January 12, 2025
Piano recital
Saturday evening
I left Vanport just before dusk Saturday night. Our flight leaves early Monday morning so that leaves us only tomorrow to prepare for departure, work I had expected to start this afternoon until the magical visit to Vanport at the end drained the rest of the day. We’ll start here though by picking up the tail end of Saturday, starting with the drive back to the apartment.
My timing on the drive home was perfect for the conditions, especially because both night vision and driving into a glare are problems for me at the moment. it was just turning dusk when I left Vanport and the sun was below the horizon; but it was still light enough so that headlights didn’t start popping up until I was about two miles from home and just approaching the Broadway Bridge.
When I arrived I drove straightaway to Elizabeth’s condo to drop off the car in the garage. I unloaded the Raven and left it behind, not planning to see it again until we return to Portland in seven weeks. I was about twenty yards from the car when I remembered Elizabeth’s request that I reset the channel on the radio to Portland’s all-classical station, the only one she only listens to apparently. I was going to just keep walking - after all, I had explained how easy it was to find her channel to her just yesterday - but finally decided it was such an easy ask that I might as well walk back to the car.
After restarting the car, resetting the radio and shutting down again I was about to leave the car when I noticed that there was a piece of trash on the passenger seat that I might as well collect too. When I picked it up though I found one more thing - a chocolate bar wrapper, the one that Rachael bought for me on one of the drives down in California. There were two squares left in it still, both still crisp and unmelted (so apparently Andrea hadn’t been sitting on them on the drive north). I relished them leaving the car for the second time. Good karma.
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Sunday
For some reason I decided to walk down to Caffe Umbria for my last morning ritual before leaving town. Tomorrow’s flight leaves at eight AM so we’ll be leaving too early for breakfast here then. I’m out somewhat later than usual, the sky is lighter, and although there’s the sound of the crows everywhere above, they’re more dispersed now.
It turns out to have been a fortuitous spontaneous choice to come here, because I find myself seated next to two other elderly bicyclists, two men from eastern Oregon - one is from Burns, the other from Milton-Freewater just shy of the state line north of Pendleton. They’re in an animated conversation about their recent mishaps - one nearly got hit in the eye by a golf ball, which certainly resonates with my recent experience; and the other took a fall, chipped a bone, and is in recovery mode. Neither one was wearing a helmet of course.
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I’ve got my right ear busy eavesdropping and my left eye on the blog until time comes to leave and get to work preparing for departure. The Burns guy left sometime ago, but as I leave I stop to break the ice with Mr. Milton-Freewater and we have an interesting chat. He has a good story to tell about the place he grew up in: Ferndale, a nowhere village just north of Milton-Freewater. There’s nothing much left of Ferndale now, but as it happens I’ve seen what little there is when Rachael and I biked from Walla Walla to Pendleton on our Walla Walla Loop ride back in 2015, one of a series of early spring mini-tours we took preparing ourselves for the French Alps. We rode the quietest route south, leaving busy Highway 11 for the much quieter, nearly empty Milton Highway that parallels it. That would have taken us right past his childhood home.
Chris Wheeler, for that’s the man’s name (and what a great handle for a biker!) immediately whips out his phone and scrolls to a photograph of the barn from his childhood home, with him and a friend standing on the ridge line back in 1976 painting a Bennington flag onto the roof as a bicentennial celebration.
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And then Chris proceeds to talk about the book he’s written about his childhood and is preparing to self-publish: Seven Summers, under the pen name Duse Pommy. He says he’ll send me a signed copy when it comes out, which I’ll look forward to reading.
So that makes for a serendipitous start to the morning, but it’s time to get to work so I head back to the apartment to start preparing for tomorrow’s flight.
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I don’t know why, but I just didn’t foresee see that today would turn into one last good story day for the road. As a setup, here’s the situation. As usual we’re in the middle of the Big Sort, splitting our belongings into what stays behind in the storage locker and what goes with us on the flight to Tucson. All morning long Rocky and I will confuse each other describing some item and asking whether it stays or goes until we finally clarify things by just barking Portland or Tucson as the planned destination for each.
