Tallahassee Road Trip

I took a 1200 mile road trip to visit friends in Tallahassee over the weekend. I stayed with Amy, a fellow Technical Services librarian that now works at Florida State, and visited with Laura and Barry, two friends with the shared interests of international education, motorcycles, and bicycles. I made the trip on my BMW F650GS. It took about twelve and a half hours each way, traveling on secondary roads through small towns. The scenery in Georgia was not at all what I suspected, it was beautiful large pine trees and rolling hills. I saw very few cars and few people in the towns I passed through, kind of pleasant in a post-apocalyptic kind of way.

Saturday morning Amy gave me the grand tour of the Technical Services building at Florida State. Technical  Services is housed in a building apart from the main campus library, one big main room with a lot of desks and a few private offices for faculty librarians.

Made me very appreciative of my office in Belk Library with its fabulous big window. Also makes me wonder if there has ever existed a Public Services department in a library that had the same set up. Doubt it.

A lot of construction happening on campus. The quad was very pretty, I especially liked the central fountain with statues of female students through the years (Florida State was all-female until the 40s). The main library, the Robert Manning Strozier Library, is in the center of campus.

After the campus tour Amy took me to Lichgate cottage, an adorable house by a huge oak tree. The weather was heating up so we took refuge in an art cinema, the Miracle 5 Cinema. Saddest thing, the cinema closed later that same week, leaving Tallahassee to the mercy of commercial Hollywood.

Sunday morning I visited with Laura and Barry, two friends that lived in Boone. Laura works in the field of international education and Barry spent time working in a library in Nigeria (where Laura was working in Admissions). They both ride motorcycles and Barry has a large collection of vintage bikes (BMW motorcycles and bicycles). They had a new addition to their family, Olive the Beautiful.

It was great talking about international education, travel, bikes, and life. Dinner was fabulous, much of it was grown by Barry and Laura. Plus the homemade key lime pie Laura made was wonderful! I really miss all of these friends and it was a great weekend adventure. (Note: The F650GS averaged 61.1 miles per gallon)