It's 1 am in chile.

I hope this isn't too late to set my hope for the new year to bring lots and lots of writing. 

And reading. 

And eating. 

And walking.and even more biking after all of that eating. 

And lots of time doing all those things in the presence of/near/in thinking of those I love the most. 

May 2015 be a whacky one!

Let's rock this thing!!

Rotisserie Chicken

It evades me at every turn and yet it's my favorite 'special day treat food' in the whole wide world.

Just thinking about the spits going round and round as the succulent juices are falling and dripping from one little bok bok to another!

It's toooo much god damn it!

Especially when every time I go to purchase said beautiful luscious bird with crispy golden brown skin and moist delicious insides, they are SOLD OUT!

I swear to god!  EVERY SINGLE TIME!

this is not my first chicken run!

I'm talking like 6 times!

I'm not even counting the time in Puerto Rico when my friend Maria and I stopped by 10 different slow cooking natural charcoal rotisserie chicken vans on the side of a highway on the way to an afternoon on an island...but in that case, we did find one with chickens ready!  HWA HA HA!!!!  I'll tell you though, it was concerning, one after the other, "not ready" "not ready" "not ready", at least it was nice to be in a place where the people have a sacred respect and understanding of the happiness a slow roasted chicken on spit can bring to ones life!  I mean, look at that smile on Maria's face!  That's called triumphant!

But today....it's like the chicken gods are out to get me!

What?  Have I not done my part for birds everywhere by hosting my living room to a turtle dove who sprays her caca all over the wall and her food all over the floor?  Yes, yes, she looks so cute, but when you least expect it, while curled up cozy sitting on the sofa watching a quality romantic comedy...yep, that's the moment when a certain odor wafts into the nostrils....yep....even birds do it....bird fart, and for a little thing, that cloud of putridness can reak chaos for hours!

So!  I'd say that whatever gods of birds are around these days owe me one nice juicy chicken!

But NO!

I walk in at a reasonable hour!  6pm!  Dinner time!  You'd THINK THERE'D BE SOME BIRDS TO BUY!

So, while purchasing my 1 singular disapointing bratwurst instead from the lovely meat man at Jenifer Street Market, I feebly whisper what's screaming inside my cranium...

me:"Um...sir?  What time do you usually sell out of chickens?"

He looks over at the empty heat oven display window...below the spits of awesomeness.

butcher guy: Oh...we're out?  Would you look at that!  All sold out!  That was fast!  

me: "Uhh....yeah.  You did.  What time do you normally sell out?"

butcher guy:  "HEY GUYS!  What time did we sell out?!?"

guys....: no response, they obviously feel that this question is below their concern...my guy is also losing interest quickly, they don't understand my deep and unquenchable chickenless suffering.

me: Well...what time do you put them out?

the dudes son/butcher guy (I'm catching on the neurons aren't firing so fast...but he answers after a moment of silence!): 2:30!  Every day!  You want a chicken?  Come at 2:30!

me while wandering down the cereal aisle:  2:30!  Got it!  Next time!  I'm on it!  

I'm GETTING A CHICKEN!!!!!!!

 

Whose gonna be standing at the butcher window come 2:29 and 30 seconds?!?  

OH HELL'S YEAH!

You see this?  That's what I'm talkin' about!  So, tonight, that's what I'll be dreaming of....

mmmmmmm....Chicken......

Inner monologue of a percussionist with a first chair violinist

Hope you're enjoying that chair...... Sure looks comfy.....cuz I'll be back here standing and watching said comfort for the next 4 hours of rehearsal.......hmmmm......bitch. 

No.. I'm not jealous....so you get to play pretty arpeggios for two hours straight....right at the end of all that??  I get a solo!  And when I play?  My hair flies back like Thor!!  Really!!!!  Does your hair fly back when you play?  I didn't think so!

301, 302, 303....we should get an award for our incredible capacity to count measures of rests and not get lost.....accept, you know, when we get lost....and of course the count down is towards a delicate gockenspiel solo of thirty second notes at forte.   Do you ever get lost?  I didn't think so. Do you ever stop playing?

