making fun, part 2: pickup

Ok, we're back for the second part of our Virginia adventure.  About a month and a half passed since we arrived back home near midnight after dropping off our sculptures in Norfolk.  We made arrangements with the nice people at D'Art Center to pick up all of our work about a week late because I couldn't take two days off the week before the studio sale.  They were very accommodating and since we were all very busy with summer things, we didn't really talk about our trip or plan anything until last minute.  

Cathryn had a conflicting trip and couldn't go.  At first, Elena didn't think she could take the time off of work so we weren't sure she would go.  Violet was out of school this time, so we added her to the group.  As the travel dates approached, Elena decided she couldn't miss it and worked it out so that she could go.  We had no plan, but we still had our info from the first trip and this time we decided we were going to base our operations in nearby Virginia Beach.  This was a decision that happened in seconds in a group chat.  Truly on a whim, a question followed by a bunch of "yes" replies.

So after I got up at 3:40 am to run in the dark with what I was sure was a black bear (long story about running for another time) we piled in the car at 6:00 am and made our first bathroom stop about 2 hours away at the beaver gas station.  We also loaded up on road snacks and coffee.

After driving North Carolina from border to border, we arrived back at Good Earth Peanuts in Shippers, VA.  The "open" sign was on and the door was unlocked.  Finally, we stood in the presence of all those canned peanuts we saw through the window.  We came for the boiled peanuts but we spent the most money on the chocolate peanut butter peanuts.  They are even better than you're imagining right now.  Good Earth Peanuts.  They have a website.  I'm already out of what we bought and ordering more soon.  So good.

We love a good photo opp.  If the fine folks at Good Earth want to sponsor us and pay us in chocolate peanut butter peanuts, we're open to negotiations.

Thanks to the last minute researching by Katherine, she led us to the 2D Cafe and Eatery as soon as we arrived in Virginia Beach.  It was a great find.  The cafe was the perfect place for visual people who love coffee.  The whole place was painted and decorated to look like a line drawing and the Turkish coffee was so good.  

From there, we were winging it.  We bumbled our way to the oceanfront boardwalk and started exploring.

If you're ever asked the question, "do you want to get matching henna tattoos?" the answer is always "YES!".  Trust me on this.

Soon, we were actually on the beach.  Toes in sand.  Feet in water.  It was great.  I love the beach.  We all love the beach.  It was now later in the afternoon and our collective energy was dwindling.  Another thing we all share in common is that we don't sleep well the night before a trip.  The sugar, the coffee and the beach helped to keep us going but I'll be honest, I was starting to fade a little.  It was time to eat.

Katherine and I took a little run on the beach while Elena and Violet soaked up the salty air and then we Googled our way to a local burger joint called Duck Dive.  It was a cool place with good atmosphere and we had the best waiter.  He even took this photo of us and the expression on Elena's face is everything.  She was responding to something he said.  Good times.  

Re-energized by the food, we decided we weren't done for the night.  We headed back to Atlantic Ave for a walk along the stores.  This was my first time in Virginia Beach and while the layout is different from Dirty Myrtle, the stores were basically the same.  There were lots of families out and it felt very safe, but the same hawkers were out trying to lure shoppers into their stores and then bargaining with them on prices to make a sale.  There were also street performers, which I thought was a nice touch, especially for a Monday night.  If you click on the photo above and zoom in, you will see a dude on stilts.  There were several bands and performers on the streets.  Very nice.  

Our reason for being out was to find Dippin' Dots.  It was almost a wild goose chase, but eventually we found some.  Dippin' Dots ain't cheap.  Geez.  

The beds and pillows in the hotel were angelic.  Maybe they felt better because we were all sleep deprived and exhausted, but either way, we slept very well.  Violet needed to get in a conditioning run, so Katherine, Violet and I headed out at 8:30 am for a 3 mile run along the coast.

I've mentioned our love of coffee, right?  I get credit for actually doing a little research and finding this one.  We decided to go to Java Surf for coffee and breakfast.  Food was good, coffee was great.  It was also located in the ViBe arts district along Virginia Beach.  As artists, we enjoyed a little walk through the area after coffee to see some of the cool art.

While we were walking, we ended up bumping into a Bad Ass Coffee by accident.  I've been wanting to try the one in Surfside Beach, SC and even though we had all just finished our first coffees, we were immediately ready for 2nd coffee.  

