Delegate reflections

Some things that surprised me:

-Hunger -- We were fed breakfast every day, but you had to really work the reception scene to get free lunches. I sometimes missed dinner since it's so hard to get on or off the convention floor after 6pm. I ate very few vegetables.

-Sobriety -- There were drinks to be had, but I was exhausted and dehydrated by the end of every day and had to be up for a 7AM delegate breakfast every morning. I really just wanted water. I'm old.

-It's good to be a gangsta -- Delegates are accorded a good deal of deference throughout the convention week, and we do lots of media interviews. Many are representing pretty sparsely populated areas and get a lot of press from their home town papers and tv stations. We get our own buses, we get lots of cool swag, members of Congress treat us as colleagues, etc. I'll miss that.

-Lots of foreign press -- I did interviews with French and Italian tv reporters as well as print journalists from Spain, China, and India. I'm guessing not too many American reporters are assigned to cover European party conventions.