SassyBlonde

Well, we're off on the Christmas Tour-- should be fun. Got to the Holiday Inn tonight despite the traffic and checked in with Luc, then had dinner with Jay and Dennis. Caught up with a few peeps and then back here to work on a few things before bedtime. GG call hubby now-- Later!!

First rehearsal today-- it was interesting. Lots of new people this time around, and the orchestra sounds miles better than it did. I have to say, though, that it's gonna be hell having Sleigh Ride in my head for a month.

Had to run back home and get some things I forgot-- my suitcase feels like it's full of bricks. The poor stage manager's going to herniate hmself with our bags! Feh. Better go start making him some hot chocolate as we speak...

Our sitzprobe went well today I guess-- a few serious farts and flubs, but not too bad. Hubby and I went out to dinner at Pizzeria Uno's and then he dropped me off before he had to go to his gig. No more hubby for 26 days!!!

Aaaaaaaaaack!!

Anyhoo, gonna chill out and watch some boob tube. The Iron Giant Marathon's on Cartoon Network, so methinks I'll pop open a box of Sociables and whip out the Easy Cheese. Woohoo!

Oy. Schlepped across Maryland today to Windber, PA. It was kinda pretty-- it snowed from western Maryland on, and the snow made for a very picturesque scene from our window. Ahhhh... Holiday Inn and instant French Onion soup!

We had an afternoon concert today- it went pretty well as things go I guess. My blood sugar wacked out in the middle and I missed a small entrance, but otherwise it worked.

The powers that be sprung for fancy digs tonight- the Embassy Suites hotel in downtown Cleveland, OH. Nice, nice, nice. We have a separate living room and really cushy bath. Mmmm. And a kitchen. Oh yeah baby.

On to Marion OH, today. It was nice enough, and I got a little work done on the drive. Had an interesting concert. A few flubs here and there.

THe manager knocked on our door this afternoon and when I opened it he had a bottle of pink champagne in each hand-- one each for me and for Luc. He bought one for each of the woodwinds, so he could call us the "Pink Ladies". Such corny jokes, that guy.

Us woodwinds are starting to get really wacko P.O.'d about the tuning. The strings are playing so sharp that we can't match them, and I basically had a complete cow at intermission because my face was about to fall off from trying. I think it worked though-- the manager talked to the group before we tuned today and it was a bit better... ah well, we'll see. 'Night!

OK, this hotel we're staying in is a complete stitch. It has a HUGE indoor atrium complete with trees and shrubs, a pool, hot ub and saunas, pool table, air hockey, and dance floor, as well as indoor balconies overlooking the atrium as if it was a courtyard. Very very 70s shi-shi.

On the bus on the way here today I taught seven people how to knit!! How cool is that? They're all making scarves and I'm well started on a hat for Sheri. Even on "vacation" I'm teaching. AAAAAAAAAACK.

Party tonight too. It was pretty rockin, actually. Everybody in the orchestra came and i nearly hopped into a super-challenge at air hockey. Tables were closed tho. Bummer.

We opened our bottles of pink champagne and were officially christened "The Pink Ladies". Also had some damn good pizza. Boy was I a cheap date-- two shots of scotch and a glass of champagne and I was two-and-a-half sheets to the wind. All the freaky guys were hitting on all of us chicks. EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEW. Came back to the room (alone, of course-- all you dirty minds out there) and will very shortly be comatose in bed. Ahhhhh... it's good to be queen.

Rolled into Elkhart Indiana todya on a travel day. I AM THE LAUNDRY BANDIT!! I was the first one to the laundry room and I thought the percussionist was going to shit when he found me there before him!! LOL

We had din-din with the conductor and the aforementioned percussionist and I tried to ignore the passes that the conductor was making at me and my roommate. Feh. These old guys need to give it a rest. Goodnight all, and all that.

We made a mad dash down the highway after checking into the inn in Rockford, IL today. Rainy sorry-ass shit. I bought a cheap belt at Wal-Mart because I've lost enough weight that my pants are falling off. Not a problem except when old letches are after you, eh?

Concert in Whitewater, Wisconsin, which was really very nice. The hall was great (a real hall- not a Jr. high school) and the green room rocked.

My poor seatmate was so sick thyat she took her sick day today-- flu. Feh. I just hope I don't get it. Poor thing-- she had a root canal and the antibiotics knocked out her defenses. She was shaking like a leaf when she got off the bus. Ech. Sleepy-time-- nite-nite!!

Hello, hello, from the wide world of Silver Spring! So much to tell, so little time!

Where to begin, but at the beginning? When last I wrote, I was mid-tour-recovery. Blecch. And before that, mid-tour. So to pick up where I left off...

After Whitewater, WI, we moved on to the lovely Best (read Worst) Inn in Carbondale, IL. What a dump! I highly recommend never ever staying there. One perk, tho-- at least there was a Kroger across the street and a Pier One (thank God for candles) next door. We had the privilege of attending a very nice reception afterwards, complete with wine and cheese (a very big deal to touring schmos like us!!)

The next stop, after a hell of a haul, was Athens, TN. The 'rents and my sis stopped in for this concert, which was the hottest of the whole tour. Temperature-wise, that is... it had to have been 100 degrees in that auditorium. And major props for the Ramada Inn on County Road 247 in Athens-- their restaurant had just about the best salads I've ever had!!!

The next day we moved on to Bristol TN, which was to become an infamous stop. After our concert (another hot one) one of the company hosted a party in her room. Rememer those letches of which I spoke? Yeah. On the way to our rooms that afternoon, the conductor called over my roommate and told her "Look at the size of that bed!! I''ll bet we could fit all four Pink Ladies in there!!!!" Ecch. And I was already sick that day. Also, the nasty mullet-flaunting cellist decided it was appropriate to slobber all over my neck at the party, for which I nearly relieved him of his nutsack. I sicced my roomie on him tho-- she was his friend and really gave him a what-for. He apologized the next day. I really thought David was going to come down and beat the Jesus out of him, too, but I managed to talk him out of it.

Speaking of my lovely roomie, that was also the night she was a peach and brought me back dinner from Outback so I could take a nap-- what a doll!!!!!

Anyhoo, more later-- gotta go catch a few Z's...

So, as many of you know, I'm leaving in the wee hours tomorrow for my orchestra tour of China. Two days of rehearsal in Orlando, then off we go. Nineteen hours on a plane with some of the craziest people I've ever met. (These guys make Wedding Crashers look like a bunch of choirboys-- they're on the make fro the moment they get to the rehearsal hall.)

That being said, I have my iPod and laptop in hand, chock-full of Battlestar Galactica and gems from Audible.com, and I'm also looking forward to seeing some friends on the tour who I've missed since the last foray. And let's be clear, I'm getting paid to spend two weeks in China.

I'll try (try, mind you) to do some posts and pictures when I get a minute, but in case I don't, enjoy the auto-posts that will be popping up until I get back.

After getting up at the crack of dawn (well, for me anyway) to get on board my flight to Orlando, I was able to get to through security in a breeze and had time to sit in the terminal and contemplate CNN over breakfast. This really wasn't as relaxing as I thought it would be, because right after the stock ticker they returned to the main story: the "Killer Tornado" that just hit Florida north of (you guessed it) Orlando in the wee hours. Juggling baggage and yogurt and coffee, I managed to dial my friend who was picking me up and determine that he was fine, in fact, he didn't have a clue what had happened. I arrived safe and sound and was picked up by our wonderful Stage Manager, went to lunch with him at Dennys (OY), and grabbed a few other orchestra members from the airport on our way to the hotel. Gab, gab gab, all the way there. I haven't seen some of these people in almost four years!

We went out for a drink at a restaurant around the corner and were a little held up by the building being surrounded by fire trucks. We got back to the hotel to find that not only had our friend the Stage Manager gotten us tickets for the Orlando Magic game tonight, vs. the Nets, he had gotten us BOX SEATS (he has people). Fun times were had by all, even though we had too much to drink and didn't get back in time to practice before tomorrow.

Even better, my roommate is not a freak, but one of my favorite people from my last tour!! More tomorrow after rehearsal...

Ah, the first day of rehearsal. And unfortunately for us today, the only day. Tomorrow we leave for China bright and early in the A.M., and have to get up and out of the hotal at 4:45. F*ck.

Rehearsal actually went pretty well today, all things considered-- we had to cram all of the usual things into half the time. When a touring group comes together, there are quite a few stages of a sort of meet and greet that goes on, not on a social basis, but playing with one another. First you have to suss out the lay of the musical landscape: who plays well, who needs some work, whose style is matching up, whose isn’t, what the limits are of what you can and can’t do, say, and play with each other. Then over the course of the rehearsal you start to blend and match and coalesce into a single force. For us, that usually takes most of the first day, along with the reading of the music that we’ll be playing. It’s like building a scaffold inside which a cathedral arch is built.

We managed to cram that into the first three-hour rehearsal and sort of started to string it all together by the end of rehearsal today. It’s just an odd dynamic—new concertmaster, new orchestra members, and for me new equipment. (Ick and f*ck.) And our conductor was in fine and rare form—like most conductors, the less time he has, the stricter and tighter he becomes, and he was on fire today, man. Caustic, but with purpose and intent, so it didn’t really seem to bother anyone. He has a good feel for the people under his baton, and everybody responded pretty well.

I LOVE the woodwind section. Playing with these guys is GREAT. I’ve known the oboist for a long time, and the new bassoonist is not only a fabulous player but also a super fun chick also. The flutist is meeting up with us tomorrow (can’t wait!!) in Chicago, so we had a sub today who did a great job navigating some of the weirdness in the music we play. I don’t envy them their parts for a second—thy have more notes and crazier parts than anyone else in the group except the first violins. Ick—no way I’d be able to play that shit.

Today was also the day that we met up for the first time all together in terms of social interaction, too, meaning that if I hadn’t already sought someone out to say hello, I didn’t really particularly want to, but who has a choice, right? Nineteen hours on the plane together tomorrow. OY VEY. Of course, The Mullet was there and The Mouth, as well as the Troll. I’ll explain these little nicknames at some later point, because I’m sure they’ll all steal the limelight at some point in the next two weeks.

They laid us out a buffet dinner, but the real highlight of the night was the hot tub afterwards—the bassoonist and oboist and I got in and got all pruney for about forty-five minutes. ROCK. The only downside was that whatever they used to clean the hot tub made the ends of my hair all crispy—kind of like soap residue. Gack. Ah well, off to bed for a few hours—I’m sure I won’t be so perky when I have to get up tomorrow.

Oy. FUCK. Trans-Pacific flights are a bitch.

We got up this morning at the crack of dawn-- actually earlier-- to make the trek to the airport and get on going to Beijing via O'Hare. All went pretty well until we got to the airport: true to fashion for this group, we were given limited information and got yelled at when we did what we were told, not what they had in mind. We made it through, though, and everything worked out peachy. I even got to sit next to my new friend Guitarman on the plane to Chicago.

Got a hot dog for lunch at O'Hare-- did you know that in Chicago a hot dog with "everything" comes with mustard, onions, a dill pickle spear, hot peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers, all ON the dog?? Crazy shit, that.

The Klatch worked it out so our seats were all together on the Beijing flight, which was easy because the flight was nowhere near full. That even got me moved up to Economy Plus, which has more legroom!! I got to sit with Pixie B, our bassoonist, and we had all three seats to ourselves. The Muse will be exceptionally proud of the movies I got to watch-- The Queen, All The King's Men, and Man of the Year. Pixie B taught me a great new card game from Japan that I'll talk about more later.

Everything went pretty well until the intermission between films two and three, where all the hip chicks were gathered around our group of seats and giggling. We were catching up after two to four years of being apart in some cases-- gossip had to be shared and jokes made. It was dark out, and this part of the flight functions as sleep-time, so the steward comes up and makes a snarky comment about how we need to keep it down because this is an overnight flight and people have paid "thousands of dollars" for this flight. Now, I've seen our e-tickets for our itinerary, and I know the flight from O'Hare to Beijing is killer expensive, but honestly people. We were served ramen noodles for the next meal, and it's not as if we could sleep-- they came by every forty-five minutes to wake us up to ask if we wanted water. Endless amounts of giggling ensued for a minute, but then we sat down to watch the next movie.

Arrival in Beijing was pretty easy and we got to the hotel all right-- the Plaza Royal Hotel Beijing, the only Five-Star Platinum HoJo I've ever heard of. The hotel staff here is fantastic-- they know we speak little to no Mandarin, and most of them speak at least a little English. (Honestly, I hate being that person who expects everyone to speak English in another country, but I could barely remember the words, much less the inflections to give them the right meaning... I've got Hello, Thank You, and I Don't Want Any pretty much down and I think that may be the extent of it for the time being.)

We get breakfast and dinner on travel days and concert days we get all three meals, and the hotel restaurant has a great dinner service. It's pretty much split between Chinese cuisine (the real kind) and improvised American food. Good stuff. They even give you filtered water with meals (water here is basically non-potable for Americans-- you could do it but you'd have the trots for a good while, and maybe worse) and their coffee is amazing. All righty-- sleepy time here-- I'm about dead and I get to sleep until 8(!!) tomorrow before we go downtown to to a little sight-seeing. Lata!

The Great Hall of the People is indeed a hall, but is not in fact "Great".

This morning we awoke to the sound of my roomie’s alarm clock and I popped up out of bed like a jack in the box. WTF? I am SO not a morning person normally, and I popped up like it was my job. Maybe it was the fact that I had thirteen hours of sleep last night? After dinner we were all so exhausted that we went straight to bed and passed out totally. Our schedules are still a little off, but I managed to sleep for about four hours at a time even though I did get up around 4 AM and have to force myself back to sleep.

The hotel where we’re staying is really nice, and it has the biggest towels I’ve ever seen. You could wrap two of me in those suckers, and that’s saying something. Hotel rooms in China have a couple of very interesting features—when you walk in the door, there’s a card slot on the wall where you slide in and leave your room key to activate the power for the room. If you take out the key, the power goes out, as I found out when I was leaving to go down to breakfast and took the key, leaving my roommate in the dark on the toilet.

Speaking of toilets, here in China there are two types—the regular seated kind, which are rare and usually only found as handicapped toilets or in places where you’ll find a lot of foreigners, and the infamous “squatter”. Basically this type is a urinal turned horizontal and installed on the floor. You have to squat to go, and it’s been interesting learning to balance and aim. Fortunately for us the hotel has the familiar kind, although the venues will probably force us to expand our repertoire a little.

We decided to go down to see the Forbidden City this morning, and we piled into two taxis to get there. It’s about 9 km from our hotel, and walking would have been a long haul, not to mention we’d have to dodge traffic. We get directions from the concierge and took our hotel cards with us so we could get back. (There’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to find anyone that speaks English in the city, so the hotel provides you with cards that list the name and address for the hotel in Chinese so the driver can understand where you need to get to—the Chinese names bear no resemblance to the English translation most of the time.) The cab ride was interesting and we bumped through traffic for about thirty minutes to the North Gate. When we arrived, of course there were lots of guys waiting to sell us tchatchkes, fake watches, and fake Olympic gear, but we had our fearless leader Cello Chick, who promptly sent them packing.

