It's Don Hobbs!

Well, this morning I'm hitting the road again with the Sherlockian who I've put in the most road miles with, Don Hobbs. I may have put in more air miles with another Sherlockian or two (and there was that one notable trip where I wound up seated next to one of our hobby's more infamous sorts for a few hours), but road miles mean more hours spent in idle conversation, and Hobbs definitely takes that prize. (Along with "most time on the same website," from our ten years as blog partners at SherlockPeoria.net !)

Don, if you haven't had the pleasure, it the world's biggest collector of international editions of the original sixty Sherlock Holmes stories, a disciple of the late, great Sherlockian collector John Bennet Shaw. I first met Hobbs at a conference in Shaw's home town of Santa Fe, New Mexico, when he walked up, introduced himself, and handed me an envelope full of Sherlockian paper memorabilia -- something we've wound up producing a little bit of ourselves in the years that followed.

Odd limited editions of Holmes stories in code, expeditions to lost Sherlockian sites, collecting runs, brisket tacos . . . every Sherlockian friendship has its tales, and Don and I have a few. Last night we had dinner with one of this blog's regular commenters, Melissa Anderson, and her husband, and I got to remember just how many stories we have between us . . . but that's always been part of the fun of getting together with Sherlockians, not just sharing a love of Sherlock's stories, but sharing your own as well.

Not sure what today's travels, probably a good eight hours in the car, will bring, but it will certainly be more interesting than my usual audio book when rolling solo. Tomorrow we'll see if there is anything that can be committed to the internet, or if today's tales will be, as Watson put it, stories for which the world is not yet prepared!