holy %^&#: palin fever goes national

Banff, Alberta / Mile 2,160 – Obviously, we're going to have to shelve the Great American Road Trip for a minute and talk about Sarah Palin.

I'm shocked and oddly excited about McCain's choice, even though I'm not particularly a fan of Sarah Palin, nor do I think it was a smart decision on McCain's part. Maybe it's just because somebody I've actually met is running for the second-highest office in the land. It may also be a little bit of Alaska pride. Alaska often seems to feel, with some justice, like the neglected youngest child in the family (and it's spoiled like one too). Having the governor as a major-party veep candidate is sure to electrify the state, especially at a time when Alaska's national reputation has been sullied by scandals, indictments and the "Bridge to Nowhere" brouhaha.

There's no question that Sarah Palin is a gifted politician. She obliterated a sitting governor in the Republican primary and saved a corrupt and arrogant state party from itself. She promised cleaner government, and she has by and large delivered on that promise. (There is currently a scandal afoot re: whether her administration pressured a police commissioner to fire a trooper who was involved in a nasty custody battle with the Governor's sister, but I suspect there's more smoke than fire there. She's too smart to do something so transparently stupid... probably the work of an overzealous "Palin-bot," as they are called in Alaska.) And, as the media never fail to point out, she is hot. I never would have expected that the sentence "Don't look at the Governor's legs" would pass through my brain, but it happened.

That's about as much as I can say in her favor. My biggest beef with her... well, my biggest non-ideological beef with her... is that she also came in promising a government that would listen to the public, but her administration has been just as opaque and imperious as the one it replaced, albeit in a different way. She's mercurial, often needlessly confrontational, and attention-hungry, and it's not at all clear who she listens to or why. Granted, it's impossible for me not to evaluate Alaska politicans through the lens of how they treat my former employer and its clients, and she disappointed me on that front.

Taking off my erstwhile-Alaskan hat and putting on my armchair pundit hat, Palin's selection strikes me as a desperate choice by McCain. Faced with an opponent who is both the potential first black President and a reincarnation of JFK, it looks like he decided that a ticket of two old white men wouldn't cut it. Sarah Palin brings youth, diversity, and flash to the ticket. But with her experience limited to less than two years as governor of a small and idiosyncratic state, along with a couple terms as mayor of a small town, it's hard to imagine that voters will want her to be a heartbeat away from the launch codes. I also suspect that those Republicans who hoped for a "real conservative" to balance McCain will be disappointed when they look at her record in Alaska. Just before I left, she championed an expensive government handout-- a $1,200 "energy rebate" for every man, woman, and child in Alaska, which will be added onto a Permanent Fund Dividend that is already likely to top two grand. (Note: I am not opposed to energy assistance per se, I just think the government can do better things with that money than shelling it out to people in my income bracket and richer. I won't be getting the rebate or a PFD myself.) I also suspect that Biden will clean her clock in October's vice presidential debate.

Despite that electrifying-the-state business I mentioned earlier, the reaction in Alaska has not been uniformly positive. The outgoing Senate President -- a woman, by the way, and a Republican, who represents the Governor's home town -- said she thought it was a joke when she heard the news, and asked, "Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?" The Speaker of the House -- also an R, but a man from Valdez -- helpfully observed, when asked about the Governor's qualifications to be veep, that "she's old enough. She's a U.S. citizen."

Perhaps what is most disappointing to me is that there is another Republican woman from Alaska who would have been a great choice. Everything I know of her, including many interactions with her in person, have convinced me that she's smart, principled, and sincere. (Obligatory disclaimer: she's been great to my former employer.) She's Lisa Murkowski, Alaska's junior Senator. But McCain didn't go that way, so we're going to see how Sarah does.

with obama in canada

Jasper, Alberta / Mile 1,959 – I am sitting in a bar in Jasper town, slightly delirious from fatigue after a grueling 30-hour, 1,200-mile push from Whitehorse. Miraculously, your three weary travelers are still friends after so much quality time in my little Honda Accord; I believe the fact that no eyes have been gouged out is a testament to the character of everyone involved. (Don't worry, Mom, I didn't do all the driving myself-- Samantha and I took turns, and Elise would have helped too except for the fact that a theft in Zambia robbed her of her license.) We were treated to a menagerie of critters that included fox, lynx, elk, deer, a porcupine, and several herds of buffalo, some of which wandered onto the highway. Along the way I discovered many new techniques for remaining alert during a monotonous nighttime drive. One of the best tips I can offer is to put your iPod in random mode, because nothing will keep your brain alert than not knowing if you're going to hear Vivaldi or Modest Mouse next. I also conjugated Spanish verbs, recalled the handful of poems I have memorized, and reconstructed my daily class schedule for every year from sixth grade until senior year at Williams. Your results may vary.

Over the last two days, we drove the Alcan all the way to its over-hyped origin in Dawson Creek, B.C., and then crossed into Alberta en route to the first of two magnificent national parks. We stopped for a picnic in a kitschy "forest" of random road signs from around the world, and we took a relaxing soak in the warm, stinky waters of Liard River Hot Springs. Among the many roadside attractions we passed, only the hot springs, in my humble opinion, is worth its salt. (Calcium sulfide, to be precise.)

During many of those blank miles, Barack Obama was on my mind-- and not for the reason that you'd think, as the news coverage of the Democratic convention up here is basically nil. Before leaving Anchorage, Samantha and I bought an audiobook of Dreams from My Father, with Obama himself doing the reading. We popped the CD in during the long and desolate stretch where the Alcan weaves back and forth between the Yukon and British Columbia, where a lone trash can merits a roadside pullout and signs for two kilometers in either direction.