Sometimes, I feel pretty certain half the string section is just pretending. Seriously.....how would anyone ever know with all 200 of you?  

Yes. I have conductor envy. Every time he looks at you, he's all lovey dovey happy and life is perfect.  When he looks at me, his face is red, he's about to fall off the podium, his baton is about to break in half and I don't think he's breathing....and that's my cue to come in!  Enter timpani!!!!

Yeah....that's right....7 different triangle beaters for one triangle. 5 different base drum mallets.  20 different timpani mallets. 6 pairs of cymbals. How many bows you got?

While you're debating with your stand partner who is going to flip the page this time, I'm probably murmuring the words, shit shit shit as I try to flip my music over by myself while holding 50 pound cymbals in my hands and casually strolling in two seconds over to the bass drum for the thunder of god to commence!...you know, just so you know what's going on behind you.....waaaay back there in the pit..

the pit!  Percussion pit. Not a very nice name is it!?!  Like arm pit......but...eh, it's home. 

And when the rehearsal ends and you're hopping off for lunch?  Yeah, I'll be rolling around timpani and base drums for another 30 minutes just as I did before rehearsal skipping breakfast and coming in 30 minutes early....but no, don't offer to help, I got this....it's called bad ass. 

keys and beds

Back before our year traveling, I had the crazy idea that I wanted to take pictures of all the beds we slept in and what key we used to get into our hotel/motel/hostel/shack at each stop.  

I like the concept of trying to catch a glimpse at just one simple thing in all of these different cities and cultures that could be compared and contrasted.

This proved ridiculous and never happened.

As life goes, some of the beds we slept in were not the quality I'd want my mother or grandmother to witness, and the keys....kind of boring!   Or I just never remembered to take pictures of them, even from the very beginning.

When it came down to it, when I was surrounded by beauty, nature, exciting street vendors and adventure around every corner, the last thing I wanted to do when I got home to a hotel was take a picture of a bed or a key!    I just wanted to put my pak down, brush my teeth and in all likeliness, in truth, zone out playing a game of solitaire on Rodolfo's I-phone.  We fought over this simple pleasure daily...who got to play solitaire on the I-phone.

But back to my big idea....looking back.

Here's my current keys:

 

These include: House keys, work key, car key, gym scanny guy, and of course, the required in Wisconsin beer key!

When the trip was upon us, I still remember losing key after key (I had a much thicker keychain before we left to travel) as I quit my job, then moved out of our apartment and lastly left/sold our car to my mother and left her the car keys...traveling, you have no keys!  There's something cleansing about this process.  Keys are a sort of chain holding us to responsibility.  If we lose our wallet or our keys....it's a huge deal.  We know where they are at all times and if we don't, it's trouble, so not having that chain holding you down...just imagine it!  It feels fantastic!!!  Like being a kid again or something!  Responsibility free!

Something that is kind of funny about staying at hostels and hotels in most other countries outside of the States, most places attach a funny looking big thing to the key so that's it's harder to lose or forget...in that, it's really hard to carry around in big cities!  This funny looking log thing hanging out of your pocket!  Or, just a big piece of wood or metal in a rectangle shape with a number or letter on it.  Very rarely did we have those credit card type plastic cards.  Only in bigger cities in the more expensive hotels.  Thank god, because the last 3 times this past year I've stayed at hotels in the States, I've had those plastic credit card keys fail me when coming back from the free Best Western breakfast and had to ask the front desk clerk which room I was in...with a styrofoam coffee cup in one hand and a free donut balanced on my ipad in the other..because I couldn't remember and didn't want to wake someone up unexpectedly while flipping my card thru the magnetic scanner of a strangers door!

So there's a strong momento of the trip!  There's nothing like a real key with a real number connected to it!  This electronic scanner barf is bull crap.