CC has been to China before, and is full of advice about what to eat, what not to eat, and all sorts of protocol and custom. The tap water isn’t drinkable in China, so everything you drink and eat has to be made with filtered water. That means of course, no drinking water from the tap, but also no brushing your teeth, no fresh produce that you can’t peel, and no salads (they’re washed with water). Of course, this problem isn’t necessarily China-specific—when I was in school I had a really wicked case of the trots for about three weeks after I moved to Phoenix. That shit ain’t right, so bottled water it is.

Anyway, the Forbidden City was really incredible—we hired a guide and hand a good hour and a half to tour the site. Our guide’s name was Linda and she was really great—funny, knowledgeable, and her English was excellent. (Pictures here)

We had to leave early for our concert venue, the Great Hall of the People at Tiananmen Square. This building is also the venue for the Chinese congress, and seats about nine thousand people. When arrived there, we were ushered through security to the hall and shown a roundabout route to the dressing rooms, which were moldy and a little waterlogged from a leaky toilet. (This later overflowed, and the whole bottom floor smelled like a herd of yak.) The audience section of the hall itself was gorgeous, even though the wood floor of the stage hadn’t been properly cared for and was splintered and broken across its whole expanse. It was a pretty surreal setup—colored lights and these shiny balls hanging from the ceiling that reflected different colors. They had to mic everyone because of the acoustics of the hall, and we found out in spades in our rehearsal that we couldn’t hear ANYTHING.

This was probably a good thing in the case of the cello section in particular. The official story so far is that they couldn’t bring their own instruments over due to flight restrictions (we think it’s more like the promoter didn’t want to pay for the extra seats needed to fly them in—cellos and oversized string instruments are normally given their own seat on an airline so they won’t be crushed in the cargo hold.) So thus far they’ve been borrowing instruments wherever we go. In Orlando, this wasn’t a problem because some of the section was from there and had a couple of extra instruments.

When they received their loaner cellos at the Great Hall, the looks of horror were intense—these were basically the cheapest and worst student instruments any of us had ever seen, and not only were they bad instruments, they were in terrible repair as well. There was a frenzy of fixing and tuning and adjusting, accompanied by the *pop* of strings breaking. They consigned the worst instrument to use for parts and cannibalized it thoroughly. They made it though all right, but CC and the Licker (he’s a cellist, obviously) looked like they needed either a beer or a shotgun by the time it was all over.

For our part, the woodwinds had a decent night, even though we really couldn’t hear anyone else. I started getting really sleepy during the last couple of numbers, but made it through all right in the end. It’s kind of like pulling an all-nighter and then playing a jury when you’re in school—more than a little foggy, but as long as everyone gets out alive you count it a success.

One more concert in this venue tomorrow night, then we’re on to Wuhan. Feh. It can’t come soon enough.

The Great Wall of China is a motherfucker. It makes grown men cry.

This morning after a nice breakfast in the hotel restaurant, we headed off to the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs for a little touristy goodness. You can set up a tour through the hotel in Beijing and they’ll fix you up with a guide and a bus for an outrageous sum, but at least you won’t have to find your own way there and back. First we stopped at the Ming Tombs (pictures here) and then moved on to the Wall by way of a tourist trap jade factory. It was interesting, but clearly there’s a racket going on there—the guides must be paid to bring in tourists to the store where they can buy all sorts of cheap tchotchkes. The jade carvings were beautiful, if extremely overpriced for the market. I walked out with a couple of small things for family members and left it at that.

The Great Wall was incredible. As we started climbing, we noticed other people stopping and resting every couple of stairs. Pansies, eh? Right. I only made it up to the first turret up the hill, but that was quite far enough thank you. As I was climbing I passed a man sitting on the stairs crying with his friend consoling him. I’m right there with you, buddy. You don’t really think about it when you see it in pictures, but the stairs on the Wall are HUGE. Most of them on the steep uphill sections are as high as at least two normal stairs, and they’re uneven and pitted, so it takes constant foot readjustment and attention. Several of the really fit little girls in our group hauled ass up to the top of the mountain, and we watched, awestruck, from where we stopped.

Shel helped me down the stairs because my knees were knocking together from so much exertion—what a great guy. He’s one of the few guys on this tour that you can absolutely count on for a helping hand and not be suspicious of his ulterior motives 90% of the time. (He’s the stage manager I told you about who picked us up from the airport, and our bass trombonist. That being said, though, the other 10 percent of the time he can be skeevy.)

We ended up eating lunch at a little tourist trap on the way home—the tour guide, I suppose, gets kickbacks for bringing his fares to these places. It was all overpriced and cheap goods, with no bargaining allowed. That’s no good in China, eh?

Tonight we were back at the Great Hall of the People, and we took a little time to go outside to Tiananmen Square and take some pictures (see them here). It amazes me unceasingly that the Chinese people find us so interesting to look at: we went over to the square to take some pictures before the concert, and happened to walk up during a guard changing or flag lowering ceremony. There were lots of people there to see the ceremony, but as we walked up, little by little they turned from watching the uniformed soldiers in front of them to point and stare and take our pictures instead. Rock stars, all of us. (Especially me, who left my coat at the hotel like an idiot and turned into a popsicle before I got back to the hall. My shirt had an insane boobie quotient going for it. OY.)

Beijing is a study in contrasts—old junked out buildings next to new flashy construction. This includes the new Olympic stadium and complex, which is amazing (pictures). Dust and dirt covers everything, from the museum exhibits to the concert piano (a baby grand in a 9,000 seat hall? Give me a break. That’s bullshit.) It seems to be a part of the ambient attitude-- what's important to clean and what's not. A result of Communism? Who knows, could be.

The hall tonight was a horrific experience. During the first couple of numbers we started to smell a really pungent odor—some sort of solvent like acetone or paint thinner, and it only got worse throughout the concert. By the time we got to the encore I thought I was going to throw up on my shoes. I couldn’t be happier that we’re out of here after tonight. It’s been a trying experience. If it wasn’t for the Wall, today would have been a real trial.

We are not in Kansas anymore Toto.

One thing about this tour that's beginning to get on my nerves is the lack of information. our promoter here seems to think that any travel info is on a need-to-know basis. In other words, we have no idea where we're going or how or when we're getting there until it's happening. That would be perfectly fine if we were in the States, but we're here in China where none of us speaks the language or knows our way around. Fuck.

We got up at the crack of dawn this morning to set out for Wuhan. The whole airport experience was a huge clusterfuck-- we had no idea of where to go or what to do and were running the whole time to get it all done. Passports and tickets werre flying back and forth. We made it onto the plane by the skin of our teeth and settled in for the short flight to the city of Wuhan, which provided much-needed time for a short nap.

Now, Beijing was a pretty dirty city, but it was pristine in comparison with Wuhan. In Beijng the dust and dirt seems to have more to do with age, but in Wuhan it seems to just be dirt. We arrived at our tiny hotel on a dark side street, the Swiss-Belhotel International, and promptly took advantage of a couple of hours of nap time. My roommate popped in her earplugs and was soon snoozing away while I grabbed the opportunity to send some email and catch up on a little blog reading.

We took off super early to the venue, the Royal Opera House, and got there with about three hours to spare. This seems to be a trend here-- after our first day, where we were an hour late due to traffic, the powers that be have decided that we should be there insanely early just in case. This, of course, gives the percussionist time to set up and the cellos time to make the best of a bad situation and the rest of us time for pictures and walking around outside the venue, which is exactly the course we decided to take.

We stopped at a corner shop for some water and then headed around the corner to find... a music shop! Even though the proprietress spoke no English, we got along and tried out a bunch of fabulous traditional Chinese instruments that I still don't know the name for. Each of us bought a couple for a song and scurried back over to the dressing rooms to try them out thoroughly. Sassy Jo and Pixie B found some double-reeded instruments like shawms that even came with tiny double reeds!! Of course, they set about adjusting them immediately and hilarity ensued. We were all laughing hysterically at the honks and squacks the horns made. I bought one instrument that looks like a big bulb of garlic attached to three pipes. It sounds kind of like a single harmonica and it a total hoot to play. The other thing I bought looks like a flute, but has a single metal reed which makes it sound like a little Foghorn.

The hall was not bad in terms of sound, but there were other problems: the risers we were sitting on weren't at all safe-- walking on and offstage we were sure one of us was going to put a foot through them or fall over becasue they shifted. And the poor cellos-- their instruments were even worse here than in Beijing. Cello Chick's was so bad she was almost in tears-- it had a really wicked wolf which made it do this insane reverb thing. Icky.

At any rate, the day was fairly trying but was redeemed by the instrument purchases... who knew? On to Guangzhou tomorrow, in the sunny South.

After Wuhan, Guangzhou seems like a tropical paradise.

This morning we took off for Guangzhou. Hopping on and off of planes is already getting a little old, but at least we're sort of used to the process now. The mantra of this tour has turned out to have more to do with releasing our control tendencies than anything else. Things run differently over here, and we've just had to learn to trust that we'll all survive and everything will turn out okay, even if we have no information until just before things are supposed to happen.

This trip is really starting to take a toll on some of the orchestra members-- our poor accordionist had to carry her accordion onto the plane out of its case and then do battle with the flight attendants to get to sit with it on the flight. The cellos haven't gotten any better and I think the cellists are past frustrated and close to insane at this point.

On the drive from the airport to the hotel, we were amazed to see the amount of green in Guangzhou-- this place is a tropical paradise compared to the places we've been. Everywhere around us on the highway we could see rooftop gardens on the top of high-rise apartment buildings, and even the highways have planter boxes lining the overpasses.

The only downside of a lush landscape like this one is the fact that everything grows, including the mold on the walls of our hotel room. In Cellco Chick and Pixie B's room it was really bad, so CC is sleeping in our room and Pixie's staying with Sassy Jo and TinyFlutist, since the hotel was completely full up and there were no more rooms available to switch them into.

Speaking of the rooms, they all have peek-a-boo showers. Seriously. There's a glass window that can be covered with a shower curtain, and no curtain on the pathroom side of the shower (not necessary because there's no water pressure to speak of).

The BlueSky hotel is not precisely a hole, but we were all also extremely amused that the room rate board lists the rates as follows: Single Standard, Double Standard, Single Deluxe, Double Deluxe, Suite and HOURLY. Huh? Really? Not surprising I guess, considering that the third floor of the hotel is a BROTHEL. The Mouth got out on the third floor to try and ask a few questions (of course, it was more miming and less communcation), but one thing was unmistakable: the smell of SEX. As soon as the elevator doors closed we dissolved into laughter and choruses of "Happy ending!!!!" Yecch.

There are two redeeming things I've experienced here, though: the Huanghuagang Park across the street and Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall. We passed the gardens when we went out walking and decided to go inside on a whim-- it turned out to be a fantastic idea. The gardens were quiet and peaceful, and we walked around them for an hour or so peering at the plants and monuments and observing groups of little old men and women playing cards or chess. It was better than any nap, and by the time we got back we were ready to headoff to the venue.

Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall is gorgeous, inside and out. The building is eighty years old and has all the grandeur inside of the U.S.'s famous movie palaces. The outside matches the glory of the inside with bright colors and intricate architecture, and is surrounded by beautiful gardens. the rose beds in front of the hall held flowers of such a vibrant red taht my camera had a hard time capturing them without distortion, and my eyes watered from looking at them in the setting sun.

The concert tonight was pretty good, with the exception of the percussion instruments. Not too bad, except that the only gong they gave us was one of the tiny New Year's gongs used by the drummers that accompany dragon dancers. Its sound was so entirely inappropriate that the woodwind section completely lost their shit in the middle of the first piece in the second half-- an Asian flavored arrangement of Love Is A Many Splendored Thing with solemnly timed gong soundings meant to be played on a large and resonant instrument. As it was, it sounded like someone was dropping a wash basin down a staircase, and we laughed until tears ran down our faces every time it happened. Just when we though we had it pulled together it would start up again, and it took us a good five minutes to get ourselves under control after the piece was over.

Dinner was interesting tonight-- served family style. We had a lot of really phenomenal dishes, but the highlight was when they brought out the chicken, served with the head fried up as an ornament for the plate. People were having shit-fits. Really, when you think about it it's not surprising for a place that had vats full of snakes in the hallway. (No kidding-- see the picture here.)

Tomorrow, for a change, we're taking a bus to the next city, Shenzhen. Goodnight until later!

Another day, another venue, another hotel.

Shenzhen wasn't really remarkable today for anything except a reasonable venue and a nice hotel room. We drove here from Guangzhou by bus on a highway that wound through fields of banana palms and sugarcane. It only took about two hours to get there and the hotel was a welcome sight.

The hotel was downtown and around the corner from a supermarket, so we stocked up on crackers and chocolate and oranges, and of course bottled water. You can get half-liter bottles of water for about 2 RMB there, as opposed to 20-50 RMB in the hotel. Nice markup, right?

The hall was pretty nice and the concert well-handled, so we had a fairly good time. the only thing on most of our minds, though, was the fact that tomorrow we have a day off from playing, even though we have to schlepp back to Wuhan by plane for a corporate buy-out concert at the Opera House.

In light of our day off tomorrow, the Klatch decided to hang out in the bar over a couple of bottles of wine. Who knew-- the Chinese have their own wine industry, and the red wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The white was worse.

And now that I have a head full of wine and a head cold, I'm off to bed to snore until tomorrow.

The airport ate my day off God dammit.

We had a nice half-day this morning to futz around, and I slept late and took naps while the rest of the klatch got massages. Not the happy-ending kind, either, for a miracle. They all raved about it, but I wasn't in the mood, and I think it'll be my one regret this trip that I didn't indulge in one myself.

Schlepp to the airport, wait wait wait. Our flight was delayed two hours, so we walked around the terminal looking for food and lo and belhold, found a 7-11. WTF? All I cared about was that they had DIET COKE!!!!!! (Or rather, Coke Light. Same thing.) And yogurt and pistachios and Kinder Bueno chocolate bars. They also had KFC and McDonalds, but I'm still not that desperate yet.

Bass Boy taught us a new version of Uno while we waited-- my attention span was way too short for that but I had a blast watching everyone else have at it. It's kind of like Speed combined with Uno, and I won't explain it here but it makes regular Uno look like a kindergartener's game.

After we finally got on the plane and to Wuhan, we schlepped back to the Swiss-Belhotel, where the hotel manager, Sergio, had dinner waiting for us. At midnight!!!! I understand that he was not contractually obligated to provide us dinner at all tonight, but he did anyway. I swear, the service we've had at these hotels in extraordinary, especially at this one. It might not be the poshest one we've stayed at, but he and his staff made it my favorite.

