The Big Trip part 1.2 - On the road

A continuation from the first post. Which was long enough, for me at least, to warrant a new post.

So we left at 4:30. We didn't get out of the city until probably 5:30. This was partially due to rush hour traffic over the bridge and a bit on the NJ turnpike, which we unfortunately hit. Mostly though, it was because we foolishly decided that instead of following my written directions to get onto the GW bridge, we'd just find our way out.

The Ryder van is a commercial vehicle. Which means that we can't go on any parkways - the main way to get from Yonkers down to the bridge. You can go a bit east and follow Broadway down and I had written out how to find Broadway, but we decided eh, there was bound to be signs pointing out a truck route, right?

That was an incorrect assumption.

On a side note, Yonkers has many lovely suburban areas, with nice houses and fairly cute shops. Many of them. With numerous dead ends.

Oh, and we didn't bother to stop for lunch, so besides Coolattas neither of us had eaten since about 7am and 8am respectively.

Also we were still sweaty and gross from loading the van.

I feel that this was a good initial test on how Chris and I will interact in the face of annoying crisis. Luckily, we both did well! I'm pretty chill in such situations and it turns out so is he, so once we were on the bridge and across, we were fine!

We stopped about an hour later to get Chinese food for dinner, then back on the road.

It'd been agreed that we were going to just drive straight through. Our first stop, Kansas University in Lawrence, KS, about 18 hours without traffic and it turned out nearly 24 hours with it! That meant arriving a day earlier than planned and having an extra day of down time before the sales began. Which for myself is turning into an extra day to cement away paperwork, but hey it would have had to be done anyway so the extra time is wonderful.

The trip down was good. There were a few spots of bad traffic, particularly where late night construction shut down long stretches of turnpike. The van handles great on the highway though and we just stopped every couple of hours to gas up, take a break, get food and switched off about every 3 to 6 hours. The van is very uncomfortable to sleep in - a cheap pillow solved that.

There were a couple of noteworthy things. We drove around St. Louis in Missouri, which has a lot of beautiful old brick building in various states of use or disrepair. Actually, we were in Missouri for a loooong time.

There were a couple of thunder storms in Missouri and Kansas, including one after we'd checked into the hotel. They were fantastic! The land is flat compared to the east coast, so the lightning just comes straight down. The rain was heavy, there was thunder - it was great. Thunder storms are my favorite weather.

Interestingly there were a lot of help wanted signs around Missouri and especially here in Kansas.

Once we got to the hotel and checked in, showers and dinner were more than a necessity. Chili's was chosen because it was in walking distance, also a necessity after 24 hours in a van. Margaritas were a necessity because we needed to celebrate getting here and because there were only $3 each. Wooo cheap midwest! Only one each, of course, and then back to the hotel to relax.

A facebook update lead to the realization that Rob Freytag is in Kansas - and only about 30 minutes away! We're going to go by later this evening to have dinner and catch up, which will be awesome. I think it's been a year, maybe two, since I've seen Rob.

We are bringing pie.

It turns out another tour was just finishing up their week at KU! The director, Karen, called me and we met up. I got to ask a few questions and I'll be going with them in about an hour so they can show me how to get to the specific building, where to park and a few good spots to get out advertisements. I'm really glad about that. This is going to be my first week ever doing this job and while I have all the supplies and notes, it'll help to have another director who just did the same gig show me around a bit.

The night ended with a whirlpool. Mmm hotels.

The Big Trip part 1 - Heading out!

So, I have this month job touring five different colleges, all around the midwest, selling posters during their orientation and first weeks of classes. It's for this poster company up in Yonkers, they've been doing it for nearly 40 years and if all goes well, it should make me enough to set up an apartment and work on animation and art for a bit. Wooo!

I'm going to try to keep a blog about the trip because it's kind of a neat job. I'm going to Kansas, Iowa, Ohio and Michigan. Left NY on Thursday, August 19th and won't be back until Saturday, September 18th.

Originally I was hired as an assistant for a different tour, but that director (tour leader) dropped out and I was offered the chance to run a tour as director myself. I've never done any sort of roadie work before, but it's something different and it's a chance to make more money so I said yes.

This is going to be a bit of catching up. But that's alright, the actual sales week doesn't start until Monday!

Thursday morning was an early day, up in Yonkers by 9am, met with a few other tour directors, set my stuff down by the pallets of stock, met up with my assistant Chris and went up to the main office! Time to get the van, get loaded and ship out! All hopefully before evening rush hour started and it became hell to leave the city via the George Washington Bridge.

That didn't quite happen.

The van didn't get there until about 11:45. The warehouse guy in charge of such things, Al, was awesome and called Ryder a bunch of times, but they only picked up once and said it was on it's way, it'd be there in 15 minutes (that was at about 10:30). The big boss, Erol, had to call before the van actually got there. This sucked simply because there wasn't anything we could do before the van was dropped off. And sucked worse because there was a TON we had to do once the van was actually there.

So two and a half hours of time gone. Grah.

Once that was settled we got our pallets and loaded the van, realizing only then that the books were insanely heavy. We'd fit 20 sleeves to a book and at the time, they'd felt heavy but not unmanageable. I'm chalking this up to our shared desperation to get the stock done and organized, giving us a minor level of superhuman strength that allowed us to individually lift and carry each book.

This is no longer so. Especially the lifting part.

So, check on one thing to do before the first sale - re-tie the books into pages of 10! That is going to be done tomorrow (Sunday).

