Back Home in The Woods for a Day

James picked me up from the theatre immediately after yesterday’s matinee ended at five o’clock, and we made the four-hour drive back home to The Woods for my single day off today.

It took about forty-five minutes to get out of San Francisco and over the Bay Bridge; there was lots of traffic late Sunday afternoon. Hordes of people were leaving two major events, a baseball game and an air show put on by the Blue Angels.

One of my colleagues in the pit of South Pacific advised me to ‘put on my patience hat, there’s gonna be a LOT of traffic this afternoon!’ so I took her words to heart, and felt more relaxed about the stop/start aspect of our crawl out of the City because I was mentally prepared for it.

We arrived home to pitch black darkness at 9:30, and crisp cool temperatures in the 40s. It’s always such a shock to be drenched in such silence after being in an intense urban area. My mind seemed to race even more, against the backdrop of this contrast.

We couldn’t have picked two more different environments in which to live!

We needed to come home once more before we hit the road with Phantom, so that James could winterize the water pipes leading out from the well.

Fall has definitely come to The Woods. Splashes of yellow adorn the deciduous trees, and there are patches of golden pine needles sprinkled throughout the evergreens. The meadow grass is brown and crackly. The sound of birds is curiously absent; perhaps they have already migrated South.

This is the time of year just before the rains and snows set in. A time of waiting for the transition to Winter.

It will be interesting to see if we can bring the Airstream trailer back home in mid-January; it is entirely possible that the mile-long, steep, rutted dirt road will be impassable with ice and snow. It usually snows in early January, as much as two feet in a single storm.

When we get back to California sometime the second week of January, we will call the town postmaster — who is also one of our nearest neighbors — to ask about the road conditions. If it’s bad, then we’ll probably park the Airstream in my brother’s driveway in Sacramento for a week or so, before venturing up to The Woods. We did this last year, and had a lovely visit with the family.

So we are enjoying our brief time at home now, and will drive back to our City Life bright and early tomorrow morning. Back to work!

There are two weeks remaining of the run of South Pacific in San Francisco. I am already waxing nostalgic about it; this has been a wonderful production to be involved with. I will miss playing in this excellent orchestra. It’s very unusual to have twenty-five musicians (with NO synthesizers) in the pit for shows these days. I’m so glad that this full-scale revival of a Broadway classic is being done now!

The Bay Area’s many Micro-Climates

I am continually amazed at the variety of climates going on in the San Francisco Bay area all at the same time.

This phenomenon is due to the fact that this area is bounded by the ocean on the west and by hills on the east, with combinations of both elements inland in various directions. It’s a complex physical environment which results in many different micro-climates. It can be cool and foggy on one side of a hill and hot and sunny on the other side.

Here at the beach in Pacifica, just south of San Francisco, it is usually foggy and cool. The temperature usually stays in the 50s when the fog layer comes in.

James drives me over a rather steep hill to the north when he drops me off at the BART station to go to work. When there is fog in Pacifica, it is usually at its thickest at the top of this hill. Then we go over the crest and downhill towards the intersection of highways 1 and 280. Suddenly the hills to the east and the City to the north come into view, in blazing sunshine.

This does not always happen, but often enough to be a pattern.

Sometimes the fog stretches northward past Balboa Park. When I ride the train, I’m not sure where the fog ends exactly because BART is underground after that station. But it is frequently sunny in downtown San Francisco when I emerge to street level at 7th & Market.

The fog creates changeable weather conditions very quickly. James told me the other day that there were at least three short periods of sunshine yesterday at the beach, none of which lasted more than an hour, and usually much shorter.

So if you don’t like the weather, stick around a minute!

I was amazed this past summer at the variations of temperature around the Bay area, even when it was sunny everywhere. It would be 60 degrees at the beach and over 90 degrees a few miles inland.

My friend R.A. lives in Lafayette, at the extreme eastern portion of the Bay area. You have to go through the Caldicot Tunnel, which cuts through a major range of hills separating Oakland from the rest of the East Bay, to get to Lafayette. The western side of the tunnel would be 70 degrees and the eastern side twenty degrees warmer. Then it escalates quickly as you proceed further east.

There is often a 50-degree difference between San Francisco and Sacramento (90 miles inland) in the summer.

I have a theory why Pacifica is such a laid-back, unpretentious community. It may be totally off the mark but it entertains me to think that it’s because the area is so foggy. If it were brilliantly sunny here by the beach all the time, it would attract wealthy people wanting to build fancy homes overlooking the ocean.

