Madison

February 11, 2006 Reply

I arrived in Madi­son yes­ter­day around noon. As we flew beneath the clouds, I could see that the ground was cov­ered in snow. My friend Keith, a per­cus­sion­ist who I knew at ASU, met me at the air­port. We drove straight to UW-Madison, where we met Les­ley, Keith’s wife and clar­inetist in one of my for­mer quin­tets. We went out for lunch, then Les­ley showed me around the music school and some of the rest of cam­pus. I rehearsed with my accom­pa­nist for an hour or so, then went to meet Marc Val­lon, the bas­soon professor.

Pro­fes­sor Val­lon is a very inter­est­ing guy — he’s both a grad­u­ate of and for­mer teacher at the Paris Con­ser­va­toire, and played in the Ams­ter­dam Baroque Orches­tra for 15 years. We went out for cof­fee (actu­ally, tea for me and ice cream for him) and talked for about an hour and a half. He was very inter­ested to find out that I’m involved in early music at FSU, and that I’m start­ing to learn baroque bas­soon. In the course of our con­ver­sa­tion, I found out that he owns about 10 bas­soons — a mix­ture of mod­ern Ger­man, mod­ern French, clas­si­cal, and baroque.

A band started play­ing near where we were sit­ting in the stu­dent union, so we repaired to his stu­dio. There, he showed me his new (about a week old) Heckel Crest bas­soon, let me peruse some music we’d been talk­ing about, and gave me a CD he recorded a few years ago. He then let me use some of his tools to work on my reeds. I’m not sure how many of the tools are his, and how many of them are the school’s but there was a ridicu­lous quan­tity in his office. For my fel­low bas­soon­ists, a par­tial list:

2 gougers, one of which is a brand new Rieger
2 pro­fil­ers, both Rieger
1 brand new Rieger top pro­filer
4–6 straight shapers
4 fold-over shaper han­dles
8–10 fold-over shaper tips
knives, man­drels, plaques, and mis­cel­la­neous tools galore
1 set of old-school hand-gouging tools

Plus, there’s a reed room in the base­ment of the build­ing that has a pro­filer and a shaper or two.
After meet­ing with Marc, I met up with Les­ley and Keith, and headed to their apart­ment. Bethany, another for­mer ASU clar­inetist who I hadn’t seen in awhile, came over and we went out to dinner.

Today, Les­ley and I went over to school early so she could prac­tice and I could warm up. I went up to the bas­soon stu­dio to wait for Prof. Val­lon to arrive. He’d told me and Eliz­a­beth, another DMA appli­cant, that we could use the stu­dio to warm-up and work on reeds. Once in the stu­dio, Eliz­a­beth and I talked and worked on reeds until it was time for her audi­tion. I ended up stay­ing for a few hours, rather than mov­ing down­stairs to a prac­tice room.

Through the course of the day, I met up with two other ASU friends — Laura, an oboist with whom I played in both a quin­tet and a trio, and Ben, another bassoonist.

More later…

Perdido Key

December 5, 2005 2 comments

Clar­inets and Bassoons

This week­end was my last jour­ney to Mobile for 2005. The rep was Christ­mas pops stuff — Sleigh Ride, one dance from The Nut­cracker, lots of arrange­ments of tra­di­tional car­ols and more recent Christ­mas tunes. We had Santa, elves, the full orches­tra, a soprano soloist, the Mobile Singing Chil­dren, and a large choir that (I think) was com­posed of choirs from the Uni­ver­sity of Mobile and other singers. We also had stand lights, strings of Christ­mas lights, and all the cor­re­spond­ing elec­tri­cal gear on stage. As a result, we were pretty short on space. The wood­winds were in a sin­gle line, as were the brass. I snapped the pic at right from my seat at the stage left end of the wood­wind row.

