Come October I will be on the road much of the time, meeting face-to-face with the constituency of the Center. One of the challenges of the non-profit road warrior is the lunch meeting: how to ensure that it is (1) pleasant, (2) healthy, (3) cheap, and (4) conducive to good conversations.
My provisional plan is to turn my lunches on the road into a quest: the quest for the perfect urban picnic. I am looking for locations where I can meet with people for free, but locations that offer both comfort and a little urban magic. Some of these can be out of doors (for meetings in three of the seasons), some will have to be indoors. And I am looking for the kind of picnic lunch that I can put together from just a handful of simple but tasty foods, bought locally. A freshly baked bread, a great cheese, some fruit, and a drink, perhaps.
My travel schedule will take me, first, to a band of communities that stretch from Sioux Center and Pella, Iowa, through the Twin Cities and Chicago, to Grand Rapids and surroundings, Michigan. Then I will do some bicoastal travel: Los Angeles and San Francisco, Boston, New York City and Washington, DC. And then we’ll see …
If you have suggestions of great picnic spots in any of these towns and cities, available to the ordinary traveller by public transport or on foot, please let me know.
And if you know of great places to buy fresh bread, artisanal cheese, local fruit, and local drinks, please also let me know. I shall post some of the advice I’ve received so far via Twitter and Facebook here, soon.
