That's How We Rise

Sometimes all you have to do is wish out loud to make it so.

One minute Mac and I are walking down 5th Street toward the river, when I casually mention that I wish I had a ticket for the Northam rally tonight so I could hear Obama speak mere blocks from my house.

The next moment, she's calling a friend who'd offered her an extra ticket (Mac already had plans) and, just like that, I'm in like Flint. Not to mention in Mac's debt for the foreseeable future the rest of my life.

When I got to the convention center after a six block walk, the line of attendees snaked from the entrance on Fifth Street back along Marshall Street, down Third Street two blocks and back up it again, across the north side of Marshall and continued on the south side of Marshall.

I joined it there when it was barely a quarter of the way down the two block stretch and within 10 or so minutes it began to slowly inch forward. To be clear, I had no issue with having to wait for an hour - although I was gobsmacked at the number of people who brought toddlers - to make my way into the rally, except for the trio behind me.

Standing in front of three entitled University of Richmond students and having to listen to their inane conversation is really more than should be expected of any self-respecting Democrat.

"I don't know why I didn't realize it would be this crowded," one of the guys said, setting himself up to be belittled by the female friend, who mainly wanted to discuss other girls ("She's cute, but she's not a very good dancer"), her sorority parties and why she thought they should have their graduation party in another country.

When she went to call a friend, she said, "Remember when we used to remember our friends' phone numbers?" as if she hadn't been born in 1998. Give me a break, you never knew your friends' phone numbers. Ever.

When one of the guys' power got low on his phone, she assured him he could let her know if he needed any emergency texts to go out and she'd take care of it for him. Emergency texts? In line to see the coolest President in history, what could possibly need texting so urgently?

Once I finally made it inside and escaped from their mindless prattling, I overheard a woman tell her friend that she'd peed in an alley, unsure if there'd be bathrooms in the convention center. Are you serious?

All I can say is, Democrats were not all showing their strongest suits tonight.

I'm not a tall woman, so in order to see, I was constantly standing on tip toe or craning my neck to see over and around someone in front of me, but at least I could see the podium most of the time.

After Northam signs were passed out, the Reverend Mike Jones entreated us to hold hands with the person next to us and the woman beside me grabbed mine for the prayer.

After the pledge, a choir sang the anthem, raising goosebumps for me with some of their harmonies, and causing fists to be raised by others. The mood was electric.

Next came Mayor Stoney, who asked, "Can you believe it was only a year ago that we had a man in the White House who knew how to be President?" A roar went up from the crowd. "And he's in the house tonight!" Louder roar.

Donald McEachin was next, mocking Lieutenant Governor candidate Jill Vogel's intellect (for the trans-vaginal ultrasound unpleasantness) and asking, "Do we want someone from Donald Trump's party to be our next governor?" Hell, no. "The eyes of the country are on Virginia this election!"

True that.

Representative Bobby Scott reminded us that last year we'd done the right thing and voted for Hillary. "I bet Michigan and Pennsylvania wish now they'd done the same thing!" If they don't, they're even bigger idiots than we realized.

Since it was my first political rally, I was new to all the cheering, noise-making and sign waving that follows every well-spoken sentence, but it didn't take long to get into it. Harder to get used to, or at least more unsettling, were the cops moving through the crowd.

The first candidate to take the stage was Lt. Governor nominee Justin Fairfax, who told us that his wife had gone to VCU's dentistry school, causing a woman near me to muse aloud, "Wonder if she's taking new patients?" Not the point, lady.

Mark Herring got lots of applause and cheers promising to be an Attorney General who'd fight for the rights of everyone regardless of skin color, sexual orientation or birthplace, with an emphasis on a woman's right to choose and accessible contraception.

The lesbians to my right cheered as loudly as I did about the latter. On my left was a Muslim couple and two Indian women stood in front of me. The crowd was noticeably diverse, young and old, with a lot of black parents and children. One guy used his crutch to signal his support of what was being said.

I have to say, it felt like a better representation of Richmond than I see in most places.

