Getting it started

Blogging, to over-simplify as I often do, looks like fun. I've got several friends, mostly in the Davidson world, who do some really great stuff. I followed Will Bryan and Wells Black faithfully over the last couple of years (Wells was, incidentally, pretty much THE original Davidson hoops blogger... he did it because it was too hard to find Davidson in the media, so he did the dirty legwork and compiled it all in one spot for us all to read). When he's got the time to really keep up, Dave Mabe does some really cool things both for his work and for himself. Michael Kruse publishes some wonderful things, but of course he's a professional. Coach Cooke was awesome from Beijing this past summer. The things that Anna Marie Smith, Nicole Keroack, and Reed Ryan did from overseas really impressed me. And how can anyone overlook the freakish skills of Jordie Poncy?! I've always looked at their stuff and wanted to get in on the action, but it's a big commitment and I have been hesitant to jump in for fear that I'll get started and then lose the fire.

What has kicked me into action is the inspiration that my good friend John Syme, Davidson's Alumni Editor, has provided. This summer he's taking his vintage convertible and his super-cool dog, Dodger, on a cross-country trip of discovery... and he'll be blogging along the way. The more I think about it, the more excited I get about helping to spread the word about his trip and the writing that he'll be doing along the way. So I think that the folks above, and John's trip, and the promise that I don't have to bound by word count have all pushed me over the edge and now I've decided to officially become a blogger. Officially.

I do this with one particular occasion in mind, and that is my July 1-9 trip to Europe that I'll be taking on behalf of the Alumni Association. Part of our "Lifelong Learning" program, I'll be leading/hosting a group of Davidson alumni that are on a "WWII in Europe" excursion. We begin in Paris, spend significant time on and around the Normandy beaches, and then we follow the path of the American military in 1944-45 as our forces pushed to the German frontier. For personal reasons, this is a dream come true for me. My grandfather arrived in Theatre in November 1944; less than two months later, after surviving the horrors of the Hurtgen Forest, he was fighting for his life in a hospital in England after being mortared in the first days of the Battle of the Bulge. I've always dreamed of re-tracing his footsteps, and I can at last do so. But in a professional way this is also going to be a treat, because I'll be the representative of the college for an enthusiastic group of Davidson alumni and friends... most of whom had parents or grandparents who also fought over the ground we'll be covering. I'm so thankful for this opportunity, and I look forward to sharing it with you as much as I can in the coming weeks.

I plan to post information about our preparations, and then will attempt daily posts while we're on the trip in July. I wonder where we'll be, exactly, on the 4th of July?