All righty-- off to bed so I can enjoy my day in Wuhan tomorrow before the concert.

Wuhan again.

I've managed to stay mostly well this tour until today, but it caught up with me a little after yesterday's G.I. escapade. At lunch yesterday I ate something that didn't agree with me, or maybe it was just the cold starting, I don't know. At any rate, blood sugar was all over th map today so I stayed in while everyone went shopping and did a few things. Had some lovely alone time and surfed the web and uploaded pictures up through the Forbidden City trip. (I know, I know, I'm behind, but I'd rather be out doing and getting more pictures than uploading the ones I have.)

Concert again tonight at the Opera House. Not a bad venue, but Cello Chick was in tears over her cello. Poor cellists. I hope our manager has learned something from this little (*ahem*) problem. If someone's too cheap to buy plane tickets for the instruments next time he needs to kick their asses into submission.

We went back over to the music store to get a couple more things-- all out of Suzuki Books, but I got a nice xiao and another hulusi. (Oh yeah, I found out what all of those things were that we bought-- Melody of China has a nice instrument encyclopedia on their site.)

Decent concert tonight, even though we almost fell through tthe risers when the Mouth vaulted back to talk to the percussionist. We also got really snazzy red silk scarves from the company sponsoring the concert to wear during the second half, and we get to keep them!

On to Shanghai tomorrow, where the real shopping begins!

My husband is the man.

We hopped the plane to Shanghai from Wuhan and arrived early in the afternoon. When we walked in the door the concierge handed me a big bundle of roses from my husband. Everyone oohed and ahed and I grinned until my face hurt. It's a day early for Valentine's, but that's a good thing. He better be taking off on Monday-- I'm gonna lock him in the bedroom for this one.

I've always made fun of people who go to foreign countries and run right to McDonalds, but I have to admit when I saw that Starbucks it was downright ridiculous how happy it made me. We all trooped in and got our expensive American coffees and then sat on the patio in a state of bliss. I'm not saying we're giving up on the food here, but it was soooooo nice to have a familiar cappuccino that it instantly made us feel better.

After that we were refreshed enough to walk down to the Bund from our hotel and take pictures of the lights that were popping on on the opposite bank. The Pearl Tower is an amazing structure, and the lights around it across the river were really cool.

We hoofed back to meet everyone for dinner at a restaurant around the corner from our hotel. Family-style, as usual, and pretty good food. One thing I've been missing this whole trip is diet soda-- at dinner they only usually have regular soda (Coke and Sprite) and beer. Needless to say I've been drinking a lot of beer-- Tsingtao, Snow Beer, Carlsburg (that one surprised me a little). More like water than beer, but still better than the alternative. At least if I'm going to get the calories, I should get something out of it, right?

Already you can hear firecrackers going off. The Lunar New Year begins on Sunday and we're going to be here to see it!

I swear I've lost five pounds walking around this country.

I called hubby via Skype (holy crap I love that service) to say Happy V-Day, even though he's a day behind back there. It was really nice to hear his voice, and I miss him tons.

This morning we got up early to walk around the city. We took the subway over to the Pearl Tower and ascended to the observation decks to look around. The city of Shanghai is vast-- it extends out seemingly endlessly from the tower in every direction.

After the tower he hiked from the subway down to the Yuyuan Gardens, which are reached by working your way through a maze of tourist shops. It's unreal how aggressive the shopkeepers are in attracting peoples' attention. They will ahout anything to get you to come over and look, from "Hey lady, you beautiful," to my favorite "Lookee lookee, very cheap!". Sassy Jo even heard one woman shout out "Hey shopping lady, come and smell my wood!"

We went into the gardens for a look around and took some fantastic pictures, pausing to adjust cameras and take comic shots of each other. We had to be back for an early departure for the hall, so we scooted out of there after about and hour and a half and took a taxi back to the hotel.

The Shanghai Oriental Arts Center was our venue tonight and will be tomorrow too. It's an absoulutely beautiful venue, a veritable palace for the arts. Viewed from overhead it looks like a phaelenopsis orchid, with each petal a different performance hall or space. I would have loved to see the aerial view during our concert, as the roof is fitted out with lights tuned to change with the sounds produced inside.

The facilities inside were wonderful-- beautiful dressing rooms and a sparkling concert hall. Since Shanghai has much more English speaking residents, our manager was able to make our dedications in English, and the crowd was very responsive.

Only one more concert to go at this point, then we have a couple of days to play round in Shanghai before going home!

Getting up early is becoming a real trial.

Rock Star Roomie and I decided to bag the group trip and go to the market by ourselves later this morning. It was great-- we stopped in to look at whatever we wanted without waiting for everyone all the time. Going with a big group is fun, but alone and small-group time has been really lacking and it was nice. And boy, did we shop. Pillow covers, chops, dresses, scarves, masks, you name it. By the time we came back we had perfected our bargaining skills and come home with a huge pile of loot. RSR got another suitcase to carry all of her loot home in, so we hopped a cab back to the hotel for a little nap.

Getting a cab in Shanghai can be dicey sometimes-- you show them your card and either they won't go or they try to take you out of your way to increase the fare. Fortunately we haven't had a problem with this so far, nor have we really been hassled, unlike a lot of members of our group. Maybe it's the fact that I told RSR to walk like she had five ton brass balls-- who knows.

Back at the Arts Center tonight. and it was a great concert. Good thing, too, because it was taped for Chinese TV-- seven cameras. Maestro has promised me a DVD when he gets one, so I'll let you know how it turns out.

Tonight is the beginning of the end of the trip-- our last concert. Thank goodness, too, because this cold is ramping up and my sinuses are going crazy. At least I don't have any more playing until next Wednesday.

Only a few more days until the Lunar New Year celebration, which TinyFlutist is already making plans for. Apparently we're going to boogaloo until the next morning-- rock on. Work's over-- now it's time for play!

Sometimes you just need to groove.

Ah, a day off at last. I decided to sleep late and go late to the Shanghai Museum. It was SO NICE to be able to sleep in a little. I goofed around until lunch time and then RSR and I decided to go down to our provided lunch. Total strike-out, that one. Yet another family style Chinese meal consisting of things which we couldn't identify with people who may not necessarily be our favorite people to deal with. Don't get me wrong-- as I've said before, I'm all for trying new things and participating and experiencing new cultures, but after a while your taste buds get a little tired of the shock of these things and we all know I get really sick of socializing after a while. Alone time has been at a premium this trip and these guys don't help sometimes.

RSR had gotten to the market to exchange her dress and we headed down to meet up with the crew for the museum. This was one of those bizarre occurrences where one after another we just started picking up people for the walk over-- it morphed from a two person stroll to a nine-person tour trip, with me in the lead. How the f*ck did that happen?

The museum was amazing, and we ran into the rest of the klatch there and decided to hook up later for a trip to a local dumpling restaurant that was supposed to be fabulous. I had benGi feeling a little vague all day so I took a time out in the museum's tea house for some jasmine tea and a cream puff with strawberries (the best shit you will ever eat-- if you're in Shanghai, run, do not walk). Finally, Bass Boy and I moseyed on back toward the hotel by way of the underground shopping mall under the park. He found some seriously fabulous shirts while I hung about vaguely and then we ambled back to our respective rooms to gear up for dinner. Still no shoes and I have no hope of finding clothes here. Apparently Asian women don't come in my size. Fuck.

The dumpling place? UN. FUCKING. BELIEVABLE. Seriously, I think I may never be able to eat dumplings anywhere else again-- these were just too good, and I think I'm ruined for life.

After dinner we popped into the Paulaner brew house next door and Cello Chick and Groovemaster D promptly dove into liter-mugs of beer. Holy fucking balls, Batman, that's a lot of beer. I stuck to a wheat brew and was happy to do so. One beer turned into two, and then three, by which time my sugar was crazy and I was falling asleep on the table and getting more than a little snarky. I chugged a coffee, which was great but functioned more like high-octane rocket fuel, at which point everyone decided to go home and go to bed. Fuck. I was not pleased-- it took two sleeping pills to get me off to dreamland after I walked in and woke up RSR, who was nursing a serious sore throat. (I felt so terrible about that-- not only was she feeling bad, my snoring was loud enough to penetrate her earplugs the night before... I could have crawled in a hole over that one.)

The moral of this story is don't stay out late unless you're willing to take a cab home by yourself, and don't drink coffee before going to bed. Last off day before going home tomorrow, which is also the eve of the Chinese Lunar New Year. Hooray!

Dancing the night away on New Year's Eve is not, as I had before believed, an unworthy pastime.

Holy fucking balls-- that beer caught up with me this morning. I very nearly had a hangover, and I heard later that Groovemaster D worshiped the porcelain gods over last night's debauchery. Oops. Of course, TinyFlutist drank us all under the table with no problem. WTF? She kicks ass, that one.

I woke up at 7 AM starving and a little hung over, so I sneaked out of the room to breakfast without waking up Rock Star Roomie. Of course, my conductor was at breakfast and commented on my disheveled state of being, whereupon I informed him that TinyFlutist put us all to shame, and that was no shame. Coffee and toast has never been so welcome, but today's eggs were the Chinese pickled variety, so no dice there. Drinkable yogurt, check.

Back in the room I caught up on some work-- the project group got a write-up in the CityPaper this week, which was really favorable and should help us drum up some audience members. Woohoo. (Note the lack of exclamation point-- even my blog is tired at this point.)

We headed over to the Jade Buddha Temple later in the morning, which was amazing-- the incense smoke was everywhere and people were praying all around us as we reverently snapped photos. Gorgeous.

The mall with the Starbucks was the lunch venue of choice, and the Korean noodle place we stopped at provided one of the best $1.50 meals I think I've ever had. Beef noodle soup with kimchee and tea for 12 RMB. Beautiful. We split up and walked around to do some shopping, and I managed to finish up my list of gifts with no stress.

RSR decided to hang back on dinner and dancing and we headed off to Xintiandi again for dinner and a little bar hopping. we really liked this are last night, so we decided to go again and check out another restaurant. Great idea, except that Chinese New Year kind of functions like our Chirstmas-- lots of things close early including restaurants and bars. We ended up at Din Tai Fung again and this time got stashed in a private room with a great waitress dedicated to our party. Did I mention how great this place was? Amazing. Afterwards the girls got some gluwein from the Paulaner kiosk and we hung around outside to watch fireworks. We even got to see some super close-up on the street that bisects the club/restaurant block! They were setting off fireworks that were bouncing off buildings and raining on roofs, but no one seemed to mind and I got some great video. (By they I mean people aided by city policemen. Public safety? Gotcha. Keep that firebucket handy.)

After the street fireworks, we headed back into the block to scope out the bar options and got sidetracked by a woman drumming up business for La Maison, a Moulin-Rouge style cabaret house and dance club. We seemed a little iffy, so she waived the cover fee for our group. Boy, did we get a surprise!! After being seated at the table, we were treated to the remainder a dance show featuring women I can only describe as having exquisite bodies-- those thongs showed off perfect asses and the abs below the beautiful bra-costumes were smokin' hot. The emcee was a gorgeous guy who entertained us with a song and his witty bater, and there was even a magician (a very, very HOTT magician) who really dazzled us with his skill at leger domain.

After the show, we moved over to the dance club on the same floor wher we proceeded to boogaloo until we were sweaty and giggling. The drinks were a bit expensive, but it was worth it for the ambiance.

I have to admit, I have a total girl-crush on Bass Boy. He's a beautiful fey boy, and a fantastic dancer. I love him all the more in that he put up with my limited dancing skills and used his much more considerable ability to twirl me around the dance floor more than a few times. He made me feel like dancing (no small feat, mind you), and I would have stayed there all night if I could have. We scooted downstairs to the Paulaner, where were boogeyed some more to the sounds of the Gems, the cover band we'd heard there the night before. One of the singers recognized us and came up to talk, and later applauded after BB and I finished a dance together. Yay!

After a while we moved on back to the hotel, leaving BB and Sassy Jo to cut a rug in Le Club and close down the place. I can't imagine having more fun on any New Year's, and now I don't want this tour to end-- everyone's going home tomorrow and many of us may never get together like this again. Ah well-- here's hoping we all stay in touch in the future... this has been the best tour I've ever done in terms of colleagues and camaraderie. Tomorrow is our flight home, and we have at least twelve hours more of each others' company. All right, off to sleep (or try, with all the fireworks). Zai jian until tomorrow, and Happy New Year!

Home.

This morning we were awakened by the drums of the lion dancers, and Rock Star Roomie and I rushed outside to take pictures and watch the festivities. We were in such a hurry we simply thew on pants and coats over our pajamas and hurried through the pedestrian underpass and into the square on Nanjing Road.

The dancers were magical-- long bright dragons controlled by bamboo poles bobbed and swayed and weaved around us, moving to the beat of the drummers. The drummers were fantastic to watch-- circled around the dancers, they beat out a deafening cadence.

After breakfast, we packed up our stuff for the last time and hauled everything down to the waiting bus. Schlepp, schlepp to the airport, where we waited patiently for check-in and boarding. We have lots of time to wait, we thought. We'll say goodbye when we get to O'Hare.

Twelve more hours on a plane with RSR (lucky break, that one) and everyone was more than ready to get off and headed in their respective directions. Hurried goodbyes were followed by one more short hop home-- we spread out from O'Hare like a web. Los Angeles, Orlando, Omaha, Vancouver, New York, Charleston, San Antonio.

And waiting at our locations, loved ones smiling and kissing and hugging. Hubby was waiting at the baggage claim along with the Maestro's wife, Guitarman's girlfriend and Groovemaster D's brother. After hurried goodbyes we scurried to our car covered in ice and salt and drove home over frozen streets.

There are not words enough to describe my delight at a warm feather bed inhabited by the two of us and our two furry friends. A long cozy snuggle awaits me, so I'll talk to y'all tomorrow.

Here I stand facing the looking glass-- one more fantastic journey completed and now it's time to go back to work, life and reality. It always seems like such a sudden stop when I get to this point-- the experience is still vivid and personal, too close and too dear to let go, and yet there is nothing left to do but move on.

But before I close this chapter, I feel like I need to say something to all of you who shared this wonderful experience with me these past two weeks: if you're from the tour and reading this, know that you're one of the people whose acquaintance and friendship I treasure. You all made this tour a time I will hold dear all of my life and look back on as a truly life-changing experience in some ways.

Thank you for the dancing, the drinking (!), the laughter. Thank you for your professionalism, your artistry, and your flexibility. Thank you for your grace under pressure. Thank you all for your time, your confidence, your good humor, and your patience.

I hope to see you all again soon. Zai jian and xie xie.

One of the beauties of going on tour with a bunch of friends is the amount of verbal gems you come away with by the end of the trip. Here, for your enjoyment, are some of ours (and if you don't know, I'm not explaining). Yes, there are over thirty, but who can choose? Those of you wonderful people frm the group who are reading this-- if I've left any out, click here and leave them in the Comment section. Rock out.

