Back "home"

(started Saturday 11/28)

We've been back in the Bay Area for nearly 3 1/2 weeks now, minus a quick side trip to Willits (more on that later). We stayed in San Francisco for a couple of nights and in Cupertino for almost 2 weeks, and right now we're house- and cat-sitting for friends in San Carlos who are on vacation. WE HAVE THE HOUSE TO OURSELVES...it's so weird. We visited our friends who own Wild Hog Winery and our friends who make really good coffee. We went to two of the restaurants we used to go to several times a week - Kokila's Kitchen and Freedom Burrito - and they remembered us!

Unlike the rest of the trip, both of us know where we're going and how to get there when we get in the car. We don't have to look up vegetarian restaurants online or ask the people we're staying with if there's anything good in the area. We can walk into sessions easily, without wondering what the level of musicianship is or if anyone will talk to us. Most importantly, we have bunches and bunches of friends to see, to the point where today (Saturday) actually feels like a weekend because we only have plans for dinner instead of for most of the day. Our time here has been a blur of lunches, dinners, and coffees. We've retrieved guitars that were left with various people, listened to a couple of my former piano and fiddle students play, and visited the guitar class that William used to go to. A friend organized a small session for us in San Francisco, other friends hosted and joined us for William's birthday dinners (3 of them!), and another friend invited us over for Thanksgiving with just her and her daughter. We even spent a Friday night playing Rock Band - you only find out who your real friends are after you've belted out Queen and Talking Heads songs at them.

So...now what?

(continued on Monday evening, 11/30)

Today we spent hours in our storage unit, looking through boxes for books and clothes and whatnot that we wanted to ship or take with us. We mailed 4 boxes to General Delivery in Mt. Vernon and hopefully we will pick them up next Monday. We got two folding bicycles into the car - William's Brompton and my Dahon - as well as a suitcase and an extra guitar and some flutes. We are relatively optimistic that we made the correct decisions because we don't plan to come back here to get everything else until spring at the earliest...

Last night we went to the Irish music session at O'Flaherty's and got to see a few musicians that we hadn't seen yet. (Today I found out that all the famous people were at the Plough and Stars in San Francisco last night - sigh). We had Irish coffees and exchanged the usual sort of barbed banter that passes for humor among Irish musicians. There were compliments given and suggestions made and it almost felt like we had never left at all. But, on Wednesday, we will cram everything back in the car and head north, stopping for a night or two in Eugene and in Portland, OR and arriving in Mt. Vernon on Saturday.

I plan to keep this blog going - it is, after all, attached to our band website - and will be chronicling our search for normal things like a house, jobs, and really good coffee as well as anything musical that we get up to in the future. We do have another blog that should be maintained fairly regularly from now on; it's at http://wgdmcu.blogspot.com/ and is all about food and gardening. I have a post up there about the gardening workshop in Willits, with more on that to follow soon, and there's also a post about my recent adventure harvesting honey in our friend Charlotte's backyard in Cupertino.

If you've been reading along during our journey, please consider commenting on this post or sending us an email at castlerockmusic@gmail.com - we would love to hear from you!