Loose Ends and Continuations

I was talking about the magazines I was looking at on Monday when I was hanging at Borders. There was a a magazine that I could not remember, with the civil war socks... that was Piecework magazine.

I was one of the recipients an e-mail from the recreation director at Hunterdon ARC, saying that the Art Club collages were hung up at the main office. She included a link to the Art Club blog and and mentioned how good the collages were. I e-mailed back and asked her who the other people on the list were, and he said it was the board of directors, who were having a meeting that evening. Yesterday I had an e-mail from one of the board members saying how much she liked the work and that she wanted to hear my thoughts on opening up ART Club to the wider community. She is a big proponant of inclusion. I think this is a great idea. I think almost anyone could benefit from the laid-back atmosphere we had going. People need an outlet to be creative, where there is no judgement, no competition, just the space and materials to be creative. It would be nice to have a supportive community. She showed me a link to an art center in Orange, NJ called Arts Unbound that reminded me of creativity explored. I'm excited that this could be going somewhere, turning into something bigger. If I had time it would be Garden Club by day and ART club by night,

In other news, I have finally gotten approval to take 2 weeks vacation. You would not believe what a big deal that was. You'd think I was asking for next year off. Of course the trouble is that corporations have laid off every possible person, and it is at the point that if someone is out for the day everything collapses. Not my problem, man! So anyway, Joe and I have started to plan our summer motorcycle odyssey. The trip is from NJ to MN and back. We have decided to trailer the bike to Michigan and take off from there.We can go a lot farther in one day in a car than on the bike, so we feel this gives us a good head start.  Joe belongs to a club called the BMW MOA. (BMW Motorcycle Owners of America) They publish a book that lists a network of people who are willing to offer certain levels of assistance to fellow club members. For instance, some members will give you garage space and the use of their tools if you break down, some people will let you camp in their yard or even give you a room for the night. We are just looking for a place to leave the car while we tour around. Joe has picked Coldwater MI as a good place to stop and there are several MOA club members in the area. He has not contacted anyone yet, but he swears it will be fine. Not far from Coldwater is Battle Creek, MI. And what large corporation has its headquarters in Battle Creek??  Kelloggs!  I am determined to eat a bowl of Rice Crispies in Battle Creek. From there we want to go to Sleeping bear dunes, then travel over the upper peninsula and down to Wisconsin. We don't have anything particular planned out past that right now. We travel in a very loose way, back roads and whatever we find along the way. I will do some research to see if there is some kind of roadside attraction or museum or historic site that seems like a must-see. I wish there was a way to easily post from the road. That could be fun. We'll see. Remember, we are traveling by motorcycle, there is very little room in our bags, I could not even dream of taking a laptop. It is my work computer anyway. I might destroy it.

Although I just said we don't plan our trips much, it did occur to us that we would be starting our trip on 4th of July weekend. We figured that the coast of Lake Michigan must be like the Jersey Shore to those that live there, so we might want to make some arrangement for that time. We started looking around on the web and found a number of cute family-owned motels that seemed to have some personality, so yesterday I started making calls. Several of the people I spoke to actually laughed out loud when I asked for a reservation for the 4th and 5th. I started getting scared. Worse case scenario would be to have to stay at the big Best Western outside of town, but we really would rather not. I finally called the Stonewall Inn and they had a cancellation. Oh happy day. It's expensive, but it's a beautiful B&B and the 4th of July is our anniversary so we decided it was worth it.