Obviously, Pacifica residents don’t mind the fog. James and I can tolerate it for a few days in a row, but it gets kind of old after two straight weeks, which happened in mid-July. It was maddening to be stuck in fog all day and then drive over the northern hill to find blazing sunshine, barely two miles away.

So I suppose the remedy is to get OUT of the house and take the train to more sunny environments. In the San Francisco Bay area, you usually have not far to go!

The Show Schedule

On this foggy Saturday morning by the beach in Pacifica, I am prying my eyes open with a Japanese thermos full of hot black tea. I have time to noodle around on the computer for a couple of hours, then take the train into San Francisco to play the matinee of “South Pacific”.

The show schedule is intense with eight performances a week. This is the standard across the country, but most theatres do single evening shows Tuesday through Friday, then double shows on Saturdays and Sundays. Mondays are almost always off. (In theatre lingo, this is called “dark”.)

The show schedule for the San Francisco theatres is different than venues in the rest of the country. We’ve got double shows on Wednesday, and then only a matinee on Sunday.

This is both good and bad. The “bad” news first: there are only two consecutive evenings with single performances. The good news is that we get off work early enough on Sunday afternoon to actually have the semblance of a normal life; there is time to go out to dinner or a movie, or veg at home during prime-time TV.

In my case, getting off work on Sunday afternoon at around five o’clock gives James and me enough time to drive back home to The Woods, which takes about four hours from downtown San Francisco.

We usually arrive at 9 p.m. If there were an evening show, we wouldn’t get home until two in the morning. So the Sunday schedule works well.

We’ve been able to go home only once during this six-week run of South Pacific, a couple of Sundays ago. It was so nice to touch base, even though the visit was so brief; we had to drive back to the City on Tuesday morning.

We drive home again this Sunday for the last time before hitting the road in earnest. James needs to winterize the various water pipes (PVC) and the fittings near the well, since we won’t be back in The Woods until mid-January.

Today (Saturday) is a double show day. South Pacific is a three-hour show, so I don’t have time to take the train “home” to the beach to eat dinner and take a nap before the evening performance. A home-cooked dinner and nap is my usual routine whenever I play Phantom, which is twenty minutes shorter. It’s amazing that twenty minutes can make such a difference, but it does!

So James has been coming into the City to meet me for dinner between shows, which is a nice break for both of us. We’ve found three favorite restaurants not far from the theatre which are good and inexpensive: Indian, Middle-Eastern and Thai. We usually end up at the Indian restaurant, which is the most consistent, flavorful and overall best value. It’s also closest to the theatre.

We’ve been there often enough to be instantly recognized by the staff when we walk in. The one waitress always greets us with a smile.

Perhaps tonight we may try a hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant that’s next door to the Thai restaurant we’ve been to on several occasions. It’s been highly recommended by the three trumpet players who are on this show — they take their eating VERY seriously!

James will drive me to the Colma train station at about 12:20 this afternoon (only a seven-minute trip over the hill from the beach), and I won’t see the inside of our little Airstream home again until nearly midnight.

Both Wednesdays and Saturdays are very long days when I can’t come home in-between shows, but somehow I make it through.

In fact, I do feel very fortunate to be employed these days, challenging as the show schedule can be at times.

A Day in San Francisco

“You must WRITE more”, a little but persistent voice whispered to me over and over as I tossed and turned in bed last night.

Little Voice added, “You must also curtail playing games on Facebook — it’s a huge waste of time!”

My husband James reiterated this last sentiment to me only a few moments ago. So I know that I need to pay attention.

I’ve been trying to figure out why I’ve felt so blocked writing in this blog, for months now. What’s going on with me?

Well…part of me wants to avoid the tendency to become mundane, which can happen in blogs. But people seem to like the day-to-day musings and ramblings of Life, even if they seem trite at times. Bloggers often refer to their posts being mundane, yet their readers always assure them that the posts are interesting.

Hmmm. So maybe I should just GO for it, and run the risk of being mundane.

The definition of “mundane” is indeed illuminating:

mun⋅dane [muhn-deyn, muhn-deyn]
–adjective
1.
of or pertaining to this world or earth as contrasted with heaven; worldly; earthly: mundane affairs.
2.
common; ordinary; banal; unimaginative.
3.
of or pertaining to the world, universe, or earth.

So in other words, people are interested in feelings and events having to do with the world in which we live. And that’s exactly what a blog is.

(Lightbulb turns on.)

