Digital Route 66 – Travel Blog

The laptop has returned, but development on Digital Route 66 is going to be little to zero for the near future for a small combination of reasons:

1.) Work will be ramping up for me over the next month or so.  This actually has nothing to do with my ability to update the website; I include it just to sound important.

2.) The website might be drastically changing.  Not disappearing, but changing.  Nothing is set or official but I’m working on some redevelopment behind the scenes so little of the published website will be updated and not much will be added.

So I guess less of a combination and mostly just reason #2.

I’ve also stepped onto the steering committee as the Illinois representative for the proprosed Route 66 Alliance that would serve as an international body to unite the various state and overseas Route 66 associations.  I won’t be passing on much of what is going on with that unless the group at large sees fit to be detailed, though I don’t believe the development process of the Alliance is meant to be a deep dark secret.  It’s an open organization welcoming all who love (or just like…or just have heard of) the road and will serve the road in ways that stae organizations cannot without replacing them as the important ground soldiers of the Mother Road.  I recently posted the mission statement I drew up for the committee to work off of, and I think it sums up pretty well the goals of the Alliance.

I should get my laptop back on Monday, so perhaps things will return to normal on Digital Route 66.  I should get the Gardner page up in the middle of next week…again, hopefully…and then on Sunday the 20th it’s the quarterly meeting of the Route 66 Association of Illinois up in Willowbrook.  I’ll have details from the meeting here and probably on the Yahoo! Route 66 message board as well.I was also able to finally get a mission statement written for the proposed Route 66 alliance as I volunteered to do at the meetings in Litchfield:

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To serve as an international uniting force in the ongoing preservation, promotion, and protection of Historic U.S. Highway 66 as well as the principal proponent for the education and enjoyment of the Mother Road.

• Aid and assist individuals and organizations, including the various state and international Route 66 associations, in their national and regional preservation, promotion and education efforts
• Help improve the ability of travelers to experience and enjoy Route 66 and the ability of towns and businesses along the route to share in
• Preserve the history of the road through the capture of oral histories, photographs and other written/digital records that will make the facts and memories of Route 66 available to all future generations
• Raise funds for the ongoing preservation efforts along the highway through alliance/association membership, corporate sponsorship opportunities and assistance with grant application writing
• Recruit future generations of road enthusiasts to travel Route 66 and help support the highway
• Serve as a unified national voice for the highway and her inhabitants, tourists and supporters

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I’m sure there will be many revisions.  But it’s a start.

In the meantime I’ve also actually written a bit over at my main blog, exit670.com.  Not that there’s anything terribly relevant there: it’s basically just my personal blog for writing whatever crap comes to mind (though never anything so menial as “I petted my cat today” or such).  That works for some; not for me.  Anyway, one of these days I’ll actually be able to write regularly on both sites.

Now that most of the Route 66 activity for the summer – the state Motor Tour and the Litchfield festival – has wound down things have seemingly come to a crashing halt.  I guess that much anticipation fulfilled so suddenly has quite the affect.

Confounding matters – at least regarding Digital Route 66 – is that my laptop suddenly decided that the motherboard didn’t need to function anymore, and thus my primary work device is AWOL.  Being a smart lad, I do regular backups of all my data, and the last such process was completed only a few days before the notebook died.  So everything’s safe.  It just makes it harder to function since few files are on my desktop and even less applications have been installed here.  My next website update was to be Gardner, and all sixty-six (!) pictures are sitting on the laptop waiting to be uploaded, while the HTML page is halfway complete and needed only an hour or so of tweaking.  Yes, it’s all on the external hard drive and could be recalled, but I’d have to copy over a slew of files plus install Dreamweaver just for that one page, and since I could have the laptop back as soon as early next week I might as well wait.

In the next several weeks I also hope to get out to several businesses here in the Litchfield area and hit them up for Association membership and/or newsletter advertisements.  Not being a natural salesman, hopefully I won’t come up too short.