Governor McAuliffe came out to Springsteen's "Born to Run," reminding us that he'd promised the women of Virginia that he'd be a brick wall to protect our rights and had been. He even bragged about holding the record for the most vetoes by a governor of the commonwealth.

Then it was the governor-elect's turn and Northam's first question to the crowd was, "Are you ready to keep Virginia blue?" He made the point that in 18 days, it was time for Democrats to get back on the offensive and top playing defense.

His biggest cheers came when, in his distinctive Eastern Shore drawl (cain't and ideer), he said, "There is no reason a group of legislators - mostly men - should be telling women what they can do with their bodies!" Amen, Dr. Northam.

The moment he began to talk about the man he was going to introduce, screens were raised over heads and all of a sudden, cameras and tablets obliterated my view of the stage. My only satisfaction was in knowing that whatever photographs were taken would also contain hundreds of phones held high in front of the man.

Near the front, a series of small white signs with hearts drawn on them were raised in anticipation of Obama coming out. When he did, looking decidedly gray, a roar went up that surely was heard down by the river.

It was nothing short of thrilling to hear his distinctive voice and cadences as he talked about Northam being elected president of VMI's honor court. "I was kind of a goof-off in college, but not Ralph," Obama said, praising Northam's honesty and integrity. Goof-off? As if.

He hailed Northam's intellect. "You know you have to be smart to do pediatric neurology. It's not even easy to pronounce," he joked self-deprecatingly.

Saying that in a time when politics seem so nasty and divided, Northam was one of the people who was in this race for the right reasons. "Can we support a candidate who wants to bring people together?" and the crowd barely let him finish his question before screaming, "Yes we can!" and began chanting it spontaneously.

To Obama's credit, he kept trying to turn the focus back to the Democratic ticket, but the crowd just wanted to eat him up with a spoon. We're talking mass adoration. The woman in front of me began dabbing at her eyes as he spoke and after a while, tears of joy just streamed down her face listening to him.

But honestly, you have to admit it's momentous to hear a President speaking in full, coherent sentences again.

When he talked about Northam wanting to end gerrymandering, a woman yelled, "Preach!" and Northam signs were raised high in the air in support.

"I've seen the possibilities of our democratic country, including what we did over 8 years," he said before turning to the subject of mid-term elections. "And don't just vote for him, vote for the whole ticket so you can get a state house that looks like you! Y'all tend to sleep through mid-terms, but the stakes don't allow us to sleep."

Granted, he was preaching to the choir, but it was still a good reminder. Then he set his sights on millennials. "You young people, it's great that you have your hashtags and your memes, but I need you to vote!"

Being in Richmond, naturally he had to tackle the race issue and he did so by explaining that we needed to talk about history in a way that heals, not divides.

And because he's always been able to make us laugh, he invoked his own ancestry, saying that on his mother's side, he was 9 or 10 times removed from Jefferson Davis. "Think about that! I bet he's spinning in his grave!"

He went on to explain that we needed to reconcile the legacy of Virginia son Thomas Jefferson, who could be remembered as a slaveholder and also as the writer of the Declaration of Independence. And then, in a moment I will likely never forget, that segued seamlessly into the Declaration of Independence preamble in Barack Obama's distinctive style.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their creator, with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It was such an indescribably perfect moment that I didn't even try to look at him, I just closed my eyes and listened, holding my breath until he finished. I'd been standing on a cold, concrete floor for close to three hours by then and my feet were getting sore, but it was totally worth it for that magical moment.

"Progress is not always a straight line, but our democracy is at stake," he concluded. "Elections matter. Voting matters. We can't take anything for granted!"

No, we certainly can't. We apparently did last year and now we're living with a madman in the White House.

"Elect Ralph and send a message of what Virginia stands for!" he said before wishing us good night and posing onstage with the candidates while Stevie Wonder's "Signed, Sealed and Delivered" played overhead.

Walking out, I saw several women walking barefoot and carrying their high heels after hours of standing. When I ran into a friend on Second Street, she said she was headed home to ice down her sore knees.

After all-day anticipation followed by complete evening satisfaction, some women might be reaching for a cigarette. Not me.