Perhaps what is ‘common; ordinary; banal; unimaginative’ to some people is not to others.

I was thinking the other day — always a dangerous enterprise — that blog-writing seems to be an all-or-nothing thing. Either post every day (or at least every other day) or don’t do it at all!

I believe that my many three faithful readers enjoy reading my very occasional postings. But there could be much more of a sense of continuity in my blog, a consistency, a regular “checking in” which has been absent thus far.

Well, we shall see.

So what am I thinking about, today?

Yesterday, I discovered a new place to hang out near the Golden Gate Theater in San Francisco. Occasionally I am able to catch an earlier train to work than I had planned to, which gives me enough time to sit down with a cup of coffee and write in my journal before heading to the theatre. I’ve done this at Starbuck’s on a few occasions, but it’s in the opposite direction from the theatre and I usually don’t have enough time to go there.

Yesterday I had an extra service-call which involved videotaping the entire cast in costume and orchestra in tuxes. We taped the most popular numbers from “South Pacific” for advertisement purposes. The call was from 1:30 to 5, followed by our usual show at 8. Busy day!

I emerged from BART onto Market St. and walked the two blocks towards the theatre. I took a slightly different route this time; usually I take a short-cut on Jones St., wending my way around the homeless lying on the sidewalk. But I stayed on Market St. in order to look for some place nearby to have a cup of coffee, since I had an extra half-hour.

There was a “donut”/coffee shop on the corner of Market and Golden Gate which I had never noticed before. It had about fifteen tables and picture windows giving out onto both streets, affording an excellent view of the colorful passerby.

For the life of me I don’t know why I hadn’t see this place before. It was as though it suddenly materialized out of thin air just when I needed it. I suppose that’s the way it is with many things; we tend not to see them until we look for them.

I went into the bright and airy room and walked up to the large glass counter containing many different kinds of doughnuts and pastries. I was reassured to see an espresso machine, so I could have a “specialized” coffee rather than just a cup of regular joe.

I ordered a capuccino and a butter croissant. The coffee was better than average and the croissant was pretty much just a big roll with a slight butter glaze, not at all like what I envision a croissant to be — flaky and buttery — but it was passable and accompanied the coffee nicely.

I found a tiny round table by the plate-glass window overlooking Market St. I could see the Golden Gate Theatre a half block beyond. I took a sip of cappuccino and a bite of the croissant and brought out my journal and pen from my knapsack.

Several working-class black men were talking in loud voices at the adjoining tables. They really didn’t have to speak at such a high volume; there wasn’t much ambient noise and the tables were close together, but this is the nature of people everywhere. I am often amazed at how unncessarily loudly most folks speak.

It’s as though they want an audience. But these men were in the middle of a conversation about one of their cronies, which I wouldn’t have been able to follow or relate to anyway.

One of the men left and the remaining two immediately started talking about him. “He’s juss like his biological father,” one of the guys stated. The other one responded emphatically, “Sho’ is!” Then the first one went into great detail about the father’s physical characteristics and tendencies to womanize, a bit more sotto voce. But I got the gist in spite of myself.

I wrote a few lines in my journal, took more sips of cappuccino and bites from the doughy roll. I looked out onto the Market St. sidewalk, where a parade of interesting characters ambled by. One middle-aged man, with greased-back dirty blond hair and attired in plaid shorts and clashing print shirt open to expose his fish-white Buddha belly, staggered up to a trash can and dug for treasure. Then he approached the plate-glass window with me on the other side and gestured at me…for something…maybe money? I contemplated giving him the rest of my croissant, but then the man abruptly staggered away from the window and ran across the street.

A group of German tourists arrived and sat down at a table, not realizing that they needed to go to the counter first to order. They sat there for the longest time before realization set in, whereupon one woman, serving as spokesperson and interpreter, got up and placed their order in a thick Teutonic accent. The man behind the counter responded in an equally thick Asian accent.

That’s what I love about San Francisco — the rich variety of people from all over the world. It’s truly a melting-pot; quite different from the almost exclusively white (and American) population of Nevada County where I usually call home.

As I got up from the table to go to the theatre, the more verbose of the black men nearby said with a smile, “Have a good day” and I responded, “And the same to you, sir”.

Yesterday was one of those days in which it was easy to embrace the City life and not feel overwhelmed by it, as I sometimes am. On its best days, I am wonderfully stimulated. I think it has something to do with being able to go with the often intense flow, instead of resisting it.

