Follow the PCJ across the U.S.

Leaving Burlington

I'm enroute to Maryland. But yesterday and today were days for saying goodbye, as I'll be on the road for six weeks. Friday evening, Lila and I took a last walk along Lake Champlain in Burlington. On the way we passed the Echo Center -- home to prom night for South Burlington High School last night.

We then walked along the Burlington lakefront and enjoyed the sunset, before heading to Burlington Bay Cafe for creamees!

This morning, our staff (Betsey, Peggy, and I) and Lila had breakfast at the Oasis Diner in downtown Burlington. It's where Lila and I eat every Saturday morning. If you ever come to Burlington, you have to stop at the Oasis. Connie, our regular waitress was just back from a Caribbean cruise and looked about as crisped as our toast.

We then walked over a block to the Burlington farmers market -- held every Saturday from May to October in City Hall Park. It's a great place to meet people, and get good food, flowers, and craft items. During my trip, I have no doubt that I'll be reporting on other outdoor markets. Take a look at a 360 degree panoramic image of City Hall Park by clicking on the link below. Then run the small file. I'll be posting other panoramic shots during the upcoming Route 50 trip.

Use this link for panoramic image. (Did you notice Peggy with her Route 50 tote bag!)

Ran into Art Hogan at City Hall Park. Art, now retired, served as Director of the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission for many years. He was very gracious to me when I first moved up to Vermont in 1988 to work as Director of Local & Regional Planning Assistance in the Vermont Dept. of Housing & Community Affairs. Art and other Rotarians were busy working today to spruce up City Hall Park.

After taking these photos, Lila and I headed home where I finished up packing. Am writing this from my overnight stop in New Brunswick, New Jersey.

Speak to you next from Maryland!

Wayne

Stop me if I'm expounding ...

My departure date -- a week from this Saturday -- feels like its racing towards me.

This past week Betsey, Peggy, and I have spent our time setting up meetings for the trip; dealing with a very irritable laptop computer that apparently wants to stay home; and finalizing the Summer issue of the Planning Commissioners Journal. But we also took some time out yesterday to have a very enjoyable staff and spouse dinner at the diner (Libby's Blue Line Diner in nearby Colchester, Vermont).

The "official" start of my Route 50 trip will be on Sunday, May 27th, in Ocean City, Maryland, where I'll be visiting with Ocean City planner Jesse Houston; and then meeting back on the mainland with folks from the Worcester County Planning Department -- the unofficial start will be the night before where I'll be staying with my hosts, Ron Cascio and Katherine Munson in Berlin, Maryland.

One thing I've given some thought to is how to make use of this "blog format." Most blogs I've seen are quite opinionated. That's not meant as any sort of condemnation -- indeed a strongly expressed, but well thought-out, point-of-view can make for stimulating reading, sometimes even when you strongly disagree with the writer. But I don't see my role as an expounder. In fact, since I'll be in most places for just a day or two, I'll be in no position to claim in-depth knowledge of any community I'll be visiting.

So what's the "slant" to this blog? If there's a slant, it's to serve as a sort of "listening post" -- where you'll be able to stop by and hear what's on the mind of planners, planning commissioners, and others, and learn about the most challenging issues they're facing & how they're trying to deal with them. And I do think there's value in having an outsiders' eye, and getting at least a snapshot view of the issues communities are facing.

The bottom line is that I''ll be successful with this blog if I can give you some food for thought, and some points of comparison to issues you face in your own community.

But it's not all a one-way street. You can help make this blog work by commenting on postings, or e-mailing me during the trip. Let me know if there are questions I'm not asking that you think are important to ask -- and I'll try to adjust as I go along. And if you have any experiences or perspectives on topics I'll be reporting, consider sharing your thoughts. Finally, if you find that what I'm reporting has some value, let others know about this web blog.

 

American Road Journals

When I was first thinking about going across the U.S. on Route 50 I came across a fascinating book, Romance of the Road: The Literature of the American Highway, written by Ronald Primeau in 1996. Primeau, who's a professor of English at Central Michigan University, analyzes American writing about the road -- or, more specifically, about adventures traveling across America.