Dreams from My Father, for those not familiar with the book, is Obama's memoir of his struggle for identity, written long before his political career took off. The book is a far more candid and real glimpse into the character of a presidential candidate than we can probably ever hope for again. Nobody who knows me would doubt that I'm rooting for Obama in November, but listening to Dreams has made me really, really, really want him to be President. Above all, I was struck by his ability to sympathize with, and manage the dialogue between, all of the wildly different characters in his life story--black and white, American and foreign, rich and poor. His is the very antithesis of the with-us-or-against-us attitude that has so completely squandered America's moral leadership and the world's good will toward us over the last eight years. It seems easy to dismiss Obama as a smooth-talking peddler of empty bromides about change and bringing people together. But give the man a microphone for a few hours and listen to him talk about his life, and it is not hard to imagine him calming the passions of belligerent world leaders or presiding over a vigorous debate in a Cabinet of the best and brightest. There's more to say, but it's long past time for me to go to bed... more from Banff in a couple of days.

dispatches from the Yukon (Territory?)

Whitehorse, Yukon / Mile 722 – A few thoughts from the road trip so far:

• The Team: A brief word of introduction about my driving companions. Samantha is a high school friend and a music therapist living in Massachusetts. Elise is a Williams friend who just returned from two years in Zambia with the Peace Corps. We have enjoyed teasing Elise about all of the technological progress that has taken place in the U.S. during her lengthy absence. (Actual quote from Elise: “What is youtube?”)
• Changing Seasons: While most of you are presumably still enjoying summer, fall has already arrived in the Alaskan Interior and in the Yukon. It has been a cool summer in the north, so the foliage may be turning a little earlier than normal, but it has been nice seeing a preview of fall colors… or at least a preview of yellow, because that’s the only color we really get.
• Strangest Sight: In Tok, Alaska, our route met up with the Alaska Highway (a.k.a. the Alcan), and we passed the burnt-out remnants of a Texaco station. The station was littered with old cars, charred scraps of metal, and other assorted junk. As we passed by, I noticed something even more out of place: a goat. Elise and Samantha didn’t seem to believe me, and I couldn’t really blame them for thinking that I was hallucinating, so we turned around and drove by the station again. Sure enough, there was not just one goat hanging out in the rubble, but two.
• Driving Hell: Having lived in Alaska for three summers—the season Alaskans sometimes wearily refer to as “construction”—I thought I was used to driving delays. But the hundred or so miles in both directions from the U.S.-Canadian border is in a category all its own. On the Alaskan side, we spent hours navigating slippery mud, brief stretches of pavement, and segments of alternating one-way traffic where road crews were ripping apart one side of the highway. On the Canadian side we bounded over a moonscape of frost heaves and potholes, and I pondered whether the disease or the cure is worse in road repair. On more than one occasion, Elise remarked that the roads were “just like Zambia!”
• Crossing the Border: The border is marked by a roadside stone obelisk, behind which you can see a perfectly straight band of cleared trees about 5 yards wide and stretching to the horizon. On either side of the obelisk there are interpretive displays about the Alcan and the surveying of the border. In a delicious bit of legal absurdity, the signs on the Canadian side are written in English and French, while those twenty feet away on the American side are in English only. We engaged in some obligatory border silliness of our own, including a photo with one of us in the U.S., one in Canada and one straddling the two countries. In addition to the shrubby and unfortified borderlands, an indication of the trust between the two countries—or, at least, Canada’s calmer approach to border security—is the fact that the Canadian immigration and customs station is a good 20 miles into the Yukon. We were fourth in line when we arrived at customs, but the RVs in front of us seemed to take eons, so we decided to pass the time by stuffing our faces with the produce in the cooler that we weren’t sure we would be allowed to keep. When it was finally our turn, the official gruffly asked us each of us individually if we’d ever had any DUIs in any state, ever, and then waved us along without any question about the produce.
• The Yukon: What is the Yukon? I have been trying to figure that out. I have always thought of this region of Canada as the Yukon Territory, but the T-word has been conspicuously absent from signs, newspapers, addresses, and everything else here. Now, it seems, it’s simply “Yukon.” Yet the guy at the bakery in Haines Junction—I love the fact that many of you will know exactly who I’m talking about—confirmed that Yukon is not a province and “does not have many of the powers of a province.” It’s as if the Yukon government and chamber of commerce decided at one point that the T-word sounds too undeveloped, too colonial, or too second-class. This clearly requires some more research… anyone know anything about the legal status of Yukon?

welcome

After a 2-year hiatus, I'm trying the blogging thing again. One confession up front: I don't know if my Cambridge life is really going to be interesting enough to merit a blog. I'm imagining future posts going something like this: "Went to class. Read in the library. Had a cream tea." So in addition to the usual travel-writing fare, you may also get to read my bloviations about politics, poverty, and other things that I care about. You've been warned.

For the next couple weeks, however, I am doing something pretty interesting (and international, since it involves Canada). I'm driving from Anchorage, my home for the last two years, to Danvers, Mass., my home for the first eighteen. Joining me on this 4,500-mile adventure will be two good friends who don't know each other yet, and some of the expected highlights of our trip include the Alaska Highway, Banff, the Badlands, and Chicago.

So stay tuned for stories and musings from the road, and later from England and wherever else I manage to visit on the other side of the Atlantic. I'm really grateful for everyone who read my blog the first time, and I hope this one will be worth your while.