I made two big mistakes on the trip to see John Edwards. The first cost me my camera. I laid it on top of a bunch of luggage on the way to the airport in New Hampshire. Someone opened the back and it fell out and on the ground. Now the lens isn’t working anymore. I don’t know how much that’ll cost, but it means I need to rent a camera next week to go up to Intel in Portland.

Then, last night, when pulling out of the parking lot in Oakland I hit a pole. I didn’t see the damn thing when backing out. Messed up the right front of my car. I’m sure that’s gonna cost me $1,500. Sigh.

It sure reminded me that even on a good week I can really screw things up — and fast.

I just uploaded to Flickr my photos of the past three days. I didn’t have that great a camera for taking still shots, but got some nice moments.

I found this comment over on the Connecticut Blue blog pretty insightful: “To me, a blogger is less a reporter than a voter with a lot of friends. A candidate doesn’t try to charm or convince a reporter like they do a voter.”

He links to Steve Garfield, who has some good insights. By the way, I don’t think any journalists got more than 10 minutes with the candidate. That schedule is decided by the campaign. We visited four states in three days. It isn’t possible to give anyone more time than that. More lengthy sessions will come over the course of the next year, though. I agree that if we want real depth and understanding of someone’s view on an issue we need more time than that and you need to be able to ask more than one question. I recorded that session, by the way, and will be one of the videos I get up.

Steve videoed me too while we were waiting for Edwards to show up in New Hampshire.