Car mishaps fail to deter students from spreading campaign message

Brian Jaffe '06 was rescued by a Hummer, Alexander Djerassi '06 by a cop. Julia Friedlander '06 and Rob Buerki '06 fought incompetent drivers with suspended licenses, and Shlomi Sher GS struggled with a cracked windshield.

At times, it seemed as if the hardest part of campaigning in New Hampshire was the driving.

MapQuest directions and an unrelenting determination to gather votes got Djerassi, Philip Van Stockum '06, Scott Shimp '06 and Melanie Wachtell '04 stuck on a snowmobile path in their Oldsmobile Aurora. Though Van Stockum attempted to apply his knowledge of physics to get the car out of a ditch, using planks from the wall of a nearby cabin to create friction under the wheels, the group was unsuccessful until the local police chief came to help.

During the three-hour struggle, the group did manage to plant a Clark sign, though a few minutes later a local dog urinated on it.

A few miles away, Jaffe was trying to make a U-turn in a driveway when his Acura Integra got stuck in about an inch of snow. Eventually, a Hummer drove by and the driver offered to drag him out.

"I'm not a big fan of Hummers," Jaffe said. "I think they're disgusting, huge, gas-guzzling machines and completely unnecessary, but I definitely have a little more appreciation for them now because they kind of saved my butt."

"[The driver of the Hummer] was de finitely very proud to be able to pull some little Japanese sedan out of the snow," he said. "I'm sure it made his day — it probably made his week."

For Friedlander and Natasha Degen '06, the problems began even before they reached New Hampshire, when they handed the wheel of their rental van to a bossy volunteer. Near the end of their drive, a police officer pulled them over and discovered the driver's Florida license had been suspended. The group spent hours in a police station decorated, Friedlander said, like "Santa's workshop," until a cop drove the offender to an ATM to withdraw money to cover her bail.

Meanwhile, Sher was traveling up the coast with a group of University freshmen when his white Corolla began to make earsplitting screeches every time he turned the steering wheel.

After inspecting the car on a highway shoulder, the students determined they were simply driving a "Dean car," alluding to the former governor's infamous speech following the Iowa caucuses.

Yet neither dodgy drivers nor faulty cars could dampen the volunteers' determination to campaign. Even while talking to a cop who had pulled him over for traveling 61 in a 35 mile-per-hour zone, Gary Shu GS tried to persuade the officer to vote Clark.