Over in Annapolis, MD, there’s a group of people who gather every Saturday morning to protest the second Trump administration. The meet at the edge of the sprawling Annapolis Mall, a structural dividing line between the city and its suburbs. They’re part of a local Indivisible group that’s been protesting every weekend for over a year and a half.

On this particular Saturday, there were over a dozen people. When I asked Robin Faitoute and her husband, Randy Schneider, both 73, about how many they usually have, Randy grinned.

“It’s the summer,” Randy says.” We tend to get twice the numbers during the winter when people aren’t in vacation!” Usually, he says, their group runs about 30 people, though it’s gotten as large as 60.

Randy and Robin walk up and down the sidewalk, checking on the other protesters in the sweltering heat. They wear yellow vests adorned with various pins. They wave and smile at supporters, and shrug off their detractors.

“Sometimes guys roll their windows down and wave their MAGA hats, or give us the finger,” Randy says.

“And sometimes they stop, and come and join us,” says Robin.

Occasionally someone in a large truck will pass by and “roll coal.” That’s when you stomp the accelerator of a large, heavily modified diesel-powered engine to purposefully emit a large cloud of foul-smelling black soot from the exhaust manifold. It’s an recklessly expensive form of anti-environmental protest, usually carried out by conservatives who drive large, lifted pick-up trucks with oversized mud tires. Maryland has laws prohibiting “rolling coal.” So does the federal government.

“The police know we’re here,” Robin says. “In general, they keep an eye out. They’ve actually pulled someone over for rolling coal.”

Comprised of mostly retired folks, nobody says they feel threatened.

People in the group say they feel like they’ve been getting more attention. Supporters honk and cheer, they say. Detractors tend to flip them a middle-finger, shout or wave a MAGA hat. There’s been a few people who’ve made finger guns, Randy and Robin say, but nobody has ever pointed an actual gun.

There’s even a regular counter-protester. A neighbor Randy and Robin know quite well. A contractor, the man has done work on the homes of people they know. He likes to drive around the protest with pro-Trump flags on his truck. Randy and Robin say they just have a fundamental disagreement about their respective politics.

The group comes out every Saturday morning for two hours. Like many other protest groups, once the reach the agreed upon time limit, they quickly gather all their signs and leave without a trace.

Randy thinks people should come out to protest groups like his. He says it’s fun to stand in the side of the road with a bunch of other like-minded people exercising their first amendment right.

“There’s comradery,” Robin adds.

As the group had began to dwindle, there was an audible increase in hecklers.

“Save America” said a guy in a truck. “MAGA, baby,” said another. “Lets go Brandon,” shouted one young woman gunning her engine through a yellow traffic light.

“They tend to yell more stuff at the end of the day,” said Kari Alperovitz-Bichell, 67. She and laughed, adding that people seem to feel emboldened when their group is much smaller.

They weren’t so vocal when there was a whole group of them standing on the corner.

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I was standing in a Buc-ee’s parking lot south of Jacksonville, FL shoving a burrito in my face. It was the first solid meal I’d had all day. My last 12 hours had been spent nervously piloting a 10ft. U-Haul half-full stuff I hadn’t sold off over the last few years.

In the 21st Century, journalism forces you to make a lot of really difficult life choices, and I had just made one I’d been avoiding for years…but we’ll circle back to that later.

Something was gnawing at the back of my mind.

This all looked familiar. Very familiar. “International Golf Drive?” I’ve heard that before. The CostCo across the street? I remembered that too. There aren’t too many Buc-ee’s with a CostCo across the street.

Then again, it’s a Buc-ee’s. If you’ve seen one, you’ve pretty much seen them all. And if you haven’t: it’s a massive gas station with over a hundred pumps, overpriced food, clean and relatively private toilets, and a hell of a lot of tchotchkes featuring their mascot, a cartoon beaver.

That damn beaver has become very prominent along US highways east of the Mississippi over the last few years. Who’d have thought that a gas station would be a must-see attraction for tourists during the 2026 World Cup?