Life is a Freight Train Moving at Full Speed

The longer I go between writing posts, the more difficult it becomes to resume.

Part of me resists writing because the blog title “Living in The Woods” does not currently fit my life working in the San Francisco bay area.

Lame excuse, I know.

I keep telling myself that someday we WILL be back in The Woods permanently. But for now, financial necessity requires me to go far afield to make a living. I’m still not ready to retire from active professional horn playing, for personal as well as financial reasons.

I figure that I can continue playing horn at a high level for another five to ten years, if I choose to. But I’ve finally grown smart enough to avoid giving myself a deadline; who knows how I’ll feel in five years (or even two!), and what my life circumstances will be then?

For now, I am thankful to have show work in San Francisco a few times a year. The long-running show “Wicked” has created opportunities for more musicians to be hired to play other shows which come to the City. I have been lucky to play three shows since late November: Phantom, Spamalot and now South Pacific, for a total of nineteen weeks’ employment.

Along with this work is my occasional subbing with Phantom. After the six-week run of South Pacific is over in San Francisco on October 25th, I’ve got seven consecutive weeks of work lined up with Phantom in Tempe, Durham and Ft. Lauderdale. The last city is during Christmas week.

After that…who knows?

My first blog in 2005 was entitled “On The Road”. Should I rename this blog?

After this show closes, James and I will take the Airstream down to Arizona, where I will play the last two weeks of Phantom’s run in Tempe in mid-November.

Before I resume work, we will have two weeks to get our house ready to sell, in a certain small town in the extreme southeastern corner of Arizona. We left there over two years ago and the house has been vacant; we decided that it was too much of a hassle to be long-distance landlords.

We recently contacted a close friend who still lives in the area, to go over to the house and assess what needs to be done. Spiderwebs and dust need to be vacuumed, the fridge needs cleaning (someone turned off the breaker box at some point and the inside of the fridge is black with mold!) and of course the jungle of a yard needs to be hacked down. We’ll probably do at least some of this work ourselves.

We’re going to stay in the Airstream in an RV park on the edge of town while there. The house is livable but our little trailer is really our HOME — everything we need is already in place and we enjoy living in it.

I could write a lot about what’s been going on in my life since my last posting in mid-August — or very little. I’ll opt for the latter, since most of it is work-related, anyway.

James and I have been busy composing and arranging music for recorder ensemble, and have gotten together with a core group of four excellent players several times over the past few months. Our eventual goal is to sell our music online. Someday this will happen when we’re more settled.

The beach at Pacifica has been beautiful for nearly two weeks now; no fog! Autumn is the best season in the Bay area, I think.

We like our little spot in the back, in the corner of the RV park. It’s close to traffic but is actually quite private; most of the short-term tourists rent the spots in the rows closer to the ocean.

We arrived here on September 11th. Here’s a video of our drive from The Woods to The Beach:

Well, this isn’t the most exciting blog post in the world but it will have to do!

Living in Two Worlds

Thursday afternoon, James and I returned to The Woods from a two-day stint in the Bay area.

I played Principal horn in a backup orchestra for Canadian jazz singer/pianist Diana Krall, at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco.

It was one concert only, on Wednesday night. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the auditorium was packed, starting at $75 a seat. The audience was extremely enthusiastic and Ms. Krall put on a good show.

“WHAT recession?” I thought to myself.

It seems that Broadway-style shows and jazz/pop/rock entertainments aren’t as adversely affected by the current economic downturn as traditional symphony orchestras and opera companies are this year. People are still willing to pay for popular entertainment in challenging times, taking them away from their financial woes for a few hours.

The orchestra consisted of forty freelance musicians from around the Bay area. I had played with several of them in the recent production of “Spamalot” at the Golden Gate Theatre. In fact, the same contractor hired for both gigs.

The stage was set up in a series of risers in a horseshoe surrounding Diana Krall’s band, a trio of very fine musicians: drums, bass, and guitar joined by Ms. Krall’s piano.

I was on the second-highest riser on the right-hand side of the stage, as seen from the audience. In fact, I was on the edge of my riser closest to the people, with the rest of the French horn section further away to my right.

The higher riser behind me contained the other members of the brass section: two trombones (one of whom doubled on tuba for several numbers) and three trumpets.

The riser below me had the six woodwind players, clarinets and flutes.

On the opposite side of the horseshoe were the strings, banked on all three tiers. It was very visually effective, all those pretty violinists (yes, mostly young women) bowing and swaying to the music together.