“THOSE are not hers.”

“People paid thousands of dollars for these tickets…”
“Big daddy”
“Rock star!”
“I am local people. You come have tea with me?"
“Where’s Danny?”
“What is that smell?”
“Get them ALL out of here! Her too! I am TRYING to run a rehearsal!”
“I have a bowing change,”
“Dun-didda-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-didda-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun…”
“Please!”
"Why the hell am I so hungry all the time? It seems like half and hour after I eat I... oh. Right. It's Chinese food."
“When are we leaving again?”
“And yet… he’s hot-- I’d do him.”
(To the tune of Come On Over)"I itch, I scratch, 'cause I just shaved my snatch..."
“I have fabulous hair.”
“I love that there are so many mirrors in this elevator.” ”Yeah—so you can look at your hair.”
“Happy ending?”
“Travel buddy!”
“Fuck these people. Fuck ‘em.”
"And... scene."
“Seems like one of you married girls could help a single brother out.”
“I just want to know what it is I’m putting in my mouth in the first place.”
“I’d say a third of my shoes never leave the bedroom.”
“Does it have snake in it?”
"And... scene."
“Lookee lookee!”
“Hello shopping lady, come smell my wood!”
“You beautiful. Yes?"
“GucciPradaBagWatchArtComeLookeeVeryGoodPriceHello?”
“You’re from Birmingham and you’re talking to me?”
“With love and cellos,”
“So what’s the groove for today?”
“What exactly IS the use of a man’s room attendant? I mean, has any guy ever REALLY looked over at this guy and said ‘Excuse me, could you hold this for me for a minute?“
“And… diminuendo.”
“Look honey, I am not your girlfriend, I am not your bitch, and I am not your mother-- I don’t want to sit with you and I definitely don’t want to hear about your hemorrhoids.”
“One more beer-- fist in mouth.”
“Holy thong, Batman!”
“Dances with curves”
“There is just an ambient layer of schmutz on this whole country.”
"After all, all it really takes to make her happy when I get home is a fat check, a silk dress, and a woody."
"Bu yao motherfucker."

It's official. This tour has beat my ass like a drum. I gave up on trying to be stoic about the jet lag yesterday and slept from 2 PM to 8 AM this morning via sleeping pill.

Later today I'm getting my ass to the MD to kick this sinus infection (I've put up with is since Beijing and I'm done. Stick a fork in me.)

I have not yet begun to unpack and the house is a wreck. (Partially my fault from all the crap I dragged home and partially the fact that hubby has been running like a crazy man since I left)

Much love to you peeps, but I have to get my ass to the gym. I managed to somehow lose ten pounds in the course of this jaunt (Walking? Food with heads? No one will ever know) and I'd like to keep that pattern moving.

If I can just stay awake.

One of my favorite things about my recent trip to China was reading the translated signs in public places. This is one of my favorite examples. Just thought you'd enjoy seeing it. (And for my esteemed brother-in-law, that's No Smorking!)

*vi·res·cence (v-rsns, v-) n. The state or process of becoming green, especially the abnormal development of green coloration in plant parts normally not green.

Found over at Mad About Shanghai.

Oh, ho, hum. Or rather, Hi ho, hi ho. Exactly two weeks from today, the bus takes off yet again for another orchestra tour. This time, it's the dog tour, the Christmas show, and people, there will be knitting.

At this very moment, in my living room in the Knitting Trunk, sit fourteen neatly packed Ziploc project bags, complete with their required materials and instructions as well as my new needle set and knit-knacks bag, packed for travel. I don't think I've ever been so happy about socks and scarves and hats and sweaters in the making. (All of these projects and the unfinished ones I'm already working on have been duly cataloged over at Ravelry, for you knitters in the know and having invites-- I swear to God Ravelry may be the new YouTube for me.)

See, for those of you who don't see me on a daily basis, knitting kind of translates for me into what other women think of a spa days or weekend vacations.That being said, I can only do it when my to-do list is carefully balanced or I have no other choice. In this case it's a little of both: when my to-do list is too long, I get anxious and fret away my precious free time trying to whittle away at it. When it gets short I get restless and start to make work for myself to compensate. When I have no choice, such as on bus travel performance tours, it's a perfect medium: I'm simply forced to accept what I can't change and happily churn away at the project in my lap, like a child in time-out.

These tours are like vacations for me in some ways-- I'm not really responsible for where I sleep, where and when I eat, what my schedule is, or anything else but getting on the bus on time and playing my clarinet. It can be really freeing once you get past the crazy people that inevitably make up a percentage of your traveling companions, and a good set of headphones make the world an infinitely brighter place, as does a place in the stage manager's van from time to time to escape the voices of braying assholes who complain too much. Pop in the iPod phones and soon all you have to worry about is where you should turn the heels of a sock and what on Earth the hero or heroine of your audiobook will do to get out of that mess.

There are socks of every description begging to come to life, beautiful scarves and hats, and even a gorgeous sweater in the queue. I wonder how many of my colleagues will want to learn this time? Last time we had sixteen out of forty clickety-clicking away, so anything's possible. I'll try to get photos up of the progress, but don't expect a lot of disclosure-- there are Christmas gifts in line, so there will be gaps until after the holidays.

View Larger Map
So for those of you who are curious as to where I'm going next month, here's the route map. Pretty considerable: 4,971 miles or about 3 days 9 hours of driving.

It's amazing how much you can get done with a little caffeine in your system.

People, I have accomplished my entire To-Do List today. (This amazing feat brought to you by Starbucks's Grande Soy Pumpkin Spice Latte. The calories, I know, I know.)

Every time I go on one of these tours, I have a mental checklist of things I need to do so I can have a mental "vacation" when I get on the bus. Mostly it has to do with cleaning the house, because it stresses me out to leave a dirty house (think Golde in Fiddler- "I will NOT. LEAVE. A DIRTY. HOUSE.") for David to deal with. I'd rather let him sit around and play poker online while I'm gone instead of washing dishes. SO basically I managed to get the house into relatively smooth working order-- clean the kitchen and mud room, vacuum the living room and dining room, clean of tables, organize and put away knitting and other projects, groom the cats (you know, teeth & toenails and such), put up Christmas decorations and lights, sweep the porch (*squee!* I'll explain this later), and pack my suitcase, which is no small undertaking.

Going on a three-week bus tour is a little like venturing into the wilderness. You never know what you'll encounter, how cold it will be, what there will be to eat, and if you'll be eaten by bears. Okay, well maybe not the bears, but you get the idea. Sometimes you'll end up at a Holiday Inn in Missouri with nothing around for miles and two peppermints and a teabag in your suitcase, and believe me, that's a bad scene. So in addition to a week's worth of clothes and laundry supplies, you also pack a hot pot, a coffee press, a can opener, silverware and instant soup and meal bars. As well as whatever is going to keep you occupied for the next three weeks, in my case more yarn than you can shake a stick at.

The stage manager is going to hate me, because that thing is heavy. For that matter, I'm going to hate me, because I'll invariable have to carry it up a couple flights of stairs at a bunch of backwater EconoLodges. It's kind of funny-- I always come back from these bus tours starting to look a little like Rosie the Riveter: guns, people. It's amazing how a little disguised exercise can add up to a pretty rockin' set of biceps.

Two days and counting, so I'd better start on tomorrow's list if I know what's good for me. That way I can go do a little celebratory drinking before I go tomorrow night... woot!

Well folks, in about twenty minutes D will be home to schlepp me up to Baltimore and leave me to the wolves for a month. I have to say, I'm a little more consternated (my Mom's word) about this than I usually am... I'd really just like to be a hermit for a month. Damn this playing thing and damn those four-thousand-odd miles and damn the paycheck... oh wait. Yeah, see there it is, right there... this thing is going to be paying for my new flute. Well, a least I can hop nobody's going to lick me this time.

Posting will be catch-as-catch-can, depending on the free-ness of the internet at the hotels, but I'll try to recap daily and post pictures when I can so you guys can at least laugh at my predicament. And awaaaaaaay we go...

There are always two things that I'm apprehensive about when I start off on another tour: who I'm going to be stuck with as a roommate and who I'll be stuck sitting next to on the bus. Not so much the music or the traveling itself-- that I can handle, but the interpersonal shit is always a crap-shoot, so you can understand my relief when I found out Canada was my roommate-- she's sassy and straightforward and hilarious and has brass cannon balls, and takes absolutely no shit from anybody doling it out. And she's a good musician too. (Major points for that one this time around.) As soon as I walked in the door of the hotel she greeted me from the lobby computer, telling me we were sharing a room. Woohoo! I thought, one down and one to go.

We rehearsed last night for three hours or so, learning the new show and each other, and boy let me tell you, it was pretty horriffic. I'm not exactly sure how well we're going to do this time out, because we've had a major turnover rate and there are a lot of new clueless faces. Sometimes we get the luck of the draw with new hires, but I think that this won't be one of those times. Not to mention the usual crowd of asshats that always seem to show back up on the bus who never knew what they were doing anyway. At least the wind section is rockin' out, with a new girl in for TinyFlutist, who had to bow out because of her regular gig. Cold comfort when the musical ceiling is falling on your head, but at least Sassy Jo and Cara and I are all in it together.

*sigh*

Maybe it will get better today. Six more hours of rehearsal to get it right, then we're on the bus and out to the wolves.

Unfortunately, the playing didn't really get better as the day wore on today. We had six hours of rehearsal, all of it painful, and managed a run-through at the end of the day, after which the conductor let us out half an hour early to go eat and sleep in anticipation of the advent of bus travel tomorrow. (*crosses fingers for a single seat*

One of the freaky things this year is that for the first time in twenty years of this Christmas tour, they've changed the book-- there are new songs, songs are rearranged, and a lot of the old songs hit the cutting room floor. In particular, a lot of the songs that used to make me hustle a bit have been taken out, leaving me pretty bored with the music on one hand, but on the other, leaving me relaxed enough to just play and not stress out about anything even in the moment. Glass half empty or glass half full? I dunno.

One thing that is different this time is the percussion setup. In most orchestras, woodwinds sit in a double row conformation directly in front of the conductor, behind the violins and in front of the brass. In this orchestra, the brass are off to stage left, leaving us in the direct line of fire for the percussionist. Let me tell you, in this show it's like being lined up at a firing range. He has a lot of cool toys back there, like wood blocks, bells, and a tiny little earsplitting splash cymbal which are all set up directly behind my head. In the middle of a couple of the numbers we're playing it's kind of like being trapped in a popcorn popper with one of those wind-up cymbal banging monkeys. Geez. I'm sure my face must be hilarious once he gets going pretty good-- it feels like my eyes are going to pop out of my head when he gets those wood blocks in play. And that splash cymbal just about scared the shit out of me and Sassy Jo when he hit it at the end. OY.

Tomorrow we're on the bus and out, so I hied my ass down to Vaccaro's at the Inner Harbor to get some amaretti for the duration (yeah right-- they'll only last a couple of days before I scarf them all) and we went to J. Paul's for dinner-- crab cakes and beer to fill my belly before bedtime. More tomorrow after the first concert... everybody cross your fingers.

Tonight's first concert was entirely unremarkable, except that it pretty much sucked. The bassist was on crack, we were all crammed together and the violinist in front of me was whacking my stand with her bow, and we're not even going to talk about the woodblock and bell chorus migraine I had ringing in my head. And I already know I'm going to be completely sick of cold cuts in about three days. However, that hasn't been the worst part of my night.

See that picture up there on the left? Yeah. That six-legged freak? Right. Exactly what you're thinking.

That, my friends, is a bed bug.

See, we're staying at this entirely shit-tastic hotel in Dover, Delaware called the Dover Budget Inn (tagline: Luxury for Less. Jeee-zus.) We were pretty skeeved out when we drove up, but we thought, Well,, there's not much choice and it's just for one night, right? Wrong.

The girls next door to us came back from the Lowe's across the parking lot with Febreze and Oust to try and kill some of the funk, and said that while they were there the cashier slyly asked, "Are y'all staying over there at that place?"
(nods)
"Oh Lord, when we saw y'all get off that bus, we looked at each other and said "Oh no! They're going in there!!! Poor things! Ya'll be careful, okay?" We all laughed at our bad fortune and Febrezed everything in the hopes that it would help, and went out in search of some Pier 1 candles at the mall across the street.

We left and did the concert and came back, all the while thinking hom many minutes it would be until Maker's Mark time, and I cahnged and hustled over to Sassy Jo and Cara's room to hang out and have a snort or two before bedtime. We were having a great time and laughing when suddenly Cara jumped up and pointed at the bed. "What the heck is that?" she said. I leaned over and looked at the creature scuttling across the sheets, and my blood ran cold. "Umm, it's a bed bug." I said. To be sure we looked them up on the internet , and sure enough, there was a mug shot of the nasty little creature we'd just seen.

Now, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the things I'm most afraid of in the spirit of getting a better handle on the depression and anxiety, and I came up with a Top 20 list of things I never want to experience. Guess what number twelve was?

Bed bugs.

They changed rooms and we checked ours, and everything seems to be fine, but sleep is just not about to happen in my mind. Every time I get a little tich I jump up and look under the covers, so I decided to bag it until I get too tired to care, which will be in about five minutes for me. Here's hoping that I don't get bitten. Yurch.


*What the hell kind of dive has WiFi and bed bugs? This one apparently.

And the hits just keep on coming.

Tonight was another great performance (riiiiight), bookended by general management assininity. Before the concert, CaraMia was treated to a healthy dose of overinflated self-important belligerence from the stage manager for something she had no control over, and the general asshattery continued as we realized there was no food at the venue and after the performance when there was no dinner stop.

Normally on these tours, the venues provide some sort of dinner for us as part of the contract rider, and we were expecting a pretty decent one at this hall, since we've played there before and had been treated to potluck dinner. Unfortunately, there was no such luck this time-- we arrived to enough celery for four people to share and a basket of slightly scary oranges.

The concert wasn't great, wasn't even good really, and we were all a little more than disgruntled. So when the bus kept bypassing every available food establishment on the way back the hotel, we got more and more unhappy, until by the time it stopped in front of the hotel (an entirely unremarkable Super 8) we were all ready to eat our seatmates. We rushed off the bus, changed out of our monkey suits, and scurried across the parking lot to the only available option, Rita's Hot Stuff Diner. Sometimes you just have to take what you can get.