As Primeau puts it, "In hundreds of books, movies, poems, songs, and videos, the road journey is an epic quest, a pilgrimage, a romance, a ritual that helps explain where Americans have been and where they think they might be going. ... " He delves into a broad range of books, from Mark Twain's Roughing It (on Twain's travels from Missouri to Nevada) to classics like Jack Kerouac's On the Road and William Least Heat Moon's Blue Highways -- but Primeau also considers travelers with a camera (or a TV crew), most famously Charles Kuralt.

What Primeau doesn't cover -- since his book was written a little over ten years ago -- is the amazing new surge in online travel journals about the American road made possible by the internet; especially by the explosive growth of blogging. For better or worse, my own Route 50 trip is going to be one small part of this new genre.

What will future historians of the American road make, for example, of the adventures of some of my "neighbors" here in Burlington, Vermont (two of them students graduating from Champlain College), who will be traveling cross-country by moped? Their trip will be retracing the route of Burlington native -- Horatio Nelson Jackson.

Jackson, affectionately known as the "Mad Doctor," was the first automobilist to travel cross-country, from San Francisco to New York. Jackson took 63 days to complete his epic 1903 journey. Driving his 20-horsepower Winton touring car, Jackson was accompanied by his dog Bud -- who usually rode shotgun. One photo has Bud posed behind the wheel! [the photos of Jackson and Bud are reprinted with permission of the University of Vermont Library].

A key element of this upcoming trip by Nicholas Girard, Kevin Corkrum, and Tom Sands will be their Moped Country blog. Here's what the three have to say about their plans: "What is all this about? We are three guys mopeding across the United States this summer, from San Francisco, CA to Burlington, VT, following the route of Horatio Nelson Jackson. ... Starting what is now one of America’s favorite past times, the All-American Road trip! We will be following his journey on moped to promote fuel efficiency and alternative forms of travel."

But Nicholas, Kevin, and Tom are just one example. Take a tour of the blogosphere, and you'll come across an assortment of cross-country road trips now in progress. Just two examples: Howard's Cross Country Trek and Andy's American Adventure.

Our Route 50 trip blog won't be quite as informal as most of the travel blog's you'll find out there -- but we're also part of this new age of travel "writing" where text is combined with photos, sound, and video to try to bring the reader/viewer a more vivid sense of what the traveler is seeing on the road ... almost in "real time." Stay tuned!

On Entering the Blogosphere

With three weeks to go before heading out on Route 50, I've had plenty of time to think about what's involved in entering the blogosphere. In the process I've had to "tech-up" my skills, so to speak.

If I had been doing a travel blog two hundred years ago (quaintly called a diary or journal back then), my main technical concern would have involved the quality of my quill pens. Perhaps I'd be flouting my quill as Voltaire seems to be doing in this image posted on a delightful Web page of the Jane Austen Society of Austrailia, that looks back at the history of quills. As Deb Williams, author of this page (titled The writing [implement] of Jane Austen - the quill pen - or, Jane Austen never had to reboot), observes: "Those of us involved in our own personal arms race of computers, operating systems and software might hanker for the simpler technology of Jane Austen's time. The quill pen was made from easily obtainable materials and required only the simplest of equipment to manufacture." After two months trying to learn the basics of blogging, audio editing, video editing, and related skills, all I can say is "amen" to Ms. Williams' sentiments.

If I were doing this Route 50 trip just 15 or 20 years ago, my job would center on listening, taking notes, and then typing up articles for readers. While this will still be a key part of what I'll be doing -- and I'll have my reporter's notebooks handy -- in order to put together what I hope will be a stimulating, exciting blog that you'll want to visit every day, there are just a couple of technical add-ons I've had to get to know.

Let's start with the blog site itself. I decided about two months ago to start with a blog service called TypePad. Fortunately, you can set up a test weblog to try things out. Obviously, you can't just have plain text on the blog. Very gauche. You need to jazz up your blog.

