Write!

When we’re not cleaning we’re playing music and doing other crazy things like starting companies and writing books J Now we’ve found a way to do both at the same time! Kathryn and I have hopped on board an amazing e-writing project called The Novel Factory that’s opening up January 4^th. Here’s a little info:

“Based on the Serial Novel style that launched such greats as Dickens and Tolstoy into international fame, The Novel Factory is an online-based serial publication that is taking a whole new look at the way we read and write books. Readers interact directly with the novel as they choose what happens next in the story. Every Monday our writers publish a new installment and our readers join in the adventure and vote on the direction the story should take...”

We’d love to have your votes on the site! You can get more detailed information at http://thenovelfactory.com. The first installment of the first book goes up tomorrow, Monday, January 4. We’ll look for you there. Happy New Year everyone!

Cleaning-in the New Year

We spent New Year's Eve playing in Delray Beach, FL for Atlantic Avenue's own First Night Celebration. Now with a whole new year ahead of us we started off the new decade with a family project ... you guessed it, cleaning. It's time to lose those extra couple of pounds of stuff weighing down our tour bus as we travel the country. Every year we get a little better at the whole 'letting go' process. This year we somehow managed to find bags and bags of hidden treasures in our 40-foot RV that we hadn't seen for a long time and would never really use. All of these things tucked safely in secret corners of the RV finally saw the light of day today and they're moving out for good. As usual our family approached the project with considerable zeal but even the most stalwart cleaner will find that, after a while, the things that they were supposed to be getting rid of, things that they'd forgotten they'd even owned, start to take on a new magical quality and inseparable sentimental value. Even something small can become a huge internal debate. I suffer from acute butitsbeenhereallthistimeitspracticallypartofthefamily syndrome and my internal cleaning conversations begin to look something like this:

"Jessica, it's a rock. You don't need it."

"But it's been traveling around the country with us for a long time! This is more than an average rock! You know, I think this rock is from Ireland! Look at the markings."

"Ohhhhh. Wow. But what's the point in keeping a rock?"

"It's a priceless piece of family history!"

"But it's a rock!"

"Can I keep it! Please! It's just one little rock! You got rid of that magazine already and everything."

"Oh, all right."

Needless to say I wasn't much help in this process, but it was a really cool rock.

Although everyone's brains are not quite as vocal, you've probably had a similar conversation with yourself around cleaning time. It happens to the best of us. What kind of things did you find hard to part with? What oddities did you find in the cleaning process?

Happy New Year!

The Fashion Statement

My dad has always had his own unique style. It’s the way he casually tucks in his shirt with no belt, the way he wears plaid and paisley together, the way he wears white socks and flip flops with the air of a man who will continue to dress that way until there is a no-clothes option.

For years my sister and I have struggled to find clothes that he was willing to wear on a daily basis that didn’t offend the fashion sense of almost everyone else on the planet and weren’t 3 sizes too big for him. We usually failed. But as the years have gone by and he’s moved across that invisible line that marks the place between ‘young and clueless’ and ‘old and eccentric’, we’ve begun to see the wisdom in his clothing choices. What once just seemed like an excuse to be asked where he was from has turned into a heightened sense of the practical. No matter where we are he is always comfortable, if not a little underdressed. He’ll repeat the same outfit for days on end but carry it with such a different style that you fail to notice. His baggy jeans never seem to wear out and his flip-flops are never really out of style. He also provides endless amusement for our family.

Shopping with my dad is a trip. He enters a store with the confidence of a man who knows what everyone needs and isn’t afraid to ask whoever is nearest for their opinion of your outfit. He also has that grim determined look that let’s you know he’s resisting all natural urges to run out the door and kiss the first patch of natural ground.

You always know when it’s time to go by the way he swoons on the waiting couches with an ill look and the struggling smile of a martyr. He always stays though, until the call is given to leave.

There has only ever been one item of clothing that my dad has actually asked for in his life, and that’s a kilt. For years we’ve searched in vain for a reasonably priced piece of tartan for him but we’ve always been unsuccessful. Even when we considered sewing our own, the cost of the fabric has always been astronomical. Even though the image of Dad wearing his Hawaiian tourist shirt with a kilt, white socks up to his knees and flip flops will forever remain one of our fondest ‘not-memories’ of Dad we’ll keep searching.

My dad has always had his own unique style. It’s part of what I love about him. It reflects his own beliefs and life choices. He understands the importance of wearing clothes and at the same time as he understands the importance of being a free spirit. Each neatly-gelled curl and rakishly tilted sock is a life-fashioning statement that will live on long after his clothes are gone.

It was the best of times, it was… nah, it was just the best of times :)

On our way back from Alaska there was one Canadian stop that couldn’t be missed. It wasn’t the hot springs or the cities, it wasn’t even the biggest mall in North America. It was better than that, the icing on the cake of our Alaskan adventure: the St. Cyr cabin.

When you’ve been on the road as long as we have, it’s easy to think that you’ve seen it all, but we haven’t even come close yet and the cottage is a perfect case in point.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, that’s okay. We didn’t even know the place existed until last year.

We found out about the St. Cyr cabin, and more importantly, the St. Cyr’s, in the way these things usually happen… in the way you least expect it:

“When are we going to play?” It was the question that was running through all of our minds last year in Calgary. It was a raining hard, freezing drops mixed with a sprinkling of hail. We were downtown, set to perform at a Stampede party that was quickly turning into an icy version of a Wet N’ Wild. The rain was relentless and our speakers were softly soaking up the moisture, but the idea of not playing was too much to bear so we unpacked our instruments under the safety of a tent.

