Not that anyone has the time to sift through 50+ pages of liner notes about the challenge, but...
The challenge organizers have put together a road book, detailing some of the things that can be expected along the route and identifying some of the obstacles to be avoided.
Might be an interesting perusal for you (if you're one of those people into reading travel books for fun). I imagine this is going to become our bible.
Here's a copy, for those interested few.
There's a little area, down on the right hand side of the browser window, where we have all sorts of interesting information about the team and stuff. If you peruse those interesting tidbits, you'll notice that there's a comment box section. It's there for a reason, my friend. It's there because we want to hear from you.
Not to toot our own horns, at least not too loudly, but we'd like our loved ones, and our friends, to take an interest in what we're doing. We want people to take a voyeuristic interest in what we're doing, where we're going, and what we're thinking about. We want people to check in on us, and more than once. The thing is, we can't tell if you have stopped by if you don't leave us a little note, or comment, or thought, or suggestion. This is meant to be, however hackneyed and one-sided, to be a conversation of some sort. There's supposed to be some give and take.
So, if you love us, leave us a note. Tell us what you're thinking. If you hate us, do the same. If you just think we're plain crazy -- well, we knew that already.
Come on, it's starting to feel lonely in here.
Maybe that's not big news where you come from, but I feel like a new daddy, so proud of my new creation.
Actually, I'm feeling our blog has become home to the Griswalds. We've gone way beyond gaudy. I'm getting flashbacks to the early days of the internet, when every "homepage" had a midi tune playing and a flashing banner. Whoo, boy.
The important thing is that we now have a way for random viewers to leave us little messages. Mom, I want to see a good luck missive from you, and soon.
I've added a picture badge to the site from Flick. A picture badge is that thing on the right side of the blog that has images moving around within the frame. It's pointed to a photo album of pictures from the 'bye bye bus' event.
I believe that it's fairly self-evident that I can't take pictures very well, so if you have any pictures that you want to share, send them to me, and I'll add them to the blog. Regardless, I'll keep adding pictures of yanks stuff to the album over time.
Happy holidays.
the Duplex Diner has been added to the sponsor page. Looking forward to seeing everyone there on Wednesday night. Last chance to sign the bus!!
Hot off the presses, here's the latest version of the t-shirts that the great folks at Fox Screen Printing are making for us.
We'll be selling these to raise funds for our charities. If you're interested in getting one, they'll be available at the Bus Bye Bye Event, or you can contact Ed about getting yours (ed@penitentyanks.com).
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Added Fox Screen Printing to the Sponsors page of the website.
Thanks for the shirts!
Kara and Scott have now been officialy added to the team. They're now on the website.
cheers.
I had been thinking that our blog was pretty hip and happening, and we'd joined the ranks of hipster kids, blogging their little hearts out while sipping lattes in cafes all over town. We've got posts. We've got sidebar links to other stuff. We've even got images in some of our posts and a frigging entry that I made from my phone! What more could there be?
Then, I did was the kids do these days, and linked through to the blog site Scott mentions in his post, arjewtino.blogspot.com. By the way, Scott: you're supposed to "link" the link. Cross-pollination's the name of the game in this brave new world. Like candy to a wee one, linking makes 'em all happy and bouncy. Not only that, but, as a society, we're steadily progressing towards utter sloth and nobody wants to type in a URL when they could just as easily click on a link. Now you know.
Whatever. The point is that I was wrong. Dead wrong. There's all sorts of newer and cooler stuff that we should have on our blog. Like flikr picture murals with moving pictures. And more counters. And slideshows in our blog entries. I hear you can even get movies to play within your blog or something.
Where did all this stuff come from? How did I get so behind the times? I remember the old days (yes, I'm riffing off the blog that I linked to) when you had to create a web page from scratch if you were interested in posting your personal thoughts on the internet. You had to write stuff up in a text file, save it, find your favorite site, steal their html code (god, remember how much fun tables were?), plop your text into the appropriate tags, and then upload the whole file onto your geocities space. That was work, let me tell you. Links would fail. Indexes had to be manually updated. And you had to keep loading those creepy midi songs onto your site to keep people interested. What was that, a whole 2 years ago?
Again, whatever. The real point is that we've got to get cracking if we want to impress anyone with our accomplishments. We need more pizzazz and flair. More bright shiny things. Drive 4000 miles in a rust bucket? Sure, that might be interesting to mom and dad back home, but post some pictures of Mr. Missing-Some-Teeth Ed, with his head in the engine and his pants hanging down, and we'll get everyone's attention.
A donor page has been added to the site. Ask one of our represntatives about getting your name up on the page!!!
http://www.penitentyanks.com/donors.htm
We lost the image of the bus. Not sure what happened there. I'll try to fix that later. I was hoping that I could figure out some way to extend some of the links, too, but that doesn't seem to have worked. Optimally, I'll figure out how to use the labels at some point to organize this thing.
Ah, where does the time go? And how does one put titles on this thing?
We had a good meeting with Scott and Kara last night. It appears that they're on board with the challenge. Nothing like more warm bodies to push when the going gets tough. I'm wondering where everyone's going to sit.
We also finally received the package from the organizers. Can't wait to watch the videos.
Just thought of more things that we'll need on the trip - shovels. camping gear. shovels. cooler. shovels.
Update the web-site
At least one thing was accomplished today... I was able to update our web-site , www. penitentyanks.com . Switched from using a wiki based application to some standard html pages. Helps with control of the look and feel, even if we lose some ability to add content. I imagine most updates will occur on the blog, anyway (and here's hoping something gets posted soon).
Actually. today was a pretty busy day. Lots of stuff done to the bus, and some plans on the itinerary hammered out, but I'll let someone else get in the mix to describe those things.