As often is the case with pops con­certs, many of the arrange­ments were quite good, some mediocre, and a cou­ple that were quite bad. The absolute worst, in my opin­ion, was from a suite that mixed stan­dard clas­si­cal pieces with Christ­mas car­ols. We only played one move­ment, “Lit­tle Bolero Boy,” and I can only hope that the oth­ers are bet­ter. As you may have guessed, “Lit­tle Bolero Boy” takes mate­r­ial from Ravel’s Bolero and the carol “Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy.” I can­not fathom why the arranger was under the impres­sion that this was a good idea. He’s taken what is (in my opin­ion, and that of many oth­ers) the most bor­ing piece of clas­si­cal music ever, taken out the only mar­gin­ally inter­est­ing part (the melody), and replaced it with one of the crap­pi­est Christ­mas car­ols in exis­tence (What’s that? You want to put “pa rum pum pum pum” at the end of every line? Sheer bril­liance!). At the rehearsal for the sec­ond con­cert (which I’ll get to later) the wind and brass sec­tions protested the piece, demand­ing that we play it faster and thereby fin­ish­ing it sooner. Our demands were hap­pily met.

On Sat­ur­day morn­ing, I headed down to Dauphin Island, south of Mobile. The drive was nice, cross­ing a num­ber of bridges over rivers and a very long one over the Intra­coastal Water­way to the island itself. My main objec­tive on the island was the Audubon Bird Sanc­tu­ary. I walked the trails with my cam­era at the ready, only to dis­cover that the sanc­tu­ary had been hit pretty hard by the recent hur­ri­canes, and there were almost no birds present. Small won­der, as the area labeled as wet­lands on the map is now choked with fallen trees and beach sand. I also stopped by Fort Gaines, a pre-Civil War fort that was involved in the Bat­tle of Mobile. (This bat­tle gave us Farragut’s famous mis­quote about tor­pe­does. What he actu­ally said was “Damn the tor­pe­does! Cap­tain Dray­ton, go ahead! Jou­ett, full speed!”) I did not, how­ever, have time to do any­thing other than walk around the out­side. I’ll have to leave that for another trip.

My Bal­cony View

On Sun­day, we played a sec­ond con­cert — with a smaller orches­tra, with­out the choirs, sans Santa, and with slightly dif­fer­ent rep. I knew that the con­cert was a run-out, at the Per­dido Key Resort near Pen­sacola. What I didn’t know was that we out-of-towners were being put up in the resort itself. I had to com­plain to our per­son­nel man­ager about the con­di­tions under which I was being forced to work. I mean, just look at the view I had to deal with from my bal­cony! We didn’t have rehearsal until three, so I basi­cally had the whole morn­ing and early after­noon for beach and pool time. I didn’t bring a suit, but “surf”/souvenir shops are a dime a dozen in the area, so I was able to pick a a cheap suit quickly.

The con­cert was held in the hotel’s ball­room, which had been dec­o­rated with poin­set­tias and other fes­tive accou­trements. Our per­for­mance was the main event in a fundraiser for the United Way, which also included a silent auc­tion and some other things. The fun part was that all the donors/guests/whoever all had ample time to access the mul­ti­ple bars that had been set up in the lobby and the silent auc­tion room. In fact, we couldn’t get every­one herded into the ball­room, and ended up start­ing ten to fif­teen min­utes late. As we were wait­ing, I got bored and started play­ing ran­dom tunes just for fun. At one point, I started into the bari sax part of Glenn MIller’s “In The Mood.” Evie, the prin­ci­pal bas­soon­ist (who I later found out used to play alto sax six nights a week in a big band), soon joined in on the melody line. Then, I noticed that one of the bassists had started into a walk­ing bassline behind us. I started laugh­ing too hard to keep playing.

We had the same herd­ing prob­lem after inter­mis­sion, only this time it was worse. So, we just started play­ing. Even­tu­ally, every­one caught on. We gave a short encore at the end, then began pack­ing up. When the con­duc­tor came back out to get his scores, a guy who’d become quite acquainted with the bar ser­vice started yelling “More! More!” in the sort of voice one might expect to hear at a WWE event. Luck­ily, we were out of things to play at that point.

This Weekend’s Highlights

November 12, 2005 1 comment

In the inter­est of post­ing this before the library closes, as well as get­ting to din­ner sooner, I now present the high­lights of my week­end in Mobile as bul­let points:

