A lot can happen in a month...

And yet here I am, just updating you now. Well, here's the monthly update, because I'm tired of apologizing to people who've found my blog for the first time in such a state of disrepair.

Two days after my last post, I went to a Direct Action Medic training in DC (mostly to see who else was there, and it was organized by a pal), and then Elly and I decided to embark on an 80-mile bike ride to our friend Ginny's farm in Culpeper, VA. Yep, that's what I said, EIGHTY MILES. The first day we took off around 3pm, and were foolish enough to think that we'd make the whole trek during the day. It rained all day, which added to the insanity of it all. Most of the trip involved hugging the 10 inches of gutter on the side of some pretty hairy highways with Virginia drivers wondering what we were doing there. Crossing offramps on a bicycle is not for the faint of heart.

We made it to one of the town-landmarks as night fell, and decided to call it a night. Sloshily stumbling off my bike at the firs hotel we saw, the Days Inn Manassas had some bad news for us: they were booked up. We'd have to cling yet again to that scrap of concrete highway planners dare to call "shoulder" for another two miles up the road in the dark. When we arrived we decided that order-in Thai food and sleeping until 9am would be appropriate remedies for our ailments. I thought I'd never again be able to feel various parts of my body, including the left section of my right palm.

It was honestly about 10am the next morning by the time we hit the road, and slogged through to Culpeper. It wasn't raining so the ride was quite pleasant, after we got over the part where our quads were screaming. Er, and the part where the sun was pounding us into the concrete. I had to wring out the padding portion of my helmet, twice. Eww!

The town of Culpeper, after you bike past all the big-box stores on the outskirts, is kinda cute. Elly and I decided that it was time for an iced beverage of sorts. After crawling up to the first cafe and watching the proprietor lock the door in front of us, we got a hot tip on a good air-conditioned cafe. We sat for a bit, caught up on calls, and set out for the last 7-mile leg -- described to us in an email as "very hilly". Indeed it was, even my San Franciscan sensibilities were stopped short by the last mountainous hill, the top of which held the turnoff to Ginny's farm's 1/2 mile driveway. We were there! It was worth every aching, numbing, almost-breaking-up-or-turning-around moment. We were greeted by Ginny and a hoarde of smiling Georgetown folks, cooking lovely meals and telling us to shower/sit/make ourselves comfortable. Which we did. We also went swimming and jumping off rocks at a lovely creek out back.

The following week I went to my first DC United game with several folks from the Worker Rights Consortium. They trounced Salt Lake City, and Elly even got into it. It was pretty astounding to see how much these dudes whomp on each other in person. There were some very foul fouls.

Labor Day weekend found this student-labor activist shamelessly slacking. Elly and I had talked a lot of trash about getting to Six Flags, and gosh darnit, we did it. First we spent a whole day on apartment home-improvement, becuase we live together in a tiiiiiny studio. We had committed to find a bigger place by September, but that was just too crazy. So instead, we put up more shelves. Which has helped considerably. The next day, off to Six Flags we went. There was a crazy water park, and we went with Elly's childhood pal Amy and her 12-year-old sister. I let them do all the really crazy rollercoasters. I went on the pseudo-Pirates of the Carribean type ride (I'm fond of water and skeletons together, what can I say? Avast!) and the wooden rollercoaster. On the water-park side, there was the humongous funnel that had a feeder slide going into it - it was so huge, they'd only let people go on 4- or 2-person inner-tubes that looked sort of ilke waffle fries. I thought my heart was going to slide out of my nose during the drop, it was truly freaky. There was a huge wave pool that Elly eventually got to enjoy, any many twisty water slides. Afterwards, our pal Molly picked us up and took us back to the apartment where we indulged in an embarrassing pop culture movie viewing.

Monday we all trucked out in Molly's car to a beach on the western shores of the Chesapeake Bay. A hot tip from a local took us to the only free beach for miles, where it was us and maybe six locals. Elly was chased ashore by jellyfish, but by the time I waded out things were less dangerous. But all the people were sifting through the sand and combing the beach intensely, with what looked to be gold-panning operations involving collanders. Eventually I went up to a woman and asked what she was searching for, and she blunty replied, "shark teeth". Shark teeth? "No, really, that's it. Shark teeth." I believed her, but I wanted to know why, and what they looked like. They were little tiny, black, and she said they were prehistoric - teeth petrified in some unknown shark-dinosaur-graveyard long ago that washes up on this shore. Later on, another nice woman who brought her son and little dog down to the shore explained a bit more. There are many of the big teeth at the community center, she said, but most of those have been picked over so what's left are the little ones. She tried to get her son interested in the search to no avail. She also had thought it was busy that day at the beach - which had topped out at 15 people. The warmth of people there was amazing, and the search for shark teeth compelling. I brought home about ten.

Part of my slackiness was due largely to the realization that Labor Day weekend may be the last non-working weekend I have until January. I may be exaggerating, but according to my calendar right now the first unscheduled weekend is Oct 8-9th (which may still be booked), and then Elly's birthday weekend (the last one in November).

I spent the next week being in shock about Hurricaner Katrina, and feeling thoroughly useless. I've heard frmo most everyone I knew down there, and all the radical organizers are organizing, and reading every grassroots account and article I can get ahold of. I have quite an archive and I inted to post it here.

Sept. 10-11th, Elly went to her Grandma's house in South Carolina, and I hung out with the crazy kids at the Living Wage Action Center, checking out a series of workshops they'll be running on campuses all this next year. The next day I took a three-hour-each-way bus trip to Philadelphia to catch up with Mazzy, since she was out with her parents for a wedding of her childhood friend. We walked around Philly and talked for five or so hours before I got back on a bus and trekked into DC, accidentally missing a conference call while trying to catch the last train home.

Last weekend was our big national leadership gathering. Both spaces that we'd requested to host it fell through at the absolute last minute (despite having been requested in mid-August), giving us the very real possibility that we had 30 leaders, a half-day training and two trainers and nowhere to put us all. Sharon had given me the heads-up that The People's Institute was up and running despite their offices and the homes of most trainers being destroyed by Hurricane Katrina -- and they needed trainings to get their feet back on the ground. So I arranged to have them run an Undoing Racism training for our leaders, which was amazing, and I'm so glad it worked out. Given the space issues, we were all scrambling like crazy but a couple of contacts I'd made came through. Whew!

Now I sit at the Rennaisance Grand Hotel in St. Louis, where the national Jobs with Justice conference will begin in seven or so hours. Which means I should probably sleep, but instead I'm up working, and catching up - which includes posting here. So here you have it.

It's going to be a very busy October, I think - I'm in Chicago next week for a Fair Trade conference, then Boston for a week (brr!) and from there to Los Angeles (yay, Cali!) and back to DC for a bit before setting off to the Lehigh Valley an hour outside of Philadelphia. Indiana for a regional conference after, perhaps Michigan, possibly back to the SOA protest in Georgia. But it looks like our Winter Conference will be in San Francisco! Let's hear it for a hometown conference. Anyhow, if you don't get a post outta me soon, that's why.

Thanks to whatever audience perseveres in the face of my sporadic posting!