Some “Americans” showed up in my hotel and upset the peace of my creative retreat here in France. Mangler and Jessica (from North Carolina) were here last week by chance and they were perfectly lovely, but this new group of “Americans” is what the rest of the world thinks of as stereotypical yanks. Outrageously loud, obnoxious and rude while being dismissive to everyone else around . My god they were embarrassing! They expounded self righteous world views that were so tightly locked up they’d left themselves no wiggle room to see any other way. I believe that traveling is the great educator and I wish more people had the chance to see the world, but the schooling hadn’t yet landed its empathetic lessons on these folks.

I haven’t ridden the last few days as I’ve been on a creative wave. I’m amazed by all the ideas and productivity flowing out of me. I can’t hardly put my notebook or computer away as I don’t dare risk losing any of this good inspiration. 

Fairdale work and my own projects are progressing along and taking unexpected exciting jumps in direction. My little watercolor travel set is in constant use filling my mini sketchbook with mindless cartoons too (I am convinced that I can keep creative momentum going by giving myself room to draw stuff I don’t put thought into). This probably doesn’t make for exciting blog reading as I’ve got no new amazing mountain scenery to share but the jumps in new ideas I’m making inside my mind are epic right now! 

I did hop on a boat to Lausanne and checked out the Olympic Museum. It was a bit ho-hum for me. Well done and pretty to look at but seemed to miss completely celebrating the amazing athletic performances through the years that make the Olympic exciting. It instead focused on examples of uniforms and samples of past medals which seemed to be missing the point entirely.