Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I'll warn up front that this isn't going to be as good or coherent a con report as some of the others I've seen in the past two days. But here goes... After setting it aside half-written for a couple of days, I've decided to break it up into multiple posts. But let's see if I can manage to get it all done before a whole week has passed.

As I said in the entry I posted when I got home, there were things that sucked and more important things that were good about my weekend at ConCertino. I'll get the sucky things out of the way first because they're quick (they don't inspire as much detail or as many digressions as the good things, and this way I'll end on a positive note):

• I didn't get there until Saturday because I failed to line up a ride between the time I found out I could go and Friday (and I didn't have the phone number of a couple who could've given me a lift) ... I was going to try the train or bus Friday night, but I'd already figured out (and promised anniemal) that I shouldn't push myself hard, and I wasn't feeling quite up to getting started Friday afternoon.
• This one's really my fault for not checking earlier, but I'm going to find a way to blame someone else because that's a lot more fun than accepting responsibility: the web page for the con said that Amtrak had a train going into Worcester Saturday mornings. The Amtrak web site said it only ran weekdays. So I had to resort to the bus.
• I spent fifteen minutes trying to get out of a parking garage a block from the bus station in Baltimore because the elevator didn't seem to work.
• I missed the first bus I wanted. The next bus was delayed due to mechanical failure, so I had to wait for the one after that. When that arrived, it had no air conditioning.
• I had such a long way to walk in the bus station in NYC changing busses, and such a short layover in Hartford, that I never had a chance to hit a vending machine for some breakfast. I also got to the convention about five hours later than I thought I would.
• I'm a little too tall for long-distance bus travel.
• The walk from where the city bus let me off, to the hotel, was just enough in the humidity to have me entering the hotel feeling amazingly tired and sticky.
• My shoulder hurt.
• Coming up on the bus and trying to only use one arm meant I had to travel really light -- I felt a little odd showing up without a bass guitar and amplifier, and without my ashiko. I also managed to leave behind two smallish bits of camera gear, either of which would've allowed me much more flexibility camera-wise.
• I got to very little of the programming (two concerts), very little of the open filking (I caught a few songs), and never wound up performing (I was all set to do something in the open filking, but kept getting called out of the room by folks who wanted to talk to me).
• I missed my cat.
• Although I got to start a conversation with ohiblather (should I use that user-id or ohi to refer to you, Debbie?), both of us were being interrupted too often to get very far; I got to talk to a couple of other people only long enought to say hello and tell them how much I wanted to talk to them later.
• The thing someone asked me to teach them was something I'm really not good at. (I hope I managed to be helpful anyhow in getting them started.)
• I made the owner of the car I went home in uncomfortable when I took my turn driving, and I feel bad about that.
• It took me four times as long to get back into the parking garage to get to my car, as it did to drive home once I got into my car.

But all of these things, annoying and physically painful as some of them were, were relatively minor compared to how grateful I was to have gotten there, and for all the better things that happened.

After all, I did get there, I did get to hear some cool music, I did get to catch up with (and hug) some people I don't see often enough, I had some really interesting conversations (the sort that seem to happen especially at conventions), I met some people, I had half a bed to sleep in, and I found a ride home (well, one was found for me) so I didn't have to deal with the bus all over on the way home. Some of those sound kind of small when I put them in words like that, but I know that a lot of y'all will understand how big they really are.

There was one good thing about going up on the bus: I met interesting people. On the second of the three busses, I was seated behind a young Lebanese woman who is a caterer and a fellow who makes things out of trees. I showed off my photo portfolio and Homespun Ceilidh Band CD (I had a CD player and headphones handy), and the fellow showed photos of the furniture and musical instruments he'd made out of branches and trunks that had grown in interesting shapes. We also talked a bit about religion. He mentioned being a theologian, so I asked what translation of the Bible he recommended for study, since my favourite one to read is a notoriously flawed translation. The Lebanese woman was also on the third bus, so we sat next to each other and talked about all sorts of stuff -- recent events, politics, mathematics, educational systems (US and elsewhere), language ... when she complained about too seldom having intelligent people to talk to about various subjects, I told her I knew a mailing list she'd probably enjoy.

We eventually arrived in Worcester and I set about trying to figure out how to get from the bus station to the hotel. The fact that the person who had offered to pick me up forgot her cell phone wound up being a smaller problem than it sounds like -- an ex-musician (he explained wistfully that he let drugs distract him from a promising rock career) saw my guitar case and the sling I was wearing, heard me mention the address of the hotel, and told me which city bus to catch and where to get on. He even offered to carry my guitar from the Greyhound station to the city bus stop for me.

So I finally did make it to the convention, where I was greeted by friends who made it clear that they were glad to see me. And that's where I'll pick up in my next entry.