It was a glitzy Lawrence Welk moment. Or a Vegas one.

Neutral dark grey curtains served as a backdrop to the orchestra. Spotlights splashed through various colors and patterns onto the fabric to provide further visual interest.

Each musician had a light on his/her stand, which was essential for being able to read the music in the dimly-lit, mellow atmosphere of this jazz concert.

There was a pleasing variety of music, with Diana Krall’s occasional solo piano accompanying her sultry voice; several upbeat numbers with the jazz trio, and then the big orchestral numbers with us.

Our pieces were generally understated and muted, with very long, quiet notes. Nothing “fortissimo” except for a very occasional swelling of chords, but always lower in volume than Ms. Krall’s vocals.

The musicians’ performance attire was all-black. Along with black pants and shirt, I wore a black suit jacket and black tie. (Most of the other men wore jackets but no tie.) I’d never worn this particular combination in my “performance uniform” before, and I dare say that it was spiffy! I’ll probably do it again for special occasions in the show pit — which always calls for black — such as Opening Night or perhaps even on a Saturday night.

After several encores and standing ovations, Diana Krall and her band bowed one last time, acknowledged the orchestra by calling us ’supremely talented artists’, and left the stage.

It was just after 10 p.m., and I wended my way backstage through a narrow, curved hallway lined with shelves, where the San Francisco Symphony violinists usually put their cases during the orchestra’s performances. In fact, it is called “The Violin Den”. During this concert, all of the musicians hired for the Krall gig put their instrument cases there.

After packing up my horn and strapping it to my back, I walked a few blocks down always-colorful Market St. to the BART station at Civic Center, where I caught a late night train to Lafayette in the East bay.

James and I stay at my friend R.A.’s house whenever we’re in the area for only a few days; it’s too much trouble to bring the Airstream down for only a one-day gig.

We’ve been back in The Woods for three days now. It’s a completely different world; peaceful, quiet and remote.

James has done several loads of laundry in the washer in the barn, and hung the clothes on the line to dry. The smell of sun-dried clothes is wonderful!

I noticed that most of our clothes and sheets go together; nearly everything is black or white or a combination of the two. I thought it would make an interesting picture. (Is your laundry this artistic?    )

We wouldn’t be hanging up clothes today, however. The sky is covered with a thick haze of smoke from fires burning less than 60 miles due west of us. Apparently one of the several fires was caused by a “bird on a wire”, literally.

Notice the difference in the sky from the above pictures of the laundry and the fire below:

The air is too toxic to breathe today, so we are spending it indoors.

I am back to practicing horn on my own, without the benefit of keeping in shape by playing in an ensemble. It is much more challenging to keep up my chops, so to speak, by myself.

It is also a challenge to be unemployed. On one hand it’s nice to have a break, but I always feel more useful and productive when I’m playing the horn professionally.

Here in The Woods, I do not earn any money this way. So I feel rather disconnected from this area, this community. For me, it’s more of a vacation home at the moment.

I know that this will change in the future when I’m “retired” and won’t be schlepping to the Bay area for gigs, but that time has not arrived yet. I have a few more years of good playing left, and I intend to make the most of it. I am just now working my way into the freelance music scene in the San Francisco area — something I’ve always thought of doing — and now it’s actually happening! I’m gradually getting more employment as I make more musical connections. I’m learning how to deal with the ins and outs of the freelance scene, which requires tact and diplomacy, as well as a certain skill in wending one’s way through the minefields.

The day after we got back home, James wired a 30-amp RV plug into our breaker box so that we can run the air conditioning in the Airstream. Our first A/C in the Woods! I’m so proud of him.

We moved the trailer from the front of the barn to the back, where there is more privacy and shade in the afternoon, and a view of the meadow to the west. It feels right there.

My next gig in the Bay area is in the middle of September. Until then, we shall enjoy our time here in The Woods.

So James & I continue to live a double life. It has its advantages and disadvantages, but mostly it is good.

Riding BART

James and I are down to our last few days in the San Francisco Bay area, as I play my final two concerts with the Midsummer Mozart festival. We are SOOOO looking forward to being back in the beautiful, peaceful Woods! We’ll be home by Wednesday.

While I’m still here, I would like to share some excerpts from the handwritten journal which I’ve been keeping all summer. Most of it has been written on the BART train, so a few entries contain snippets of observations that I’ve made on the passengers.

BART train

From the first day of the journal:

Saturday, May 23, 2009
The train is nearly empty, except for a couple of notable characters — one young woman with suitcases is knitting — something that I have not seen before on the train.