[As an aside, I've emailed TypePad's technical support folks several times so far -- primarily about some glitches in adding audio. Here's something rare to say about any technical support: they're prompt; they're great problem solvers; and they're friendly too!]

But back to jazzing up the blog. First you're going to need to add some photos. That's the easy part for me since I've been using a digital camera for a couple of years. For those of you who want to know this kind of thing, I'm using a Canon A95.

And these photos are pretty simple to upload to the blog.

But wouldn't it be great to add some video clips while I'm traveling. Of course it would. But that means being able to do just a bit of video editing -- something I've had no experience with. So I've been learning the rudiments of video editing.

You can see an early sample of this from a visit to Kenosha, Wisconsin, about a month ago. Just a note on what you'll be seeing. The gentleman just visible on the right (just briefly near the start of the video clip) told me that he's been going to Frank's "just about every day for 30 years now." After eating their scrambled eggs and hash browns I can understand why!

Fortunately, TypePad has a fairly easy way of posting videos to the blog, using something called VideoEgg. I hope it will be obvious to people you need to click the arrow to start the video!

OK, we've got the digital photos & videos all set & ready. But won't visitors also want to listen in on some of the conversations I'll be having?

That means getting familiar with a voice-recorder, a compact device that allows you to record conversations and then download them to your laptop, so that you can then upload an edited version back to your blog.

Got the voice-recorder. A tiny, but cute, Olympus Digital Voice Recorder. Not even all that hard to use, as long as you're not a stickler for top-of-the-line sound quality. [Please note the effective use of product placement in this photo of the recorder! Be a sport & help support our trip by making a purchase from our online store].

But recording a conversation is the easy part. The problem, as I've been discovering, is that you need to edit the conversation so that listeners don't cringe. I quickly found out that I'm very effective at saying "uhmmmm" "ahhh" and similar fillers. They even have their own distinctive sound wave curves. In learning rudimentary audio editing, I now also know: not to laugh; to wait a moment before asking the next question (so you can more easily edit out material); and to put up with listening to my own voice -- believe me, that's been the hardest part of dealing with audio.

I'm using a free software program called Audacity -- probably called that because you need a lot of audacity to believe you can learn audio editing in just a month or two! But I've managed to spend enough evening hours to be able to use it at a very basic level. Even posted my first edited conversation -- and somehow managed to figure out how to add in some intro music (from Dvorak's American Quartet) which we'll use as a short intro to our conversations. Take a listen if you haven't already done so.

And the march of technology continues. Just a few words about my new friend "Flickr." For those of you not in the know, Flickr is a giant web repository for photos. Run by Yahoo!, Flickr allows users to upload and share their photos. But also, quite appealing to me, is that with Flickr you can geographically mark where your photos were taken, and then display them on a map. That something I'll be doing (I hope!) during the upcoming Route 50 trip. Here's our Flickr map page ready to be put to use.

Yesterday, our friend -- and computer fixer -- Silas Miller of Rent-a-Geek stopped by our office and told me that dozens of folks right here in Burlington, Vermont, use Flickr. Hi! Silas even took a minute to make me one of his Flickr friends -- and then made sure I added him as one of my friends. What all that means, I'm not quite sure. But when it comes to anything computer or internet related, you can trust Silas (and he's really not a geek).

And last, but not least, there's that still relatively new technology that has already swept the world, and that many of you use daily: the ubiquitous cellphone. But while you may be a regular cellphone user, have you heard about moblogging? As I'm learning, moblogging (i.e., mobile blogging) is using your cellphone to post photos directly to your web blog. In other words, you don't even need a computer to use a blog. Not sure if I'll become a moblogger ... just entering the blogosphere has been enough of a climb so far!

p.s.,  I promise I won't use my cellphone while driving. I'll pull over to the side of the road before making any calls.

