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Annandale, VA
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571 451 9230
HERBIG IDEA is a creative studio comprised of WHITNEY LYLE and SAM HERBIG. Whitney is a designer who loves to create books, packaging, and do more crafty projects in her spare time. Sam is a film electrician who loves to take photos tirelessly, while finding time on the side to create maps in various mediums (a long-standing hobby, starting with his 3-d topographical map of his hometown, Tübingen, Germany in elementary school).
Together, Whitney's big picture ideas and Sam's impeccable attention to detail, they pull prints in a print shop or set-up a makeshift photography studio. They love to generate ideas and find ways to execute them.
We're chronicling our travels around the states on this blog. Check it out, if you're bored and sitting on an apple box (you can also check it out from home or the office).
3, 2, 1... my goodness the weather is awful outside! Time to set out on our little trip around these United States (and Canada!). We're just going to assume that a high wind warning and ice pellets are a good omen.
That or it's baptism by . . . fire?
Anyway, shout out to my dad on his birthday. May this coming year be prosperous and filled with happiness and new experiences.
Anyway, got to go
Samuel
Dear reader,
It was with great excitement that we travelled over to Whitney's grandmother's (Mom-mom) backyard to for once and all put aside the age long question of: can we set up a tent. I wasn't allowed to take a picture of Mom-mom so we could introduce her here, because she had her hair in curlers. Oh wel!
For that purpose we purchased a tent (which we intent . . . to use on the road trip) ate a healthy breakfast and went to task.
REI Basecamp 4
We've documented it in detail here for all of you to witness. I insisted that we keep time, so we'd have a standard against which to measure our performance throughout the road trip. I encourage all of you to keep asking for updated times.
Our tent is a Basecamp 4 from REI. It's pretty big but fits into a small enough bag so we can throw it in the trunk without it taking up too much space. Perfect for the road (is what we're thinking at this point). During the selection process Whitney also pointed out that it's probably a good idea to have space *inside* the tent to store things while we we're camping. I had to agree.
Official set up time as presented by me: 23:22 minutes.
Look at that time!
Official tear down as presented by Whitney: 11:33 minutes.
It's clear who was responsible for which part of the test. The initial impression of mine is pretty good. It was easy to set up, and even I could follow the instructions. The construction of the tent seems intuitive. We bought a basic tarp as tent footprint.
I assume that there's going to be a follow-up on this post, as soon as we figure out all the things we don't like about it . . . or as we discover awesome aspects hitherto not considered.
All the best,
Samuel
Myself and Whitney
Hello world! Sam here as a 50% of this endeavoring road trip team: I'd like to take this moment to reflect on the fact that this is the beginning of the online representation of this trip. I'm pretty darn excited about getting on the road, so we decided to accompany it with some sort of online travel diary. So let's just call this my introductory/test post. I'll be trying out some of my humor in text version. If it doesn't work in the written form you should complain to any of the people that would tactfully snicker at my jokes when I told them in person. They encouraged me.
Anyway, here we go:
Without resorting to undue hyperbole, I think I can say that this winter has certainly been snowier than any in recent memory (I think I saw some statistics comparing snowfall too, but I'm too lazy to find them right now). Which brings us to Saturday, easily one of the nicest Saturday's in recent memory.
Potomac River
So like most everyone else, we took the wonderful weather (almost 70 degrees, in Maryland!) to get outside and to test our boots (really our stamina, but we're trying to keep up appearances). We decided to head out to the old C & O Canal National Historical Park on the Maryland side of Great Falls.
Some immediate impressions:
1. Holy moly first warm day = people get outside in droves!
2. It's a very different experience walking through a forest, that lacks all of it's foliage.
3. There are so. many. birds.
From hiking/walking along the Virginia side of the Potomac River, I knew that people like to kayak and raft on the river (I actually, I think I remember seeing someone losing their paddle on the river a couple of years back). This time we were hiking along the Billy Goat Trail which is on the Maryland side, and saw lots of people on the water again as well as a rock climbing class, by the looks of it.
A wild kayaker appeared
Although the trail was pretty crowded, the Billy Goat Trail itself is moderately challenging. As a matter of fact, having grown up in the near vicinity of the Alps I am used to a very different more consistent (?) hiking experience and terrain. In this case, the trail is very versatile: starting out it's a soft earthen path in the woods, then it gets rocky, next it's sandy and soft. There are quick steep inclines and long even stretches. This all makes it a nice, interesting trail to hike, which presumably makes it so popular.
Furthermore, you're accompanied by the Potomac (It seemed like the water was much lower than it had been recently because at a number of points we were walking well beneath branches of trees that still had drift wood and grass stuck in the branches) which by itself is fascinating sight.
On a side note: I just figured out that if I upload my photosphere's from my phone to Google maps, I can embed them here (that's one of the test aspects). So here's a 360º panorama of the Potomac River toward the south end of Bear Island:
Where was I? Right, hiking along the river. The path also took us away from the river on occasion, one of which brought us to this pond, where I promptly took this panorama (if you look closely, you can see Whitney messing around with my camera and messing up my picture):
Sue and Whitney
We stopped at little beach for lunch where I snapped a few more shots, including this obligatory one of Whitney with her lovely mother, Sue (who's been sheltering us, while we were homeless and preparing for the road trip. Thanks Sue!).
After getting back on the trail, we finished off the Billy Goat Trail section of the hike and returned by way of the old towpaths along the original C & O Canal.
My convincingly laid out and asserted rough guess at the age of the canal wasn't that far off (I figured it was somewhere between 1880 and 1920). It's nice to see a mix of maintained and weathered remaining infrastructure. Most prominent are the old locks, but there are also the remains of former structures that were part of the original operation.
Charles F. Mercer, old canal boat
Almost back at the parking lot, they even had an old canal boat (the Charles F. Mercer). She was on blocks though, because of the low water lever in the canal.
So there you have it. First completed writing assignment for Herr Herbig. Thanks for reading, and let me know what you think.
P.S. There's a link to "PICS" at the top of the blog, that I'll try to keep up to date with our travel pictures.
It's been quite awhile since we've posted. Life has been zooming past us and there hasn't been a lot of time for creative pursuits.
We moved out of our apartment in Brooklyn when the lease ended at the end of January and I said a goodbye to everyone at Scholastic. Now we are spending the next month and a half in limbo. I'm in Virginia, working on a few creative projects and spending some time with the people I love down here. Poor Sam is still working diligently up in New York and sleeping on our friend's couch.
Why would we do such crazy things, you ask? To start our next adventure! Years ago when we were talking about how we wanted our future to look we decided that one day we wanted to move (back in Sam's case) to Germany. So in August we fly to Berlin, which will be our next home.
Before we leave we plan to take a roadtrip around the United States. We start heading south at the end of March and will go clockwise around the country, returning at the end of June if all goes well. Of course we plan to update the blog often as we make our way along.
Happy Valentine's Day to anyone reading out there. There will be more posts soon!
—Whitney