Another “first” is another young woman, who is wearing a white surgical mask.

I had wondered if many people in S.F. would be wearing masks due to the recent swine flu scare, but this is the first one I’ve seen in the week that I’ve been in the area.

June 4, 2009
For a few minutes, I sat on the round concrete bench at Civic Center Station, waiting for the train. There were a couple of old men reeking of booze, and later, a couple of young gals who smelled even worse.

June 7, 2009
Lots of people riding the train today. No-one sitting next to me so far, so it’s definitely more comfortable for me to write — both physically as well as psychically. I’m sure this will change soon.

July 15, 2009
A curly-haired woman in her late 30s or early 40s has just sat down next to me, rapidly working her PDA or whatever they call it these days.

She’s trying to minimize a chronic cough. Has stopped texting now that the train is under the Bay — no cell service. Meanwhile, I can continue to write! It’s sort of funny.

The train is standing-room only. It will be interesting to see if it remains that way through Berkeley. The woman next to me seems to be at a loss without her phone.

The woman is now sneezing and only somewhat covering her mouth — ugh! She’s sort of looking over at what I’m doing and if she’s reading this I can’t be responsible if she takes offense. I sure don’t want to catch her cold!

I am not enjoying this train ride, mainly because of this woman with a cold.

We’ve emerged from the 19th St. Station of Oakland into the sunshine. (Cough-cough) It’s amazing how silent this car is, especially for being so crowded.  Except for the coughing.

Several people on the train are coughing. I’d better be very diligent about washing my hands after being in this kind of enforced public. Turn your face AWAY from me when you cough, woman!!

It looks like I’m going to have to ask her to move to let me out, since we’re now at Ashby and I get off at the next stop, downtown Berkeley.

July 20, 2009
Rush hour. No-one has sat next to me at Civic Center, and there are a lot of standees near the doors. Should I feel guilty? Powell now…I bet someone squeezes in next to me. Which just now happened! An older businessman with briefcase paused next to my seat, seeing my horn case on the floor next to me…I got up to let him sit by the window. Hopefully Murphy’s Law won’t be in effect with him having to get out before I do!

Someone is standing in front of the doors between cars just behind me, which is a little unnerving and the older gentleman next to me is coughing periodically. WHY do I end up with these coughing seat-mates? LOL

Embarcadero…now going under the Bay for the next 5 minutes. Cough-cough. The sound of tinny music issuing from someone’s earbuds — the drum track is the only thing audible. The businessman keeps looking behind him at the woman standing at the connecting doors. He laughed at a comic strip (he’s reading a paper on top of the briefcase in his lap).

Now he’s digging for gold — gross. Sometimes I really don’t like being around people! I’m reaching the end of my rope with this particularly long stint in the Bay area.

Just emerged into the outdoor section of track near West Oakland. Skies are mostly clear here, as usual.

That music is very loud if I can hear it so well through the outside of that woman’s earbuds.

The man next to me keeps coughing, makes a half-hearted effort to cover his mouth. I can still feel the breeze of his cough (now he’s blowing his nose in a hanky — how old-fashioned!)

This particular train ride is putting me into a foul mood.

*     *     *     *     *

Despite these sometimes unpleasant occurences, I’d have to say that all in all, riding the BART trains has been a reasonably positive experience. I love taking public transportation whenever possible, and the SF Bay area is one of the few in the country that actually WORKS. It’s mostly dependable, and gets me where I need to go.

Our Life on the Beach

Although I have not written in my blog in the longest period of time since I started it a couple of years ago, I read my usual list of other people’s blogs daily. It’s part of my morning routine.

I have had flashes all summer of feeling like life is passing me by without documentation, while my blog-mates are busily recording their day-to-day existences to share with the masses.

However, I have been handwriting my journal almost every day since I arrived in the San Francisco Bay area on May 17th. My penmanship, once admired by the recipients of my profuse handwritten letters “back in the day” before computers, became rusty from disuse over the years of clacking away at the keyboard.

In these cyber times, it seems that many people have forgotten about handwritten letters or journals.

This summer, it has been very satisfying for me to revive and refine my handwriting after all these dormant years, penning my journal. I started writing at age fourteen and continued writing in that mode until I was in college, when I switched to typewriters of various sorts. Then I kept a journal on the computer.

Handwriting a journal feels so personal. Of course I don’t get any comments because no one else reads my entries except for me. This is okay.