So, as I stood against a light pole sucking down my first cigarette in hours, it suddenly dawned on me that I’d been to this exact Buc-ee’s before. I’d stood under the same light pole with a cigarette marveling at the absurdity of the place several years back.

But when had I been here? It had to be one of the first times I’d been to a Buc-ee’s. Which means it was one of the first times I’d set out on the road. And after four years of relentless traveling, it all starts to bleed together…

It had to be back in ‘22, during the midterm elections. Was it that Charlie Crist event at the union hall in Jacksonville? DNC head Jamie Harrison rolled in on a charter bus with a plan to keep the Democrat’s thin majority in the House. It was supposed to be one of those “come together” moments after a tense primary.

Crist, who’d been forced out of his cozy US House seat representing the Tampa area, was the state’s former party-hopping governor. He’d won a bitter Democratic primary by trumpeting a message of compromise. His main opponent in that primary, the progressive Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, ran on confronting DeSantis, MAGA extremists and Tallahassee’s new corporate-friendly culture. Fried had to introduced Crist that day.

My notes that day say, “tense.”

Could it have been a Val Demings’ event? She hoped like hell to flip Marco Rubio’s Senate seat. She was all over the airwaves with ads and interviews. Demings even led a GOTV golf cart parade to an early voting site in that miserable meat locker, “The Villages.”

Crist and his pick for lieutenant governor, Karla Hernandez-Mats, a teacher and union leader, held whistle-stop campaign events in small communities across the state. They were doing the kind of grip’n grin events where locals had a chance to talk one-on-one. Old-fashioned retail politicking that, in a normal world, wins votes.

Polls showed DeSantis with a clear lead heading into the election. He’d cultivated the image of a smarmy, tough-talking little asshole, and spent much of the campaign running his mouth on the C-blocks of friendly, right-wing primetime cable news. During the only debate, DeSantis dodged even basic softball questions in order to hurl insults and culture war buzzwords, riling up a friendly audience in Fort Pierce. The campaign only held a handful of choreographed events, so most (if any) attention to the race came from DC pundits musing about a 2024 White House run. That lack of attention helped avoid real scrutiny for his migrant flight(s) scandal.

It was pivotal year for Republicans, particularly in Florida. The GOP-led state legislature had gerrymandered districts up and and down the ballot, packing and cracking historically Democratic strongholds. Back then, the DNC thought it was a good idea to throw money at Trump-backed candidates in GOP primaries in the hopes of having an easy run through the general election.

While it wasn’t the “red wave” pollsters had called for, election night in Florida was a bloodbath for many Democrats.

Crist was trounced by Ron DeSantis. Demings was buried by Rubio. Rep. Al Lawson lost his seat to Neil Dunn (earlier this year, Trump earlier blurted out that Dunn “would be dead by June,” due to a heart condition, and Dunn has since announced he won’t year stand for reelection in ‘26).

On election night, the party’s jovial atmosphere faded quickly. There was an almost certain assumption among some of the press that Crist was going to lose, but Crist’s staffers and supporters were holding out hope. Once the returns rolled in, it didn’t take long before the race was called for DeSantis. Crist lost by almost 10 points, gave a tearful concession speech. Most of the media had cleared out of the hotel the campaign had rented out for the party by 10pm.

I spent the rest of the night in the hotel bar. Some chipper union boss was buying me drinks, singing the praises of journalists and assuring me that everything was going to be OK. Eventually I dragged myself to the back of my truck where I slept in the sprawling parking lot of some nondescript office complex.

Four years later, standing at this Texas testament to America’s car culture, there’s a giant sign next to a ridiculous cartoon beaver marveling at the price of gas. Today, a gallon of 87 Octane is almost four dollars. And, after sinking almost $100 into the tank of the smallest U-Haul, the only thing that seemed hopeful was my new apartment would be close to train lines.

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