Four Weeks & Counting

Burlington, Vermont. Thursday,

It's getting hectic in our small office, as we're continuing to set up meetings with planners and planning commissioners in communities I'll be visiting -- while also working on the Summer issue of our publication, the Planning Commissioners Journal.

You may not be aware, but we're a very small operation. Besides myself (Wayne Senville), there's our general manager Betsey Krumholz (note to planners: she's not related to Norm Krumholz!), and Peggy Ellis-Green, who handles all sorts of office work. I first met Betsey during the six years we served together on the Burlington Planning Commission. Peggy has been with us for several years. Among other things, she's a pedestrian advocate, who power walks just about every day.

Betsey & Peggy were a bit taken aback about half a year ago when I first mentioned the idea of this road trip. And at that point I was thinking of just three or four weeks -- not the six week trip we're now planning. But now they're looking forward to having me out of the office for a while! No doubt, things will run much more smoothly.

Betsey & Peggy have also been providing me with tips on how to be a good guest, since I'll be staying with quite a few folks who have graciously volunteered to host me, and advice on things like what kind of polo shirts I need to order (with pockets, and wrinkle-resistant).

Some folks have asked me, "Why Route 50?" Part of the answer is that I wanted some sort of organizing structure for the trip (and, as I've since found out & will report on in a future post) there's quite a large literature about American cross-country road trips. Indeed, Horatio Nelson Jackson, the very first automobilist to cross the U.S. from coast-to-coast (along with his dog, Bud, in 1903) was from here in Burlington, Vermont -- in fact, his former residence is just two blocks from where I'm sitting now.

But why Route 50. In checking various cross-country routes, we simply had considerably more subscribers along, or near, Route 50 than any other route. Since one of my priorities was to meet & speak with individuals who have been receiving the Planning Commissioners Journal, that was an important factor.

I've been excited by the positive response we've received from virtually every community along Route 50 we've contacted. In fact, I know there's already too much to hope to squeeze into six weeks.

Next week, I'll report on some of the new skills I've been learning (or, more accurately, wrestling with): from blogging, to audio editing, to my new "friend" Flickr.

Before Starting Out

I can use your help.

posted by Wayne Senville, editor of the Planning Comm'rs Journal

Between Memorial Day and July 10th I'll be travelling from Maryland to California -- the length of Route 50 -- reporting on planning issues facing communities along the way.

I'll be visiting with citizen and professional planners to find out about their communities' successes -- and also about the most challenging issues they face.

Every day (that I'm able to), I'll be reporting back here on this blog about what I'm hearing -- and seeing. Afterwards, we'll be featuring highlights of this cross-country trip in the Fall issue of the Planning Commissioners Journal.

Right now, we're planning my travel schedule. If you live along Route 50 -- or close to it -- in Maryland, D.C., Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, or California -- let me know. I'm going to try to meet with as many Planning Comm'rs Journal subscribers, and other planners and citizens interested in land use and community issues, as time allows. Email to: editor@plannersweb.com and I'll get back to you with more details about when I'll most likely be in your area.

Regardless of where you live, I hope you'll join in this exploration of planning issues from coast to coast by following this blog this coming May. I'm certainly looking forward to learning a lot along the way.

If you'd like to keep posted on this Route 50 trip, be sure to sign up for our updates -- and we'll let you know when I'm enroute from my hometown of Burlington, Vermont to milepost one of Route 50 in Ocean City, Maryland.

Wayne Senville, Editor, Planning Comm'rs Journal

How you can help us out:

1. Get the word out about our travels. Email your friends and colleagues with the URL of our site. It's easy to remember: www.Rte50.com
2. Visit our online store & get a mug or a t-shirt -- not only will you receive merchandise with our beautiful logo (prepared by our designer, Ned Corbett), but you'll be helping underwrite the costs of our travel as we receive a portion of the sales
3. We also welcome sponsors for this trip, to help us defray some of the major costs (e.g., our car rental will be costing over $1,500 -- a considerable expense for a small business such as ours). In appreciation, we will be posting the names of $100 contributors on this page. Please contact us for details: editor@plannersweb.com