Catching up - Saturday & Sunday

I was so exhausted Friday night that I didn't blog that night; instead, I blogged about Friday on Saturday night. So tonight I'm going to try to catch up & will blog about both Saturday & Sunday.

Saturday, Brian & I "slept in" until about 10. "Slept in" is in quotes because 10am Eastern is 7am Pacific, so it didn't really feel like sleeping in to me! After a good breakfast at Denny's, we headed to the store to pick up some things we need for the trip, things like scotch tape, index cards, toe bandaids (I seem to have developed an ingrown toenail - ouch!), and an eyeglass repair kit.

When we arrived at the airport Thursday night, I bent down to reach into my luggage for something and my glasses fell off! I'd lost a screw!

This is not good.

I didn't have any way to fix them at the airport, so I just balanced them on my face.

Stylish, no?

Until we made it to the hotel, where I could get a safety pin out of my luggage.

Rockin' that '80s look. What's that? The safety pin is supposed to go in my EAR?

I wore my contact lenses on Saturday so I wouldn't have to walk around looking all dorky, then fixed them after we bought the repair kit.

All better!

After the shopping trip, we went to the church to check out all the bells, make sure they were all in good working order, and to mark them so we know which set of bells is which -- this is very important when you've got 3 sets of bells and 2 sets of chimes! On the suggestion of Martha Alford, I got several colors of rubber bands - the kind that kids make the bracelets out of nowadays. I put a band around each bell handle, then tied some to the case handle, too. After each concert, when it's time to pack up, we can easily sort which bells go in which cases. Yay!

Red band goes in the red case.

After we were done marking all the bells & chimes, we re-packed Susan's office...

Still a lot of stuff, but more organized now.

Then went to Jo-Ann Fabrics to buy some foam. We are borrowing foam from all of our venues, but we use wooden triangle pieces to flare out our tables into a "flying wedge" shape instead of just a plain U or L shape. We feel this opens us up more to the audience, allowing us to engage them more, while still being able to see each other so we can play together. All of our venues have 4" thick foam, except for one which has 3" foam. We have been using 4" foam at home, but a lot of people have 3" foam and since we're going to be traveling more and more, we thought it was time to invest in some 3" triangle and 2-ft rectangular pieces. We bought enough 3" thick foam for our needs, and also got some 1" thick foam so that we can use them when we're using 4" thick foam on the rest of the table. (Don't ask me how we're going to get it home; I haven't figured that out yet. I've got another week before I need to know for sure!) I'll get some pictures of the foam and wood pieces tomorrow.

Of course, once we got the foam, we had to cut it and we didn't have an electric knife, so we went to Kohl's and got one. It was on sale for $17.99 - regular price $44.99, PLUS I had a 15% off coupon. SCORE! We went back to the church & Brian cut the foam into the pieces we needed.

From there, we went to Susan's house for dinner - wonderful lamb gyros and chicken souvlaki from a local Greek Festival. YUM! Then back to the hotel for some shut-eye because...

... Sunday was an early morning. I had volunteered to play a solo or two (or three) for Susan's church & she took me up on my offer. Yay! I played Arnold Sherman's "Grazioso" for the Prelude, "Slane (Be Thou My Vision)" arr by Kevin Holsinger and me for the Offering, and Christine Anderson's "Be Still My Soul" for the Postlude. People came up to compliment me after the service & I think some people will now be coming to the concert who otherwise might not have come. Double yay!!

After church, we went back to the hotel, so I could dye my hair - my pink was a bit faded & needed a refresher. I'll have pics tomorrow if I can get a good pic in the sun, where my hair just GLOWS! - and to separate out our concert things from our general items to make it easier to get to the venue tomorrow.

Then it was out to dinner with Susan & Mike. They took us to the Red Line Diner in Fishkill - diners are a Thing here in New York. I mean we have them in California, but not this dense on the ground. They are *everywhere* here. This place had really excellent food - Brian had jambalaya & I had mac & cheese. 

While out driving yesterday, we noticed this sign near our hotel:

OCC? Hey! We know who they are!

