On the Air & On the Ground in Iowa (Part 1)

Observations in the lead-up to the Iowa Caucuses

I landed at the St. Louis Lambert International Airport (STL) just after 9:00pm Central last night. Originally, I planned to fly into Eastern Iowa Airport (CID) in Cedar Rapids on Saturday morning, but I change my flight to Friday evening on a whim.

My friend A.J. Spiker, the former Chairman of the Iowa Republican Party and co-chair of the Ron Paul for President 2012 campaign in Iowa suggested I come in a day earlier — the forecast was looking grim.

There was another blast of winter weather just days after 6 to 10 inches of snow was dumped across the Hawkeye State. As of this writing, more than a foot of snow has fallen since last night in Oskaloosa, where I’m holed up in a hotel.

What should’ve been a 3-hour drive from the airport to a hotel where I could rest for a little while before getting back on the road turned into a 4-hour trek to a motel parking lot followed by another hour drive to Bloomfield, Iowa, where I found a room in an open hotel and slept for 3 hours.

“Well, you’ll have a caucus story to write about for sure,” Spiker texted me.

And I do. And this is it — at least the first dispatch from Iowa.

I woke up just after 6 this morning to prepare for a radio interview with SuperTalk 99.7 WWTN’s Dan Mandis, which you can listen to here.

As you can tell, Dan wanted on-the-ground insight into the upcoming Iowa Caucuses.

After that interview, Spiker texted me, “Hit the road, Jack.”

The plan was to get to Des Moines International Airport, return the rental car, and hitch a ride with A.J. up to Ames for the weekend.

Not so fast.

This was my view on the drive from Bloomfield up toward Des Moines — or as far as I could get, which is Oskaloosa, a little more than an hour from the Des Moines airport during good weather. But absolutely unreachable today.

As I was pulling into the hotel, the GMC Terrain, which hadn’t failed me to this point, stopped just short of the parking lot. The front tires began to spin as I lodged myself into 6 inches of snow which had accumulated on the road into the hotel.

Thankfully, in true Iowa style, the hotel maintenance guy helped dig the car out of the snow, and I parked.

This is where I’ll be until at least tomorrow morning.