After that, we continued to explore the beach area.  As we walked and ran while in town, we kept seeing a big sculpture in the distance but we never ended up getting close enough to it.  We decided we needed to check it out.  I'm not a huge fan of the parking situation in Virginia Beach, but we found spot and did some more walking and exploring in search of the sculpture.  

It was a huge bronze sculpture of King Neptune made by an Italian guy in 2005.  Really cool.  

There were a lot of details on the sculpture, but it was hot.  

The weather on our first trip was perfect.  75 degrees, blue skies and light breeze.  The weather on this trip was more normal and realistic for late July.  It was hot, humid when the sun broke through the clouds, it was blistering.  We enjoyed a lot of cloud cover, but my head still got pretty burned.

We took a different route back to the car and found this cool candy shop.  I love candy.  The bright colors, the sweet taste, many of my childhood memories involve candy and sugar.  My dentist is on speed dial.  When Katherine said, "Y'all go sit in the ice cream cone chairs and let me take a photo" I was all about it.  

Apparently Katherine loves candy too.  The shop was a whole vibe.  And I think Katherine got some sort of edible pen and paper candy thing.  Very strange, very cool.

Driving around looking for parking showed us several places we wanted to check out.  One was this cool record store.  It was loud.  I thought I was just being an old man but after a few minutes, everyone was wanting to get out because we were all overstimulated.

The hours were clicking by and in the early afternoon we had to remind ourselves why were were in town.  We had a 20 minute drive to Norfolk where we needed to pick up our sculptures.  Here's maybe the coolest thing about this whole experience:  Elena didn't just get a sculpture accepted into this national level exhibit.  She freakin' won it.  

She was awarded the Best in Show award for her excellent sculpture.  Oddly, Katherine predicted this would happen two months earlier.  That's Elena with her blue ribbon!

Then we played a game of art and luggage Tetris in the car.  Once we had everything packed so that I could still see out of the windows, we pulled back onto the road for the long drive home.

We all agreed that we wanted to arrive home earlier than we did last time.  Arriving at my house at midnight still meant another hour drive for Elena and Katherine.  As we made our meandering way through the day and as we enjoyed conversations on the drive, it started to not matter so much what time it was or what time we'd get home.  When Katherine floated the idea of slowing down to stop and eat at a favorite sit-down restaurant in Florence, SC, everyone happily agreed.  Redbone Alley has been a sculpture delivery stop for a while now.  It also helped that Emily lives in Florence and this would be an opportunity to maybe see her.

Elena really likes to color.  Still no story, just facts.

And there's our group photo with Emily.  She put the little one to bed and then hurried over to sit and chat with us for a while.  It was wonderful.  

After another couple of hours on the interstate, we rolled up into my driveway around midnight again.  When I steered onto the exit ramp near my house, Elena audibly lamented that our trip was nearing an end.  Everyone agreed, even though we were all exhausted.  

That's the thing that doesn't come through with photos.  The road conversation.  From early in the morning to late at night, this group always has great conversations.  Some talks were silly, some were very deep but all were enjoyable.  Each individual was able to put aside things like headaches, stomach aches, personal concerns, future worries and minor dramas and be fully present in heartfelt conversation.  The group was more important than the individual.  It was beautiful.  

Often, I find myself doing the heavy lifting when it comes to conversations.  I know that long pauses on road trips equal boredom and that's a slippery slope to falling asleep.  I often have to initiate conversations or ask crazy questions to get people talking.  With this group, however, I was able to relax and just be a person in the conversation rather than a person feeling responsible for the conversation.  A couple of times, Elena called me out for not saying much during a particular conversation.  That was because it was going along fine without me adding anything.  I could just listen and absorb and think.  My lack of input was a good thing.

One of our travelers told the group just how grateful she was to have gone on this trip and to have had these experiences.  It was a real moment.  Especially for a guy like me who says how much he loves to be alone and has done so many trips like this solo in the past.  In fact, it was almost a year ago to the day that I went on a solo trip to install a sculpture in a pretty remote area.  I remembered texting Cathryn and Elena about something funny that was happening there and I told them they should be there.  They responded that I should have invited them.  I had just never considered that someone would want to go.  Turns out community can be better.  

