Mark’s Bloomin’ Journal

Wawa (a Canada goose by any other name) is a rather remarkable chain of stores covering the mid-atlantic states. Apparently starting life as a dairy it has now morphed into something of a phenomenon. Known to me only because of this latest LAF Challenge I have come to really appreciate its convenience, its cleanliness and its cost efficiencies. It becomes home away from home for everything from gas to yogurt and fresh fruit to coffee. This is not your average “stop and rob” and there is little mistake that english is spoken here cheerfully, politely and as a first language.

After Saturday’s warm up ride I am sitting outside a pristine Wawa in Blue Bell looking mildly overheated and fumbling the top off a chocolate milk. A couple taking a break from an outing on their Harley Davidson wander over to check out the bike I am riding and marvel at the various bits of carbon and titanium and how they all came together so beautifully in a small factory in Glens Falls. NY. They are genuinely intrigued. Surely from other Wawa patrons viewpoints it must look odd, this couple off a super loud hog, dressed in leathers talking earnestly with a spandex clad guy whose only ride is about as flimsy as a flies wing and as silent as a ghost. None the less the conversation is super friendly and pleasantly lengthy. For the best part of forty minutes they tell of other nice routes for me to ride and in turn I tell them of tomorrow’s big ride with Lance Armstrong playing pied piper to a throng of five thousand. The pillion from Pennsylvania is teary eyed by the time I am done recounting some of the Challenge’s finish line tales. Wawa and your customer experience, please feel free to move to the Pacific North West. Such a small but important pleasure to pour the dairy product of your choice into your coffee directly from a carton (kept on ice) as one would at home. No none dairy creamer here !

Monday can’t come soon enough and we are off to Ambler to visit with Kathy Davis, card artist and purveyor of beautifully penned sentiments for a tour of her studios. One day a year or so ago KD ended up in my office in Lake Oswego and after much humorous banter along the lines of her warming the same seat in my office as a few other illustrious, if less pleasant divas, we parted with the promise of a reciprocal visit. So here I am. To see the creator in her lair is most interesting and like most good things it is a far simpler format than one might imagine. The tooling of the job is one thing but it is the creative juices of principle and staff that really fill this space before the finished product gets FTP’d off to the presses and then to distribution x millions of times throughout the US’s major retailers. If you all thought I was a luddite… well let me tell you about KD. While all her work may well be digitized and available to staff at a key stroke she accesses all past work from a bank of filing cabinets weighing tons and holding perhaps forty thousand past efforts. Her present and future inspirations coming from the look and feel of the paper in her hands. Such nice people doing nice work there in Ambler, PA.

Kathy and John want us to see a little more of Pennsylvania in our remaining time so direct us to Doylestown’s galleries and museums, suitable lunch spots and onto the gardens at Chanticleer. It is great to spend day with my eldest in new territory as we poke about a museum depicting much about the early life and labor in Bucks county. While Ms. Garmin fails to take us to Kathy’s recommended lunch spot she does get us to a nice spot on the banks of the Delaware river where a wonderful waitress from Poland delivers an equally delightful lunch and engaging conversation. Against Gavin’s better judgment we head for Chanticleer’s thirty acres of garden paradise and much to his delight arrive to find that it is closed on certain days of the week. This being one of them. Before we know it the time has come to deposit him back beneath the soaring columns of the 30th St Station and headed back to Upstate NY via Manhattan while I depart Blue Bell at 4 AM armed with fresh coffee from Wawa (where else?) to run the gauntlet of the ever surly Philly TSA to hop a flight for Minneapolis and onto Portland.