What I will do - besides vote on November 7 - is never hesitate to wish out loud again. Who knew it worked?

Make Mine a Nebbiolo

For the third time in four years, I spent the afternoon pouring for strangers.

The Virginia Wine Expo is at the Convention Center, mere blocks from my house and an easy, if breezy, walk for me.

I'd been asked to pour for Gabrielle Rausse, Italian winemaker of some of my very favorite Virginia wines.

True, I'd have to smile at drunk people all day, but I also got to surprise people ("Wait, why isn't this Pinot Noir red?"), listen to their defiance ("How can you have a Malbec? There's no Malbecs in Virginia!") take compliments from people ("Whoa, look those amazing tights!") and confound them ("What do you mean there's no tasting room or website? How off the grid is that?").

How could an eccentric like me not be impressed with a winemaker not playing by everyone else's rules?

As you might expect, the first few hours are far saner than later in the day when people have their buzz on.

You can tell because after a while, some people just walk up and stick out their glass and say, "Gimme your fill-in-the-blank" instead of doing a full tasting.

You can also tell by the glazed eyes, but I don't want to judge. Much anyway.

And we're not even going to talk about the ones who wear their wine glass on a string around their necks.

But all that is mere comic dressing for the pleasure of pouring well-made wines while the winemaker stands next to me doing the same, but with an Italian accent.

And he was so good at working the crowd.

When a woman asked how he made such great wines, he responded, "I tried making bad wines and this was the result."

At one point he asked me about our mutual friend, the one who'd asked me to be a pourer today.

"How did you meet?" Gabriele asked me and I explained our Virginia wine connection.

"Well, you must be practically perfect because that's the only people he makes friends with," he told me.

Of course, that just solidified that Gabriele must be the same since they're friends, too.

And while I'm anything but, I am more than happy to be standing for six hours on a concrete floor conveying my enthusiasm for fabulous wines made by a practically perfect Italian with grapes grown in Virginia.

Call it an eccentric's idea of a good time.

The First Rule of Eye Contact

Who better to go to my first Festival of India with than a handsome Indian and his non-Indian girlfriend? It's funny because my friend's interest in Indian food is dwarfed by hers, but then she also thinks she was an Indian in a former life and he's about as Westernized as they come.

More than one person made the analogy that walking the aisles of the festival was like walking the streets of Bombay: slow, circuitous and frustrating.

On the plus side, the people watching was excellent and the parade of Indian dress a real treat (and sometimes hilarious, like the guy in traditional Indian garb but with spiked hair and pink Crocs).

So what did my native host choose for us to eat? Chicken curry with rice and naan, pav bhaji (smooshed mixed veggies with chopped onion), vada pav (potato patty on a roll), chaat papdi (chickpeas, potatoes, tamarind sauce, cilantro chutney, onions and small pieces of something pita-like), samosa chaat, medhu vada (rice dough donut with coconut chutney and a veggie soup which they were out of) and to drink, mango lassi. Of them all, the chaat papdi was probably my favorite.

Desserts (he and I love our sweets) included coconut burfi, rasgolla, ras malai, kheer and ladoo, all of which seemed to have sweetened condensed milk as an ingredient (or rosewater). The coconut burfi was my favorite, but if you knew me, that wouldn't surprise you.

I noticed as we sat there that every time I made eye contact with a male Indian, old or young, he gave me a big smile, so I asked my friend what was up. "It's because you're white," he explained, "and you're making eye contact." I blame my extroversion, but I was unprepared for so many grinning men.

I left the convention center stuffed and headed to Westover Hills for All the Saints Theater Company's Benefit Spaghetti Dinner and show. Obviously I'd already eaten (or, more accurately, overeaten), so I arrived just in time for the entertainment, always eclectic at these events.

The extravaganzas used to be held at Gallery 5, but now the group has constructed a backyard theater in the combined space behind two houses and it's charming.

The colorful curtains are strung between two trees and the front piece for the stage is brightly painted images and patterns. The keyboard is surrounded by a fake cardboard shell mimicking a grand piano. It's all over the top and wonderful.