Also, I hate pallet lifts. They're very unruly and difficult to turn without backing up and going forward a million times like a first time driver. If you haven't guessed, I've made a fool of myself several times trying to direct that thing. XD

Back up to the main warehouse, where I was given another copy of my checklist and then slowly, painfully, collected all the other stock. It was slow and painful because I kept thinking we'd collected everything, only to check my list or be told by another warehouse manager, Walter (also cool as hell), that we had a lot more stuff. And it had to be collected from everywhere.

The most memorable was probably the basement. The warehouse is one of those giant old brick factory buildings, which means the basement is all brick and cement and exposed pipes and rotting, splintering wooden beams. I'm glad I wore boots. The basement is also FULL of various stock, with two, maybe three passages here and there. Not all of the stock lied along these passages. In retrospect (and only in retrospect) climbing over pallets, around boards and on top of precariously balanced boxes was a bit fun.

This may all give the impression that the company wasn't very organized - this isn't the case. The stuff was everywhere, but it was organized either with other alike stock or in a pile with a bunch of stuff specifically for my tour. All of the warehouse guys were running around, working like crazy and there were three other tours trying to pack and get out at the same time - two of them tour 2 and 3, meaning really big important tours with a lot of stock and decent sized trucks to fill. I'm tour 19, the last one.

We managed to get everything by 3:15, met with Erol to get the Amex card and cash for the trip, as well as settle on a schedule to talk weekly profits and a bunch of other boringly necessary paperwork, then finally headed out! It was just about 4:30pm.

We stopped at a Dunkin Donuts on the way. Coolattas were necessary and delicious.

shirts and things

So I've been trying to get as much together as possible before doing this roadie gig for a month, from August 19th until September 18th. It's been a bit difficult. I'm still applying for commissions and working on my own stuff, but knowing that I'll be gone in a couple of weeks does severely hamper my abilities to look for long term work.

Despite any frustrations with that, I do really like working on side projects and one shot jobs.

I'm designing t-shirts! MySoti.com is an awesome place, totally takes care of the cost printing shirts can get to. Check it out!

I also just entered into a contest to design the poster for this open air market in San Francisco, called Treasure Island Flea. I submitted three designs, though two are just variations of the same poster. Grah, I hope I get it! Commissions have slowed down severely and it would be nice to get something. Nothing is as encouraging as getting a legit, paid job for your work.

Contemplative gummy worms.

Title is pretty much it... I have been contemplative and I am eating gummy worms.

I'm starting to feel the animating bug bite again, which is kind of nice. I've been doing a lot of illustrative work, which is what I want, but I do like to animate. Hm. We shall have to do something about that.

In conclusion, I drew a demon. On my new hand down moleskin. Mmmm, moleskin. Mmmm graph paper.

Times, they are a changin'

Oh man, crazy things this past week or so.

Basically, I've gotten a job next month traveling through Kansas and Iowa for a month, selling movie posters to colleges, and that will give me enough to get myself an apartment and try to do this whole only art thing for a bit.

Wish me good luck. I could say psha, I need no such thing, but honestly I am nervous.

Way too used to making sure everything is settled responsibly. XD

I've been doing alright with commissions through etsy and have spent a lot of time on crafts and art. Amusingly, I have yet to sell any of my original stuff on etsy! So even though I have more I could sell, I am reluctant. Check it out though - etsy.com/shop/kiraseru

At least I have a lot of art to use for future posts!

Like the following. Mmm, acrylic. Mmmm, not digital painting.

Quickly, an update!

Oh, it's been a while.

I've gotten very busy!

Right now I'm sitting in Think Coffee at a little after 3:30pm on July 4th, trying to hurriedly update this before they close at 4pm. It is beautiful outside. Everyone is eager to go to their BBQ's, beaches, parties and firework displays.

I'm starting to pull together some commissions through etsy, which is really exciting! I'm surprised - I didn't think that I would actually get any responses to my bids for work until I was better established. A bit to my chagrin, I haven't sold any work posted on my store but I'm up to three commissioned pieces! One was a set of banners and an avatar for a girl's new etsy shop, the other two are paintings. Each is very, very different from the other. Which is nice. I'm looking forward to working on both and I'm really happy that I can get some work as an illustrator and painter. Again, laughing at myself a little over this. I thought that the very last way I'd ever get money was through something like traditional painting work, and here I am!

I found out this week that the artists in Union Square will soon be no more. I was surprised - I knew there were some issues with Bloomberg or something but had no idea he was actually shutting everything down. It's ridiculous. The art vendors are such an integral part of the Square. Between that and Friday's moving into the area, I think Union Square might be destined for a more Times Square feel. Ugh.

I also didn't know that the artists there just kind of went and set themselves up! My friend Chrissy Clark had an event there a year ago, part of her thesis, and had to jump through a bunch of hoops! It's a shame they're shutting it all down, I would have definitely gone out and tried to sell some prints or pillows or something.

Might still do so next Sunday. They have another two weeks. It'd be nice to see what happens.

I'm starting to look at apartments. It's a little nerve wracking, trying to find the time. I can't skip out on work to look at places, and on my days off I'm either at internship, at Daisy's studio or... well there's Sundays, but I think most places aren't going to want to show their apartments on Sundays. Eh, we'll see - at this point, I'm rambling.

I'm also working more on my show... leaning towards making it a movie... exciting.

All this stuff is great, but I have to admit that I've been feeling cagey. The bridal shop is a good job - it's not what I want to do. Painting and doing illustrative work is fantastic - I can't yet live off that alone. I can't even pay bills on that money just yet. It's frustrating.

Ah well.

Following is a sample picture for one of my commissions! I'll post the entire thing when it's done. This was just a sample of the style I wanted to paint this woman's bid in. She really liked it, which made me happy. And I get to draw and paint a bunch of hands. Yay!

I need to do more life drawing. I miss it.