Today marks the launch of this, the first version of our lovely little web site. My name is Tom Stanley, and I'll be your primary tour guide and narrator through our planning stages of our great road trip, during the hundred days of journeying and sightseeing on the road, and in the months following our arrival in beautiful Portland, Oregon. I'll be sharing photos and a video here and there, and devoting the bulk of my mental energy to writing as much as possible about every moment of this excursion.
I'm greedily using our upcoming adventure as a venue with which to further my writing career, which has included plenty of work through school and in the time since. My work has appeared in Where Magazine in Philadelphia, where I interned for seven months and nurtured a growing love for travel and tourism journalism. While I spent most of my life growing up in the Philly suburbs, I never took the time or the initiative to get to know the city until it became a part of my job. I devoted my time at Where Magazine to writing pieces about neighborhood museums and attractions. In the meanwhile, I started to explore the food scene in Philadelphia, a city that easily entices its residents and visitors to do so.
From there, I'd merely whet my appetite for writing, so I continued independently at Conshohocken Freedom, my blog about life on the outskirts of Philadelphia. Still in (fairly) regular publication, this has been my pulpit for raving about local eateries, telling stories about personal activities and complaining about anything that puts me in a bad mood. I'll certainly work to clean up my language a tad for this new endeavor.
So, as the title says, welcome! You can look forward to reading all about the many trials and tribulations that Joey, Sarah and I are sure to face before the trip gets moving. Until next time, ciao for now.
-Tom Stanley