I celebrate the fact that my penmanship is gradually coming back. I am beginning to love it again. My third-grade teacher instilled in me the beauty of handwriting at age nine. She had the best hand.

I am starting to feel less stilted in my handwriting, having to form my thoughts complete before setting them down, without the benefit of computer editing. It is improving with each page that I scrawl out.

Sometimes my handwriting is VERY jerky on the fast-moving train!

I write on the BART train every day on the way to my various music gigs, and then again on the way home.

It is a good release for me to write down my private thoughts.

I write mostly about work and the freelance scene of musicians here in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is a very different world than the peaceful, idyllic life that James and I live in The Woods, where we do not interact with very many people.

I do not play in any musical organizations when I live in The Woods. So I have to go other places — big metropolitan areas — to work. Most freelance musicians have to settle in such places in order to make a living.

For me these days, the San Francisco bay area is the “happening” place work-wise. James & I are very fortunate to be able to travel in our Airstream trailer to wherever my musical employment is.

Right now it’s in the City by the Bay.

The freelance musical scene here is a curious combination of comeraderie and competition. It is an extended network of classically trained musicians, scattered throughout the Bay area, highly qualified in their field. We are all vying for the same gigs. It is a tight-knit, friendly group of people from their mid-twenties fresh out of music schools to musicians in their seventies, playing in orchestras all over the area.

Everyone keeps the pulse of “who’s hiring who” and why aren’t they being hired any more for this gig or the other? Buzz…buzz…buzz…it’s very incestuous. Yet, almost everyone accepts the vagaries of the music business and manages to remain cordial with each other.

It is amazing, really. An exclusive club of musicians trying to make a living from their craft.

I am currently playing the two-week Midsummer Mozart festival. We play in four different concert venues around the Bay area each week. When this is over at the end of next week, James & I will finally be able to return home to our beloved Woods!

Until a few days ago, we had parked our Airstream on the front row of RVs closest to the beach. But we got tired of the constant shifts of energy as short-term neighbors were replaced by new ones. There were some good folks, but our most recent parade of neighbors was extremely invasive and obnoxious.

This finally pushed us into changing lots, to one “in the corner in the back in the dark”, as James puts it. It’s in the line of RVs furthest from the beach. We’re on the end, so there are no neighbors on the left side. The neighbor in the rig on our right is hardly ever there (I’ve never seen him) so it is very peaceful.

Here are some pictures of our life right on the beach, ending with our present location.

Dog Ringo loves the RV park because of the numerous dog smells here. Highly stimulating!

One of the advantages of having a lot right on the beach was that we had our own little “back yard” facing the ocean. This view looks south towards the Pacifica pier.

This view looks north towards San Francisco and Marin.

On my rare nights off, we would have cocktails and watch the sunset. It’s almost always cool by the shore, so we have to bundle up!

James doing his Kenny of South Park imitation:

This is the shot that EVERYBODY takes of the beach at sunset. If you’ve seen one, you’ve pretty much seen them all!

My attempt at being artsy with one of our bicycles:

I did enjoy our time on the front line closest to the water, but looked forward to moving to a quieter location.

It was a relatively quick and simple operation to move the trailer to this back lot, last Saturday, July 18, 2009.

It’s wonderful to open the windows on the side with the bushes and see a canopy of greenery instead of a rig parked only a scant few feet away.

Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’…

Whenever I’m on the road, time distorts. It either goes by in a flash or seems to stand still.

Or both.

Looking back on the past five weeks, there’s really not a whole lot to write about. Yet, I’ve been very busy.

Eight shows a week is a relentless schedule, especially when half of them occur in only two days, over the weekends.

It is a predictable work routine which I am very comfortable with. Although demanding, I know what to expect. After many years of doing it, I have learned how to pace myself.

I am amused (and gratified) to see how my father’s strong work ethic manifests in my nature. Over the past two years of on-and-off employment, I seem to be happiest when I am working.

As a musician, this means playing. My work is my play and my play is my work!

Lately, it feels good to bring home a paycheck every week too. I’ve been fortunate to sub with Phantom for a few weeks, literally here and there, over the past year.

Here’s a shot of me playing the harp with Ringo and Rupert providing an ever-appreciative audience:

I am now down to my last five days (and seven shows) in Hartford CT. This is the second week of the run here; James and I arrived on April 21st.

I still have a hard time believing that I’m all the way across the country! This is a BIG piece of dirt.

We left the Airstream at the RV park in Kansas City because the northeastern part of the country is not very RV-friendly; there are very few places to park.