And we’re dealing with significant time constraints, two of them. One is access to the storage locker, which is only open on Sundays between ten and four. Within that time then we need to retrieve the bikes and a few other things from storage (like the photographs from our Switzerland tour, since now I’ve got a journal to go with them - I’ll plan on writing that one up in Tucson once I’m done with the lost Andalucia journal); and we have to get all of the Portland items into the unit before it closes for the day.
The second constraint tightens our time box even further though. I’m attending a piano recital over at Lincoln Hall on the PSU campus with Elizabeth this afternoon. The concert starts at four and the plan is that I’ll meet Elizabeth at the concert, thinking I’ll be done with the storage unit by early afternoon (because I thought I was going to start in yesterday afternoon, before Vanport happened) and then walk up there with the camera and take a few last minute photos before we leave.
So, there’s still a lot of work to fit into our five hour window. As soon as I’m home at ten, Rachael and I prepare to walk across the street to take a first load of Portland items and bring back the suitcased Bike Fridays and any Tucson items that are still in storage.
Simple enough, except for two emergent, significant problems. One is my iPad, which fell victim to a water hazard last night when an open glass of water got knocked over on the table (a result of the fact of my new night vision issues) and apparently some splashed into the charging port; so this morning the battery is draining fast and won’t take a charge. At the last minute I may have destroyed my iPad and that photo shoot of the city might have turned into to a trip to the Apple Store to buy a new iPad.
First though we try first aid, and after several rounds of propping a hair drier in front of it the thing gradually returns to life. A big cheer is heard the first time we see that it’s still got life in it and starts taking a charge.
The other emergent problem is even worse though, because even though one of us was just over at the unit a day or two ago, this morning neither of us can find the key to our padlock. It’s obviously here somewhere, but after about twenty minutes of looking everywhere in this tiny matchbox studio we’re living in - time, btw, that’s taken out of our five hour accessibility window - we give it up. The recourse is to pay the storage unit’s $100 fee to cut the lock off, the fear is that this isn’t work that can occur on a Sunday morning and we may not be flying to Tucson tomorrow after all.
So it’s with more than a little anxiety that we walk across the street to discuss the problem, and there’s a second cheer heard when we’re told it’s no problem at all and the lock gets cut off while we’re standing there. Game on again.
We drop off our first set of Portland items, we take the bikes back across the street, and then I return to the unit to look for more Tucson items while Rachael retrieves the new combination lock we planned to switch to anyway so we wouldn’t need to be dependent on the key.
All of this takes time, so by around noon I call Elizabeth and say that circumstances have changed and I’ll meet her at the streetcar stop in front of her door and we’ll ride up together. But that plan gets trashed too by one final snafu when I leave behind in the unit a box that belongs to our apartment owner - we’d used it to carry stuff across the street and in a daft moment I set it on top of the heap inside the unit instead of on the outside of the door immediately so I couldn’t screw myself up.
Fortunately I thought of this when I’m walking away, or we’d have to explain to our host why we’d locked something of his away for the next two months. Unfortunately, for some reason I can’t open the combo lock. It’s the issue with my eyes again. When my blind eye gets agitated by the light I start seeing double and I can’t line the numbers up correctly. Rachael will have to come across the street, unlock it and retrieve the host’s box while I leave for the concert because I’m absolutely out of time. It’s 3:15 now, and there isn’t even time to do anything but change my clothes, but I cobble that too and end up standing waiting at the streetcar stop at 3:30, in my short pants and Pendleton but without a rain coat.
On the plus side, we don’t get charged rhe $100 lock fee because it’s our first violation in seven years. So all we’re really out is a whole lot of stress, that and the embarrassment of showing up for an International Piano Recital event in the middle of the winter, in short pants. Elizabeth, who is extremely appearance conscious , will be thrilled by that, I’m sure.
I check the next arrival time for the next streetcar, and it’s not for another 25 minutes. So that’s out. I pull out the phone to call Uber, and am shocked that rather than the usual one to five minute wait it’s forty minutes! All the resources must get sucked up getting people to afternoon events.
