Category Archives: Travelin’

HPSBFFT2008 – Prologue

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Happy Spring Break, folks!

Ok, well, not for you workin’ folk out there, but for lazy grad students like myself, it’s time for a week of fun and relaxation. A week of not doing much of anything. A week of moving slow and taking it easy.

Except, well, not.

This semester I’m, taking a class in Contemporary Preservation Policy and in that class we have an assignment to basically cast ourselves to the wind and learn about a current preservation issue in an area that is not Vermont. So because I like industrial history and because I like military history and because I like rural areas and because I apparently like spending lots of time alone in a car, I’ll be driving to Charleston, West Virginia to learn about efforts to nominate to the National Register the site of an early 20th century battle between mine workers and the national guard.

I leave in sixteen minutes.

I’ve packed way more than I need; enough that last night Emily asked “Are you going on a trip or are you moving out?” But I feel like I’m well prepared. I have a varied enough wardrobe to match whatever nature throws at me, I have a computer and a voice recorder to capture information as I learn it, I have a multitude of entertainment options (both paper and electronic), and I have a newly-refurbished car that (pleasepleasepleaseGod) won’t let me down.

I’m going to try to blog the trip and hereby tentatively commit to a-post-a-day schedule for the duration. I’ll be driving 5 hours a day from now until sunday to get there, so who knows how tired I’ll be at the end of each day. I’ll try to post something before I go to sleep, but if it’s first thing in the morning, don’t be surprised.

So, off I go.

Let the Spring Break Historic Preservation Fact-Finding Trip of 2008 (HPSBFFT2008) commence!

Aye!

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Holy crap, you guys.

Scotland.

Scotland!

What a minbendingly awesome trip.

As soon as I can figure out how to shrink some of the digi-pics to a size that will fit herein, I will post pictures and recollections.

That’s a threat and a promise.

antescotia

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Scotland Scotland Scotland Scotland…..

I am so excited.

24 hours from right now, I’ll be – well – probably passing the mini-Camden Yards as a pass through 95 in Aberdeen. Our flight doesn’t leave until 8:30 from beautiful Philadelphia.

But 48 hours from now? It’ll be just after 9pm local time, there will be about a half hour os sunlight left, and I bet my bride and I will either be sitting down in a pub with a pint or be in direct pursuit thereof.

Can’t. Fucking. Wait.

This has been a crazy would-rather-eat-actual-shit week at work. I have this theory that the universe makes you earn good vacations and these last few days in the grind have done nothing to dissuade me of that belief. But just a half-day’s more at work and then I’m gone. Like a freight train. Like yesterday. Like a soldier in the civil-war-bang-bang.

Pat yourself on the back if you got that reference.

Here’s the Mike-u-weather forecast for the first 5 days in Scotland: showers, showers, showers, partly cloudy, showers. I think that’s par for the course though. And, although at first I was picturing a rain-drenched time in the isles, upon consulting every weather website I could find I think that ‘showers’ means just that. Primarily a cloudy day punctuated by a short period of precip here and there. Most people I talked to bring up how rainy the UK can be, but check it: Edinburgh’s average monthly rainfall for May is just about 2 inches. Baltimore’s? Just over 4.

So, anywho, I am regoddamdiculously excited to leave. The prospect of being wedged on a plane for seven hours next to a strange and most likely excessively sweaty person does nothing to dampen my enthusiasm. Nothing!

I am a little bummed that I am missing yet another Blogtimore Happy Hour. Snay was nice enough to offer his seat at the happy hour for my seat on the plane, but I bet Emily would catch on pretty quickly. Mumbling about Battlestar Galactica and tossing out random and useless historical knowledge might delay discovery for a bit, but the jig would eventually be up.

Nah, on second thought I wouldn’t trade my seat for anything. Me, my wife, and a new country. Totally awesome.

I go now to the land of the Scots.