Yesterday was a long, long day. Woke up at 6 in hopes of getting out to pick up Dave by 8:30. Sadly I didn’t have much time this weekend to pack and prepare all the crap we needed for the trip, so I had to get it all done Monday morning. Then I updated the website, and answered some e-mail, and talked to a few folks online. I didn’t end up leaving the house till nearly 10:15.

The car was packed full of t-shirts, and flyers, and lugage, and buttons, and all sorts of goodies. I laugh that I was thinking of taking four people, or even six people in the car with me. The car was nearly full just from me.

I picked Dave up in Cleveland Park, and scurrying to avoid the terrible downpour, he added his stuff to the pile in my car. We stopped for gas, snacks and some air in the tires and were on our way. We weren’t on the road till nearly 11 am. Two hours later than planned.

It was raining the entire drive. Quite a miserable day. Visability was terrible, the roads were icky, and it slowed everything down. We were working without a map for much of the drive, but I just stayed on 95 all the way north to Connecticut. We made it through New York without incident, but as soon as we reached Connecticut, traffic backed up terribly. Stop and go for an hour or two. How miserable. Still raining.

We wasted lots of time in CT, but finally made it out of the traffic snarl, and into Massachusetts and southern Vermont. By the time we reached Vermont it was dark. We were several hours behind schedule. The rain hadn’t let up at all since the trip began. Still coming down in buckets. Vermont was one dark blur. I couldn’t see anything besides the car in front of me. I kept thinking that if the car I was following went off a cliff, I’d follow right along over the edge because I couldn’t see a thing. Just one dark, wet blur.

After nearly 12 hours on the road, we at last arrived in Grand Isle, Vermont. We crossed over a causeway that we guess crossed Lake Champlain, but it was so dark we couldn’t see anything. We drove around Grand Isle a bit. No one had visable addresses on Hardy’s street, and the numbered was weird anyhow. Hardy lives really far out there. Its a really cool place though. He lives in a renovated old train station. All wood stove heated. He has a huge newfoundland dog too. Best news of all, by the time we made it to Grand Isle it stopped raining. The first time it wasn’t raining the entire drive.

Niceities didn’t last long, we hauled some stuff inside and then got to work not long after. Hardy had printed up some of the post cards we would use to gather people’s information and then send them on to the statehouse as supporters. Dave and I got to cutting these (they were on quarter sheets), and then Hardy set up some computers and he and I started working on the press kit.

We really should have had the press kits done this weekend, but I ended up going away for Easter unexpectedly. I certainly enjoyed getting away, but I didn’t get any work done. My punishment came Monday night when we stayed up till 4:30 am working on the press kit and making some posters. We put together some good stuff, but honestly staying up that late after being on the road for 12 hours isn’t so good on the ol’ brain. Simple sentences were coming together slower and slower as the night went on.

It was excellent though sitting at Hardy’s big dining room table with he & Dave all working on NYRA stuff. It was like how the NYRA office would be. Hardy and I swapping ideas, IMing our files back and forth across the desk, Dave finishing up the posters and such. Like a great symphony playing in unison at a quarter speed.

We got a bio sheet of key NYRA/NYRA-VT folks, an info sheet on NYRA/NYRA-VT/YouthAMP, our schedule, a fact sheet on making up the funding, and a sheet with some talking points on why we want to lower the drinking age.

Finally I just couldn’t take it anymore and had to sleep. We didn’t finish the final fact sheet on drunk driving and such, but I didn’t care anymore. We had a huge amount of stuff going on the next day, so we all called it a night at 4:30 am.

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