After a month thick with LP work, including first editions for Cape Cod & US & Canada on a Shoestring (gonna be great), two new best of city guides (NO & NYC), and preproduction work on Miami & New England, time to catch back up with the self, and the travel plans

Looking out towards the fall calendar, many getaway options to sift through. First up, October's looking like the time for heading back to New York City, in news now for the 9/11 anniversary. We were there a year ago today to support the city and reconnect with New Yorkers, friends and strangers, and trip out on the event that brushed us so closely, as we were there when it happened, and actually in the WTC on Sept the 9th. Had Newark-SF plane tickets for the morning of Sept 12, those cancelled, we found ourselves tranversing the country with other refugees on the Greyhound bus. But that's another entry, one we'll always sift through as these sad September days roll back again.

Thanks in part to my Aussie bosses and their 5 weeks vacation policy, I get to split a lot, and usually look to cash in some days around the end of the calendar year. So Thanksgiving's a gimme, one we can stretch into a week and a half, and this season J Tree's calling me - time to take Sophie to the desert. Mai, her mom & my wife, kind of hates the desert, a byproduct at least partially from spending too many summers in put in Austin, but me? I love the landscape that's about as polar from Jersey as it comes. Figure we'll let the little one break that tie. Plus its cheap enough to camp there (could be cold but we've got gear), and we've gotten good leads on the Harmony Motel in 29 Palms, the pad where U2 stayed during the Joshua Tree recordings. Somewhere down the road, Gram Parsons bid his adeau, but I figure best to spread the rock n roll death sites out a bit, so we'll wait.

We've got a mini SW loop to build up off that trip, to possibly include Sequoia & King's Canyon, Vegas, Flagstaff & the north rim. I could be high thinking that winter won't be impacting us in these places, but that's just Bay Area living for your, whack weather always messing with my sense of seasons.

One surity is Montana will be cold, and come Christmastime, that might be our port of call. Sophie's godmom and Mai's old pal Patricia, she and hers have a ranch up there round Nye/Fishtail way (b/t Bozeman and Yellowstone), and have put out the kindly invite for us all to c'mon up. If It happens, we'll be jazzed, and we'll be on a comfy airplane, that's assured. Ain't looking forward to four days on the road round that time then.

As it goes, freelance gigs a going to. Got a piece in the SF Bay Guardian on the Metro Art in LA comin soon, heard from a random old travel media connect who's in Hong Kong he saw my SF piece in Business Traveler (Far East ed). Time to pitch, time to pitch, time to pitch. That's what a gap in the schedule affords me, that and all that lovely vacation time to skip out a day or two. Trouble is, its so damn nice here now its all I can do but lope around smiling.