  • They pro­vided din­ner for us between the two rehearsals yes­ter­day. The mem­bers of the board were invited, and pre­dictably, those who showed up seg­re­gated them­selves from the musicians.
  • I’m being housed in the Uni­ver­sity of South Alabama con­fer­ence cen­ter, where I’d stayed once before. This time how­ever, I have a huge room all to myself: queen size bed, TV, couch, arm­chair, large desk, strobe light. Yes, a strobe light. Mounted on the wall. Actu­ally wired into the building’s elec­tri­cal sys­tem. No, I have no idea, either.
  • Today, as I was walk­ing around down­town tak­ing some pic­tures, a guy in a pickup truck stopped honked at me. Think­ing he wanted direc­tions, I walked over to his open win­dow. He asked if I wanted to work today, and I politely declined. What part of my faded jeans, rim­less sun­glasses, Doc Martens, cam­era bag, and spiked-up hair led him to label me as “poten­tial day laborer?”
  • Tonight’s con­cert is called “Beethoven and Blue Jeans.” Appro­pri­ately, con­cert dress is blue jeans and a BBJ T-shirt they have pro­vided us. Sweet.
  • My book-buying addic­tion has reared its ugly head again. But, how could I pass up three inter­est­ing used books for a grand total of under $12? Maybe I’ll catch up over Christ­mas break.
  • We’re play­ing some cool music. The Beethoven quota is ful­filled by his Sixth Sym­phony, the “Pas­toral.” The William Tell Over­ture and Flight of the Bum­ble­bee pro­vide pops-ish clas­si­cal music. We have a very good marimba soloist, Naoko Takada, play­ing a con­certo by Kevin Puts, a fairly young com­poser from UT-Austin. Finally, there’s a very cool, short Arvo Pärt piece enti­tled “Wenn Bach Bienen gezüchtet hätte…” (“If Bach Had Been a Bee­keeper…”), on which I unfor­tu­nately do not play.

And now… time for din­ner and to put on my con­cert bla… I mean, my T-shirt.

Public Libraries Are Your Friends

August 27, 2005 Reply

I’m cur­rently in Mobile for the first con­cert of the sea­son. This is a pops con­cert with jazz/blues pianist Ron­nie Kole and his trio. Our first rehearsal last night went pretty well. We have the dress rehearsal (for which we actu­ally have to wear con­cert attire — there will be both still and video cam­eras) and the con­cert is tonight. The music is pretty easy, as often is the case with pops stuff, but it’s a good way to start out the year. I’m not exactly in top play­ing shape at the moment.

I’ll post more about the orches­tra, the beau­ti­ful con­cert hall, and tonight’s con­cert later. I just stopped in at the Mobile Pub­lic Library to check my e-mail and find some cheap food via Google Maps.

Mission San Luis

June 28, 2005 3 comments
Apalachee Com­mu­nity House

This week­end, I decided to go visit Mis­sion San Luis. The site is only a cou­ple of miles from the FSU cam­pus, but I some­how hadn’t made it there before. Since the offi­cial Mis­sion San Luis web­site seems to be com­pletely dead at the moment, I shall pro­vide a very brief his­tory of the site:

1633: Span­ish Fran­cis­can fri­ars come to live among the Apalachee peo­ple.
1647: Non-Christian Apalachee revolt, killing Spaniards and burn­ing churches.
1656: The fri­ars and Apalachee attatched to Mis­sion San Luis move to what is now Tal­la­has­see. San Luis becomes the provin­cial cap­i­tal.
1704: Fear­ing raids by the British, the inhab­i­tants of Mis­sion San Luis burn the struc­tures and flee.
1983: The site of Mis­sion San Luis is pur­chased by the State of Florida. Archae­o­log­i­cal research and site recon­struc­tion begin.

The Mis­sion site seems to be very well man­aged. The visitor’s cen­ter and museum, while small, is very well done. In addi­tion to dis­play­ing and inter­pret­ing arti­facts, there are excel­lent dia­grams, recon­struc­tions, and inter­pre­ta­tions of the archae­o­log­i­cal work itself. One cool thing is a set of slid­ing glass panes that let you over­lay var­i­ous stages of exca­va­tion — and the asso­ci­ated data — on a plan view of the site. There are also recre­ations of two dig units in pro­file (as if you were stand­ing in the pit, look­ing at the wall), that show impor­tant fea­tures as well as some arti­facts in situ.

The site itself is also quite impres­sive. Com­plete recon­struc­tions have been done of the church, fri­ary, Apalachee com­mu­nity house (above), and a small Span­ish dwelling. The build­ings are fur­nished and appointed based on con­tem­po­rary accounts and records of what was removed from the orig­i­nal build­ings before they were burned. Exca­va­tion of the small Span­ish fort has recently been com­pleted, and appar­ently recon­struc­tion of that is in the works. There must be some good money com­ing in from pri­vate donors to fund all this work. Admis­sion to the site is free, and I can’t imag­ine that the state funds it this well. I’d wanted to ask about fund­ing at the visitor’s cen­ter, but it was closed by the time I thought of ask­ing. I wish more archae­o­log­i­cal sites could get this kind of support.