(The same thing would happen to me in Santiago with Rodolfo's fathers door.  I would stare at it for 5 minutes before feeling totally confident that I was on the right floor before sliding the card thru the door scanner and hear that soothing click, that meant, Sarah, you're home free, you didn't fudge it up.  Go you.

Here's our current bed:

I love our bed!  Love it!  Best bed I've ever had!  A Serta mattress lovely thing purchased incredibly cheap (almost scammed really) by some lovely friends of ours who had to move out of town in a hurry....we've slept so amazing!  Nothing like what we had on the trip...or before the trip...really, it's the best sleep of our lives!

I will say I do remember the worst sleep I had on the trip.  Both Rodolfo and I had melt down panic attack moments on the trip that we can laugh at now, but in the moment it was terrifying....feeling like you're trapped in a place you can't be and there's no way out and both were related to not being able to sleep..due to horrible sleep depriving circumstances.  Things we take for granted here in our comfy bed/room/home.  

Chiang Mai.  Son kran week. The hottest days of the thai year. I'd decided that we needed to stay at the cheapest place possible of course.  The room was similar to a prison cell.  The bed was a wooden board with a thick blanket for a mattress and a sheet.  I think there was a very small sink as well.  Well...some time around 1am, I started sobbing.  It was hot, I was tired, there were loud drunken noises from a bar close by and I remember repeating over and over again, I can't do this anymore!  I can't do this anymore!  Rodolfo had to calm me down rubbing my back telling me we just had to try and sleep and that it would all be better in the morning.  The next day we booked ourselves into one of the more mid range hotels that included a lovely breakfast, air conditioning, tv and a MINI FRIDGE!  (which I used to keep Rodolfo's birthday cake in, yes...I was going to make him sleep in a shit hole on his birthday, I'm a horrible wife).  It was heaven!l

I do however remember a certain routine R man and I got into at every pit stop.

When you sleep in a lot of different places, your backpak becomes sort of like what in my imagination is a tortoise shell of many different rooms in one bag.  A Mary Poppins bag of tricks if you would...or layers upon layers of artifacts that need to excavated daily!

We packed our bag in an order of need....necessaries on top and less important further down...the hard to reach spots filled with presents or gadgets, shoes and sweaters.

The very top was always, ALWAYS pajamas, tooth brushes, iphone charger and plug adaptor so after a long day of walking and wandering, we could easily just plop down without thinking and fall asleep.  Under that would be a change of underwear and under that, a plastic bag of clothes and a bag of toiletries.  We kept the laundry detergent and scrub brush in a side pocket (to wash our undies in the bathroom sink....(praise to edificio underwear once again) and our cotton sleep saks, and pillow covers in a bottom pocket of the bag...(pillow covers were actually cotton sarongs we used on the beach as well, but were perfect for all other sorts of needs...even a skirt at times.)

So my big idea never came to fruition.  But it was a cool idea!

Other ideas included, taking a picture of: 

our breakfast every morning (in many countries, breakfast doesn't really exist) 

all types of transportation

the hotel rooms themselves

toilets

all the kinds of crazy fruit

Things that would have been cool to have documented looking back:

 - one spot of skin....I'm pretty darn certain, my shade of skin changed drastically between climates, as did my hair color

 - it would be neat to just know how much I weighed throughout the trip.  I have hunches, but we never had access to a scale.  I do know I lost muscle mass in Asia from the heat, and probably lost bone mass or something in Africa from malnutrition, but boy did we puff back up in Spain and France!

 - the signs/names of hotels we stayed at

 - the signs/names of restaurants we loved

 - the signs/names of parks and cities we loved 

(all 3 I would have used to write good/bad reviews now that I have reliable internet at my finger tips - some places should not exist, others deserve praise!  Also, perhaps some day, it would be fabulous to get to go back and see some of the places we loved the most!)

Yes!  Winter makes me itch for adventure!  Luckily for me, I have a ticket booked to Puerto Rico this coming February with my great and dear friend Maria for a ladies road trip!  Whoo hoo!!!!!