the first time I have ever been pleased with a flight delay

Written 8/22 in the airport:

Yesterday morning I got up early and went to the Seattle airport to catch my flight to New Jersey. I had a planned layover of an hour in San Francisco and I’d fantasized that my second flight would be delayed and maybe I could have lunch with some of my former coworkers (the office is ten minutes from the airport). Well the airlines did me one better: my first flight (Seattle to San Francisco) was delayed and I missed my second flight altogether. The United personnel gave me a few options: I could take a red eye flight, leaving at 10 pm and getting into Newark at 6 am; I could fly through Chicago; or I could take a flight today. Waiting nine hours in the airport, making an extra connection even though it hurts to walk (sprained ankle), or spending a night in San Francisco with my friends? The decision was easy, to put it mildly.

What a wonderful day, in the way days in San Francisco are usually wonderful: I had lunch with my coworkers, as imagined; I sat in my old kitchen filled with afternoon light; I had seasonal local vegetables for dinner in a hip diner; I ate an ice cream cone; I had a few beers. Of course the reason all of these things were so wonderful is that I did them with my friends. My lovely, smart, funny friends who welcomed me back with open arms. How marvelous to pop in for a day and rejoin my life (almost) as if I never left. I know three months is different than three weeks, and when I come back for good some things will have changed. But the fundamentals will remain: good people, good food, good life.

In the meantime, I am excited to start campaigning. Two people at the Seattle airport yesterday told me they thought we had two bad choices in the presidential race. What are you talking about? I wanted to cry (but didn’t due to an inability to marshal arguments in a state of extreme exhaustion as well as a desire to disengage). Can’t you see that Obama is different than the candidates that have come before? Sure he has his problems. He is human, and he makes bad choices sometimes; he is a politician, and he makes political choices sometimes. But he is smart. He understands nuance. He has good, detailed policy positions. He ran a brilliant and well-organized primary campaign. And he is a fresh start. Electing a mixed-race man named Barack Obama is a rejection of the politics of fear and division that we have lived with for the last eight years (longer, really). He can’t fix everything that has gone wrong under Bush, but he will make a good start – better than anyone else I can imagine.