Guidon­ian Hand

I found some­thing very inter­est­ing on one of the inte­rior walls of the fri­ary — the painted hand at right. Sadly, there was no accom­pa­ny­ing expla­na­tion, and the visitor’s cen­ter was already closed when I dis­cov­ered it. Each joint of the hand is assigned a num­ber, and what appear to be solfege (do, re, mi, etc.) syl­la­bles. There are also lit­tle snip­pets of shape-note nota­tion next to the hand. I’ve never encoun­tered any­thing like this in my music stud­ies. Can any­one (musi­col­o­gists — hint, hint) tell me any­thing about this diagram?

Update: My dad iden­ti­fied this as a Guidon­ian hand, after Guido d’Arrezzo, an 11th cen­tury musi­cian and teacher. I remem­ber talk­ing about Guido in music his­tory, but have no rec­ol­lec­tion of this dia­gram. I’ll have to see if I can find an expla­na­tion some­where. Also, I real­ized there’s no scale in the pho­to­graph — the hand is prob­a­bly 4–5 feet tall.

New Pics

June 17, 2005 Reply

I’ve man­aged to post a few pic­tures from my recent trav­els. I’ve uploaded my dig­i­tal pho­tos (for me cur­rently, dig­i­tal = sim­ple point-and-shoot = not always very good) from the Folk­life Fes­ti­val, the bar crawl after fin­ish­ing work on the fes­ti­val, and the IDRS con­fer­ence. Even­tu­ally, I’ll get my film devel­oped and prints scanned. Also, I should have a ton more pics from the con­fer­ence to post once Julie sends me her dig­i­tal pho­tos. Oh, and I’m going to try to actu­ally post once in awhile.

Unexpected Stop

June 4, 2005 1 comment

This morn­ing, I had to bid Seat­tle a fond farewell. In the time I’ve spent there over the past few years, the city has really grown on me. Seat­tle def­i­nitely ranks at the top of cities in which I’d like to live.

But any­way, I was fly­ing from Seat­tle to Austin, TX for the 2005 Inter­na­tional Dou­ble Reed Soci­ety Con­fer­ence. What I didn’t know was that we’d be stop­ping in Phoenix along the way. I vaguely remem­ber see­ing “1 Stop” on my ini­tial flight reser­va­tion, but the city was never iden­ti­fied. After spend­ing four years at ASU, I kind of miss Phoenix. I haven’t got­ten a chance to go back and visit, and being there for a brief time only in the air­port was kind of bittersweet.

As we flew into and then out of the city, I was able to see ASU (above), South Moun­tain, Papago Park, The Super­sti­tions, and many other memory-inducing sights. I need to get back there for a visit — prefer­ably when school is in ses­sion so I’ll have more friends in the area.

On that note, one thing I’m look­ing for­ward to about the con­fer­ence is the fact that the ASU bas­soon stu­dio is per­form­ing. So, I’ll get to see a bunch of my for­mer stu­dio mates as well as Dr. Jeff Lyman, my for­mer pro­fes­sor. If only I’d stayed an extra year to get a sec­ond degree in anthropology…

We’ll Meet Again…

June 3, 2005 Reply

… Don’t know where, don’t know when…

So, the fes­i­val is offi­cially over. Tonight, we had the “grown up” wrap party with mem­bers of the board, staff, and vol­un­teers. It was a fairly low-key affair with lots of food and drink. Last night was the unof­fi­cial wrap party with the pro­duc­tion crew and the rest of us who have been in the trenches for all ten or eleven days of on-site work. That cel­e­bra­tion was much longer and rowdier.