The show began with musicians playing and a trio of dancers who pulled people from the audience to dance with them onstage as the singer sung. Next, the Amazing Shelly Skye contorted her body into unimaginable positions and a young boy shouted, "She does too much yoga!" There was a comedic sketch about a torch singer desperately trying to sing despite multiple mishaps.

Punk Sinatra did a paper mache storytelling and All the Saints told the haunting tale of "The Judge" accompanied by their own trio. Bread and Puppet Theater out of Vermont did a cabaret, there was flag dancing and accordion playing and the audience enjoyed all kinds of puppets under the night sky.

Joke of the night: Why did the hippie drown? He was too far out. Har-har.

Capping off the night was the final installment of Ipanmea's 12th anniversary celebration and upon arriving, one of the servers welcomed me back and warned that, "Last night was classy, but tonight will be trashy."

What that meant was that tonight DJ Dodie would attract a much larger and younger audience and it would end up being a serious dance party.

Which worked out just fine, because the farmer, his date and two friends came in and suggested we all move to the patio while we still could. It was the right decision for many reasons, not the least of which was a divine breeze that kicked up and blew skirts and hair.

A friend was there on an online date and when he went to get drinks, she asked me what I thought of him. "You ought to try the online dating thing, " she enthused. "It really is a great way to meet guys you'd never meet otherwise."

Easy for her to say; she was enjoying a first date with a nerdy-looking reader with whom she acknowledged chemistry. But I knew her point was that it's been 19 months and I'm overdue.

One of the farmer's friends turned out to be just the sort of person who holds my interest in conversation; born in RVA, lived in Ireland from college on and recently moved to Providence to teach at Brown. Now let's see, what can we talk about?

Over the course of a couple hours, we covered the changes in the Richmond scene since he was here last, the difficulty in dating a non-reader and, naturally, all things musical.

It turned out that we were both fans of Swedish pop and Lykke Li makes us both giddy. Even better, he didn't know of the Shout Out Louds, so I got to recommend a band, always a source of satisfaction from one music fan to another.

He was also as big a post-rock fan as I am and that yielded some great Explosions in the Sky and Sigur Ros show comparisons. Now that's the kind of random conversational partner I'm talking about.

Meanwhile, the dance party inside was reaching fever pitch and trying to make it through to go to the bathrooms was at best challenging and at worst touchy-feely.

I did enjoy hearing remixes of classic 70s dance music, but the patio was reaching critical mass, so I decided to say my good nights and left, heading up bustling Grace Street, my mind going in multiple directions.

(Online dating? Really? Is that where this is going?)

La, la, la. Indian food and cabarets. That's what I'm thinking about.

Pouring for the Drunk at the VA Wine Expo

Because volunteering once already this weekend wasn't enough, I did it again today only for a radically different event than the Handmade Bike Show. Today I poured at the Virginia Wine Expo, also at the Convention Center, but full of inebriated people instead of awed bike geeks.

It's fascinating pouring wine for people at an event like this (I did it for Cardinal Point Winery at least year's event, too) because the attendees run the gamut form wine snobs to novices and everything in between. And the later in the afternoon it gets, the less people care about what they're drinking or learning. The increasingly frequent sound of a wine glass crashing on the concrete floor brings up cheers every time it happens.

Three different people came up and asked if they could sample the wine to erase the taste of burnt rice in their mouth (apparently a nearby food table had overcooked the rice and palates everywhere were suffering for it). One girl walked up, put her hand on her hip and asked me, "What have you got with at least 2% sugar?" Clearly she knew her palate and wanted no part of tasting beyond that.

One guy came up to the table, called a friend and told him where he was. After liberal use of colorful language, he hung up and apologized. "Sorry, but I love dropping the f-bomb. And I'm inebriated, so I really like dropping the f-bomb." He then introduced himself to me and the other pourers and even an innocent bystander.

My favorite was the group of five who definitely had a buzz on and were greatly enjoying tasting and shooting the breeze with each other. I had to keep reminding them what we were doing and bringing them back to the moment. Finally, one woman looked at her friends and, clearly perplexed, asked them,"How ARE we getting back to Powhatan anyway?

