The new day job begins with a half-hour cycle down palm-lined Sunrise Boulevard here in Plantation, Florida, writes Anthony Galvin.
The broad sidewalk which doubles as a bike path is shaded by large banyan and ficus trees, the latter a house-plant back in Ireland. Pedestrians are thin on the ground, but I keep a sharp eye out for the local fauna - small lizards that scurry like mice under my wheels, an occasional bevy of Muscovy ducks, and one morning a stunning white egret which repeatedly took off and touched down in front of me. But no signs yet, thankfully, of the alligators and water moccasins which inhabit the placid canals that lie like strips of glass and mirror the huge blue skies.
Halfway to the job, the tropical verdancy gives way to strip malls filled with supermarkets, sub shops, 24-hour pharmacies, and various businesses. Even the bus-stop benches have signs selling something: "DIVORCE WITHOUT WAR", "YOUR HOME SOLD IN 30 DAYS - GUARANTEED", or, I kid you not, "SHARE A RIDE: 547-7285". You seldom see anybody waiting for the bus, however, whereas the stream of cars down the six-lane boulevard is more like a flood.
My new day job is that of volunteer co-ordinator at the Broward County Kerry-Edwards campaign headquarters.
The stream of volunteers into the office is constant too, and reflects the staggering diversity of South Florida. Elderly retirees from New York work alongside African-American high-school students and the phone-canvassers on any given evening include Americans from Jamaica, Haiti, Central and Latin America, as well as from Iran and India. The 25 office phone lines never stop ringing either, though we are no longer returning calls to Ethan, who claims to have "secret" scientific information for John Kerry only.
"The Senator", as we officially refer to Kerry, was in Florida for the first presidential debate last month, and our office was charged with rallying the troops to greet him at Fort Lauderdale Airport just nine miles east down Sunrise Boulevard. I had to close HQ that night and missed the rally, but no good turn goes unnoticed, and the next morning I was among six volunteers scheduled to shake the Senator's hand at what the Secret Service calls an OTR, or "off the record" stop, on his way back to the airport. I was too busy counting the 100 sheriff department motorcycles, lights flashing and sirens blaring, that preceded the Democratic candidate's cavalcade, and so missed seeing John and Teresa as they flashed past our select sextet, our "OTR" photo-op overruled by the Senator's advance team. So no snapshot for the family album, but it mattered not, as the buzz was altogether mighty.
Florida, of course, is where the election was stolen from Al Gore four years ago. Nobody here doubts that Republican governor Jeb Bush will do whatever he can get away with to once more deliver Florida's crucial 27 electoral votes to his older brother. However, we won't be fooled again as The Who once sang - not so easily, at least - and more than 1,000 volunteer lawyers for Kerry will be at polling places and election supervisors' offices across the state on election day.
We blow-ins to Florida and other swing states are known as Kerry Travelers, and here in Plantation we have volunteers from Georgia, New York, Texas and California. There's also Daniel from France, who, we jest, is our Lafayette for a second American Revolution, and Ruth, a brillant young card-carrying British Labour Party member. "We're the International Brigade," Ruth and I like to joke, but we both know our history too well, and value language too much, to draw any parallels with those Internationals, including my uncle Jack Fahy, who volunteered to fight Franco and Fascism in the Spanish Civil War.
Still, the 1930s are mentioned repeatedly by those older American volunteers who know their German as well as their Spanish history. They cite the loyalty oaths which those attending a Bush event must sign, or Sue Neiderer, the 55-year-old mother whose US soldier son Seth died disarming a bomb in Iraq, and who was bundled, handcuffed, into an unmarked van after she shouted a question at Laura Bush at a Republican rally in New Jersey. "Can these things truly be happening in our America?" they ask.
The new day job ends late at night, and I cycle home in either the dark heat or the tropical cloudbursts that sweep across from the Everglades, and put even Donegal rain into the halfpenny place. A possum startled me just the other night, darting in front of my bike with his pink snout and rat-like gait. I do think about the 'gators and snakes as I cross the canals at night, but the true menance is what another four years of Bush-Cheney will visit upon my America.
Meanwhile the moon hangs bright overhead as I pedal home to my host family, shining down on a wider world that will surely salute the mad celebration here in South Florida if the Senator from Massachusetts prevails.