This was my third year work­ing the fes­ti­val, and my best so far. The work went well — I’ve finally got a good han­dle on what I have to do as sig­nage coor­di­na­tor. Plus, I had (for the first time) two great staff helpers who made my job much eas­ier. Aside from all that, this is the most fun crew I’ve worked with. As far as the pro­duc­tion world was con­cerned, I pretty much liked and got along with every­one. There was an inter­est­ing mix of crew, includ­ing a singer/songwriter, a cou­ple of actors, an ety­mol­o­gist, and a cou­ple of pho­tog­ra­phers, among oth­ers. I’ve come away with a num­ber of great new friends, and renewed friend­ships with peo­ple I knew before. To (in no par­tic­u­lar order) Chan­dler, Gretchen, Jerin, Christo­pher, Damon, Rev, Mea, Bre­anna, Kyle, Chili, Bill, Dave, Jack, Andrew, Shawn Michael, Scott, and every­one else: thanks for a great time, and I hope to see you all again soon.

Sleeping in Seattle

May 22, 2005 2 comments
Sail­ing to Canada

I just fin­ished my first day of work at the North­west Folk­life Fes­ti­val in Seat­tle. I flew up on Thurs­day, then took the Amtrak up to Belling­ham to visit my mom’s (and my) friends Mary and Jim. The train ride was absolutely won­der­ful. Trav­el­ling by train, you see lots of sights that you couldn’t see if jour­ney­ing via car or plane. For the first 45 min­utes or so, the tracks ran right along the water of the Puget Sound — the inter­state is miles inland. On top of the sights, the train is more com­fort­able than other modes of travel — lots of legroom, the abil­ity to get up and walk around, and both a full-service din­ing car and a bistro car. I wish that Amtrak went to more cities — namely Tal­la­has­see and Nashville. Come to think of it, a route between Tal­la­has­see and Mobile would be espe­cially use­ful to me in the near future…

Any­way, enough about the train. I had a great visit with Jim and Mary at their house on Lummi Island, which is part of the San Juan Islands. We dined on fresh wild salmon, and they took me out sail­ing on their 38′ boat, the Dan­Ran. That was a blast, espe­cially since I hadn’t been sail­ing in years. I took the train back down to Seat­tle last night. Much of the jour­ney was in dark­ness, so I spent most of the time reading.

Today was the first day of prep for the fes­ti­val, and our call was 7 am. We won’t start so early from here on out, but the days will only get longer. The fes­ti­val itself actu­ally starts on Fri­day, and runs through the Memo­r­ial Day holiday.

I hope to have time to take lots of pho­tos of the fes­ti­val, which I’ll post when I even­tu­ally get back to Tal­la­has­see. The thumb­nail above links to a few dig­i­tal pho­tos I took while vis­it­ing Jim and Mary. Film pic­tures of that trip will appear later as well.

I’m stay­ing with a friend I met through the fes­ti­val a cou­ple of years ago. Michael’s been kind enough to host me in his cool loft apartment/photography studio/art gallery for two years now. It’s con­ve­niently located near the Amtrak sta­tion, SafeCo Field (where the Mariners play) and most impor­tantly, the Pyra­mid Ale House.

Well, I’m tired from a long day of car­ry­ing stuff. Time to kick back and relax with a book…

Spring Break… finally

March 31, 2005 Reply
Inside Castillo de San Marcos

Our spring break was almost three weeks ago now, but I’m just now get­ting the time to scan my pho­tos and write about it. I spent a won­der­ful time in St. Augus­tine with my mom and her friend Caneta. We saw lots of neat stuff, like: Anas­ta­sia State Park, the Mis­sion of Nom­bre de Dios, the Castillo de San Mar­cos (“The Fort”), the Jack­sonville Zoo, Bulow Plan­ta­tion ruins, Fort Matan­zas, and the Anas­ta­sia Light­house. I’d con­sid­ered writ­ing up a whole account of the trip, but that would’ve been much longer than any­one would want to read. So, I’ve taken the dras­tic step of actu­ally label­ing (most of) the pho­tos from the trip. Click the pic­ture of the cozy bar­racks (not as nice as the beach condo we stayed in, but per­haps slightly larger) to see all of my spring break photos.

New World

March 22, 2005 1 comment

Our Lit­tle Slice of Paradise

So on Sun­day, my friend Chris and I made the trek down to Miami to audi­tion for the New World Sym­phony. The gig is a sweet one if you can get it — hous­ing pro­vided in Miami Beach, play­ing in an orches­tra full of good play­ers, lots of free time to prac­tice or do what­ever. The eight-hour drive down to Miami wasn’t so bad. Traf­fic wasn’t an issue until we got to Miami Beach. Then it was a nightmare.

