The travel day

I'm sitting in the airport feeling as anxious as if I were one of those people who hates to get on an airplane. But nothing about this is about airplanes. In fact, the flight is the soothing part. I also feel like I'm dragging this much stuff with me.

I'm getting ready to go to the Vancouver Early Music workshop "The Apotheosis of the French Baroque," and get my butt kicked for the next two weeks. (The picture is the one they're using on their brochure, by the way.)On the good side, I'll be getting my butt kicked by some pretty good people.
Here's the list of the designated butt-kickers for the week: Marc Destrubé, violin: Wilbert Hazelzet, flute: Jacques Ogg, harpsichord & fortepiano: Jaap ter Linden, viola da gamba & cello; Julie Andrijeski, baroque dance & violin: and lectures, etc. by Ton Amir, harpsichord builder & lecturer.
Kind of looks like a summer vacation for people from the Netherlands, doesn't it? Interesting they'd choose somewhere cold & rainy like Vancouver for their summer vacation. Or maybe when Vancouver put this together, this was the only group of people who would come to a cold rainy place in the middle of the summer. I will have to be on my best behavior and not complain about how cold it is there, since I know that I am the coldest person on the planet.

It's supposed to be in the 60s and rainy this week and in my suitcase I have three wool sweaters, I'm carrying another onto the plane, and I have a coat!! Of course I also have an umbrella.
I have exactly two short sleeved shirts, mostly for the mottos on them: One says "Earlier than Thou" and the other says "Go Figure" and has the first note of Chaos by Rebel on it (which has every note of the scale in the figure).
These shirts are one of the moneymaking schemes of a group called KatastroPhe. There is noplace else that I can wear these nerdy t-shirts and have anybody grasp what they mean. The other funny part about the earlier than thou shirt, is that I will probably be the oldest person there. I'm pretty sure I'm older than most of the faculty.

Back to my anxiety: I am woefully unprepared for this. This is a competitive program, i.e. you have to audition to get in. I can only imagine I was accepted because they didn't have enough full-paying students apply. I have some very nice recordings of the pieces I intend to play. They sound nothing like the versions I play. I made the really woeful mistake of picking one piece that had been recorded by Jacques Ogg. My version sounds nothing like his. This could be good if I were going in another intelligent direction, but it is just bad. Don't know why I need to go there to have my butt kicked, seems like I can do a pretty good job of it myself.

There's a dance component to this workshop as well. Baroque dance is usually an elegant affair, with lots of lovely hand gestures and pointing of toes. The best I could do in the way of shoes for this event (they were supposed to be soft) were some multi-colored Addidas. And of course once I get all my old-lady arch supports, bunion protectors, hammertoe splints and extra socks stuffed in them, they are about as flexible as army boots. My vision of myself dancing is along the Dumbo Elephant but not quite so graceful line.

We've just been told that our flight is at least a half hour late. This means I probably won't have enough time to get Canadian money in the Seattle airport. It's good to have something non-musical to worry about, though this is pretty low on my list of things that matter. Obviously they'll change money in the airport in Canada, too. I just don't want to give Bank of America another cent of my money in moneychanging fees.