© All Rights Reserved

Cultural Learnings of America: The Democratic Party Caucus.

This choosing a candidate business turns out to be event more complicated than I expected. Washington State's Democrats choose their delegates by 'caucus': a party-organised system of getting people together to argue about the candidates then go and stand around in groups with their like-minded supporters. A little bit like picking teams in football at school and a perfect chance to add that all-important element of peer pressure to the democratic process.

There's also a State-run election (Primary) later in the year, but the Democrats in Washington seem to ignore that. I'm sure there are good reasons for this.

In a classic example of the piss-up/brewery scenario, the caucus for our part of the city was arranged so that the entire neighbourhood had to congregate in one small room. I've never seen people literally queue all the way round a city block before. I have to admire their commitment.

It eventually became apparent that you can't fit a whole neighbourhood in a small room, so different districts were painstakingly coaxed across to the adjacent park. Apparently there were no grown ups involved in the process, so this took some time, with no one having any clear idea of what was supposed to happen next.

After an hour of hanging around, a nice man with a sign decided to take matters into his own hands and learn how to conduct the process himself. Finally I'd get to see some caucusing.

Well-meaning people from the Hillary and Bernie camps volunteered to make finely nuanced cases about issues nobody else understood, or ranted generally about issues that they didn't appear to understand (but felt very strongly about).

Still, some woman got to make reference to Benghazi, once someone had reminded her what it was called.

At the end of all this, I was told there's no apparent connection between how many people turn up in each district and how many delegates they end up representing, so just across town half-empty rooms of people got to play a much bigger role in deciding between the forces of idealism and pragmatism (or, to my eyes, realism).

American democracy is stranger than I'd realised.

© All Rights Reserved

...but it doesn't get any cooler.

After a day of complaints about the heat from both sides of the Atlantic, I thought I'd a quick time lapse video.

Best viewed on the 4K monitor none of us have, yet.

© All Rights Reserved

The annual Dead Baby Downhill - a semi-legal street ride down to Georgetown - took place this evening. A ramp had been set up and a group of riders were dodging through the crowds to show what they can do.

© All Rights Reserved

The advantage of cycling up a mountain is that you then get to ride down again.

It was probably the longest singletrack descent I've ever done - twisting through more meadows and through the trees.

As if your eyes trying to adjust as you raced from light to shade and back again wasn't enough, the lead rider's back wheel would kick up a plume of dust. It danced beautifully in the light but did mean you couldn't see the rooty and rocky step-downs.

Which mean I rode them much more confidently than I might have done, if I could see them. Not with quite with Josh's finesse, mind.

© All Rights Reserved