Blue: A Life is Given in the Name of Liberty

A lot has been going on here, I mean a lot! We actually had a nice last few days in Buffalo. There was a party at the "Green House" which was capped off with a surprise visit from the real (non-spud) Patrick. We got some last minute shopping done, had "family dinner" and said our goodbyes. Then it was off to Michigan and the start of our summer!

The drive down was fairly boring. I had the joy of getting up at 5:15 a.m. and driving down to Olean. Then, as I needed to get my truck back to Michigan, I got to follow the bus for the seven-hour drive. After struggling to stay awake for the first few hours of the drive, something interesting happened. A fairly large pheasant thought it would be a good idea to take on a 30,000-pound bus head on at 70 m.p.h. While the bird did not go quietly (the thunk reverberated through the entire bus) it lost the battle in a flurry of feathers. We managed to pull into my house and get settled that evening, had a home-cooked meal and called it a day.

We decided to spend the next day just working on planning and taking care of some stuff. It was then that we started making some great contacts and planning some huge events. We learned that their is a NASCAR event in Wisconsin the 19th that we can attend, the blues festival in Chicago on the 13th and then a huge political movement across Ohio, not to mention a day at Hillsdale College.

However, this does not begin to be the most interesting thing that happened. To cover this, a brief description of the bus is required. The back of the bus is our office and a bedroom that Janis has adopted as her work space. There is a hole in the ceiling with a fan used to pump air either into or out of the bus.

Anyway, suddenly there was a loud constant chirping emanating from right above the fan. Janis looked up to find a little sparrow staring into the bus. I went back there to look at the commotion and the bird just kept looking around and chirping like crazy. Keep in mind the fan is currently sucking in air and making a fair amount of noise which made it odd that the bird was hanging around. So we attempted to have a conversation with the little guy and after about seven minutes, we decided to let the bird be. Apparently we hurt his feelings, or he took the quote "give me liberty or give me death" literally, because as we went to leave him, there was a sudden thunking and chopping noise from the fan and then silence. The loss of our friend was
traumatizing enough but remember the description of the fan? A hole in the ceiling with only a screen separating the inside of the bus from the fan and outside. Now I hope none of you have seen what happens when you put a live bird into what is essentially a blender, let alone one with no floor under it, only a screen and an office/bedroom. I'll save you the details but we spent the next 20 minutes picking up parts of the "liberty sparrow" because much like Humpty Dumpty we were unable to put him back together again. We keep him in our hearts still as well as the pheasant early in the trip. Pray for the brave souls who gave their lives to our cause.

Justina and I did manage to steal a few minutes away to enjoy the lake I live on. We went out for a boat ride, stopped in the middle of the lake and jumped in for a bit. It was a much needed break from the 30 straight hours we had spent working on Scribblemaps in Justina's case and from emailing and calling potential clients in mine. We are getting ready to head out to dinner in a bit and then tomorrow we start towards Ohio and get ready for a huge campaign we will be working on there which is centered around a bikers' convention to start off with. It should be pretty interesting to put it lightly.