It was cold and our fingers were frosty on the strings but we played away, dancing on the tables and weaving in among the crowd. That’s where we met the first St. Cyr: Annette. She saw us perform and invited us to come and visit her at her cottage on our way to Alaska. That’s how we learned about the St. Cyr cabin, nestled in among rolling fields of canola (who knew canola was a plant?) by beautiful Gull Lake.

The St. Cyr cabin is an artfully designed work of handcrafted wood that the St. Cyr family built by hand as a party and retreat for their friends and family. We’ve learned a lot of things there over the past 2 years, vacationing with Annette and her family. Things like how to wakeboard, play beersbee, make a garbage-can turkey and party like a Canadian. We even got a chance to sit in on a permaculture course that Annette’s daughter and son-in-law taught. But most importantly, we learned that we have a Canadian family we never knew existed.

You may never make it to the St. Cyr cabin, but here are some pictures from our trip that can take you there, if only for a little while:

What to do with a 16 year old?

It’s hard to believe that it was only 16 years ago that Christian was born, a bouncing baby boy with lungs that made themselves known in an unforgettable, yet somehow tuneful way. It’s hard to believe that it was only last month that we were singing Christian a birthday song at the top of our lungs, purposefully out of tune in the joking way that made us all cringe. It is also hard to believe that the ‘baby’ of the family now needs to be addressed as sir because he is taller than all of us.

We celebrated Christian’s birthday on the road. He doesn’t eat any sweets so we made him an apple and grape cake with a few candles.

We all sprayed our hair with white streaks to sympathize with his advanced age and decked the bus with streamers and balloons. We blared music from the party bus and played games as we traveled.

When we got to the Canadian border the guards weren’t impressed but eventually they let us pass and we continued our journey to Alaska and beyond!

An Afternoon Stroll...

Our family’s idea of an afternoon stroll is a little different than most peoples. For most of my life I had no idea. I figured that it was normal to travel miles on a short walk or climb for hours on a short hike. I guess I assumed everyone did it that way. It was especially easy to believe when my 22 aunts and uncles and 46 cousins on my Dad’s side all shared the same understated measurement of distance. Of all this I remained blissfully ignorant, until recently.

I came to my awakening in Colorado Springs. When we saw the mountain they call Pikes Peak there was no question about whether or not we were going to climb it.

The city sits high up at 6000 feet where the air is clear, but rather thin. Pike’s Peak and our ‘little’ hike would take us up 13 miles with an altitude gain of an additional 7,400 feet.

It takes the average hiker at least 8-10 hours to make the assent. At the summit, legend had it, surprised and admiring tourists who had paid to take the train up would greet you with awe and listen to every step of your perilous journey with wide eyes and slack jaws. The hike could be dangerous and required waking up at the ungodly hour of 4 in the morning. But even that couldn’t stop us.

We took mostly water and waterproof gear with us. The mountain had the nasty habit of turning out hail and thunderstorms at random and a number of hikers had been struck by lightening or perished of hypothermia on the mountaintop. These thoughts were enough to keep us cheerfully engaged as we climbed.

The first few miles were a breeze. Two of my leg muscles had the indecency to get themselves pulled within the first few miles but with the help of Ibuprofen and the sacrifice of a few days walking afterward we pressed forward.

We made good time. At base camp we took an hour break and refilled our water bottles and ate our carefully prepared peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But this was merely the breath before the storm, in more ways than one.

Our troubles didn’t start until we hit 10,000 feet. We had heard the rumors that severe thunderstorms were due to strike the mountain earlier than usual, but it had been raining every day since we had arrived in Colorado Springs and weather is a finicky thing, so we weren’t too worried. We split up for the hike, the boys taking the accelerated climbing track and the rest of us following somewhere behind.

The altitude struck first. As we approached 11,000 feet our heads started to pound and our stomachs protested. We all started to feel like Johnny Depp as he staggered around the deck of the Black Pearl in Pirates of the Caribbean. It took all of our remaining brainpower to remember to put one foot in front of the other. It was worst for Dad. Altitude sickness hit him hard and fast and disagreed with his lunch. Let’s just say there was only room for one of them and his lunch didn’t win.

When we started to hear the thunder just a few short miles from the top we decided that it would be safer to try for the top than turn back. It snowed, rained and hailed alternately as we climbed, forcing us to seek shelter in a crevice a few feet wide and only a little deeper. The temperature dropped and the thunder crashed. We were all soaked and freezing and our muscles were starting to forget the meaning of simple words like ‘hike’ and even ‘move’.

When we got to the top people looked at us like we were insane and suddenly the words, ‘dry’, ‘chair’ and ‘furnace’ all took on wonderful new meanings. None of us could walk very well the next couple of days but by then we were already on the road, on our way to another adventure.

Here is photographic evidence of our trip:

From the Road...

Our family would, among other things, make a great internet access commercial. We are the people you see on the sidewalk, carrying our laptops high above our heads, praying for a glimpse of a signal so that we can get our mail or load a single web page.

I thought that all of our internet troubles were gone once we got the iPhone, but international borders have separated us from the thin web that connects us to the world. Granted we are more productive when the internet is absent, but not so much that we feel it truly justifies it's distance.

As of today we are in the middle of Canada, on our way up to Alaska once again. To make this particular journey more intriguing, we found two people to travel with us! Our Grandparents!

8 people + 1 RV = The Adventure of a Lifetime!