Flobots and Des Moines

DSC_0031, originally uploaded by Rock the Vote 2008.

Friday, October 17th, 2008

Young voters registered yesterday – 10,595
Miles travelled today – 120 so far

9:20 pm – Between Des Moines and Iowa City

The Flobots – above – were with us tonight in Des Moines and we will have what they said in an online video in a couple of days. In the meantime, here’s today:

Des Moines, IA has the second largest skywalk in the United States. For those unfamiliar, a skywalk is a series of above ground passages leading from building to building. You use it to get around in the winter and to get terribly terribly lost at any time of year.

We were very good at getting lost. The goal of our afternoon was to walk around this massive above-ground passageway registering anyone we found. It worked. We registered lots of people. But finding our cars was completely impossible.

Or rather, finding them was fairly simple. Getting back to them was impossible. Our DJ, Aaron James, and I were in charge of retrieving one of the vans and we spotted it almost immediately from a glass corridor twenty feet above Locust street. If we could have jumped down we would might have landed on the van. But we couldn’t, so we had to wander through buildings until we found a street exit. Aaron was convinced he knew where he was going, which, of course, he didn’t. I was convinced he had no idea where he was going, which, of course, he didn’t.

The scene reminded me of my parents. I drove through this state many times with them when I was much younger. Both grew up here, so I came to associate Iowa with family legends and long fights about whether we are lost. These trips taught me a valuable lesson: if you are fighting about whether you are lost, then you are lost. And so it was today.

“Aaron, do you know where we are?”

“Yeah, I recognize this. We’re coming up on something.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s behind us. We ought to ask someone.”

“Let’s just keep going, I think I recognize this.”

“It won’t take a second to just stop at one of these stores.”

“Just trust me, alright.”

We were a twisted stereotype of husband and wife. But how could we not be? As of today we have been traveling for five weeks without time apart or rest. As a group, our choices were to develop into a hostile infighting mess or to bond into a family unit. So we now have eleven quasi-siblings and two rotating semi-parents. Tonight, I played Mom and Aaron was dad. Everyone else played the kids waiting for us to find the goddamned car.

“I’m pretty sure this is the wrong way.”

“Look, there’s no reason you shouldn’t trust me. I parked the car.”

“I’m just saying.”

After twists, turns, an emergency exit and a twenty-minute walk through the cold grey weather, we found the car. Aaron grudgingly admitted we had been lost and I mostly refrained from gloating. We picked up the kids, drove to a concert with the Flobots for some voter registration, and then hopped back on the bus to drive to the Iowa city. I am hoping we can stop on the way to see the world’s largest strawberry.

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Rock the Vote Bio: Rock the Vote was founded in 1990 to organize artists and fight against censorship of musicians. Since then we've evolved to focus on empowering young people to get involved in the political process. We use pop culture, peer-to-peer organizing, and the latest technology to raise visibility of politics and demystify the process of registering to vote. @rockthevote Email the author at: blog(at)rockthevote.com

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