Thoughts on an Iowa highway

As I was fighting my way through the rain from Des Moines to beautiful Cedar Rapids, I found myself thinking about the presidential candidates.

Just how do they do it?

I don't mean the daily speeches and interviews. That is what they are trained for and they can do those in their sleep. (Some of the time it looks that way, too.)

No, my question: how do they manage to get comfortable when night after night they are packing and moving from hotel to hotel?

This morning, I finished up some work for the website, had a good breakfast and started packing for the two hour drive to Cedar Rapids. I thought I had done a good job putting dirty stuff in one bag and clean (and semiclean) stuff in the other.

I moved them to the care and came back to make a last-second check of the room. All I had missed was two shirts on hangars, a T-shirt and two pair of shorts I had left on top of the TV.

When you go to seven cities in five days and spend five nights in different hotels, you can start to go goofy. Try as they might, hotel beds aren't as nice as your own. As amenable as most front desk people are, you still end up looking for something that isn't where you thought it was. You almost have to call down to the desk with a question about the TV or how to hook up to the internet. No two shower handles operate the same way. Want to sit and take a hot bath? Not in the bathrooms on my budget?

Then there is the matter of following directions (kudos here for Mapquest. With one small exception, the directions around this state this week have been superb.), dodging in and out of traffic on Iowa's various highways. (One really odd thing that doesn't happen in Minnesota. The state highways will lower the speed limit from 70 to 65 for brief stretches for no apparent reason except the road might dip at one point. Generally speaking, us out of staters slow down. Guys in Iowa plates just keep on trucking.)

All in all, this traveling thinh is one tiring gig. And I am only doing this for five days, not the two years that most of the remaining campaigners have been doing.

Granted, Hillary, Barack and John have people who take care of things like luggage and the hotel bill. Still, you need clean clothes every day when you move from town to town. I have been watching Mrs. Clinton closely and I swear the woman never wears the same suit two days in a row ... or even in the same week. How in the hell does she travel with all those clothes to say nothing of the other stuff women bring with them on the road? The fashion police are everywhere these days and I suspect there are people assigned to check on this very issue.

In that one area, us men get off easier than women. You can wear the same shirt and pants two days in a row. This is particularlt true when you are driving from one town where nobody knows your name to another.

I also found myself wondering what these guys do for fun at night. When my duty is over at the arena or the ballpark, I wil head towards my room but usually stop at a bistro/slaoon on the way or, if I am lucky, at the hotel bar. (Comfort Inns, by the way, are very nice. They would be even nicer if they had a small bar in the lobby instead of a coffee machine.) Like John Steinbeck used to do in "Travels with Charley", I find myself thinking about where I had just been and what I liked or disliked about the arena/stadium. But what do Hilary, Barack and John do when they report to their hotel room? Check the next speech? Find out who the mayor is of the towns they are visiting the next day? Instead of watching ESPN, do they watch CNN or Fox instead? And what do they do when the local newspaper doesn't carry the comic strip you are used to reading every day at home? Do they go on line (as I did) to see what they missed?

These are the thoughts that rumble through a fellow's head as he drives by himself on an Iowa highway.

While I have been gone this week, new carpet and light fixtures were installed in the basement of our house. Will I even recognize the place? At least I can remember how to get there. I wonder if any of the current presidential candidates could tell you the nearest side street to their house.

One more night. One more ballpark. I'm anxious to see my wife, the dog, the carpet and light fixtures and even the cat who spends most of his time asleep but wakes up occasionally to barf on the floor. I'm ready to return to my favorite pub to have a drink with people I know.

Home, sweet home never sounded so good.