I do feel fortunate that I am starting this endeavor a little early and playing around with things before the official kick off in May. I have been overwhelmed with the feeling that maybe I have bitten off more than I can chew. The only thing that seems to help is to go back and look at some of the original strips from the professional cartoonists (web or not) and realize that their characters have matured as their drawing skills have. So as I sit here on the last day of spring break, all I can think of is I need to get the ideas on paper and then go back and tweak them. I have story ideas, but I sat around trying to decide which one I should start with… I finally decided after much inner dialogue that I should just start drawing and then post them in the order that makes the most sense. Looking at PVP recently, there have been a number of short almost single day strips, so why should I be set on a three strip arc? Just draw stupid. I took last night and went over Kyle Baker’s fantastic book How to Draw Stupid. Once again looking for inspiration and I think I did find some, I know everything about my drawing will improve if I just start drawing. So the characters will be change, does anyone remember the main character from the first Peanuts strip? Two hints: It wasn’t Charlie Brown or Snoopy.
As far as planning for the Odyssey goes, everything is finally in place for England. Flight, lodging and a MINI One. For those of you unfamiliar the MINI One is basically a baseline MINI Cooper (not available in the US) smaller engine, no Bells, no Whistles. It should be a lot of fun to drive after living with a fully equipped Cooper S for four years. Now the final steps for England are just to figure out where we are going to go on our day trips, a lot of things on the list, and all of them should be great. Sue has started to solve puzzle caches for England and looking for those that are MINI or Automotive related- including a cache near where Top Gear is filmed. She has also found an event the Monday after MINI United and has been in touch with a UK cacher who has given her some ideas.
The US portion of the trip has also come together, I’ve got my lodging and registration for Mini Meet, and am deciding what route to take to get up to Winona, MN. I’m considering heading over to St. Louis and then north, just for fun (OK I have a friend I want to meet up with and Cecil-Evil GeoCaching Monkey doesn’t have any caches in Missouri). Heading home through Sheboygan, WI to touch base with an old college friend and through either Chicago (and gummi bears at Albanese) or avoiding the city (but not the gummi bears).
One sad point is with the economy I will be solo for Comic-Con in San Diego, not too bad since I feel I will be working for part of it and be rather demanding about what I want to do, but it would have been nice to share the experience with one of my brothers. Still working on airfare to get out there, but I’m not too concerned yet. Haven’t started to ask around to see what might be going on in San Diego before or after and I don’t know about renting a car since I’ll be downtown most of the time so it would be a waste until the convention is over and I head out caching on the way back.
While I don’t think I’ll be posting anymore test strips until May (I might, but don’t know yet) I will try to update the blog part with things related to the adventure. Thanks to all of you who are joining me virtually on this adventure it is nice to have the company.