By the time I got over there, there were about fifteen people waiting in line and sitting at the tables, and one of them wryly pointed at the guy running around behind the counter and said, "He's the only one here. It's going to be a while." So I placed my order and plopped down in a seat at a table next to my new violist friend with Mel and the lead trombonist. We talked, we joked, we counted minutes, but when the violist finally got his sandwich, all conversation ceased. We were all sitting there looking at the turkey on white he unwrapped like it was the second coming of Christ or something, we were so hungry. He lifted the beautiful creation to take a bite and I think we all started drooling. Putting down the sandwich, he laughed at the looks on our faces and said, "Geez, guys, it's like you're watching porn or something. Turkey porn. Huh." I'd trade every porn flick I've ever seen for my hot ham and cheese right now, I thought. In the end, it took more than two hours to get everybody served, with the last person finally getting their food at 12:45 AM.

Now don't get me wrong-- the food was phenomenal and the guy behind the counter was hustling like a track star to get it all done. Pretty remarkable, really. However, it was just a perfect cap to an already crappy night, and as I sit here and enjoy my peanut butter pie (!!!) in my hotel room, it makes me wonder why I keep coming back for this every year. Aaah, who knows. At least I have my own room tonight and we're not leaving at the ass-crack of dawn tomorrow, so I can enjoy the moment a little bit.

Finally today we got some musical relief. It always takes a little while for everything to settle in as far as playing together is concerned-- it really should have happened sooner, but at least it finally happened. One of the things I really love about this tour is playing the music-- when it's good, it's really good. There's something so satisfying about playing a concert with no pretension, no purpose but to play happy holiday music for an audience that really, really loves it. After all, as one of my colleagues said tonight after the concert, "There's nothing like a good helping of Baby Jesus followed by the American flag."

We always end the concert with a sing-along on a Christmas song and then "God Bless America", so by the time we leave the stage the crowd is good and worked up and happy. It sounds cheesy, I know, but there's a really special kind of satisfaction seeing the glowing faces of the crowd after that last standing O that is honestly why I do this gig-- it makes people happy.

The crowd we play for is mostly senior citizens, most or all of whom know and are intimately familiar with the history of this orchestra and its founder, and who have a lot of fond memories associated with the music we play. There are certain songs where I know I can look out in the crowd and see a little old lady dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief or a little old man sniffling to keep the tears from running down his face. Tonight, in fact, I looked out and in the front row was a woman and someone I assume was her son in military dress-- when the Maestro dedicated the next number to those serving overseas, she seemed fine, but when we finished the last strains of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," tears were rolling down her face and she was squeezing the hand of her son so hard her knuckles were white. Granted, all of that emotion probably wasn't because of us based on what I saw in front of me, but it still kind of brought home the point that good music doesn't have to be artsy-fartsy to make a difference in someone's experience, in fact it's often the simplest music that brings the greatest response.

We get to do this thing twice tomorrow at a little college in New Jersey, so you never know what kind of experiences there will be there. And if everything goes as planned, I'll have a special treat to tell you about regarding my dinner company tomorrow afternoon as well (prepare for a whole lot of *squee*, people.) Off for some sleep in this cushy room-- the first really good hotel we've had since the rehearsal venue. No bugs here, and a kick-ass breakfast on the horizon.

Tonight I got taken to dinner by one of my all-time idols. If you were ever to ask me what the one job is that I want more than anything in the world, I would tell you this man's job, hands down.

Before we left for the tour, The Maestro asked if I would like to come to dinner with him and his old college roommate on this particular date, as his old roommate is a clarinetist in a famous opera orchestra and TM thought I might like to meet him. Of course I agreed, and the wheels began to spin in my mind as soon as I hung up the phone. The Maestro made sure to remind me before today's first concert that this was a very clear house to play in, that every part of everything we played could be heard clearly, and to remember who was in the audience. Thanks for the vote of confidence, I thought, but it ended up being a wonderful head-up, because I played that book about as well as I've ever played it before, and was really satisfied with myself when I walked into his dressing room to meet him for dinner. His friend was there and introductions were made, compliments were paid (*squee!*) and we left to eat at a little restaurant down the street.

It's always hard for me to meet people I really, truly admire, because I start to wax a little blonde from excitement, but this time I have to say I did a really good job. I was calm, and funny, we had a lot of laughs and I got ribbed a lot for being half their age. It's also hard because you never know how that person will react to you and if your expectations will be met or smashed-- he met them in spades and more. Of course, they reminisced and told old war stories from the musical trenches, but what was really neat was how this guy went out of his way to keep me in the conversation and direct it so that I wasn't left out. He asked me about where I played and with whom, we commented and reminisced about shared acquaintances, old teachers, and even talked about playing techniques and I found out I knew how to do something he wanted to learn, so he told TM to give me his contact info so I could send it to him when I got home. (*double squee!*) He also was very complimentary of the woodwind section in general (go girls, go) and a great time was had all around.

I walked in the stage door through the clouds of cigarette smoke grinning from ear to ear, and when someone asked me how it went, I answered emphatically, "That was worth every bed bug."

Just had to share with you all The Rules as drafted by my friend Mel for this year's tour:

1. If you happen to find yourself in Dover, Delaware staying at the Budget Inn...Lowe's next door has antimicrobial Febreze.
2. Always have Febreze. Better yet, use it. Bus funk is strongly discouraged.
3. If you have to hork a loogie, please be respectful and spit into a trash can rather than the floor. We are not in China anymore.
4. Always, always wear panties. Maybe the other girls don't want to see your balding vajayjay.
5. If you are supposed to be on a bus at 2:00 after being dropped off at the largest mall in the universe, please eat at the slowest restaurant. Really, just take your time. It's not like anyone sacrificed coffee and a good pee to be back on time.
6. The new GPS in the van is really only for decoration. It is not to be actually used for directions.
7. All hail Colonel Sanders!
8. The nicotine club meets regularly right outside the bus door. Since the orchestra cannot afford smoke machines and pyro on stage, it's a nice treat for us to walk through several times a day.
9. The bus toilet really is reserved for 1 only. Unless you're Russian.
10. Dinner will be served promptly at 12:45 am.

One of my least favorite things about going on these tours is the fact that we're stuck eating wherever the bus driver puts us out-- today we got stuck at the world's slowest Perkins. Usually it's Cracker Barrel, so we were happy for the change, but still-- it took us an hour to get our food, which of course was scary as all get out anyway. Gack. here are times when I can totally empathize with sailors who had no green veggies and got scurvy on voyages... sometimes all I want it something green and fresh and uncooked and not fried. Perkins, unfortunately, doens't so much provide that. At least our manager was behind us in line, so no yelling about being back on the bus on time.

When I get older, I want to live somewhere like the venue we played today-- it was one of the most fabulous retirement villages I've ever seen. Now, this was no nursing home gig-- they had a full-on concert hall, complete with cushy purple chairs, and nice veggies and mint brownies for snacks (gotta love the senior villages for snacks-- awesome.) It was packed out, too-- completely full to the gills. I have to say again that I'm a huge fan of our audiences-- they're some of the most appreciative and enthusiastic concertgoers I've ever experienced, and they're generally incredibly nice people to boot.

Nice or not, I am SO ready for a day off.

Seriously people, if I ever start wearing strapless dresses and glitter eyelashes when I'm sixty, please, please, please someone tie me up and brainwash me into submission until I make sense again.

I'll be honest with you here-- the lovely ladies of the chorus who are traveling with us are not unattractive individuals, but when they get into costume they basically look like a pack of drag queens. Lots and lots of fake curls, lots and lots of fake eyelashes, glitter, and dresses that look mostly like some kind of 80s prom nightmare.

And the drama. Oh dear Lord, the drama.

It's a pretty well-known fact that singers consider themselves the suns around which the rest of our worlds revolve, but seriously people, there's a really good chance that there may be a knock-down, drag-out between one of us girls and one of these women. (Sassy Jo calls it Coots versus Kittens. Sounds like a viable WWE match to me, right?) After spending a truly incredible amount of time on the bus today, these women honestly expected everyone to move out of the way and then wait for them to process back and get their stuff like they were parting the Red Sea (think going toward the back of a plane that's just arrived-- not a chance in hell.)

I am so over singers.

In other news, our hotel today is old school. Really, really old school. It even has those towel holders that function like bottle openers hung on the doorframe and cigarette burns on the bathroom wall. Classy. Like us I guess.

The theater tonight was fabulous, though-- it's one of the old Warner Theaters, the movie palaces from back in the day. It was huge, and even the exit signs were stylized with the opulent designs that could be seen on the chandeliers, walls, and ceiling. My camera wasn't nearly wide enough to take a photo of the whole thing, so I had to make a composite of about 12 shots. It was really gorgeous, and the crowd was polite if not completely ecstatic. Plus they fed us real food beforehand.

After a certain point all I can remember about certain locations is the spread-- certain halls are known for providing good food and others are remembered for the lack thereof. Mostly we get sandwiches or the means by which we can create them, and every once in a while we'll get lucky and someone will do up a real dinner or one exceptional item, like really good cookies or coffee. It sounds silly, but on days where the bus ride stretches into eternity, sometimes all you have to look forward to is the spread, then another round on the concert merry-go-round. Tonight we got meatballs and pasta with marinara, big flats of salad and Wegman's molasses cookies. A nice relief from cold cuts and pretzels.

I'm for bed-- I have yet to get an eight-hour stretch of sleep yet, and not for lack of trying. Y'all sleep tight, and don't let the bed bugs bite. They suck, believe me.

Ahhh... a night off. It's a beautiful thing.

We were actually lucky enough to score a night at a Hyatt tonight, where we had the afternoon and evening off following our matinee. We were up at the crack of dawn on the bus and out, and we trekked over to Ohio for an early show and then a night off. I went in search of some good Indian food with The Maestro, which I'm sure will cause the rumor mill to kick into high gear tomorrow.

The rumor mill on this tour is especially vicious, namely embodied in a couple of specific people who will take any fact and run with it. It really cracks me up, but I can already tell from the looks that I got from one of the singers and a couple of violinists that they think something's up, so I really need to find a way to nip this in the bud. Because honestly, how many of you out there think I'd cash in on D to roger some older dude? For fuck's sake.

And of course, since it's the first night we've had off, there was a party in the pianist's room tonight. Piano Parties are legendary on this tour. She's a really sweet dingy lady, and she somehow manages to pull in the whole orchestra for a party in her hotel room at least twice in the course of any given tour. Maker's Mark? Check. Glassware? Check. (The perks of Hyatts even extend to the little things.)

Now I'm for bed in a Hyatt Grand Bed. Alone, mind you. Hell yeah.

I should probably clarify about the whole rumor mill thing at the outset today-- we have a couple of people on the tour here who love, love, love to spread rumors and gossip, whether they have a basis in fact or not. One of the favorite topics is who's sleeping with who, and there's always a lot of speculation with absolutely no associated fact. All you have do to become a character in their play is be friendly to someone of the opposite sex in some small way like sitting with them on the bus or hanging out with them repeatedly on lunch breaks. On this tour I can honestly say there's not a whole lot of that going on, even if the Rumor Mill is going strong, based on what I know about everyone here.

There's also the added problem that there are still a couple of skeevy guys on the tour who somehow have enough ego to think if you sit with them at dinner that means you want to hop in the sack with them too, ot some such nonsense, and will act accordingly, grabbing your ass or asking you to come back to their room for a back rub or a martini. If you're seen talking to one of these guys, the automatic assumption by the Rumor Mill is that of course, you must be sleeping with them, because otherwise why would you talk to them? *sigh*

There's one guy in particular, who we will call The Source, who is the absolute worst-- it's like he lives vicariously through the drama he can create about everyone else's lives. As a result, there are a lot of us who don't like to talk to him very much, because we know whatever we say will be twisted around against us into something dramatic and awful and wrong. Which of course only fuels the fire, since not talking to him makes it much more likely that he'll come up with a story to fill in the details he's missing about your life and your trip so far. In point of fact I can name three instances where he created affairs, life crises, or diseases for me or one of my friends that needed to be corrected and stopped because they were causing so much trouble. Just another example of how tour life makes the banal horrible and the average, extreme.

In other news, we had another round of dinner theater performances tonight, with dinner for us in between. Let me be completely honest-- the Croatian take on corned beef and cabbage just doesn't do it for me. Neither do institutional mashed potatoes, although the strudel at the end was pretty good, so we crossed the parking lot to the meat market in the little strip of shops there, and I was surprised to find some good chocolate and some of those Kinder Surprise eggs we'd seen in China, so I got one, hoping it would contain the tiny plastic Brunhilde on the display box, but no such luck. Instead I got a tiny sad little robot that couldn't even stand up on his own, so we have a new bus mascot I suppose. The best surprise while we were there was the sign hung over the counter-- apparently we were fortunate enough to be patronizing the Winners of SausageFest 2005, at the Polka Hall of Fame. Good grief, I love the Midwest. Let's see what The Source makes of that honor, eh?

Well, I have nothing much to report today other than another boring day on the bus. Nothing too insane in terms of drive time today, but it's starting to get kind of old. I don;t think I ever said how the bus seat situation turned out-- I got my own seat (*squee*) and have been knitting like a fiend while watching my entire backlog of Battlestar Galactica episodes (I've been behind for, well, the entire series.)

Getting a single seat (one where you don't have a seat-mate, so you get both to yourself) on a tour bus is an important but dicey proposition-- you have to be wily and snarky to pull it off, but if you do, you're set for the duration of the trip-- bus seats are static once they're set, and you've got your own little nest until you go home.. Sometimes I feel a little guilty, but then someone comes to join me and I remember why I went that route-- I can be quiet when I need to, listen to my iPod when I want to, knit without poking anybody in the arm, and generally be more in control of my own happiness. Screw those other guys. Okay, well not so much, but I can choose when and if I want to sit with someone else, which makes for a much happier Sassy.

People give me shit for all the gadgets and gizmos I bring with me on these tours, but there are some essentials that make life on a tour bus SOOOOO much better:

1. Case Logic iPod Sleeve: the carabiner fits in/around the headrest so you can watch your iPod without hunching over your lap to see it. Very important if you don't want to feel ,like a pretzel when you get off the bus. And, it leaves your hands free for knitting.
2. (UPDATE)Koss THE PLUG Earbuds: I swear to God, these things will block out everything but the loudest noise. I use them when I mow the lawn, so you'd think they would block out all the ambient conversation and other noise on the tour bus, but unfortunately no. There are some people on this tour who apparently talk louder than my lawnmower. *&^%@#^$.
3. A small KnowKints GoKnit Pouch: It hangs on the headrest post to hold your yarn free so it doesn't roll all the way to the front of the bus when the driver does a punctual stop. Very, very handy.
4. A Case Logic cup holder: I think this thing is sold as a stuff holder at Best Buy-- it's the best five bucks I've ever spent. Holds my phone, my watch, pencils, sticky notes, and cable needles at the moment, all free from poking me in the butt or getting lost in the seat, and off the nasty bus floor.
5. Mighty Bright Dual LED Book Light: Oh my Lord, I love this thing. Essential at night when you can't see where your shoes have gone or if your orange has rolled up under your friend's seat. Or for knitting in tunnels.
6. The food bag: Heidelah was there with me when I bought this, and I can't even begin to emphasize how important it is-- if you just can't stand Applebees one more time, you just reach into your little tote bag and pull out your peanut butter and jelly and bread and you're set. It's literally bursting at the seams with my stash.
7. The Backpack: Holds everything. Knitting supplies, hairbrush, toothbrush (because having tuna breath on a bus is a crime), iPod charger, pump kit, etc.
8. The Coat: Functions as cushion, blanket, and tent, depending on the situation. And looks fabulous over a concert dress. Poor thing spends most of its time balled up in the corner as a back support when it's not hanging over my hanging bag in the back of the bus. Perhaps not the best care, but it's served me really well for seven years.