The streets were packed with spring break­ers, euro­pean tourists, and who­ever else par­ties on Sun­day night in Miami. It took us 20 min­utes just to move a few blocks. At one point, we found our­selves amidst a bunch of peo­ple who were all car­ry­ing around plants. They didn’t seem to be tak­ing them any­where, and there wasn’t a vis­i­ble plant source. It was just peo­ple milling around with plants. When we got to our hotel, we dis­cov­ered that there was no park­ing there, and we had to find a spot a few blocks away. This was when it hit us that Miami Beach is an expen­sive place: park­ing was $20. Luck­ily, we could leave Chris’s car there until it was time to leave the next day.

Back at the hotel, we took stock of our tiny some­what shabby room. $130 a night in Miami Beach doesn’t get you much. Orig­i­nally, we’d been think­ing about cram­ming 5 peo­ple into one room. Had the other three not bailed, we would’ve had to get to know each other really well that night — I’m not sure there was even room for any­one to sleep on the floor. Our view was of a charm­ing rooftop and eye-catching back alley. The TV remote was held together with pack­ing tape. The shower pipe leaked, spray­ing a stream of water over the shower cur­tain. The front desk had one iron to lend to guests, but no iron­ing board. At least we were only stay­ing one night.
Read more [+]

Pics from Last Weekend

January 15, 2005 Reply

While in Fort Myers last week­end, I was able to spend a cou­ple of after­noons on Estero and Sani­bel Islands pho­tograph­ing wildlife. This trip, I remem­bered my ‘real’ cam­era, and my dig­i­tal cam­era man­aged to not die. I had my film devel­oped the other day, but just got around to sort­ing and scan­ning this evening. There are two sets — a few pics from Bowditch Point in Fort Myers Beach on Estero Island, and a bunch of shots from the “Ding” Dar­ling Wildlife Refuge on Sani­bel Island. Click the thumb­nails to see the rest of my photos.

Overheard at the “Ding” Darling Wildlife Refuge, Sanibel, FL

January 8, 2005 Reply

Vis­i­tor to ranger, while look­ing at a 10–12 foot alli­ga­tor sun­ning itself:

“Does it just stay there?”

Ranger:

“Well the rule is, he pretty much goes wher­ever he wants.”

A lady describ­ing Long Key State Park:

“They have a sub­merged anchor, or, what do you call those things… can­non ball launcher thingy.”

Contra-ct

January 7, 2005 1 comment

So, I’m down in Fort Myers play­ing with the South­west Florida Sym­phony again. They called me up Mon­day night to ask if I could come down and play con­tra­bas­soon on Mahler 5. I agreed imme­di­ately, not fully con­sid­er­ing the fact that I’d have to leave the same day classes start. I man­aged to work all that out though, and against all odds arrived in time for the first rehearsal Wednes­day night. Any­way, the con­tra­bas­soon I’m using is on loan from the Venice Sym­phony (Florida, not Italy). This is the last line of their rental/loan contract:

One won­ders what hap­pened that made this a nec­es­sary clause…

Alligators Fear Me

November 21, 2004 2 comments

Yes­ter­day my only oblig­a­tion was the Sym­phony con­cert at 8, so I had the whole day to explore Ft. Myers. I went down to Sani­bel Island, which is just a $6 cause­way trip from the city. The island got hit pretty hard by one hur­ri­cane or the other — there were huge piles of destroyed veg­e­ta­tion all over the island. I sur­veyed the dam­age first, then went to the “Ding” Dar­ling National Wildlife Refuge. The main attrac­tion there is the avian life. There were tons of birds to be seen — egrets, osprey, ibises, spoon­bills, pel­i­cans, cor­morants, ducks, and a vari­ety of thing I couldn’t iden­tify. I was kick­ing myself for mot bring­ing my ‘real’ cam­era with me. I had my dig­i­tal point-and-shoot, but the mem­ory card seems to have died. I’m still try­ing to recover the pho­tos, but no luck so far.

After spend­ing awhile there, I drove around the island for awhile, and stopped at a lit­tle satel­lite area of the refuge. I was the only per­son there, which was nice. I saw a cou­ple of alli­ga­tors right away in the ponds by the trail. One was in shal­low water, with his back and head above the sur­face. The other I spot­ted with binoc­u­lars — it was lying in a marshy area at the edge of a pond, quite well hid­den. After look­ing at them for awhile, I con­tin­ued around the 1.5 mile path. The third side of the rec­tan­gu­lar loop trail fol­lows a canal. There’s a dirt path, about 3–4 feet of grass, and then the canal.

