Sleeping Not

Something I didn’t expect when I started doing these tours with Yanni is how little time I would actually spend playing my hammer dulcimer. You’d think that as a touring musician the opposite would be true. But in reality the traveling, and then recovering from the traveling takes up most of our time.

Even when we have a day off like we did yesterday it is quite often preceded by an overnight bus ride. I still haven’t gotten sleeping on a bus down yet and I’m envious when I walk through the sleeping quarters and hear people snoring. I’ve always been a very light sleeper, startled by the tiniest distractions and the long ride to Anaheim Tuesday night was full of them.

Just as I was dozing off one of my bus mates who will remain nameless decided to head back to the front of the bus and hang out with the stay-up-all-night folks for a while. This person unfortunately left their cell phone in the bunk. It took about ten unanswered phone calls before I slipped my street clothes back on and made my way to the front to let them know. Now this may not sound like a big deal but have you ever tried getting dressed in coffin sized quarters?

The offending party apologized profusely and took care of the problem as the bus continued its thump and bump journey over America’s potholes. For even the most restless person exhaustion eventually takes over and you fall asleep. However sleep was short lived for me that night as another of my bus mates, who was so anxious to get back home that he set the alarm on his palm pilot for 5:20am to sure he was ready for our predicted 6am arrival. Unfortunately he awoke around 5am and headed to the front of the bus to ride shotgun with the driver. He of course forgot to take the Palm Pilot along with him. I guess I let it go through its cycle of ringing and sleeping about five times before I got out of bed to stand in the isle and figure out where the sound was coming from. The hardest part was standing there listening to everyone else snore while I waited for the alarm. We all had a good laugh about it later.

Yesterday’s off helped me catch up on my sleep so I decided to get in a little practicing just for fun this afternoon. It was wonderful and I spent most of my learning learn “Girl from Ipanema” on my linear chromatic hammer dulcimer. I also remembered that I packed a small ukulele (as opposed to a big ukulele) to play around with. It was given to me before I left and I don’t know much about it. I’m going to take it with me on the bus this afternoon and see if we can get some singing going again. Hopefully someone knows more than I do about how to play it. ¶ 8:16 PM