I love the peeps on this tour. I love Lexie, I love Sassy Jo, I love CaraMia, I love Mel, I love Canada, I love BonBon (the concertmaster), I love Yar (singer-- bass). Some of them, like Sassy Jo, I've known for a long time, others are newer, but I really am glad I've found friends like them. They're the reason that I can survive the hell of touring, and mainly the reason I come back every time. It's a great way of getting paid to spend time wtih your friends, and the shared experience really tightens those bonds in a tangible way.

However, friendship, like a marriage, has its ups and downs. Spending hours and hours on a bus with the same people puts every little niggling flaw under a microscope and blows it out of proportion. It's not that you dislike these people, but it's like a concentrated reduction and distillation of self that can sometimes be good and sometimes can go horribly, horribly wrong. That person who you saw before as "talkative" suddenly seems like they never shut their mouth, ever. In your own mind, the one who was "cranky" before becomes a bitch. The "solitary" one becomes antisocial. And the sleepers just sleep and sleep. Unless you have some sort of way to ignore people and make your own little happy place, things can go downhill really quickly.

Different people respond differently to this sort of process, and my defense is to put on my headphones and veg out with my iPod and knit socks. Benighted, godforsaken, oh-my-God-I'm-never-going-to-finish-them socks. I have no idea what possessed me to choose to do moss stitch on these socks, because I. Hate. It. It's become one of those projects that makes you find other things to do-- you get so frustrated that you start to default over to new and different projects-- anything so you don't have to work on that God-forsaken sock. Ah well, I have a hat, scarf, and string bag 99% done, so at least something's getting done.

We're split into two separate hotels tonight and we were fortunate enough to have a Famous Dave's down the street, so a big group of us hustled over after the concert for a little barbecue... you know, there' nothing like a little smoked pig to improve your outlook. We sat around a huge table and bitched and moaned and laughed and discussed until we closed the place down, and there are leftover ribs in the room fridge for breakfast tomorrow. Not looking forward to sleeping on this bed, but there's more bus time tomorrow and sleep is where it's at. G'night, y'all.

A couple of days ago Hans turned around and commented to me that he was nervous-- things seemed to be going really, really well this tour, and I really thought about smacking him, because you all know what happens when something says something like that: it all goes to hell in a handbasket.

Tonight's concert was an exercise in extremes, because when we started we noticed that the lights were hot and super-bright, but I was concentrating on that so hard that I didn't notice until intermission that Sassy Jo was in tears from the pain in her back. I want to set this straight right now-- this girl is tough. When I turned around to say something to her after the first half finale, I almost dropped my clarinet when I saw the tears in her eyes. I have no idea what could be making her hurt that bad, but good Lord, whatever it is would probably have me curled up in a ball in the corner weeping for my mother if it made her cry.

She managed her way through the second half like a trooper and we were delighted to meet up with our favorite cellist from the China tour back at the hotel. After a little hang time we were all for some sleep , and hopefully Sassy Jo can get seen by a doctor tomorrow and get some relief. Keep your fingers crossed, guys.

Sassy Jo went home today.

After a couple of hours on the bus, it was clear that it was going to be excruciating for her to try and stay with us, so we left her at a Fairfield Inn in Pennsylvania to wait for Cello Chick to pick her up and got back on the bus after lunch to continue our trek. She made it back to Pittsburgh with CC to wait for her husband, and we're all crossing our fingers that whatever's wrong with her back can right itself with some good rest and time off.

Which of course means a new oboist.

The outlook here is grim, folks. Anyone we're likely to get on such short notice is not going to hold a candle to Sassy Jo, but we'll have to take what we can get and make the best of it. It's kind of going to be like bungee jumping-- count to three and off we go, to whatever fate has lined up. It might be pretty scary, because the oboist in question is iffy from what I understand.

The mood on the bus was subdued after lunch, when we dropped her off, because this girl is the life of the party, folks. She will be very sorely missed. We all slept or kept to ourselves and I burrowed deep into my iPod for some more Galactica episodes and had at that sock for a while. By the time we stopped for dinner we were all in need of a great big beer, so beer was had since we had the night off. I was more than a little out of sorts from being cooped up on the bus for so long, so it's no surprise that when I got a call from our resident Power-Tripping Busybody I was a little steamed, not to mention had had the filter turned off from that tall glass of suds.

the Source is not the only one on this tour who sticks his nose in everybody's business-- PTB is just as bad and half as tactful, and when he made a sideways comment about the oboe situation I lit into him like it was my job, and with twice as much relish.

If there's one thing I absolutely can't stand, it's somebody who thinks they're being sly and cool making half-witted comments about my friends with all the subtlety of a jackhammer and then for some reason thinking I'm going to agree or find it funny. The sheer stupidity he exhibited literally stopped me in my tracks for a couple of seconds before my brain kicked my mouth into gear. And boy, it kicked into gear. All of the sudden, all of those closely, politely held grievances came out and aired themselves like so much dirty laundry. Really cathartic, that, and I think he got the point. We'll see tomorrow whether he acts on what we discussed.

Tomorrow's more time on the bus before a show, and we get to meet The Pinch Hitter. I'm crossing my fingers that I'm wrong about the situation and that everything goes smoothly.

After hours and hours of rolling along on the bus, we finally made it into Kansas City through an ice storm. We were all set to don the monkey suits again and go play another show when the call came through that the show had been canceled due to weather. Immediately we all perked up, and I even went so far as to jump on the bed. Playing a show in a new city every day this time has been kind of a drag, and a night off is always appreciated.

On tour, a night off usually translates to someone having a party, and so it went-- California, CaraMia, Lexie and I all went over to the Aldi across the frozen parking lot and scored some of the best bad five-dollar wine I've ever had, as well as cheese and crackers and party mix and such.

It was amazing to me how thoroughly the ice had covered everything in its path-- the trees, the power lines, and even the random blades of grass sticking up through the snow were covered with quarter-inch shells of crystal clear ice. It made for some really picturesque scenes, and the trees looked amazing. Of course, that also meant the sidewalks were covered with glassy ice as well where the ice melter hadn't reached, so going was treacherous and not paying attention to your feet could get you a real quick trip to Flat-On-Your-Ass if you weren't careful. We managed to make it back in one piece with snacks in tow and proceeded to party down, which for us meant hanging out in California's room with the whole crew and drinking wine until we almost fell over. At this point I planned to go back to my room and vegetate, but Yar and Lexie and Muppet had other ideas and called me over to play Pictionary.

Of necessity, we don't usualy carry around the real versions of all the games we play-- we make up our own versions using hotel notepads and our own random rules: versions of charades, Pictionary, Celebrity (I'll explain that later), and so many strange and inventive card games that I can't go through them all here. Of course, we also have travel versions of Boggle, Scrabble, chess and checkers, but the most fun ones are the bastardized community games where we have to make fools of ourselves to win, so a game of Pictionary is always hilarious, no matter how many people are involved. Add to that that musicians already have completely warped minds and the word sets we come up with usually have at least one instance of scatological or sexual humor and things can get really funny really fast.

Therefore, it was no surprise that our game devolved into using pictures of "spaghetti" and "mother" for something you learn about in high school health class, and we were all on the floor laughing by the time it was done.

It's insane that at thirty years old, my best memory of this trip so far is staying up late playing Pictionary. I love it.

UPDATE: I totally forgot to tell you guys--- PTB totally apologized to CaraMia today for his asshatted behavior. Good to know I haven't lost my touch.

It's amazing to me that doing nothing but sitting on a bus on my ass all day can be so completely tiring. It's not like you're up and down or running a marathon or something-- you're just sitting in one place. And yet when I get off the bus after a long drive, I'm so exhausted I can barely stand up. I guess it makes sense-- the whole time you're riding, you're socializing and joking, reading, or doing something to pass the time until the next stopoff. In my case I fire up the iPod and knit while I watch or listen, or curl up in my seat and type for a while or watch a movie on the laptop. This sounds fun, but after hours and hours on end of watching and listening or talking, you start to get completely stir-crazy, and you get a serious case of bus-butt (your ass falls asleep unless you get up and move every half hour or so.) So far I've made it through about half of BSG season two and started a scarf, and still no dice on finishing those bedamned socks.

We rolled through miles and miles of icy roads, moving toward Milwaulkee for our three-day stopover there. This ice storm that has blanketed the Midwest has made the going kind of rough for us this time, meaning longer drives in icy conditions and less time leeway for stopping. Because of the weather conditions, we had abbreviated stopovers for lunch and breaks, and I can honestly say I'm more sick of fast food than I've ever been in my life. If I never see a McDonald's again, it will be too soon.

By the time we got to the hotel, we were so loopy that we just wanted to have a good meal and go to sleep, so we decided to set off down the street to a local restaurant for a bite. Big mistake-- the parking lot was so covered in ice that we nearly broke ourselves going fifty feet to the road, where we noticed that there was no sidewalk. Luckily, about this time the hotle shuttle caught up with us and picked us up, schlepping us off to the nearby mall, where there was a lovely Italian restaurant. We had a bite and then came back here to our rooms to sleep off the exhaustion, because guess what happens tomorrow? Yeah. More bus time. I can't wait to go home-- six hours in a car is going to be a total cakewalk compared to this.

We rolled into Milwaulkee today, beginning a three-night stay in the same hotel. Finally.

Getting up every morning and packing up and moving out is starting to get really old at this point, so it's nice to know that tomorrow morning I will neither have to get up early nor pack up all my possessions and schlepp them down to the bus. That can be a real bitch when the parking lot is covered in ice like glass and you have a thirty-foot walk to the bus to get through. I should know, because I almost broke myself trying to do just that this morning. The ice on the long, shallow hotel steps was so transparent that I didn't see it until I found myself nearly ass-over-tits and hanging onto my suitcase for balance and dear life trying to stay upright. That's going to smart tomorrow.

Rollin', rollin', rollin and then we were overjoyed to find ourselves staying across the street from a great big mall in Milwaulkee, at a hotel with Sleep Number beds and room service. Awesome. To find all of these things at a night's stop is a touring musician's dream-- as you've already read, we often get stuck with a gas station across the street in the middle of nowhere and are left to fend for ourselves for food and entertainment. Joy. Fortunately, we're in a veritable mecca of entertainment here, with a mall, a theater, and awesome restaurants. We went over and walked the mall, where we tried out the iMedic chair at Brookstone, got coffee, and decided to see The Golden Compass (*squee*) and then promptly hied back here to our rooms to sack out. (And yet, here I am at 11pm typing.) Looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow and trying to walk the mall a couple of times for fun.

A Disclaimer and a Mea Culpa (1/11/08): Sorry it's taken so long guys, but I've finally told everyone I need to tell in person about the events the last few days of the tour, so here, finally, is the last set of entries for your enjoyment. They all lead up to a pretty horrendous finale on Day 22, so if you're interested in reading all about it and haven't got your hot little hands on the password, please email me per the instructions here..

Let me get this out of the way right now: Sleep Number Beds are the biggest crock of shit I've ever experienced. They're basically great big overpriced air mattresses, more complicated and less helpful than the one I bought at Target, but even less comfortable. I woke up this morning in a rictus of pain as my back decided that the best position was seized up to the gills. It got so bad that I was getting shooting pains through my right hip. I fully admit that the problem probably started when I slipped on the ice and probably was exacerbated when I stayed up until three A.M. playing Celebrity with The Crew, but for the love, people.

Speaking of playing Celebrity until three in the morning, we did exactly that after tonight's concert. I'm starting to think I'm drinking a little much on this tour, which has become a tour of expensive single malts for me. Our Manager and The Maestro always seem to have a couple of really good bottles on hand, and besides the Maker's I've been sampling a little of the finer fare when I have a chance. Good stuff that, but it will knock you on your ass if you're careful. That's why I was very, very cautious at tonight's Pianist Party, which as we've established before is usually inhabited by some of the less savory types in our group, including the aforementioned Maestro. He was intent on having me try some of the 12-year Macallan he brought up, and as soon as it was poured, started backing me into a corner, talking about twelve inches from my face. Now, he's a close talker in the first place, but this was getting scary by the time Yar and CaraMia showed up. See, I made the mistake of showing up there by myself, thinking that the two of them must have already gone up since no one answered my knock on their doors. Whoopsie, because I ended up being the only one from the Crew at the party at first. Never a good place to be-- we try to travel in packs to these things if we can. He's really starting to creep me out, Mr. Maestro, because he's very into my personal space. I'm trying to be polite, because we still have some concerts left to go, but it's beginning to make me pretty uncomfortable, the way he's acting around me. He had me backed up against the armoire and the wall at one point, telling dirty jokes and talking way, way too close to my face. I like to have fun and kid around, but I really don't want anyone to think there's anything going on there-- that's just nasty, and I have enough to worry about on this tour.

The Pinch Hitter, by the way, is pretty awful, frankly. The crazy thing about this music is that it's not hard to play, but it's very hard to play well, so we've all been getting a nice dose of that old Sesame Street song. Another case of the jinxes, because just as we were kind of humming along in the woodwind section, there went that handbasket with Sassy Jo and now we're a three-legged table again. Oy. I would say I need a drink, but I think that's probably best left for another time.

I miss D.

There's no two ways about it-- one of my least favorite things about doing these tours is being away from him for weeks at a time. After about twenty days of enforced separation I start to crave contact with him like it's a drug, that closeness you get with another person curled up in bed like two cats, or leaned over to sleep on a shoulder on the sofa. There's nothing overtly sexual about the kind of contact I mean-- I'm not talking about sex itself. I mean the kind of intimate contact you can only share with someone who knows you really well-- the product of time and care and mutual understanding. The kind of relationship where you can not only sleep with someone in the sexual sense, but sleep next to them in the bed all night. Intimate contact that connotes intimate knowledge and ownership of that other person's personal space.

I actually opened my eyes from sleep this morning feeling sad and lonely and wishing for his presence. It brings back memories of our college days when we were on different sides of the country, flying back and forth on weekends to see each other and hustling to find plane fares that wouldn't leave us surviving on Ramen noodles (this was ten years ago, back in the days of $199 Southwest round-trips.) After a couple of weeks apart I would start to dream of holding him and wake up clutching my pillow like it was my own personal salvation. When I woke up this morning, I laid in bed, still not able to place what day of the week it was, and counted down the days until I'll see him again-- eight days. Eight days of bone-deep yearning that you can't talk about to anyone, just try to damp down and survive. Eight days of feeling like half of a whole.

