Greetings,

Welcome to the Cooper studio, Jefferson, Iowa.

What did we do before Google?  Or it's less-quick-off-the-tongue-counterparts?  Seriously, what did we do?  How did we find things?   and worse yet, how long did it take?

Let me outline the search of the evening:

Wanted:  a barely running school bus, preferably a short bus, preferably currently residing somewhere in central Iowa.  Preferably cheap.  Hey, we can even set up a trade:  donate a short bus, and we'll get you a week's worth of free advertising during the last full week of July.  Let's see how many follow along on that line - because any biking aficionado will know the last full weekend in July is RAGBRAI week...

And now you'd like the rest of the story?  Here goes:  Jefferson, Iowa will be hosting the (brace yourself) IOWA BICYCLE FESTIVAL!  We will be festival-ing on May 26th, all over the town square of Jefferson, Iowa. 

All things bicycle.  And to the state that hosts RAGBRAI, you know that's a lot.  We are having a bicycle parade, featuring nothing less than (we hope) a whole bunch of RAGBRAI buses and their crazy team people.  And after the parade, and everybody gets back to the town square, we need a bus to paint, in somebody's team colors, and then auction off.  Possibly we'll need to bribe someone to haul it off.  Whichever.  Guaranteed fun.  But we have to find a bus.

And so what did we google?  Iowa salvage yards.

That's what our generations have been reduced to, you know.  If you need something, just google it.  Need a painting?  Yeah, you can google that too. 

But here's something we need to explain to salvage yards:  if you want somebody to google you, so you can sell them a bus, you gotta give them the info.  How many buses do you have in stock?  Big buses, little buses?  With tires, or without?  What's the price?  What's your phone number?

Now being artists who like to sell paintings, we all know that kind of stuff.  We always give the info for the google searchers.  We always have a great online portfolio showing all our available paintings.  We definitely state what size those paintings are, big AND little.  And we certainly do state whether they come with frames or without.  And the price, absolutely, it's right there under the painting.  And a phone number?   But of course we give them that bit of info as well!  Right on our ever-so-perfect-website.

Umm, we do, don't we?

Just checking :)

Later, Cooper