As I hurriedly packed my suitcase New Year's Day, I doubted the wisdom of driving 10 hours to Manchester, N.H., so I could volunteer for a 71-year-old maverick senator who inspired unrelenting enmity within his own party.

Surely this was not how a 26-year-old unemployed software salesman from Pittsburgh should go about finding a job.

But I reassured myself that supporting John McCain -- win or lose -- was an honorable mission.

Along with hundreds of Americans, I took a weeklong winter vacation in New Hampshire to knock on front doors, make harassing phone calls and wave yard signs at motorists.

My first full day, Jan. 3, began at 7:30 a.m. atop a 4-foot-high snowbank in a small hamlet near Manchester. It was there that I learned the art of sign-waving.

I would attract little attention -- let alone maintain a life-sustaining body temperature -- by stiffly holding a McCain yard sign. I began running in place. This quickly morphed into a dance, replete with fist pumps and hip gyration more appropriate to a Steelers telecast.

My fellow volunteers displayed equal enthusiasm. There was Will, my temporary roommate and a 16-year-old college freshman from Massachusetts, who would hoarsely give off-the-cuff speeches on street corners about McCain's integrity and 27 newspaper endorsements.

I rationalized our passionate behavior this way: If the undecided voter took notice of our enthusiasm -- and did not witness such activity by Mitt Romney volunteers -- they would cast their vote for McCain.

Two days and 400 phone calls later, I began to feel John McCain was not so much a person as a movement. Sen. McCain was the titular head of a righteous organization that had to win, if only to stop what my colleagues and I saw as fabrications being disseminated by Mitt Romney. We were fighting the good fight against the forces of greed and self-aggrandizement.

On Saturday, Jan. 5, I finally saw McCain in person in Peterborough, a quintessential New England town. More than 600 people packed the meeting hall (dozens who were turned away stood outside and watched on a projector) to hear him answer any question. My job: launching piles of confetti.

Here was the genuine McCain, playfully teasing a fellow volunteer and rehashing corny barbs about his congressional colleagues.

And like he had previously done at many of these engagements, John McCain displayed the black, plastic bracelet he wears on his wrist. It was given to him by the mother of Spc. Matthew Stanley, a 22-year-old soldier slain in Iraq in late 2006, who implored Sen. McCain not to let her son die in vain.

I doubted President Bush's initial rationale for the war, and I still have reservations about the prospect of a secure and prosperous Iraq. But I have no doubts that if anyone can repair the mess, it is John McCain, who said we have a moral responsibility to leave the Iraqi people with a better country than the one that has teetered on the brink of collapse.

Perhaps I'm naive, but I'm willing to place my faith in a man who knows despair and hopelessness on intimate terms, and as a result is unafraid to face difficult questions.

On Primary Day, I spent the morning at the Manchester City Hall plaza, where the mobile studio of "Good Morning America" was parked. There, Team McCain competed for signage position.

Nervous and exhausted, I walked back to headquarters and found a semi-quiet hallway where I lay on the wooden floor for 15 minutes.

Later that night, at the victory party, strangers gave each other congratulatory hugs and kisses. Others released joyful tears. E-mail addresses were exchanged with talk of working in the upcoming battlefield states.

Sen. McCain's personal celebration would be short on reflection. He had to catch a morning flight to Grand Rapids, Mich.

Barack Obama may be the fashionable candidate for today's youth. But in New Hampshire I met voters and volunteers -- young, old, but always stubbornly optimistic -- who believed in old-fashioned virtues like integrity, leadership and service to one's country.

Now, I'm on to Michigan to volunteer again with the campaign, and see if people there will feel the same way.