January 18, 2009 06:55 PM UTC

The Pilgrimage

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• by: dslater

(What an exciting trip – looking forward to updates.  Please disregard idiot Sankore’s posting on thread. – promoted by Laughing Boy)

(Cross-Posted to DemNotes at www.DemNotes.com)

I’m in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania this morning. Yep, Harrisburg. Yesterday, we spent the entire day hopping from airport to airport to end up here – just a couple of hours north of our final destination: Washington DC.

It is a little reminescent of my first trip to Washington DC, way back in January 1993. Back then, a few of us Young Democrats from my school packed into a compact car and made the 20-hour drive from Norman, Oklahoma to watch the President we helped elect become, well, President. It was a breath-taking and exciting experience. But it was nothing like this time.

This time, I’m feeling a lot more emotional.

I wasn’t this emotional on election night – mind you, I was excited, happy, cheerful, just like on any other successful election night. But the sense of history this week seems much more palpable; it seems even more palpable than when we stood there in the Pepsi Center and nominated Barack Obama with tears streaming down so many faces.

I think, perhaps, this is more emotional because of the mass travel – from all colors, from all stripes of society – to Washington. Yes, it truly seems like a “pilgrimage”.

Heck, my presence in Harrisburg this morning is emblematic of that mass movement. Airline tickets here were about a third the cost of tickets to any of the three DC-area airports. It was a whole lot cheaper to fly here and rent a car to drive to DC than to fly directly there.

And we are not alone. On the final leg of our flight, from Chicago (how appropriate!) to Harrisburg, our flight was full – not a seat to be found – and it was full of folks whose final destination was not Pennsylvania nearly as much as it was Pennsylvania Avenue.

So, I’m getting emotional. Reading the special section of the Rocky on the plane yesterday – reading about those who are also making this trip, whether as a journey of personal fulfillment, or because they’re in the parade – I became a little teary-eyed. This is why we get involved in politics. Indeed, this is why we are Americans: the peaceful transition of power; the orderly transition from the status quo to an era of Hope. This historic nature of this is not lost on anybody around here.

Thanks to our wonderful Fremont County Vice Chair, Alain Chamot, we are staying with his incredibly hospitable and generous mother in her home in Northwest D.C. I’m not sure whether we will have Internet access, but if we do, I’ll try to write about what we do and see for the next few days. Tomorrow night, we attend the Colorado Ball here in D.C. Tuesday, of course, is the Inauguration and the Western Inaugural Ball. Finally, Wednesday will be filled with official meetings, both of the Association of State Democratic Chairs (in the morning, where we will elect a new President of the organization) as well as of the Democratic National Committee (where we will formally elect Virginia Governor Tim Kaine as our Chair).

But you don’t have to be in Washington to celebrate this history. Celebrations are going on in nearly every community in Colorado. Go to DemNotes.com and use the comments section for this post to let everybody know what you’re doing and what this week means to you!