A Disclaimer and a Mea Culpa (1/11/08): Sorry it's taken so long guys, but I've finally told everyone I need to tell in person about the events the last few days of the tour, so here, finally, is the last set of entries for your enjoyment. They all lead up to a pretty horrendous finale on Day 22, so if you're interested in reading all about it and haven't got your hot little hands on the password, please email me per the instructions here.

This morning was one of the most terrifying experiences I've ever lived through, and I know for a fact that I'm not the only one. We were tracked right in the middle of that system of winter storms that's been hitting the Midwest this week, and had a five A.M. departure this morning to the tune of pelting ice and bus wheels. I suppose when they set the schedule, they didn't realize that we would be driving from Milwaulkee to Detroit in an ice storm, but as it was we were stuck and had to hoof out of there early in order to make our afternoon concert on time.

Make it, yes. On time? Not so much.

We rolled into the venue an hour late and quite frazzled from the ride. It was terrifying-- we were going thirty-odd miles per hour on highways slicked with thick ice. You could feel the bus shimmying and swaying on the road, and I'd often wake up from my dark cocoon to see the lights of eighteen-wheelers mere inches from my window as we skidded. After a long stretch of time trying to sleep in the cold dark of the bus wakened by every skid, I gave up and plugged in my earphones and assumed the world's most awkward sleeping position in my solitary seat, resolving not to look anymore and just hope for the best. The stench of fear was palpable in the close warm air, and everyone was a good deal more quiet than their usual boister and banter, except for hissed expletives every time the bus skidded or sverved.

We rolled into the venue, who had kindly held the audiences with a few half-truths and promises, and promptly exited the bus to jump into the monkey suits and get on with it. I think we were all more than a little close to our breaking points, and it's at times like those when a good spread goes a long way. This venue is legendary for its backstage hospitality, and this trip was no exception. Hot pasta, fresh salad, and some of the best desserts I've had in a while.

Finally, frazzled and tired, we rolled into the hotel, where the Manager treated us all to pizza for our troubles. Not a great way of making up, but at least it was something. I'm for bed at this point, because we have another long and horrific day of bus riding tomorrow to get to the last stop. It can't come soon enough.

A Disclaimer and a Mea Culpa (1/11/08): Sorry it's taken so long guys, but I've finally told everyone I need to tell in person about the events the last few days of the tour, so here, finally, is the last set of entries for your enjoyment. They all lead up to a pretty horrendous finale on Day 22, so if you're interested in reading all about it and haven't got your hot little hands on the password, please email me per the instructions here..

Tomorrow is our last day. Two more concerts, and we're off home and away from each other for two years.

It's always at this point that I start to get quiet and the sadness begins to creep in slowly. As much as doing this frustrates me on a lot of levels, I enjoy and look forward to it too, and in all likelihood it's going to be a two-year dry spell before I see these guys again. When we go out together like this for weeks at a time, it's like a different world from the normal one we inhabit daily when we go home. It's surreal and strange, and I wouldn't give it up for anything. The microcosm of the tour bus creates a sort of special ecosystem in which you can be who you choose to be, no reservations. The people I've been playing with, in most cases, don't really know me outside of the tour, but there are people here who know me better than all but my very best friends at home. The real me, no substitutes, no filters (which may or may not be a good thing, I guess).

As much as I like that, however, I am so ready to be home it's not even funny. My loneliness for D is a palpable thing at this point. I'd even consider going straight the hell home from our last venue if I could work it out, but the trip home to Alabama has already been arranged. The thought of five more days of This-Is-Not-My-Own-Bed is killing me. I'm starting to get more than a little crazy in the head every time I roll into another hotel room, and I swear to God if I see another restaurant it will be way, way too soon.

As it's our last night all together in one hotel, tonight will mean another round of Celebrity a Chez Yar and Muppet, probably with copius amounts of drinking and hilarity, so I'll see ya' on the flip side.

In remembrance of all of the insanity we've just lived through, I would now like to present The 2007 Crew's all new and updated version of the Twelve Days of Christmas Tour: (after the jump)

In case some of you were wondering if the tour ate me alive, fear not. I have survived and arrived home to D and kitties finally. There are a few more things I have to edit on the last batch of tour diaries, but the real reason they haven't been posted is that there were some very scary goings-on that I had to discuss with some family and friends before I could share with you all. If for some reason you're already a regular reader and/or commenter and don't have the password for my protected entries, ask now (via the sidebar link to the right) because you're going to want to read about this one. You won't believe your eyes.

I've finally told everyone I need to tell in person about the events the last few days of the tour, so here, finally, is the last set of entries for your enjoyment. They all lead up to a pretty horrendous finale on Day 22, so if you're interested in reading all about it and haven't got your hot little hands on the password, please email me per the instructions here.

It has been a damnably long time since I posted something real on this site. Of course, like so many other bloggers out there, I'm torn as to what this means for the future of this blog in the age of Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets, but you will not find here some long and sappy passage lamenting the demise of my one and only place to express my innermost drivel and ramblings: we all know that I'll always continue to do that in one form or another, and I don't need a dedicated webspace to do it. Christ, I'm a musician: I can always just go play some opera and weep into my bourbon.

No, instead I bring you news. News of the greatest import to my little toy tugboat of a world-- in a week's time I will once again be winging my way to the other side of the planet on yet another orchestra tour, back to China and cheese and insanity. And as always, I will be bringing you lovely readers (all two of you who still give a rat's ass) along for the ride. There will be thrills, chills, and plenty of lurid tour stories, and maybe, just maybe, if I ask very very nicely, there might be a guest blog, or even just a blurb, from the famous Frankenberry, who will be winging along with me on this particular jaunt.

But first I have a question for you: if you were going on a whirlwind tour of the Orient (yes, I know, it's not P.C., but it sounds quite nice), how would you pack? I took an enormous suitcase last time, but I'm a little leery of all that drama right now. The pertinent facts are these: we'll be gone for 13 days, be flying in and out of six cities, and I'll need clothes for sightseeing, performing, and sleeping. My clarinets will take up space as one carry-on and all of my insulin paraphernalia has to come on board with me at all times, but the other can be small or large, and I can check up to 44 pounds of luggage. So what say you? Is it possible to consolidate and still travel in style, or should I go all out? If you have any suggestions, leave a comment with tips, tricks, and ideas: I need all the help I can get.

Well folks, the verdict is in: my bags are packed and I'm off tomorrow morning for yet another crazy trip with my touring gig.

As for how I made out with my packing, y'all will probably be surprised to know that I'm toting only one carry-on plus the clarinets and my bitty backpack purse onto the plane. For how that's going to work out, stay tuned: I'll have a verdict for you in about fourteen days. It's actually pretty amazing what you can cram into a standard carry-on bag: in my case, clothes for seven days, wash supplies, a pair of shoes, performance clothes, meds and supplies, chargers, makeup, toiletries, you name it-- I got it, and the requisite weight only comes out to a measly 25 pounds, which is less than I myself gained between the last trip there and this one. It sort of begs the question of what in the hell I took on the last trip in that E-NOR-MOUS suitcase: I was smaller, and I still did laundry every seven days or so, so what in the hell did I think I needed all that crap for?? I can remember having space in the suitcase when I came back, but I can also remember just about driving myself nuts with all of those plane flights and two wheeled bags to schlepp. This time I'm take it easy and save my exertion for those steps at the Wall.

At any rate, the itinerary includes five or six cities in fourteen days from Orlando to Beijing to Shanghai and others, and everything from basketball games to playing concerts to hiking. Planes, trains, and automobiles, and food of every shape, color and size. Knitting socks and listening to audiobooks, and getting up to shenanigans with people I hardly ever get to see except on a tour bus. More than covered by what I packed to bring with me.

And now, I'm tired and ready to hit the hay for tomorrow's beginning so I can write more coherently than I have so far (as Blue Line Mike rightly just commented on my Facebook, I need to go to bed): when next you hear from me I'll be in the land of orange juice, Mickey Mouse, and NBA playoffs: Orlando.

Ahhh, the arrival day of an ensemble tour.

I think it's safe to say that I didn't get nearly the sleep I should have last night-- I went to bed at around 3 am and popped up out of bed at 7:15 or so, ready to go and with only the thought of finishing my to-do list and getting the hell on that plane.

While we're on the subject of planes, let me make one thing clear: Southwest Airlines rocks my socks. Not only do they have the most egalitarian seating policy around, their check-in procedure is friggin' brilliant and they really know how to take care of their passengers, including leather club chairs in the waiting area and power stations for those of us who can't stand to be without our electronics for any length of time right next to those same buttery leathery lovelies. I could do without the singing at the end of the flight, but why not-- they did a damn good job otherwise.

Also, the TSA was humming along today with insane efficiency-- I was in and through security in a record three and a half minutes today, which made my life amazingly brighter and lovelier.The flight was good, had lunch with the stage manager, who picked me up at the airport, and then the first major tour walkabout around downtown Orlando. Found a Planet Smoothie for a pick-me-up after almost three miles of walking up and down city blocks, and then rode around on the free Lymmo shuttle to get the lay of the land and headed back for a good nap and some knitting time.

By the time Frankenberry showed up, I was damn good and ready for a burger and a beer ($5 Hump Day Special at Watiki in DT Orlando) so we headed out and ended up meeting three of our favorite people at the bar: Mel, our cellist friend, and the percussionist. Since Frankenberry our cellist friend wasn't here for the reading of The Rules, we decided to revisit them via my Crackberry and I think we sufficiently scared the passersby with our insane laughter. In case you haven't read them, you should refresh so you'll be up on the latest news and notes.

Tomorrow: the first rehearsal. This should be interesting.

Aaaah, the first day of rehearsal.

This is when the rubber kinda meets the road: you get to see everybody sweat through their first encounter with the group dynamic and watch the newbies try to figure out all of the weird nuances that they've only heard about through myth and legend. You also get to hear the same old hacks do the same old things in the same places, different songs.

For my part, this program is pretty much a cake walk: I just have to play with a good tone and stay relatively in tune (I say relatively, because apparently there are many consensuses on where the pitch should be, and none of them good) and most importantly keep from laughing out loud when Frankenberry leans over and makes jokes during the really cheesy bits. I think I only have one piece where I have to hustle a little, and it's one of the biggest cliches of all time, so it's more a question of not laughing while I'm trying to do it in F# Major.

In all seriousness, the music I'm playing with this group is really one of my favorite things I get to do being a professional musician: there's just such a wonderful feeling when you play music with no agenda except that it's beautiful, beautifully written and orchestrated, and only has the purpose of making people happy. Not to mention that I feel extremely privileged to play this man's music, as all of the performance and distribution rights to his arrangements are still owned by his family and NO ONE gets to use them except us under very special circumstances (AND we're playing off of copies and originals from parts handwritten by him and his arrangers. How COOL is THAT?)

That being said, it was exhausting, and I'm on my way out the door for beer and good food, after a power nap.

Rehearsal done? Check. Music learned? Well, sort of check. Gettin' on a plane in the morning? Double check.

I know it's super boring, but the only thing to report about today is that we rehearsed some more and are getting on a plane in the morning for the three-leg journey to Guangzhou via Shanghai via San Francisco. All I can say is that I really, REALLY hope I don't have to sit next to someone unpleasant, because I'll be really pissed off. The cliques have already sort of formed and so we're going to try and get placed all together somewhere on the China flight so we can chill out in comfort and safety without fear of being mauled or annoyed by one of the many skeeves or loonies with which we find ourselves surrounded.

Today and yesterday were a great education in the difference in international musical terms: our conductor is British and so refers to things like "crotchets" and "minims" and "quavers" instead of quarter, half or eighth notes. It has occurred to me before that it has to be really difficult in and profession to discuss anything of great detail without running into issues of terminology, and that;s exactly the problem we had today: he'd ask us to change a crotchet to a quaver and you could pretty much hear the caveman noises emanating from our brains. It was kind of hilarious, so in order to provide for better communication across the nautical distance, I list for you now some common American terms and their British Equivalents:

• Whole note = Semi-breve
• Half note = Minim
• Quarter note = Crotchet
• Eighth note = Quaver
• Sixteenth note = Semiquaver
• Thirty-second note = Demisemiquaver
• Sixty-fourth note = Hemidemisemiquaver or "quick note"
• Hundred twenty-eighth note = Quasihemidemisemiquaver or Semihemidemisemiquaver
• Fermata = Pause

What is there to say about 34 hours of travel time? Not much except holy CRAP I'm so ready to never see a plane again.

A five-hour flight from Orlando to San Francisco, crammed between a squicky colleague and an old lady going to visit her kid and grandkid, then a twelve-hour flight to Shanghai and another three-hour jaunt to Guangzhou. Holy crap, I'm about as tired as it gets.

I got really lucky for the long flight and scored a seat in the same row as Frankenberry-- that was actually a lot of fun, apart from being stuck in an over-sized meat-rocket for twelve hours. That was thanks to our intrepid percussionist, The Juggler, who figured out we could check in ahead of everyone else via the airport kiosk, so we decided on the best we could get-- a window and middle seat by the galley, which ended up being awesome because the guy on the outside moved up to another empty seat before we took off and we had the row all to ourselves.The Juggler is my hero, and I'm totally buying him beer in the near future, because his quick thinking allowed me to sit and laugh with Frankenberry all the way up and over the Pacific and Alaska and down into China-- a gift that's truly immeasurable by any standard.

I have to admit, one of the things I'm most excited about on this tour is getting to spend some quality time with all of my friends, but especially him-- we're usually so busy in regular life that hanging out usually consists of going to get beers or sitting in rehearsal or at a concert-- not exactly quality talking time necessarily. (Now if I could just figure out how to fit Boo Berry into my suitcase or something for a similar one-on-one stint I'd be perfectly happy. I'll have to ponder that one...) At any rate, that's why I do these tours-- it removes me from the ebb and flow of real life and lets me spend time with some of my most favorite friends (and some of my most unfavorite people as well, but there's the price for the benefit) in a situation so removed from everyday life that it always kind of feels like a dream when it's over. As far as the pay goes, it's a pittance compared to the fact that my bottom line is covered so I can go and have some quality time with these guys.

The people on the tour have shifted again as usual-- a new wind section, same brass players, some new violins and cellos and lots of folks who are new to the China circuit. Groovemaster D is back on cello, as is The Mullet. Rock Star Roomie is rockin' the assistant concertmaster chair and the Troll is back in the first violins, and The Source is back in the seconds. Of course, Bossman is heading up the brass section, Muppet's in the horn chair, and the PTB is back on the low end. Same tour, different line-up, same problems, same bitching, same daily effort to be zen about it all and try to enjoy the experience for what it's worth, including getting to play that music-- all of this while endeavoring to have some quality time with the people you've come to love and escape from the ones you hate, inasmuch as it's possible on a plane or bus.

