For this week, Britt Blaser and I are spending our lives volunteering as IT Angels at Dean Campaign HQ in Burlington. We hope to make this something of a tradition. We'll be co-blogging on the experience.

It was a late Saturday night in Brooklyn. We had BBQ and plenty of beer in the name of a free Eddie Cordova, and it was a chance for me to see a bunch of heads I probably wouldn't have otherwise run into. Whisky and beef and Brooklyn-brewed beer. My ostensible home is in disarray; no bedding, hot and humid, littered with the detritus of cross-country travel. It was a stagnant night of deep chemical sleep. The point was that I was kind of wrinkled when Britt swung by to pick me up in the morning.

We were headed up to Burlington, Dean country, looking to spend the week lending technological mojo to the campaign any way they could take it. It's adventure camp for wonks, and a good chance for me to make some contacts before I jet west to start work in earnest on Music For America.

The drive was bucolic, Britt and I swapping stories about our upbringings, finding more common ground than you might expect considering the generation gap between us. The weather came and went and he told me his best war story, crash-landing a burning C-130 full of white phosphorus at an airstrip 20 miles from the Cambodian border. We talked about the lost art of conversation and girls and doing things with great velocity.

Britt drives like a pilot and a rich man in the best possible sense, taking the shoulder to send us off on an adventure through Hartford, the kind of driving that creates drama and excitement and a sense that anything's possible. Life's yours for the taking, and asking permission is for kids; this is ok because we are honorable people. Reminds me of Hunter S. Thompson's outlaw credo. He's an American spirit, and a weird little dude. I enjoyed to road trip quite a bit.

Rolling up through central Mass and into Vermont the scenery stirred up some memories, romance and youth and a clean kind of being. I had a couple girlfriends who I saw up here, a unfiltered crush and pure puppy love, the last of my solid gold watches. I put me in a wistful mood, remembering old music and things done in haste.

As we got close to Burlington, the sky opened up in one of those humbling moments, nature flexing her artistic muscle with a rich palette of sky and sun and granite and green growing things. Coming from the west coast I felt we were cresting a hill and running down to the sea, but of course it was just Burlington around the bend.

And what a place it is. A beautiful city. We checked in to the hotel, small town friendly vibes only partially masked by the Marriot management overlay. First stop was Campaign HQ, buzzing with a kind of eager newsroom mojo at 8:30pm on a Sunday night. It reminded me of my best times working on my award winning High School Newspaper, all work and no ego and fun people with principles.

We got a tour and went to dinner and then went to one of the DFA crash pads -- the many houses in Burlington taken over by DFA staff -- to catch K street with the Gov. on HBO. The show's a little too pomo for it's own good, Soderburgh even further blurring the line between political reality and entertainment news. It's a neat experiment from a structural point of view, and I can watch James Carville all day long, but it might be a little too smart and meaningless to succeed.

After that we're tired, and Monday is looming. Britt and I make our winding way back to the hotel, and I attend to some personal phone calls and the evning wound down. This week is going to be exciting.