... and so today, we drove over there to check it out. It's less than half a mile from our hotel! BTW, did you know they have a Café over there now? Serving lunch & dinner every day, plus "Biker's Breakfast" every Saturday & Sunday. The main showroom was closed & we had just had dinner, so we just did a drive-by photo shoot:

The Café - I gotta wonder why it's not called a Diner??

ooh, pretty!

Maybe someday we'll get a chance to come back & actually look around inside!

In a few hours, the rest of the band will be arriving at airports in Los Angeles and Oakland and flying to the East Coast. Barbara & Tracy will meet them all at La Guardia and then they'll all drive to Poughkeepsie. I've been sending last-minute things to them for the past couple of days - "Don't forget your costumes!" "It's been raining, so if you have a brolly, bring it!" etc - but they'll be on their own very soon. I hope they all have a great flight and arrive safely and have no trouble getting here tomorrow. Bon voyage, mes amis! 

-Michèle

Friday Fun

Friday morning, Brian & I got up early and had breakfast at the hotel. We then waited for the shuttle from Enterprise to come get us so we could pick up the cargo van. On the way to Enterprise, we told Adam, the Enterprise guy, all about why we were on the East Coast & about handbells. He gave us his card & I gave him a link to this blog. (Hi, Adam!)

After picking up the van, we put on our door magnets:

Now we're traveling in style!

From there, we drove out to Boyertown, where we met up with Brian Seeman, director of the Philadelphia Handbell Ensemble, who was kind enough to loan us bells G2-B2, plus some miscellaneous others, plus bass mallets, a couple of tables, AND made arrangements for us to borrow a 4 octave marimba from Boyertown Senior High School. (Thanks, Brian!!)

Why are you taking pictures instead of helping us load the van??

After Boyertown, we discovered that the marimba squeaks while we drive:

I said I wanted to record it and use it in a composition; Brian said, "You won't find it so amusing after 12 days!"

Next stop was the Steve Weiss Music store in Willow Grove, where I bought a C diatonic mbira because I need one for this tour and I left my C pentatonic mbira at home. DUH! The guy who helped us, Jeff, knows Tim the owner of Malmark and was interested in hearing about our tour. I sent him a link to this blog (Hi, Jeff!) and made sure he heard about our TV appearance. :-)

After Steve Weiss, we went to the Malmark factory in Plumsteadville, where we picked up two 5 oct sets of bells, a 6 oct set of chimes, a 2 oct set of bells, a cajon, and a bell tree stand. (Thanks, Martha!)

Tetris masters!

While there, I got to ring a G1!

Too much fun!

(We'll be back at Malmark with the rest of the band on Thursday to take a factory tour.)

From Plumsteadville, we drove to Manhattan...

Like driving in LA, but with more honking.

... where we picked up the big black suitcase from Barbara's hotel...

Doesn't look like much, but it was 70 lbs!

... and then drove to Poughkeepsie, where we met up with Susan Guse and unloaded the van into her office:

Hard to believe all of that fit in the van!!

After that, we checked in to our hotel & hit the hay. It was an exhausting day and we covered a lot of miles - about 300, according to Google Maps!

That's a lot of ground to cover in one day!

We had a busy day today, too, but I'll post about that tomorrow. Now it's time to bed - early day tomorrow because I'm playing some solos at St John's for their 9:30am service. 'Night, y'all!

-Michèle 

Getting ready to go... and to come back!

Brian & I spent several hours Wednesday doing laundry, gathering all the items we wanted to take with us, loading up the truck, and packing our suitcases for this trip.

Barbara & Tracy took Timbré's big black suitcase, which contains all of our mallets, our "bumpers" (more about them in another post), plus our wooden "wedges" (ditto). I think there are some table covers in there, too, plus anything else Barbara might have put in there to take with her to NYC.

