To the Northern Land We Go ... • The Sketchbook Project

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To the Northern Land We Go …

Well, your sketchbooks are officially international travelers! After the amazing show in Portland we headed north, just over the border, to Vancouver, BC. It’s a pretty quick drive but we had to make a quick pit stop in Seattle to get some lunch at Macrina Bakery—you can almost smell that bread from the Interstate.

The toughest part of the drive was convincing the border control agents that we did, in fact, have thousands of sketchbooks in our enormous trailer. Not the usual cross-border haul, we suppose! After a search of the trailer, we were on our way. We arrived around 6pm Monday night in clean ‘n green downtown Vancouver. The crew got together for a delicious dinner, walked along the shore, and got a good night’s sleep.

Arriving at W2 Media Cafe, we were welcomed by the staff with open arms. We set up upstairs from the cafe, which meant having to wheel all of the books through a basement loading dock, squeeze each shelf into an elevator, and then unload up two floors. Even though we were short two staff members, we made it work! Must be all the coffee…

Tuesday started off with a bang as groups of people arrived early and we had a line by 2:55pm. At 4:10, Steven was whisked away to go do a live interview on CBC radio! He made it with just seconds to spare.

Wednesday was a crazy day! We had just under 1000 books checked out in only 4 hours and we gave out 165 library cards. The crew met some really friendly northern neighbors and we all definitely hope to make it back sometime soon.

In total, we checked out 1588 books and issued 265 library cards! Thanks so much to our BC friends for making this a really memorable stop on an ever-more-exciting 2012 World Tour!