Packing for Travel

Packing these days might include now some time spent loading up the media device, making sure you've got listening material for the road. That's what I find myself doing this morning as I get ready to drive out west to run the Deadwood Mickelson Trail half-marathon (despite being pretty unprepared to actually run the whole thing) and visit some family.
Specifically I wanted to upload my new Ditty Bops cd, Moon over the Freeway, which just came out. If you check out their website you'll find all sorts of pictures, video, and music, plus the itinerary for their bicycle tour of the US as they bike and tour. They are blogging their ride, which has begun in California. In all, it's a great cd (what Newsweek called "what Betty Boop might have had on her iPod") and a cool website.
I'm also uploading Bruce Springsteen's We Shall Overcome--The Seeger Sessions, which has a bunch of cool traditional tunes, and the Dixie Chicks' new cd, Taking the Long Way. Of course, I had to make sure that my Buckskin Bible Revue music was on the iRiver, too.
The Dixie Chicks album was a disappointment. I had high expectations, thinking of them as a group that brought a lot of traditional bluegrass sounds to songs playable on country music stations, but this one, probably slated for very little airplay after the flap over their remarks about the president, seems aimed directly at the country music fans they angered. Fiddle and banjo riffs are almost entirely absent, and every tune has the same tone and sound, as though they ran every one of them through the same stamper. They're good tunes, but taken all in a lump, they underwhelm.
Meanwhile, I'll be posting again later about the fun in the hills.