From the beginning of the first trip, one of the main goals was "fun".  No normal human wants to drive 14 hours in two days, so how do you make a drive like that fun?  These cool travelers demonstrated how.  You wake up super early and you know you're not a morning person, so you make sure to have a really good coffee and you do things that will ensure that you are in the best mood possible.  You say yes a lot.  You make suggestions and you're agreeable to what other people want to do.  You choose to see things as opportunities for adventure instead of a chore.  Elena and I didn't want Dippin' Dots and we were exhausted from lack of sleep but were we up for a long walk to try to find some?  Absolutely!  And because of that agreement, we saw live bands, a guy on stilts and we watched a guy juggle on a very tall unicycle.  

If you're the person who does the research, you also jump on board for the unplanned side quest.  If you're the person who doesn't plan, you take advice from the planner seriously.  If someone needs to run 3 miles and you only wanted to run 1, you go run 3 with the group.  And yes, it means you stop for a bathroom break even when you don't need to use the bathroom.  

As it turns out, that's what makes a good community.  Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses.  Everyone had different wants and needs.  Alone, we have to suffer and make adjustments because of our shortcomings.  Together we work as a unit, allowing those with strengths to rise and take the wheel, making someone else's weaknesses null and void.  Things become smoother, easier, better and more fun.  It's so hard for me to type that.  Ugh.  Freakin' community.  

Taking it just a tiny step further, having fun is a choice that you make.  It is a state of mind.  The next time you have a chore ahead, give that a thought.  It is within you to turn that chore into fun.  

So, we took our artwork on a 7 hour delivery drive and then picked it back up after the exhibit.  We spent 28 hours driving, took a lot of precious time out of our summers and paid outrageous prices for gas.  But what we'll remember years from now is how much fun we had drawing in the sand on Chesapeake Bay, walking through so much beauty at the botanical garden, getting matching henna tattoos, trying Turkish Delight, reading sketchy sayings on t-shirts and shorts in store windows, laughing together in the car and getting closer as friends.  

making fun, part 1: delivery

The parts of my life that get exhibited through social media and this blog are just a few select slices of a much bigger, uglier, more complex existence that would bore you if you were subjected to it.  Obviously, right?  We all know that public posts are very curated, it's just that sometimes we forget.  I'm a private person and what you see from me is very much intentional.  I keep a lot of things for just me.  

This summer, I had to go on a couple of long drives to deliver and pick up artwork and I made a conscious choice to make those trips as fun as possible.  These are moments I would often just keep for myself and not share with whoever reads this, but after the second trip and a couple of key conversations, the teacher in me couldn't help but want to share.  I just kept thinking there was a nugget of wisdom in there somewhere that might be good for one or two of you to read.  And if not, maybe just following along on a ridiculous adventure would be better for you than doomscrolling.  So...if you're interested, come with us on a little trip:

This part of the story is really cool for me.  Back in the spring, Cathryn and Elena (two current students), Katherine (former student, current colleague/peer) and I decided to enter a juried exhibit for sculpture.  Katherine found it and suggested it to us as a group.  Like most fun things, it started like, "hey, what if we all did this together?".  The exhibit was called "Metal Transformed" and all of us just happen to be metal sculptors.  Cathryn and Elena had just spent a year turning metal into amazing sculptures that replicated plants and other cool things.  Katherine has several amazing replications of objects in metal.  Shows like this can be expensive, but I kept thinking this was just a really good idea.  

We entered.  

One afternoon, the text thread started.  "Check your emails".  We did and one by one, we all announced to the chat that we got accepted.  I was astonished.  Not because their work isn't great, but because artists should expect a 90% rejection rate.  We were all excited and began planning how we were going to get our work all the way up to Norfolk, VA.  

With long distance exhibits, I usually enter things that are easily shipped.  If it's more than a couple of hours away, FedEx is cheaper than gas.  With several heavy steel sculptures to send, we quickly started planning a 7 hour road trip.  Heck, with this group, there was no doubt we would have fun.  I'm too old to drive 14 hours in 24 hours, so an overnight trip was necessary.  In May, we carefully packed and loaded our sculptures in the FJ and left my driveway at 6:00 am.

Our first order of business was delivering the artwork to D'Art Center in Norfolk.  This really cool and prestigious Art Center is part of a very cool cultural arts district in downtown Norfolk.  We were welcomed with a cart and access to the drop-off room.  

Cathryn couldn't make the trip with us, so we printed out a flat Cathryn and took her with us.

The Chrysler Museum of Art was literally across the street from the exhibition space and they had a wonderful collection and an exhibit by one of my favorite artists, Louise Nevelson.  