Ma'am, I don't even want to think about that.

RVA: Center of the Bike World This Weekend

I am a lucky girl.

I could have just paid to see the North American Handmade Bicycle Show and been awed by the state of the art of bicycle making in 2010.

Instead, I volunteered and was assigned to be a photographer's assistant, allowing me to not only see the show for free, but also spend hours behind the scenes chatting up various fascinating bike- makers from all over the world.

Like everyone else, I was excited that the event was going to be held in RVA this year.

When I saw the lists of media attending to cover the show, they ranged from the mundane and mainstream, USA Today and the RTD, to Canadian Cycling Magazine, Bike Talk Radio and Fixed Gear Gallery with everything from NPR to Cyclelicious in between.

I was lucky enough to be assisting Brad, the photography half of the team that publishes Urban Velo magazine; I couldn't have chosen a more pleasurable assignment.

We spent the afternoon talking bike polo (he plays for Pittsburgh's team, so we both know a couple of the guys on RVA's team), the perks of working in publishing and, naturally, bikes.

Sometimes it was my job to return bikes to the show, but mostly it was my responsibility to entertain bike- makers when they brought their bikes back to be photographed.

It was amazing.

I saw a stylish tandem made by Calfee Design on which the shop had been given carte blanche on the paint job by the customer.

Apparently that doesn't happen much and the owner acknowledged going a little crazy with the custom painting and it was just beautiful.

The bamboo bike from Bamboosero out of Santa Cruz was painted by an artist in New Zealand using henna ink.

The frame was so smooth, artistic and beautiful as to be sculptural.

They use artists from places like Ghana, Uganda, the Philippines and New Zealand to create their one-of-a-kind bikes.

The owner of Dominguez Cycles, from St. Paul, told me it had been an easy winter there; they only had about three feet of snow piled up at home at the moment. I guess everything's relative to what you're used to.

He'd brought an unusually colored, but short, red bike that he'd built for his wife.

The color was an exquisite shade of lipstick red, not bright or deep. Of course, she had a helmet to match.

The owner of Kirk Frameworks Co. out of Montana told me he began designing and building skateboards as a teen and segued into bike-making.

I asked what it was like living in a state like Montana (total population 900,000 people) and he bragged that his city had 30,000, so it was one of the larger ones, which meant it had a symphony, a ballet and other cultural amenities. There'd have to be something, wouldn't there?

The delightful owner of Shamrock Cycles was from Indianapolis and I asked him where the name came from.

He said, "I considered Pasta Cycles or Sausage Cycles, but they didn't have the right ring to them." Smart ass.

Actually, it was about his name, so we bonded over shared heritage. He was an O'Donnell, as is my mother, and we agreed that there's something lucky about meeting another O'Donnell.

He also said that Indianapolis is more of a road bike town than a mountain bike town, so that you know.

Probably my favorite conversation was with Ton of Vittorio Fietsen in Holland.

I couldn't resist talking to him about the surprising pictures and videos I've seen of girls riding their bikes in Holland with cute high-heeled shoes and fashionable clothes on and wanted to know if it really was that common,

Laughing, he said it was, but qualified it with, "But they're not the best biking shoes!"

He also said that the average person there has three bikes.

I asked what he thought of Richmond and with his succinct European sensibility, he summed it up. "Garish hotels and not enough bikers."

Amen.

As if all the backstage conversation didn't make my day, strolling the show reminded me what being a female at a male-dominated event can do for the ego.

In the middle of a bike discussion, one of the guys from Mosaic Cycles in Boulder looked down at my legs and said, "Awesome tights!"

Strolling another aisle, a guy informed me that,"That color is magnificent on you!" referring to the day-glow yellow volunteer t-shirt I had on; maybe it was the contrast with the black I was wearing.

I got more flirtatious smiles and greetings from out-of-town bike people than I should have, but I figure they were just looking for someone to show them the town once the show ends for the day at 6.

Which I would be very good at doing and I could practically guarantee that they'd leave with a great impression of what our fair city has to offer beyond the obvious, but I'm already booked.

With any luck, they'll discover all RVA has to offer on their own.