The Globetrotting Geek

Friday/Shabbat – Day 299/Day 300

May 27, 2013

Friday was mostly insignificant as it was in the most part comprised of a nine hour drive down from the Redwood Forest to the city of San Fransisco.

Despite packing our bags in under an hour, we arrived three hours behind schedule. Waiting for me at Wharton West, the graduate MBA campus of Penn, were my parents who I hadn’t seen now in months.

After hurriedly loading our bags into a side room, we piled into the MBA Orientation Reception to sing what would be for me, my last full set with Glee.

My parents stood at the side, dad mildly uninterested and mum almost beaming. Overall I think they were more glad just to see me and to be given the opportunity to spend time with me. From there we headed to the hostel to dump my bags and then to dinner nearby. As the sky was quickly darkening,  we left in a hurry to buy me some food for the next day and the rest of my night was spent reading in bed till the roommates came home and shut off the light.

The next day was lazy in the morning as it wasn’t till eleven am that I was due to meet with  Flora Franklin, a dear childhood friend who I had last seen over five years ago. Fun fact: her grandfather is none other than Douglas Engelbart, the inventor of the computer mouse and internet pioneer.

The day with Flora was spent walking around the city, visiting sites such as Chinatown and Fisherman’s Wharf, One such enjoyable location, Pier 39, had multiple shops of interest, including a Ghiradelli Store and a Left Handed Store that stocked scissors, guitars and the like. Flora had many surprises in store for me, and her life had taken a few interesting turns, but I’ll leave that for another time.

My afternoon was spent reading more of cryptonomicon and trying to figure out what on earth was going on in it. Eventually I drifted off to sleep, waking just in time for dinner again with mum and dad at their hotel before walking back home and heading to sleep for good.

Thursday – Day 298

May 26, 2013

Thursday we woke up nice and early again to pack our bags and go straight to Ashland High School where we performed our big show numbers for a crowd of screaming teenagers (predominantly girls). They particularly loved our Backstreet Boys medley however, as the newmen new it slightly less it was a somewhat disappointing finish for us. From there it was back on the bus to drive to our final destination state:

California. After a number of hours driving we arrived at the Redwood State Park, where we would be camping for the evening. But before we stopped the bus and unpacked our bags, we made a trip to the Walmart where we stocked up on food and camping goods. All in all, Glee Club massively overstocked for what would be just one night out in the forest.

I personally opted to buy a large orange sweater in XXL size to keep me warm instead of a sleeping bag. This would later prove to be a poor choice despite the low cost of the sweater.

 

Next up was unpacking all the tents, choosing tent-mates and setting everything up. Our food had to be locked away in metallic safes called “bear lockers” to prevent roaming bears from invading our tents at the scent of food or deodorants. Apparently we were right in the center of bear country. After unpacking two groups set off on hikes. I set off with the smaller of the two hoping for a bit of a quieter walk amongst the redwoods. Unfortunately, my group had chosen the path with no view and a steep incline.

The hike was a bit short for my liking, just over an hour and a half, but given my lack of preparedness and a water bottle, that wasn’t a tragedy. As a result of the disappointing trail, we decided to walk down to the river off the path and chill for a few minutes. Luke Massaro, the Glee Club pianist, bent down to test the temperature of the water and, accidentally dropped his sunglasses in.

Thus, I stripped off some of my clothes and dipped in to fetch them out for them. The water was cool, clear, clean and fresh, and despite frustration at getting dirty when I got out, I was glad to have had a few minutes in the water.

From there we walked back to camp where a passer by snapped a photo of my entire hiking group in return for a few snapshots of her.

After arriving back I took a nap till it was time to cook dinner over the campfire (veggie burgers for me) and gladly I felt satiated by the end. We sung for a few hours around the fire until the neighbors started yelling at us. Then Ben Freedman, Adam Parham, JHo and I  tried singing some blue to Teddy Guenin on the harmonica. I wasn’t so fantastic at it but the others’ rhymes were fantastic. When I tired of that I headed to sleep for an uncomfortable night in the cold.

Wednesday – Day 296

Wednesday was a full day of theatre. First up was a chat with the creators of “The Unfortunates” and a short performance and workshop for/with them. One insight that provided was that the show had within it a number of intentional ambiguities, designed to encourage audience interaction rather than to leave them as static ‘viewers’.

A quick coffee/snack later, we were touring the backstage of all the theatres with Eduardo Placer, a PGC graduate, the director of a number of PGC spring shows and now, a major company member for the Shakespeare Festival, playing roles in multiple shows including “My Fair Lady” which we were to see later that afternoon.

During the course of our tour we visited all the major theatres of the festival including ‘The Elizabethan’ open air theatre where we performed a traditional English Glee “Down Among the Dead Men” for the empty house, just to hear the acoustics.

Almost immediately following the tour, it was time to see our next show, Eduardo’s production of “My Fair Lady”. The show ran for three hours and was absolutely delightful. I enjoyed it a bit more than the previous nights show and there was one superb moment when hats flew down from the ceiling to land on the entire cast’s heads as they were dancing. Attached to wires, the hats descended, detaching as the normal force from the heads tripped a little switch. and the hats came off the wires as if by magic.

Following the show, we stood outside the theatre to perform for the exiting audience however, the rain got in before we did and scared most of the crowd away. However, not all was lost as we were called after about a minute, by the executive producer of community who wanted to sponsor an indoor location for us to perform for the twenty to thirty or so people who remained behind wanting to hear us sing. For them, we sung our very hearts out and gave them what I think was the best show we performed all year.

 

After that we had drinks with Eduardo and many clubbers had dinner (though the food in the place we were in didn’t seem much to their liking). Afterwards Eduardo secured tickets for a few of us to go see King Lear. I decided that it would be well worth my while go, especially as the festival was meant to really be a Shakespeare festival moreso than a general theatre festival.

The play was unbelievable and performed in the round, which made for a really engaging experience. Having never read the play before, it kept me riveted and guessing as to what would happen next. Despite my intense enjoyment of “My Fair Lady”, Lear was the most engaging of the shows I saw those twenty four hours and the one to which I also connected the most emotionally.

The show ended at close to midnight and the few of us who had seen the show desperately tried to find cover from the rain outside. I was in a particularly difficult situation myself as I was staying with Katie and Briawna rather than at the hotel and so could just catch a ride with the others. I ended up walking back to the place, arriving far too late, and missing the SMS with Briawna’s number from Stephen who wanted to encourage me to find her in the city.