I walked along the path, scan­ning the oppo­site bank for any signs of gators. Sud­denly, there was a huge rep­til­ian form thrash­ing in the grass almost right next to me. I leapt back a few feet and let fly a string of choice words (luck­ily, no one was around to hear them). Appar­ently, I’d come upon an alli­ga­tor sleep­ing in the grass. It had been fac­ing the other direc­tion, and hadn’t seen me com­ing. When it heard me nearly right next to it, it freaked out, which caused me to freak out as well. Luck­ily for me, it went into the canal rather than up onto the path. After recov­er­ing from my shock, I watched the water to see if it would come back. A few min­utes later, it resur­faced with only its nos­trils and eyes out of the water. The beast seemed to glare at me, upset that I’d dared to dis­turb its slum­ber. Again, I kicked myself for not hav­ing my cam­era with me. After star­ing the gator down for a minute or two, I con­tin­ued along the trail — now mak­ing noise to guard against acci­den­tally sneak­ing up on any other large beasts.

Next, I went to one of the island’s pub­lic beaches. I went for a swim, but didn’t stay in long. The water was very shal­low out to the point where boat traf­fic made swim­ming dan­ger­ous. Plus, there wasn’t much surf to speak of. So, I con­tented myself with lying on the beach and read­ing. I couldn’t resist call­ing a cou­ple peo­ple from the beach and say­ing “guess where I am!” I resisted call­ing some — like Tris­tan — who were prob­a­bly freez­ing as I lay sun­ning myself.

Any­way, I made it back with just enough time to shower, put on my tux, and get to the con­cert. Every­thing went well, as it had the pre­vi­ous night. Fol­low­ing the con­cert, I said good­bye to all the great new peo­ple I’d met, and headed back to where I was stay­ing. Betty, the lady I was stay­ing with had beaten be back (she was an usher for the con­cert). She knew that I was leav­ing quite early in the morn­ing, and told me she prob­a­bly wouldn’t get up in time to see me off. But, she packed me a very plen­ti­ful bag with more then enough food for both break­fast and lunch. It’s won­der­ful to be treated like a grand­child by some­one you’ve just met.

Well, that’s more than enough for now. If I man­age to recover any of my pho­tos, I’ll post them. My hopes are not high for that, though.

Sunny Fort Myers

November 19, 2004 Reply

So, I’m cur­rently in Fort Myers, on the Gulf Coast in south­ern Florida. I’m play­ing 2nd bas­soon with the South­west Florida Sym­phony. They had a last sec­ond need for a bas­soon­ist, and appar­ently couldn’t find any­one closer than Tal­la­has­see (which is over 400 miles away). I Found out about it Mon­day night, and had to leave Wednes­day at noon. I wasn’t sure I’d make the rehearsal, as Mapquest gives the drive a time of 6.5 hours, and the rehearsal started at 7. It turned out not to be a prob­lem, though.

The pro­gram for the week­end is a bunch of opera stuff — excerpts from Car­men, the entire sec­ond act of La Boheme, and lit­tle instru­men­tal inter­ludes from three or four other operas. The soloists are won­der­ful, although they haven’t been intro­duced to us yet, so I don’t know exactly who they are. I imag­ine I can read their bios in the pro­gram at the con­cert tonight. The orches­tra sounds quite good, and every­one has been very nice.

The orches­tra pro­vides hous­ing, and I had the option of shar­ing a hotel room with some­one or stay­ing in someone’s home. I chose to stay in a home. They placed me with this won­der­ful older lady, a British ex-pat who spent much of her life in Michi­gan. Since retir­ing, she’s spent alot of time trav­el­ing the world, and has lots of inter­est­ing sto­ries to tell.

I’m writ­ing now from a pub­lic library, as I can’t seem to find any places with free wi-fi access. Barnes and Noble has a hotspot, but their rates are fairly exor­bi­tant. Any­way, I’m off now to explore Fort Myers before tonight’s con­cert. Oh, and for those of you up north — it’s 80 degrees, and I’m wear­ing shorts.

First « 123