This past weekend I took a trip to visit my buddy Brad and his awesome family: Sasha, Siena, and Caden.

Brad’s an illustrator that I know from my days at ActiveEdge, responsible for a lot of the award-winning things we’ve done there. He recently built a house in his home town to pursue the dream of the independent illustrator, while his wife Sasha runs her own daycare center. So while Brad toils upstairs in his illustration den, Sasha is in the daycare center in the basement. It’s really cool…I felt a bit envious at the arrangement.

On the other hand, being entrepreneurial has its downsides, so it was good to actually talk with Brad about some of the things we’re both going through: clients, billing, having guts to turn down projects, etc. Also dreams: doing books, games, etc. Although we’re in different kinds of businesses, I think the core desire to create something awesome is common. I’m awfully glad to have Brad as a friend.

So what does one do in Winslow, Maine? Well, you drive to Waterville and go to Big G’s for breakfast, aka “Big Gerry’s”:

I had an enormous pancake, some great home fries (not undercooked and slimy like many places), and sausage and eggs. I saw cinnamon buns the size of my head! Everything there was big, except for the price. Fantastic.

Afterwards, we went to a place called Marden’s, which is a kind of market catch-all. It reminds me of a place called Spag’s on Route 9 in Massachusetts: stock changing every day, piles of bargains everywhere, in a kind of old drafty building. Judging from the people there, it was the country equivalent of Christmas Tree Shoppes…great deals are there for those who are patient enough to hunt! There’s a little dance that the Fitzpatrick clan does called the “Treasure Dance”, which they showed me when we got home. You hold hands and bounce up and down screaming “Treasure! Treasure! Treasure!”…it’s a very happy dance.

Brad and I stayed up pretty late talking shop and looking at interesting web sites. We also got his wireless network and router set up, and his machine partially de-loused of useless Norton software. And of course, we played Quake 3 for hours…Brad got his footing back pretty quickly, and even won a few games. I could tell that with a couple more days, he’d be unstoppable…I had to resort to tactical mind games plus constant armoring to get the jump on him.

On the last day, I introduced them to the horrific game Karaoke Revolution 3, which was met with grudging interest but ultimately declared to be awesome. Even Brad admitted that it was fun. As expected, the women of the household were into it, and it was declared that it should be added to the next family theme night.

Sasha baked me a loaf of bread to take with me back to my bachelor pad. It’s a very healthy bread, with whole wheat, oatmeal, corn meal, and probably some other stuff. It sat next to me on the drive home, which was about 3.5 hours all told.

It was a very good weekend. Looking forward to doing it again, and taking more pictures.