Fiddling while Rome burns part 1
When I first sat down to start regularly updating this blog again, I joked that I’d do it for about two weeks and then spectacularly flame out. The joys of ADHD, I suppose.
Well, I have spectacularly flamed out, but not quite in the way we might have predicted. And, as Great-Grandpa Alphonse used to say, “When ya’ don’t know where to start, go back to da’ beginnin’.” (If you’ve never seen Escanaba in da’ Moonlight, this will make absolutely no sense to you. It’s hilarious if you’re a Michigander, and probably completely opaque if you’re not. So, there’s that.)
The scene: probably… the beginning of July. The dates on my photos tell me it was actually the end of June when I started sewing what I affectionately refer to as “the Road Case Tee”, which is actually a True Bias Rio with contrast binding and some… artistic license. It was meant to look like the road cases that musicians cart their gear around in, with the silver latches and hardware, and the names of the band and artist spray painted on the sides. I was headed to New Jersey for two days, to go see John Lodge and his band. (If you’re keeping score at home, these were concerts two and three out of what is ending up to be SIX this year. I didn’t start out with the intention of being this unhinged, but the only time I got to see the Moodies perform together (and the last time I saw any of them individually until this year) was 18 years ago, in 2007.)
I finished the thing on July 7, with approximately 10 days to spare.
On the 18th of July, I packed up Melanie, my car, and started what was ultimately a two day drive. I made it through Indiana, Ohio, and about half of Pennsylvania before I stopped that night, and it was what I can only describe as carefully planned chaos, because I had intentionally aimed myself directly at Clearfield, PA, but I had no hotel reservation until about 5pm that evening, as I wasn’t exactly sure if I’d get there before I couldn’t go any further. I ended up rolling into the Super 8 in Clearfield, rolling directly through a shower, and straight into bed.
The next morning, I took the smallest side quest, in the form of a 15 minute drive into Curwensville, PA. My grandpa was born in a Sears kit house in Curwensville, and when I told my dad about it later, he tells me I could have turned the opposite direction on literally one street and driven past it. (Assuming it’s still there, of course.) I take this to mean that I just need an excuse to head back in that direction sometime soon. If you look in the slideshow, you’ll notice that there are no photos of this part of the drive. I used the big-girl camera for those, and since I’m too poor to buy the stupid subscription Adobe on this computer at the moment, you all just get to wait until that happens.
After that… at somewhere around 9:30 in the morning, I turned myself and Melanie once more toward the east coast. Four-ish hours after that, I arrived in the land of Jon Bon Jovi. (I did not take a photo of the Jon Bon Jovi TRAVEL PLAZA on the Garden State Tollway, and I am living to regret that decision.)
Part 2, coming soon…
