Yes, I took a bit of a hiatus from blogging these past few weeks. My apologies if you’ve been addictively hanging on every word. I’m sure by now you’re aware that I’m far from Australia at this point and playing catch-up with the verbage. So, dammit, let’s catch up.
When I left you to your withdrawal, my work in the bush had officially come to an end with a late night celebratory meal. Of course that’s not the end of the adventure. I mean, think about who’s story it is you’re reading. That said, Sunday was pretty uneventful. When we, or least I, finally got up (after my mood from the night before, I think Seb was afraid to wake me), and did the math on what we’d need to accomplish in order to be in Darwin at a reasonable time, we came to the simple conclusion that the material we’d collected would have to suffice. There was no way that we’d be able to explore last minute sessions with IBr or M. The math: 4 hr drive + [2 copies x 5 DVDs x 30 min.] + [3 copies x10 CDs x 10 min.] + 3 glasses of wine with dinner = incomprehensible fatigue + unconditional surrender.
Monday was the day for returning all the rental equipment and the 4WD, packing my ridiculously heavy bags, shopping for a didgeridoo and getting to the airport on time for my flight back to Melbourne. Should be pretty relaxing, no? Except, remember that incomprehensible fatigue factor? Multiply that by one frighteningly, cheerfully racist rental proprietress, one Herculean self-car wash session, one indescribably ridiculous $300 charge for a 3 inch scratch in the paint and the attending fight with the rental agent [your favorite expletive-laced insult here], one distressing phone call home in which I discovered that I’d missed my daughter’s departure for sleep away camp and one inexplicable six hour flight delay at the none-too-comfortable Darwin airport. Temper that with several double espressi and the purchase of a truly wonderful didgeridoo and you may have some idea how I felt when I crawled from the back of the cab at Ormond College, University of Melbourne, in the middle of the night on Tuesday morning.
No idea when I got up on Tuesday. All I know is that I started on laundry while I continued working on the CD and DVD factors from “the equation” - what? You thought I finished that stuff up in Darwin? So you didn’t actually do the math, did you? That evening, amid the my growing exhaustion and the beginnings of an annoying case of walking pneumonia, I had the pleasure and honor of playing a really lovely, sensitive, quiet improv set with Adam Simmons (sax), Eugene Ughetti (perc.), Mark Cauvin (d. bass) and Caerwin Martin (cello) at the Make It Up Club, a regular Tuesday night happening where Australia’s best improvisers are given free reign to try new things in front of an enthusiastic and supportive audience. (unabashed plug – if you’re in Melbourne – go check it out. If you see any of these musicians names on concert posters, go and listen. On a CD, buy it.)
Although the rest of this, my last week in Australia, was no less eventful, it was a bit of a hyper-exhausted blur. Lots more burning of CDs and DVDs, another gig with Adam Simmons and Eugene Ughetti in another charmingly gritty venue (Horse Bazaar), a now-imperative trip to a Chinese herbalist, many doses of truly grotesque tasting tea, a presentation on my work to the faculty of Ormond College in the nicely appointed and highly Harry Potter-esque Senior Common Room, a couple planning meetings for future visits to the land down under, and very likely a healthy dose of sleep walking.
At the end of it all, I managed to catch a 4 am cab at the same curb where I could swear I’d crawled out just a couple of hours earlier. The airport staff maintained it’s reliable and consistent, if not comforting, ritual dance – insistence by the staff that my trombone would have to be checked, searches through the electronics, cutting deals with supervisors to avoid fees for overweight baggage, eventual begrudging acknowledgment that the ground crew has final say over my trombone, pleasant banter with the security agents, starbucks on the way to the gate, another negotiation over my designed-specifically-to-fit-easily-in-the-overhead-trombone-case, the arrival of the annoyed-for-being-bothered-with-something-that-so-obviously-fits-safely-in-the-overhead ground crew chief, and finally finding my built-for-members-of-the-pygmy-tribes-of-Africa seat.
If you’ve been following the entire trek from the beginning, you know that from Australia I would be heading to Japan. However you also know that my flight pattern was… well, eccentric. So the plane I fought my way onto in the last paragraph was actually flying to LA. I know. Wrong direction. But from LA I would be able to change planes and head to… (dramatic sigh) San Francisco. Still not exactly the direct route. But in San Francisco I had the advantage of a 24 hour and 18 minute layover (does that still count as a “layover”, or is it actually a “stay” at that point?). I say advantage, because it allowed me the serendipitous opportunity to visit with my uncle and two cousins and to meet each of their darling babies for the first time (my cousins’ babies – my uncle is thankfully baby free).
Eventually it was back to the airport for one more glorious check-in tango before actually getting on a plane headed to Tokyo (no shit!). I’d love to describe what a joy it was to be on a plane headed for my actual destination, except that a couple of hours in, we hit tremendous turbulence. I don’t mean the little rattle your tray table type of turbulence. I mean flight attendants on the floor, food flying, people screaming turbulence. About the time the attendants got the mess cleaned up and people calmed down, we hit another pocket complete with altitude loss (woo hoo! – think the Haunted Hotel elevator ride). When the plane stopped shaking this time, the captain came on and informed us that the seat belt sign would stay on for the rest of the flight – so if we hadn’t used the bathroom yet, we should try to hold it (only about 10 more hours to go). I suppose I was one of the lucky ones. I hadn’t received my food yet, so didn’t have to wear it for the rest of the flight.
By the way – my trombone did not fall out of the overhead bin and kill anyone.
Next blog
– it’s on to Japan (yes, the plane landed safely and despite my persistent
cough I wasn’t detained or quarantined)
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