That left Brian & I to take the other 3 cases Timbré needs to take on this trip: Big Golf (a hard-sided travel case designed for golf bags, but which contains the fold-for-travel-and-storage chime rack that Brian made for us), my big bell case (which usually holds bells C5-C8, but which now contains most of my bells, plus a few of Timbre's, plus has a few empty spaces this trip), and my small bell case (which usually holds bells G4-B4, plus D8 & E8, but which now has a few other small items in it, too). Then our large personal suitcase -- which ended up being overweight because we are taking a lot of stuff, and did you know go-go boots take up a lot of room in the suitcase??

Then, because we return late evening on Tuesday, June 30 & have an afternoon gig on Wednesday, July 1 in San Diego, we made arrangements to rent a storage space just south of Corona to store the bells, chimes, and other stuff we'll need for that concert (but that we didn't need to take with us on the cross-country trip). We left the house early & loaded up the storage unit with bells and chimes:

6+ octaves of bells! 2 sets of chimes!

After the storage facility, we went to Ontario airport where we breezed through security -- they didn't even ask about the electronic tamboura in my backpack! From there, we flew to Las Vegas where we had a 2 hour layover, just enough time for carnitas quesadillas and some Dos Equis Ambar. And now, we're on the plane to Philadelphia!

Yes, Barbara & Tracy flew to New York for their anniversary trip, and the rest of the group will meet them there on Monday morning, but Brian & I are flying to Philadelphia. Why? Because we have to gather all the instruments and equipment we need on this tour!

So, tomorrow morning, we will go pick up a rented cargo van, then head to Plumsteadville to pick up bells and chimes from the Malmark factory (thank you, Martha Alford!), plus a cajón and a bell tree stand. THEN we drive to Boyertown to pick up more bells, more bell tree stands, some tables, some foam, and a marimba (thank you, Brian Seeman!). THEN we drive to lower Manhattan to pick up the big black suitcase from Barbara's hotel. THEN we drive to Poughkeepsie to unload the van at the church for Monday's concert.

Brian & I will be spending Saturday making sure the bells & chimes are all voiced nicely together, plus doing some shopping to pick up some things that we still need such as duct tape, band aids, or anything else we discover we've forgotten. We hope to have time to visit a Massage Envy spa and get massages - ah! 

But, enough for now. I'll post more tomorrow as we go so you can see all the work and logistics that go into a tour like this. Stay tuned!

TTFN,

-Michèle 

Pre-Tour Adventure

It's a good thing I sleep well on airplanes, as it's 10:30 p.m. and we have to get up at 2:30 a.m. to start this adventure! I have learned so much about packing in the last few years and I surprised myself at getting everything I needed into one medium suitcase with room to add a couple things I wanted but didn't "need," like an alternate pair of sandals and a sundress!

Thursday is all day travel, but we'll be in New York City by dinner time ready to have a fun weekend where my hubby and I will celebrate our 30th anniversary (which is actually Monday, the first day of Timbré's tour. And, yes, we will have a champagne toast after that concert!) by visiting Lady Liberty, touring the 911 Memorial, riding to the top and dining at sunset at the New World Trade Center, hanging out in Central Park and maybe The Cloisters, munching at Katz', shopping in Chelsea Market, walking The High Line and taking in "Something Rotten" at the St. James Theater.

I'm so excited I don't think I can sleep!
Remembering what my mom told me...Santa won't come until I fall asleep!
Good night!

Dress Rehearsal Concert

On Sunday, June 14, we played a Dress Rehearsal Concert for the residents of the Heritage Estates retirement community in Temecula. We told them in advance that it was a dress rehearsal so there may be a few bumps along the way -- part of the purpose of the DRC was to find where the bumps are so that we can fix them before we go away on tour!

We opened the DRC with Everett Hilty's Rhapsody in Color, a personal favorite of mine. We played it really well, I thought. The audience certainly loved it!

Here's a video we took of it:

We hope to have more videos to post along the way, but you'll have to wait for those until next week. Meanwhile, please comment and wish us well on our journey. Barbara, her husband Tracy, Brian, & I fly to the east coast tomorrow, while the rest of the group takes a Sunday night red-eye and arrives on Monday morning, just in time for our Monday evening concert in Poughkeepsie!

See y'all on the East Coast!

-Michèle