So I walk - fast, because it’s 3:30 now and it’s nearly a fast half hour to Lincoln Hall. I’ll just make it if I pedal fast. Oh, and I still have shin splints. I’m lucky though because it’s all uphill and they don’t really bother me on uphills so I can keep a brisk 3-1/2 to 4 mph average, except when I’m stopped for street lights. And when I’m stopped I take advantage of it to grab photos of radiant skyscrapers backed by gloomy skies.
I make it, barely. I’m approaching the concert hall at 3:57, phone Elizabeth to get in line to pick up our tickets at the will call window, and we’re in our seats about two minutes before the program director comes on stage to give his regrets that the featured performer is a now show and we have a guest pianist replacing him.
And then he proceeds to tell his own nightmarish good story. T scheduled performer, Denes Varjon, is hospitalized in Budapest, the victim of a devastating flu that the city is suffering from. In his case he suddenly became violently ill in the middle of a performance and had to be rushed to the hospital. So he’s a no show.
Instead, he tells us of his interesting day when he called something like 250 upcoming stars from around the world before he finally finds one who’s free and has a performance program prepared, rehearsed, and ready. He’s Rodolfo Leone, a young Italian (oh, he’s cute! Elizabeth will say appreciatively when he walks on stage) living in Los Angeles at the moment. Perfect! Just one problem: Los Angeles is burning down in their horrible, out of control fires that are destroying one neighborhood after another. Rodolfo tells our program director that he can come, if he flies out immediately while there’s a brief break in the winds and flights can get out.
It’s an excellent concert, all compositions that work for me: Schubert, Beethoven, Chopin - really, I prefer this to the planned program. And the performer is given a very warm welcome and standing ovations both because he’s very good and coincidentally quite cute, but also because everyone is appreciative of his ability to be here at all. I especially enjoy Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata, a work I know and enjoy hearing live.
And like my joy last week in seeing that cinema still works, I have the same reaction tonight. Piano recitals and chamber music in general are probably my favorite classical performances. I love the music itself, but also the intimacy and the visuals of watching the performers faces and interactions. Tonight we’re sitting on the wrong (non-keyboard) side of the auditorium, but I’m happy to see that my vision continues to improve and tonight I can see his hands on the keyboard reflected on the underside of the grand piano’s uplifted cover.
The second half of the program is a different situation though. I love Chopin, and as a treat because the audience is viewing a substitute artist we get an encore of a second, longer Chopin work. Unfortunately it’s marred when I feel a buzzing in my pants and hear a very faint sound of music. It’s my phone, alerting me that it’s time for my evening vitamins. The phone is on airplane mode, and will keep reminding me every five minutes unless I can figure out how to turn the damn thing off.
I’ve only had this phone for a week or two, and I can’t figure out how to turn the damn thing off. Fortunately after the second alarm buzzes without the accompanying music that must have been from the piano I realize it will thankfully be silent, but I keep surreptitiously trying to turn the alarm off, trying to get to the screen with the right icon, which I incorrectly think is the ‘settings’ one. I finally find it, but when I tap it I miss it because of the double vision thing I hit its immediate neighbor, the flashlight icon. And instantly there’s a beam of light shooting up to the ceiling. Lord, what a mortifying nightmare.
So I immediately slap my right hand on top of it and clutch it against my leg, putting it into a light lock for the rest of the performance, which is something like a half hour, long enough that my right hand is cramping by the end.
Outstanding concert though, and well worth another round of standing ovations at the end. Afterwards Elizabeth and I step outside and rush to the streetcar, which by is just arriving; and when we’re back in the neighborhood we stop to admire the Christmas tree in Jamieson Park. Elizabeth is a huge Christmas fan (she’s gone to see the nutcracker suite every year for something like twenty years straight) and then I head back to the apartment because my work is not done yet. Our Uber driver arrives at 5 AM and I still haven’t packed or finishing suitcasing Rachael’s Bike Friday.
I’m still sorting out my gear at nine when Rachael gives up for the day and heads for bed. Most of my work needs to take place at her end of the room so the light’s on while I’m working and she’s trying to sleep.
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3 days ago
It’s eleven by the time I’m finally done at the far end and can turn the light off. And then I do a quick mental calculation and decide there will be time in the morning to finish up before the taxi arrives. So I call it a night.
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3 days ago
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