Getting to Lafayette I've planned a few days rest near Lafayette LA before moving onto New Orleans – it's a kind of mid-point decompression after SXSW. I'd really like to be there as long as I can – Thursday thru Sunday. I misread the Amtrak timetable and thought I could leave Austin on Wednesday night…
NB: these are rough drafty notes on stuff that's going through my head Redundancy The temptation is to keep everything lean and only have one of everything. But often you need to know that you have enough, that if you lose or break or have to give away this one, you've always got another in…
This year I've chosen not to buy a badge for SXSW. If someone else was paying for it, I probably would have taken one, but last year, almost immediately after I bought my badge, I was wondering why I'd laid out cash for it. So this week I'm on the outside. Not completely because the…
Maybe not so much to write on Southby days – it's a blur and difficult to differentiate the days once you're here. Wore my Learning Pool t-shirt, I know that much. I need to write more about Learning Pool because they are good people doing good things. I'll be wearing my tee again tomorrow and…
I'm going to post these little jottings that I've been making while on the road – no order, structure yet, they're the bones of what I'll be writing about later. Advisory: may contain platitudes, truisms and inanity. Unexpected joys The joy comes mostly when you realise how it's all been leading up to this, how…
I'm aware that in the rolling daily updates there's been little talk of how it's actually going for me how i'm _gulp_ *feeling*. Well the headline is I feel great. I'm really enjoying the whole thing. Taking it much more easily than last year. Hardly worrying at all, except when I do. The "Solve…
There's nothing like it getting dark over a cold, grey wet Illinois and waking up in glorious Arkansas sunshine. I'm back in the South – hurrah! Into Texas and we hit Dallas at around 11am. I would have a double seat to myself from now on as Marisa was getting off. We had a whole…
Breakfast with Tracy: scrambled eggs, toast and an apple – simple and perfect. I was a little worried by the fact that a couple of inches of snow seemed to have fallen overnight. But that's just me thinking London thoughts. As Tracy pulled back out of her garage over the fresh white stuff, I knew…
I had a better night on the train, well kinda. I worked out a couple of comfortable positions to lie in (for some value of comfortable) and I alternated between them. At one point I thought "There's a blog post in here: 'The 10 most comfortable ways to sleep in a coach seat on Amtrak'"…
So I arrived at Milwaukee station today and (I don't know why I hadn't done this before) asked for a ticket to Austin for tomorrow. No, sorry, that train's fully booked. Damn. There are a couple of seats still available the following day if you pay a small supplement, but Wednesday, full. Um… OK. It…