At any rate, mischief managed, we made it through the flight after a lunch at Gordon Biersch (oh, the tasty, tasty beer) and moved on through customs to our Guangzhou flight, which was delayed, and delayed again, and which had to taxi out to the farthest spot on the tarmac on landing. The ride back in to the terminal on the shuttle took us about 10 km and probably longer than it took us to get to the hotel, and we exited into a really surreal darkened and mostly empty and closed terminal in Guangzhou. Our promoter was waiting for us and soon we were on the bus one the way to the hotel, past restaurants and bars and places still open and hopping at 2 am.

The digs for tonight are a really odd nouveau-Scandinavian business hotel, where I now sit in the cool and bright room (YAY for air conditioning) Now I'm for sleep, because the first concert's tomorrow and there's stuff to see tomorrow morning after breakfast.

Well, our first concert didn't go exactly as planned, at least not for me. And on my birthday, too.

When I got up this morning and headed down to breakfast, I expected just to have a bite to eat and then a walk to check out the area around where we're staying, but then I met up with Frankenberry downstairs on his way to the Baiyun Mountain park to walk around, and so I joined up with them and headed out for an even better walk.

Now don't get me wrong, Baiyun Mountain was awesome, but my Indian name should seriously be Pansy because I was ready to pass out after about ten minutes. All joking aside, at least Frankenberry and Juggler and the lead trombonist were willing to wait around for my sorry ass to climb up behind them as I snapped pictures of plants and birds and views and huffed and puffed my way up stair after stair.

When we got back, it was off to get money changed and get ready for the concert, which ended up being at a totally different hall than the one where I thought we'd be playing-- this one was a beautiful new and modern concert hall downtown rather than the historic hall where we performed last time, and I was a little disappointed that Frankenberry didn't get to see the last one: he would have flipped over the detailing and the architecture and the gardens surrounding it. We had a sound check, a little pre-dinner snack, and then got ready to play, and that's where things went downhill in a flash.

Everything was running, if not smoothly, then acceptably until about 75% through the first half of the program, when I started to feel really, really strange: my heart was pounding, my limbs felt heavy, and I felt incredibly hot and dizzy, all right before and during one of the pieces where I'm fairly essential, so I tried to keep going the best that I could and managed to finish out the piece, even though FB tells me I was listing to one side at some point and he was worried I was going to fall over. I did what any good diabetic is supposed to do and checked my sugar (though I had to do it THREE TIMES because I kept screwing up the process because I was so out of it), which was sky-high, so I corrected and tried to breathe deep and power through the last piece on the half.

Over intermission I felt better, so I trotted back on stage to make it through the rest of the program, water bottle in hand, and sat down to give it a shot. My body had other ideas though, and once I started playing, my heart rate started up, I saw black spots, and I was having trouble breathing: I knew I had to get off the stage or risk becoming a news item for passing out and falling off my chair, so I told FB I was going off and headed for the door after the piece was over.

From that point it was all downhill: I was so dizzy and nauseous I couldn't stand up without help, and though I'm not sure how bad it was, I know I had a fever high enough to give me chills for a good hour or so. Luckily for me, the promoter's assistant was backstage and was an absolute dream: she made sure I had water, help walking to and fro, and a cold cloth for my head-- she even massaged my scalp and my hands to try and help me out, but whatever it was was having none of it so I just tried to lie there and not pass out or hurl on my shoes.

At this point I really have to state my thanks for having Frankenberry there: he zoomed out after the second encore to make sure I was getting some help and made sure I had a quiet place to lie down, kept people away from me (which is no small thing in a nosey group like this one) and even arranged for an alternate way for me to get back to the hotel in the car of the hotel manager and his wife, all while basically holding me up every time I had to walk anywhere. He was so good that the Boss Man just let him handle everything and stayed back out of it. He's an amazing friend, and I cannot possibly express how thankful I am that he was there to help me-- it would have been pretty terrifying and horrible to go through that without a good friend there to look out for me. He got me out of the theater and into the car, made sure I was all right on the ride back by cramming himself into the backseat of a tiny car next to me and alternately telling me to keep my eyes open (to help with the nausea) and holding a cold towel to my head, and then made sure I got to my room all right and had everything I needed (thank goodness the convenience store next door had Gatorade) to get through until my roommate came back.

Needless to say, it wasn't the best birthday I've ever had, and even though whatever it was has mostly passed, it's not something I'll ever put out of my mind while touring ever again: the feeling of having to leave the stage in the middle of a performance is terrifying and awful and not something I hope to repeat. We're now in Beijing and on for another concert tonight, which I hope goes far, far better than this one did for me.

Sometimes the aftermath of an event is as strange and devastating to get through as the event itself, and it's surprising to me that I never remember how hard it can be to deal with.

I must have had a fever of some degree last night, because this morning I felt weak as a kitten dragging my bags downstairs to the bus to fly to Beijing. I knew when I got up that I still wasn't one hundred percent better, and like any good Southern belle, I took that as a sign that it was time for the war paint.

See, as y'all know, I grew up in the South and as any Southerner knows, women down there live by the ideal that no one should ever see you not at your best in terms of appearance, much less see you sweat, even if you're just going to the 7-11, so I got up this morning and put on my nicest outfit-- the one I bring along for business dinners-- and did my hair and makeup and breathed deep while making my way downstairs for our next leg of travel. It's amazing how much a little facade can help you bolster yourself for a less-than-ideal situation.

I skipped on breakfast as such per the advice of my doc, who I called via Skype for a little consult (her response: "Oh fuck, you're calling me from China. This can't be good." Love her, srsly) and stuck with white toast and the Gatorade which Frankenberry was kind enough to score for me the night before when I got back to the hotel. And then the plane flight: let me tell you, never underestimate the power of pressure points: it was the only way I white-knuckled it through the flight to Beijing and I've never been so glad to be off a plane (P6 and LI4). I don't think I've ever been so glad to see a familiar hotel-- the Howard Johnson Plaza Royale-- I dropped off my stuff, popped downstairs for lunch, and then scored an epic power nap and got ready for the concert.

Though I felt all right when I started the performance, as I started to play through to the point where I got sick the night before I began to freak out: Would it happen again? Could I do this? Was my BG normal? Did I have my water bottle? It never occurred to me to prepare myself for this being rough, but it really blew me away how like PTSD it felt-- I could feel all of the things that had happened the night before again, though without the bite of the actual sickness. All I could do was breathe deeply and work my water bottle like a job, but I managed to make it through all right with my game face on, war paint and all. Back onto the bus, where I dozed until we got back to the hotel and dinner, which I was too tired to eat, and now I'm for sleep because tomorrow is the Forbidden City and Temple of Heaven!!

[Guess what?!?!?!? I successfully badgered Frankenberry into doing his own post in this tour series, so here you go: introducing today's guest blogger!!!!]

So SB wanted me to to a guest blog entry, something that I really didn't want to do, originally, but she was so insistent and since she's kind of integral to some of the things I do, I figured I'd better keep her happy. A Managing Director scorned is...well, I don't want to think about the possibilities. So I'm blogging. Though I'm not a blogger. I'm not a tweeter, I don't even have a website. This is therefore very alien for me, and I apologize for any un-bloggish behavior. Now to begin:

We're in China. I really thought this would be the most different place on the planet from the U.S., but really it's coming across like a lot like big cities in Europe. It's quite dirty, kinda rude, and crowded. I don't understand them any better than I would Germans or Norwegians, though here there's little hope of finding someone who knows even a few words of English. These cities are dirtier and more crowded than Europe, but the comparisons in my mind are clear.

I must give props (yes, I said props, deal with it) to SB for being such a patient hostess. She has been my guide, advisor, and supporter, and has been kind enough to pretend that I'm not bugging her after a week of constant waking contact. Without her, I think this trip would have been a lot worse. Don't get me wrong, it's great to be here and see a few sights, but this tour is constant flying or busing, interspersed with concerts and a few hours of time in a hotel for sleep or a break. And for those who know me, you know I don't play well with others, so I may have been even more antisocial than I am right now, and sitting alone in my room wishing ill on everyone.

That being said, since this is a Sassy blog, I should say a few words about our orchestral compatriots, right? Right. You'll see the rules of the tour later, which will underscore their interesting behavior, but in reality this is just a case of being in a confined environment with 40 people for a very extended period. Personality quirks come to the fore, and many musicians just don't have the social filters that exist in regular life. Instead, we have folks who feel entitled to say what they feel, and expect other people to jump and react to please them. Goodness, I don't deal well with that. I would say something about suffering fools, but I bet someone will turn that around on me, so I'll avoid it. But gosh, I don't want to hear for the seventeenth time that you don't like your seat on the bus or your luggage got banged around or the woodwinds can't tune, because for one, no one likes their seat, for the second, that's life, and for the third, yes we can, evidenced by our blending on long octave passages between four players. So they can suck it. Yes, I can be as catty as the next musician, I just try not to show it very often. It's hypocritical, and I try to keep that to a minimum. I'm sure Boo Berry will have a response to that...

So I didn't have a good opening, and I don't have a good closing. I'm showing myself to be un-blogworthy.

And suddenly I have my close: Sassy is a Nosey Parker-- she just looked over once again to see what I was doing as we sit in this crappy hotel room in Wuhan drinking beer and catching up on our writings. Ha! I'm talking about her in the third person in her own blog! Unless she edits me. Hmm.

[SB: I promise, the only edits I made to this were a little punctuation. This one's all Frankenberry.]

There are always rules when you travel on tour, spoken or unspoken, and the most important one to remember are the ones learned from your colleagues' behavior on the road. After all, context clues make the story, so here are some things we needed to remember this time:

1. You must have long hair to play in the cello section. This is non-negotiable.
2. When talking to yourself in rehearsal, you must speak in a foreign language, preferably one that nobody understands, including yourself. Use of your outside voice is highly encouraged.
3. Don't ask, no one will explain why anyway.
4. Breakfast is better after 9:15. (See rule No. 3)
5. THRS: That's how rumors start. Just keep that in mind.
6. Talking about it always makes it better.
7. Keeping your eyes open usually helps, but not always. For example, when dizzy from food poisoning: yes. When in the men's dressing room: NO. Oh GOD NO.
8. Never practice anything you're going to perform in the concert while warming up or on rehearsal breaks. Play your favorite concerto or aria or quartet instead. Every night. Fortissimo. Or sing it, for even better effect.
9. FUCK ART.
10. When considering the quality of your performance, dinner, accommodations, or anything else that matters, remember "it starts from S." (said in a Russian accent.)
11. If you have the melody, by God, SLOW DOWN. Don't stay at the same tempo, that's not expressive enough.
12. No discussing of the rules on the bus in front of a manager.
13. Remember, there's only one James Bond, and his name is Sean Correry. (Yes, that's the proper Chinese phonetic spelling.)

I don't know what to say here yet-- everything from this trip is still too fresh on my mind. I hate traveling halfway across the world in a day, because though my body is back where I belong, my soul hasn't yet followed. I've made it to the other side of the the long succession of flights home, followed by a marvelous dinner with D and the Frankenberrys, and things may be quiet around here for the next few days while I order my heart and my mind and spend some time mending my soul. For now I sit, memories in mind, and have nothing really to say here, except this:

To all of you who made this trip such a blessing in spite of everything, know that I love you and hold you dear in my heart, second to none. The memories I have with you will be like treasured jewels I take out from time to time to remind me of how lucky I am, always, to know you and to love you and to be blessed enough to spend such intense time with you even for so short a period, even when it inevitably has to come to an end all too soon. Though you may worry, I assure you that I won't forget them, and that you are in my heart always.

One thing that I can never quite successfully navigate after spending any amount of the time playing on the road is an epic bout with the post-tour blue funk. It always starts about the time I get off the final flight or ride home and lasts pretty much directly in proportion to the agony and/or ecstasy experienced and the length of time I've been gone, and I'm always completely knocked for a loop at how black and all-encompassing it is. This time, of course, has been no exception: when I walked off that final plane, I was already falling down the well, and as I've learned, there is no solution but to brace for impact and hope nothing breaks at the bottom, then dust yourself off and begin the long slog back up the slope to normal life.

When you travel and work closely with a group of people for so long, it's easy to become accustomed to their presence in your everyday life: you know where the are and what they're doing, almost to the minute, of every waking hour, including all of the little dramas and idiosyncrasies that make them tick and tock, so when you finally part ways it's kind of like you've lost an appendage-- you're cut off from the collective and the silence can be deafening. The worst time is at night when I can't sleep and there's no one around-- nothing to save or distract me from the loneliness I feel, the loneliness that D can't really understand and my friends here have no idea about. I've dealt with this before, but somehow I didn't think it would be quite so devastating this time-- I had hoped that time and experience would lighten the load and make it a little more bearable, but I think I let everything in a little too much this time, so extricating myself from the death of the experience is like ripping my heart out a piece at a time.

The extreme jet lag isn't helping, but I'm really hoping I can bootstrap myself into working condition for my two shows today. Maybe work will help me reclaim my place in everyday life so that I can find some sense of normalcy, but for right now I feel enveloped in a suffocating black velvet cloud, unable to navigate and find my way home. There is light, but it seems very, very far away, and the path seems long and steep this time. *sigh*

So here's the thing:

I've missed you guys.

I've had some pretty heavy things going on in my life this year, things which basically have changed the face of my entire existence in one way or another. And I haven't really felt comfortable talking about that here, in public, for anyone and everyone to read. More importantly, there are very good reasons why I can't and shouldn't.

And frankly, it's killing me.

Because if you're still reading this, then I've probably known you, or had you as a reader, for long enough that you're probably wondering what the hell happened to me.

Because if you're still reading this, you're probably one of the people whose opinions and love I value enough that I'm going to need your help in the next year.

Because frankly, I need an outlet more in-depth than Twitter and less personal than Facebook.

So here's the other thing:

On March 1st, this blog is getting a makeover. I'll be moving it to a new server, shaking up the layout a little, and converting it to a new CMS, though the site address won't change. The ranting and raving and silliness will stay the same, only there will be some things that I don't want to share with everybody, some things that I may need to share and say, but only within certain circles. I'm tired of keeping it all pent up and I've done that for long enough.

If you're still reading this blog, and you're been a loyal reader or friend or even a long-time lurker, email me at (sassy{at}sassyblonde{dot}net) with the title of this post in the subject line or comment on this post and request an access key. I'd love to have you in the circle.

Til then, I'll be cleaning house and doing some renovation, and I'll see you on March 1st.

UPDATE: So, snow and circumstances being what they've been around here, I'm going to have to ask you guys to wait around a little longer, which actually ends up being appropriate for a lot of reasons. I've gotten all your emails and comments, and if you can hang tight for a few more weeks, I'll have the next phase ready on April 1st.