Monday afternoon I finally made the decision to pack the kids in a rented car and drive us down to Philadelphia to Obama campaign any way we could. I had been hesitating for a few days but the thought that my kids were going to lose the opportunity of being part of something truly historic gave me palpitations. After I made a couple of phone calls I was told to go to "1352 Gerard Avenue", the person told me there was plenty of work to do in that ward.

Well.

The Obama campaign has been blessed with a grassroots bounty of donations and volunteers who are at the ready to donate their week's lunch budget or hop in their cars and drive across states to help get out the vote and canvass for the Senator.

This does not mean though that everything in the campaign runs smoothly. Case in point? When I was given the address to get to this precint office, the person said, "Use Google Maps and you'll find the address easily". Yet one wrong letter and one misspelled avenue later, I ended up what probably was the middle of nowhere in Hillaryland.

You see, "Gerard Avenue" is a little nook of street in the very upper middle class suburb of Elkins Park. It is an unincorporated community split between two townships and about 10 miles from Philadelphia's Center City.

"Girard Avenue" could not be farther away from Elkins Park. It is in the heart of North Philly's 14th Ward and if there is anyway to describe this area, one would have to compare it to the striking poverty and decay of New York's Harlem and South Bronx back in the 1980s. Nice people, neighborhood rough.

I am part of a group of political pundits who write for Personal Democracy Forum's blog on technology, politics and the presidential race, techPresident. I'm in the throes of finishing a paper they will be publishing later this year about the current state of politics and the future of it thanks (or no thanks) to technology. I find it hilarious that I ended up in the middle of nowhere thanks to one of the subjects of my essay : A digital native who thought the right answer to getting people to their campaign was to know which online mapping software instead of knowing the class, race and geographic nuance that an "E" instead of an "I" brought to my journey to the city of brotherly love.

We got off exit 6 on the New Jersey Turnpike and traveled west on Pennsylvania's own. Before getting lost in Elkins Park, we drove past farms and exurban areas until we hit the strip mall and suburban mayhem of Roosevelt Boulevard. Most people waiting for buses where Asian, Black or Latino looking. Most people in cars in this area were not.

We stopped for directions and the gas station attendant was right out of a Simpsons episode. He heckled and chased off his premises a young white dude who was hustling from a white van what the attendant describes as "stolen car stereo equipment". This happens to him now every single day. "The guy knows the police won't come for over a half an hour and that's all he needs to sell his stolen stuff". On the counter I notice he is selling lighters that look like buckshot rifles."Do you want to buy one? They're all the rage around here", he said. I said no thanks and we settled for "whoopie cushions" the kids found on a toy stand along with toy assault rifles and toy handguns and even a toy grenade.

Off we went on our journey. We drove through Cottman and past Township line. The houses went from townhouses to cottage types to huge, sprawling million dollar mansions ensconced in well manicured naturalistic setups. Past Cedar and then Harrison, the houses became more McMansiony, more cookie cutter although these neighborhoods we were driving through looked like they'd been lived in for not decades but maybe a century.

Once we hit the dead end of Gerard Avenue I asked a lady sitting on her porch for the address I was looking for: "Never heard of it". When I asked her if she knew of an Obama headquarter, she smiled and said, "There's no such thing around here".

Now, I don't know if that was true, but I can tell you that the kids were counting Obama and Clinton signs and for every five Clintons there was one Obama. My oldest son, Evan, wistfully said at one point, "this doesn't look good."

We called headquarters again and once we were set on our way, we drove all the way down Old York Road. Again we saw the strip malls and townhouses but then something happened. It was right after we passed Roosevelt Boulevard that things changed dramatically.

My son Evan took that picture because he noticed the sign everywhere. "What's a "cash daddy" mom?" I had to explain that people who can't make ends meet sometimes have to sell or pawn their things and that I thought that might be the business model for that company. "What's pawn?" came after that and we just went through a whole discussion of the current economy and social classes.

The kids took many pictures of boarded up brownstones New Yorkers would kill for, rows and rows of them as we drove down what was now North Broad street. We drove past some nicer areas that were cared for by Temple University. Yet most of N Broad was in a state of disrepair that screamed, "it's been like this for ages".

When we finally got to our destination on the corner of N Broad and Girard Avenue, people from all over the country were there to lend a hand. There was the mother-daughter team who got up at 5am and drove down all the way from Boston. There was a whole family who vanned it from Queens. There was the dude from California, the retired teacher from Virginia. People from all races, genders and abilities were there to help get out the vote. Once my kids walked in the door, the age range of volunteers dropped to 8 and 10 years old and went all the up to 70 years old.

The buzz, the energy and the enthusiasm was absolutely overwhelming. People kept coming in an out of the office at a pace that even my sons found astounding. Volunteers grabbed leaflets by the hundreds and packets with maps and addresses and leave to knock on people's doors and urge them to vote. Some of them were literally driving voters to the polling places, particularly elder people and the disabled.

We took our fliers, our packet and our maps and along with a local volunteer we drove down to a most Latino neighborhood, in the area f N 2nd Street and Dauphin.

We parked, the kids took to their scooters and with our guide we hit every house. Then we stumbled upon some volunteers from SEIU, the service workers' union. They had already canvassed the area but had not stopped to talk to most people because they didn't speak Spanish. Helena my guide spoke some, but I'm not just a native speaker, I am from Puerto Rico and people can pick that up immediately from my accent.