Update From The Field

I must say, I'm feeling surprisingly good about Colorado. Depending on the poll, Kerry is down between between five and 1. Of course, given the margin of error, he may be even closer. My take from being out and about each of the past four days and quite a lot over the past two weeks is that he's close.

Take tonight, for instance.

I did some "visibility" work in a small town (Frederick) north of where I live. The small town is in an overwhelmingly rural Republican county. My "visibility" work consisted of standing on a highly trafficked (at least for a small town) street corner holding up a Kerry sign along with a few other people. I wasn't expecting much in the way of feedback. And it was very cold today and this evening when I headed out. I wasn't looking forward to it.

But I was pleasantly surprised. Hundreds of cars passed by. (Returning from work.) We received A LOT of horn honks and positive hand gestures. It really felt good. There were definitely a few negative hand gestures but not nearly as many as I would have expected given our location. The other thing I noticed is that there was not one -- not one! -- Bush/Cheney bumper sticker. Even on the huge diesel pick-up trucks that are ubiqutous in the area. We even got a "thumbs up" from a few of the big pick-ups which surprised the heck out of me.

During our 3 hours out we were joined by a couple of drivers who just liked what we were doing and decided to join us! One lady even brought us some hot chocolate! (As it was under 30 degrees it was much appreciated!)

As I said, I wasn't expecting much from the evening but I went home feeling pumped!

Even the one overtly negative thing has me pumped. At one point during the evening I heard an odd noise. I was enjoying my hot chocolate and so I didn't really pay attention until I realized it was a "splattering" sound. I looked down at my feet and there was a smashed egg! Imagine. We ticked some poor Bush/Cheney fan off so much that they threw an egg at us. Not only that; who drives around with an egg in their car? So we aggravated them so much that they went home and got the egg and then came back to lob it at us! Classy.

But hey, if they want to throw eggs or yell obscenities (uplifting Christian family values and all that) more power to them. I didn't see any Bush/Cheney volunteers braving the cold for their guy. We're pumped. Even in a rural Republican county there's a positive vibe.