Saturday, July 14

On Saturday morning we paid our respects to the farmers' market in Forsyth Park before hitting the Interstate to Atlanta.  Our first stop in Atlanta was the Contemporary Art Center, which was in a surprisingly rough-looking neighborhood -- we were pretty certain our GPS had led us astray!  It doesn't help that the museum building looks kind of like a warehouse that burned up in a fire, but we had to assume that was intentional.  The exhibit featured several artists who were aiming to stretch our comfort zones.  There was a mostly-nude lady dancing erotically with a dead salmon, for example.  And there was "Hennessee Youngman's" thought-provoking (satirical) video on "How to be a Successful Black Artist."

Monday, July 9

On the first day of the conference, we rode the ferry together over to the convention center and had an overpriced breakfast in the conference hotel; then I rode back to our hotel on the Savannah side of the river.  Jessie attended an all-day workshop on image-based narrative inquiry, while I gave my successor at Prairie Star District UUA an orientation to her new tools and responsibilities.  I also drove out to a grocery co-op on the far side of Forsyth Park to pick up some food for future breakfasts and moved the car to a cheaper lot for the week.

When Jessie returned to the hotel, we went for a swim and had dinner at Vinnie Van Go-Go's before attending the conference's opening reception.

At the beginning of July, Jessie and I drove to Savannah for the American Art Therapy Association (AATA) annual conference.  I was excited to return to Savannah and see part of the South I had gone around on my bike trip (namely, the mountains); Jessie had not been to the South before, with the exception of Memphis.

It's been over a month now since I joined 800 other people in Biking Across Kansas.  This was my first "supported ride," meaning that I was not carrying my own gear but only responsible for bicycling to each day's destination.  It's taken me this long to blog about the experience because, well, I didn't have a great time, and I quit halfway through, and I needed some time to put a positive spin on the experience.

In November, 2010, we visited San Francisco on our way to the American Art Therapy conference in Sacramento. See an album of photos from the trip!

On Monday night, Jessie and I played host to four young bicycle tourists -- Kelly, Lucy, Remy, and Ann Caroline -- on their way from Colorado to Washington, DC as part of the Trek to Reenergize America.  You can read Kelly's take on their visit -- now it's my turn!

On Tuesday, June 9, we needed to get wi-fi to plan our day, but doing so at the Ostello was a big production involving photocopying our passports. Checking out also involved an inspection of the room, which we had to clean ourselves. Then we went down the road and got breakfast before hitting the highway back to Florence. We arrived in town by 11:30 and found a parking garage for 21€ for 9 hours.

On Sunday, June 7, we had breakfast at the hotel buffet and headed for the Venice airport, but we got the directions wrong and spent an extra hour on the bus due to starting in the wrong direction. Fortunately we were not catching a flight, but just renting a car! When we arrived at the airport, we followed the wrong signs to the rental parking lot but eventually found it. We had reserved a car with an automatic transmission so that both of us could drive, but the Hertz agency didn't have any, so we got a tiny Peugot convertible with a manual transmission that only I could drive.