Shabbat/Sunday – Day 292/293
Posted on 26th May 2013
Shabbat was really uneventful for the most part. Read a full Jack Reacher novel (decent).
Next stop was Portland, a city that I knew next to nothing about. Most of the next period was spent actually getting there, and once there late in the evening, most things were closed. Thus I walked around the city for a while, eventually taking myself to see the new Star Trek film. Whilist I quite enjoyed the movie, something felt wrong about it, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. Some subtle plot whole perhaps?
Sunday we woke up early for a couple of gigs. First up was a performance for a Glee Club alum’s parents in law, whom we surprised next to the lake in Portland. This was the first time I wore the ‘Glee Club Polo’, a less formal top for tour that replaces the khaki blazer on occasions when the heat is too much. After that gig, we hiked for a while before coming to a retirement home around thirty minutes away.
Our performance in the retirement home was one of my favourite of the entire year because the residents there, more than any other audience, knew and appreciated our music. The had lived through the popular years of barbershop, knew the jazz standards from their youth, and still had taste for classical music. As much as their applause was a little soft, it continued for quite a while and, following the show they were eager to come and talk to us about our individual involvements in club.
Everyone was hungry after the gig but finding food was difficult for most people due to the Sunday closure of almost the entire city. After my group finally found food (most of it gave me trouble even to look at, deep fried, double fried, triple fried food etc.) we headed off to see Powell’s City of Books, what claimed to be the largest independent book-store in the world.
After arriving at around four pm I spent the next three hours amongst the shelves browsing every genre from Christian fiction to Sporting and Arms, to Sci-Fi to Self-Help. Their collection was truly gigantic. It was most difficult to prevent myself from going all out and buying every book in the store. The picks I ended up leaving with were “Earth Unaware” (Orson Scott Card) and “Cyptonomicon” (Neal Stephenson). Those two I just couldn’t resist.
Dinner was with the PGC band and after everyone was done with their meals, Zach Costa, Theresa Breiner and I headed to a nearby bar. The bar was ok, I drank a Stella while the other two had cocktails. Right next to the bar were two Portland institutions. The first of these was a strip club and such were more common in Portland than in any other US city. In fact, just around the corner, a good fifty percent of Glee Club were at a dubious place by the name of “the Golden Dragon”, trying to get a genuine city experience. The second of the two institutions was Voodoo Donuts, a doughnut shop that offered over thirty different kinds of doughnuts ranging in flavours from grape to fruit loops. The other half of the glee club eventually gather there and gorged on the many flavours until they could eat no more.