were set up along E St. and access to the parade route was only allowed at one or two checkpoints so lines of people several blocks long filled the streets. I waited in one of these for awhile then when we didn't move for a good half hour and it seemed like we'd get to the parade route perhaps in time for Obama's next inauguration in four years, I cut off and went straight to the Washington monument, which is miles from the Capitol but where I figured I'd at least be able to see a jumbo-tron and wouldn't have to hassle with lines quite as much as there were no security checkpoints. As I got a little farther from the Parade route and walked towards the White House along H St., the streets thinned a bit and everyone was in a more relaxed, jovial mood than those struggling to get the best spots. It was a bit surreal: here we were in the midst of this momentous day, for which the streets of D.C. were emptied of traffic, and a lot of people here didn't seem particularly swept up in it; instead they (myself included) wandered around looking for donuts or muffins or coffee.

Eventually I did make it to GW then headed down 18th towards Virginia Ave. and the World War II memorial, joining a thickening stream of people, all walking towards the Washington monument. We got to Constitution Ave, the street bordering the Mall to the North, and real excitement began to set in. Hundreds of clusters of bundled people walked around the frozen Constitution Gardens Lake and across the frost-covered grass separating it and the Reflecting Pool. The jumbo-tron by the WWII monument showed Obama leaving breakfast with the Bushes.

I headed straight to the top of the mound that the Washington monument sits on. A migration of people did the same all across that big field. I squeezed to the Capitol-side of the Washington monument. Down below, a sea of people - each with their little American flag - stretched down the Mall towards the Capitol. There was a jumbo-tron every block, receding towards the Capitol. Despite the mass of people, it was quiet. I could hear the flags that surround the monument flapping in the wind.

I didn't see any protesters, nor did anyone seem overcome with excitement. Most everyone I was standing near seemed content and curious to hear what Obama had to say. The only exceptions were those who'd chosen fashion over warmth and were now shivering uncontrollably. The musical performances of Aretha and Yo Yo were incredible: it was so quiet and the music echoed across the mall and the music, combined with the rustling of the flags, sweeping over such a content, calm crowd was an almost Zen-like experience.

When Obama came on and began speaking, there were occasional cheers but for the most part everyone just perpetually nodded. Unlike Bush's inauguration, it seemed that no matter who you were (there were plenty of Repubs in the crowd, including the couple next to me), everyone was at least listening.

I'd been in some big crowds before, but as Obama spoke and articulated such a transcendent vision for the country, I felt a commonality with everyone that I'd never really felt before. Looking over the crowds of people on the Mall, I felt like everyone one of them was fundamentally a good person. I had this intense feeling that everyone had been drawn there for the best of reasons, a deep-rooted hope and belief in a way of life more in tune with our humanity, and that this somehow bound us all together. Obama seemed to recast so much of ordinary political distinctions as petty, it seemed everyone was seeing each other in a way that everyone wants to see other people, with magnanimity. Unless, of course, that person inched in front, trying to get a better view.

When Obama's speech ended, another mass migration filled the big field by the Washington monument, heading towards the Foggy Bottom metro stops. Being part of such a massive group of people, combined with the drums and colorful uniforms of a military marching band playing on the Elipse, made me feel like I was in the movie Brave Heart. Bush's helicopter glided over the crowd and a couple people flipped a middle finger at its green underbelly or yelled "Bye, bye Bush" or something with more profanities but most people seemed more immersed in the future than the past, or were too cold by that point to care. Despite wanting to beat traffic, I couldn't bring myself to leave and so I lingered around by the monument, watching the streams of people fill 17th st. and the avenues by the reflecting pool below and watching the marching bands preparing for the parade on the Ellipse. A Haitian steel-drum band began playing Amazing Grace and a very diverse crowd gathered around. The Haitians went mobile and, as we all stepped to the beat, again I felt like I was back in New Orleans, following a second line parade (which are awesome by the way).

Eventually, I dragged myself away and drove home, ridiculously excited about the potential for the next four years.

Otherwise, life in New Orleans is good. The Sunday before last I ran the Mardi Gras marathon and finished in 3:30, which was my goal. Work on the Paul's house is coming along well - we are nearing the end of drywall and it's finally starting to look like a house! Also, our weekly training runs and meetings for the Anchorage marathon to raise money for LLS are always a highpoint: people of every age are in the group and watching some of the survivors or family members really push themselves for a cause that has touched them so close to home is incredibly inspiring.


Well hope all is well and I look forward to hearing from you all. Love,

Phil