So we’ve brought just the truck the 1200 miles to the East Coast, and are staying in a Residence Inn just north of downtown Hartford. In fact, we stayed at this place the last time Phantom played here, back in early 2002.

Thankfully, the dog and cat are good travelers and good sports. They’re doing fine!

We stopped in Delaware on our way to Hartford to visit briefly with our dear friends Caroline and Peter, who had flown from England to stay with their family who moved to the States. It was wonderful to see them, even if for only a few hours.

Backtracking: our three weeks in Kansas City were pleasant; it’s always nicer to stay in our own little space, the tastefully and artistically decorated vintage Airstream. It’s a very comfortable environment, and works well for us.

It was also nice to be able to spend time with our good friends Jerry and Judy. It had been several years since we’d seen them, and we always have a good time together.

This usually involves visiting Kansas City’s fine art galleries, seeing movies, and eating at various restaurants, including KC’s famous barbeque. (Yes, we’re 99% vegan, ha ha!)

Jerry is an enthusiast of the French horn and has a large collection of instruments, hanging from bicycle hooks in his basement. In fact, we originally met in 2000 when Jerry found out that I was selling a horn. We became fast friends.

It’s always fun to play on his instruments, and Jerry often invites other area horn players to his house to play ensemble music when I’m in town. I was particularly gratified that the horn section of the Kansas City Symphony came one afternoon to play through my new horn quintet. They sounded great on it and were very complimentary.

One of the other players at this fun gathering commented that my piece should be in the standard horn ensemble repertoire. High praise, indeed!

This has inspired me to finish the other two movements. Until this latest flurry of activity to finish the first movement of the horn quintet in Kansas City, it has been a long time since I’ve composed any music for horn; all of my energies have been devoted to writing for recorder ensembles.

When we left California on March 27th, Spring had arrived a couple weeks earlier. In Kansas City, the season was just starting to manifest with little buds on the trees and slightly higher temperatures. Three weeks later on our two-day trip to Hartford, we discovered that Spring’s clock was turned back yet again a couple of weeks.

Until a few days ago, when the temperatures soared into the 90s. Crazy!

This morning it is a more seasonable 57 degrees, and the weather is expected to continue cooler through the remaining five days that we are here.

Today I am busy editing video footage that I took on our trip from California to Kansas City. When I finish doing that, I will finally post!

(Later: The total footage was too long to put into one video, so it’s in two parts.)

On The Road Again

Greetings from Kansas City!

I am here to play three weeks of Phantom. Then on April 20th, James and I will drive to Hartford, CT to play two weeks of the show there.

We look forward to visiting friends in New York City, Boston and Nashville after my five weeks of Phantom work are concluded on May 3rd. We should arrive back home in the Woods sometime during the second week of May.

We are staying in the Airstream trailer at an RV park in Merriam, just south of downtown Kansas City. We have parked here several times before; once with the show in 2001 and other times just passing through. This central location is a convenient stopping-place.

It is so good to be out of the car finally, after three long ten-hour days of driving to get here. On our return home we have decided to take four days to get back to California from Kansas City, which will be less wear and tear on our bodies.

Since my previous post, Winter has receded in the Woods, but it is not quite Spring yet up in the mountains.

The snow melted during the last week of February. The run-off from the higher mountains created a large amount of water rushing down the Yuba River. James and I awoke on the morning of the 24th to the sound of the river, which was positively roaring!

In the month since then, the signs of Spring have been subtle. The new season will intensify while we are gone, culminating in an explosion of lupin and bachelor buttons in the meadow by the time we return in mid-May. We can hardly wait!

In late February I took this picture of ladybugs (breeding?) on a holly bush close to the back porch.

A couple of weeks later, I checked the bush again:

In mid-March, temperatures crept up into the upper 60s during the day. James brought out the patio furniture which we installed on the back porch, and we enjoyed several lunches out there until it got cold again.

Springtime means that we can dry our clothes out on the line rather than in the Music Room (we don’t own a dryer). There’s nothing like the smell of sun-dried clothes!

Cat Rupert enjoys being outside more now that the snow has melted.

The only patch of snow which remained on March 13th was on the north side of the Music Room where the sun does not shine.

You can see the chimney which had fallen after the first heavy snowstorm in December. We didn’t hook up the new woodstove this Winter, as staying warm in the Airstream was much easier.

In my next post (which I will put up soon, I promise!) I will describe our current life in Kansas City, so very different from the one we have in the Woods.