I saw the flyer on a telephone pole the week after the election:
RuntheIronmanAgainstBush.com.
I was on my way to Symphony Hall to hear Robert Thurman make Buddhist jokes about anger with a friend I'd met canvassing in Reno.
And although I've never enjoyed running a mile in my life, I thought: "Ironman, cool" and filed it away. In a year in which I had a single priority, to elect a new president, I made it to November 2 only by putting everything else aside, including my own reservations about talking to strangers and standing in traffic waving signs and ringing doorbells in mobile home parks.
I did so for my own selfish reasons: on November 3rd, I wanted to be able to go back to enjoying my life, no longer reading four newspapers and watching "Charlie Rose" at midnight and worrying about the Supreme Court and who we were torturing. I wanted to have no regrets. But most of all, I wanted to not be where we are today, having to figure out how to dig our way out of this. Planning for 2008, when I'm not sure how we're going to get through 2005.
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