Gribblenation

Yesterday, I invited over Doug Kerr, CC Slater, and Chris Jordan for the first WEBSITE SUNDAY. basically, yesterday was all of us in my computer room/office working on websties, doing research, and having a good time. We spent about 10 hours on different things. Website Sunday or weekend has been something Doug and I had been talking about since I moved to New York in February. And with the slow and dead witner months, what a better way to be productive. Doug was able to work on Connecticut Ends, Complete the debut of Massachusetts Ends, and do some Rhode Island page work. Slater worked on another page of his and Doug's trip to Philadelphia last month, and I, while in the midst of doing laundry and making lunch and dinner for everyone, started on South Carolina but suffered writers block and decided to do some adds to the Georgia, Missouri, and Tennessee galleries . CJ left early since he was feeling ill. It was definitely a productive day (more after the update info) as we t

How I go about updating the website is very simple, I do a state at a time and between the states a gallery or a feature update. It turns out to be about a state a month. Which is fine as hobby time is mainly set to weekends and some evenings when I am on a roll. The order is simple: SC-NC-VA-WV-PA and start again. In between, those states is when I usually do a gallery update or add vacation photos etc. It's been how I have done updates for about, I think 2-3 years now. The amount varies as sometimes you get flooded with items from a state other times you don't. It is very streaky. An example is for a while I was getting a lot of Alabama and Georgia gallery shots, so it seemed every few weeks there was another eight photos in Georgia and four for Alabama in between state updates. If it is a lean material update in photos (since it is a photo driven site), it does give me more time to add to existing pages or do something more research specific. I may reorganize a page, add map

What's next? I officially announced the completion of PA State Route Ends today. After almost five years and who knows how many photos, announced updates, and contributors, the project is finished, for now. Of course, there will be some new designation added Monday and I'll have a missing route. But seriously, I'm very proud that the project is done, and very thankful to all those who have help make it a success and very popular. I started PA Ends two months after I introduced North Carolina Ends. I had thought that NC Ends would be finished much quicker than PA and that I would be lucky to really get contributions living so far away, and that it would take a lot of time to get anything outside of SWPA where I grew up. That changed when the Bees started to send multitudes of ends. Many of times I would check my e-mail after I got home from work, and get about 20 e-mails of ends from them. It was amazing, andthey really are the ones who kicked started the whole project. By

Was working the weekend on a term paper for school, "Rhetoric in Homer's Odyssey ." This literature class has been something I wanted to take at my alma mater for a few years, and it has been a good test to see how willing I am to go forward with an MBA in the future. Anyways, I wasn't able to go anywhere or work on much this weekend, so here are a few quick links of other road blogger's for your enjoyment. The Georgia Roadgeek - Steve Williams' notes on the highways and doings in Georgia serves as the model for my own. Filpus Roadgeek - Dave Filpus' road trip blog was the first road blog I came across over a year and a half ago. His road notes serves as the template for my road trip reports. I'll have more later in the week, I promise!

One of the fortunate things about being a buyer is that you get to travel for work, whether to visit locations, trade shows, plant tours etc. In 2005, besides moving from North Carolina to New York to assist in the start-up of our new district purchasing office, I've been fortuante to go on two work trips, Louisville, KY in June and Orlando, FL in early November. Sometimes during these trips you are able to do/see/experience things you normally wouldn't be able to do, whether by means of affordibility, vacation time, or distance. In Lousiville, I was able to go to Churchill Downs and the Louisville Slugger Museum. In Orlando, I was able to take the ' Rookie Course ' of the Richard Petty Driving Experience . Disney has its own special track that is exclusive for the experience...so it's a minor downfall as all the other 'Experience' locations are on tracks where racing occurs. The track is a one and a half mile tri-oval. The experience begins with a few quest

Headed southwest to our Richmondville store this afternoon. It was for a store visit and I was overseeing a product reset. Route: NY 7 West, I-88 West, NY 7 East/NY 10 North. Notes: To most this is an uneventful trip, a 30 minute drive down I-88 to a rural store. And it is just that, an uneventful 30 minute drive from my office down I-88 to a rural store. But I figured this would be a great time to just comment on one of my favorite Interstate drives, I-88. I've never traveled in the Mountain West (with the exception of a weekend in Alberta in 1996) but for some reason, Interstate 88 is what I would think how the Interstates in the Rockies would look. I-88 is rural...desolate..and (not as high as the Rockies of course) mountain scenery. One of the more spectacular views is heading west on I-88 approaching Exit 23 (NY 7/30/30A) The interchange is at the bottom of a valley so both the east bound and west bound approaches to the exit is down hill. However, heading westbound the road

The Saturday after Thanksgiving took a trip in Southern Albany County to check out the recent snowfall and possible photo opportunities. Route: NY 85 West, NY 140 West, NY 443 West, NY 85 West, NY 143 East, NY 32 North, US 9W North, I-787 North, I-90 West Notes: Although I wasn't able to find anything that sparked my interest photography wise, I was looking for a winter scene for the Christmas cards I send out every year, I did enjoy the rural highlands of Southern Albany County. NY 85 after it climbs the Helderburg Escarpment is rather flat. And after a fresh snow fall of about 3", the isolated rural crossroads make you feel miles from downtown Albany, when you are only about 10-12 miles at most. Southern Albany County is very different from the rest of the county, it's a counterweight to the urban and suburban scenes to the North. NY 85 leads you through a cross-section of the county. An urban freeway from its start at I-90, it is lined by many first neighborhoods, which

Welcome to "Sure, Why Not?" which besides my answer to "Hey you up to going here or doing this?" is the name of my 'blog'. I hope you enjoy the stories from my travels. In this web journal, I'll let you know details of roadtrips and other events big or small. No angst or any of that self-hate stuff, but places I have been, stopped at and explored, people i have met, and random comments or observations along the way. And a few photos as well. Every now and then I'll include some ongoing research for my websites , and also include what I can remember from past trips over the years. I hope that you will enjoy the insight to my travels and that it will encourage you to go out and explore many of the same places I have and find new places of your own and share.