We took our time and saw all the art.  A little overwhelming, but great.  We asked the staff where we should eat and they directed us to a very cool restaurant a short walk away in a cool, historic building.  

We knew we were close to water and we're all suckers for a beach, so we made our way to the shoreline of the Chesapeake Bay just in time for sunset.  It was gorgeous.

We are all coffee lovers.  Coffee was a big part of our adventure.  Katherine and I ran past a COVA coffee and decided that would be our morning coffee stop after a free breakfast at the hotel.  We took flat Cathryn with us.

Here's an important note about the group dynamic:

Katherine is a planner.  She will do hours of research about a city before going.  She will make a Pinterest board, make lots of notes in her sketchbook and she will send you links to videos on YouTube.  When she goes somewhere new, she becomes an encyclopedia that the rest of her travel group can access.  

I fly by the seat of my pants.  I believe in the importance of learning about a place and even doing a little light reading about it, but I enjoy spontaneous adventures.  Katherine and I got to travel to Barcelona and Venice several years ago with a much larger group and she ended up being the Yang to my Yen.  

Elena is happy to tell you her opinion about things, but she is very much a person who will smile and go with the flow.  She says "yes" a lot and that's a perfect quality for a travel buddy.  

Cathryn was flat and basically did whatever we told her.

In this group, Katherine provides the lead and we begin by walking in that original direction but then we all get easily sidetracked by my whims and silliness and we end up having even more fun than we could have planned from home.  

During our first travel day, we experienced the joy of our group dynamic and had a lot of laughs and fun because of it.  Give us some sleep and some coffee (and a lot of bathroom stops) and we're happy as clams.  

So, of course, Katherine knew about the Norfolk Botanical Garden and when we asked everyone we talked to about what we needed to experience while we were in town, it kept coming up.  We had no plans after morning coffee, so we decided to check it out.

Turns out, we happened into a picturesque and perfect day.  

Even at the garden, we looked at maps, did a little research and then totally made it up as we went based on the perfect weather and the beauty of the place.

We literally stopped to smell the flowers.

And we took time to rest.  

Then we stopped again to smell the flowers.

Then we lost flat Cathryn.  I don't want to talk about it.  RIP.

The slow pace we took was also a testament to the great personalities in the group.  We all knew we had a 7 hour drive ahead of us, but we were in no hurry to leave.  We wanted to experience all we could while we were there.  We said yes to a lot of things, maybe everything, and we soaked it all up.

I love a side quest.  The whole day, we heard the noise of planes taking off and landing at the airport beside the Botanical Garden but we couldn't quite see them because of the berm.  After we walked the garden and had a magical grilled cheese and afternoon coffee at the garden, we just had to see what was on the other side of the berm.  Like little kids, we stood at the top, mesmerized by the planes and even waited to wave at one of the groups heading out.  It was so much fun.  

"Do y'all want to get a photo with that strange chicken statue at the gas station?"

"Of course!"

Based on billboards, North Carolina is famous for weed vapes and gummies.  Based on billboards, Virginia is famous for peanuts.  Tempted by the road signs, we decided we needed boiled peanuts on our drive home.  We followed the signs to a very cool little town and peanut shack only to find it closed at 5:00 pm.  We were bummed.  Still, we looked through the window and took a few photos.  We made a note that we would try to catch it open on our return trip.

Elena likes to color.  No story, she just likes to color.  

"Elena, have you ever been to South of the Border?"

"No, but I want to go."

"Sweet!"

*Swerves onto the exit ramp.

So we stopped at South of the Border, even though it was late and all the stores were closed.  The bathroom was open because "Pedro never sleeps" and neither does that bathroom attendant.  (Because according to billboards, South Carolina is famous for South of the Border.)  And we still got to walk around in the enchanting glow of neon lights and take photos with the critters.  

An hour or so later on the interstate, I watched as an oncoming car lost control and flipped several times through a road construction zone.  The adrenaline from that experience kept me wide awake until we made it home pretty late.  Well, that and the fact that good travel buddies always stay awake and make for good conversation.  We were tired and I'm sure all of our butts were sore from sitting in the car for so long, but we were all happy.  Happy to have our work exhibited together, happy to have experienced so many fun things together, and happy to be back in our beds at home.  

If you want to read about the return trip and get the moral of the story, you'll have to check back in when part two drops.