Mike's US Tour '08 (Part 1: Duckon)

[fleetfootmike]

So, Yahoo! UK kindly agreed to let me go attend YAPC::NA, a Perl conference at IIT in Chicago.

A quick peek at the US SF convention calendar revealed Duckon in Chicago the weekend before, and Contata the weekend after, and a little negotiation with my boss got me the vacation to do it, so....

Without further ado, and with the unwitting (at least in part) sponsorship of Yahoo! UK Ltd, here is...

Thu 12 Jun

Up at 0500, last minute case rearrangement, and then Anne ran me to the station in time for the 0610. On time (which, while not unusual, is cause for celebration), and made it to the Picadilly line by 0700, and was walking up to Virgin Atlantic check in/bag drop at 0800. First annoying discovery - my case is well over the 50lb limit. Off to the shopping area, and pick up a cheap and cheerful holdall, and repack.
There was my second mistake. Repacking in a hurry, I forgot the stupid liquids rule, and transferred toiletries to the holdall, which I was proposing to use as carry on baggage. Needless to say, security picked up on this, and confiscated them.
Bad luck comes in threes. All went well till I misread the departure gate (28) as 20, which (with a crossed-zero font and a badly focussed TV) is not that hard to do...
For those who haven't done that at Heathrow? Once you're through into the whole gate area, getting back out to a different group of gates is actually annoyingly hard - you have to go back out through 'Connecting Flights' and security AGAIN. And so I went from being probably the first person at the gate to being hot, cross and one of the last. On the good side, I got a charming gate assistant, and managed to get my seat changed to exit row without paying the $75/£40...
We wound up sitting at the gate for half an hour after boarding, due to bad weather at Heathrow, followed by another half hour queueing for a takeoff slot, before we finally got airborne. Read "Pragmatic Programming", wrote a song, landed, impressively, on time at 1400 local, to be met by the wondrous billroper.
Bill's detailed most of that day on his LJ - suffice it to say I (and mysticfig) got left holding the baby at one point. Finally got to bed around 2330...

Fri 13 Jun

...and, in what became a pattern for the trip, had a lousy night's sleep. No blame to billroper & daisy_knotwise's spare bed, just one of those nights. Woke around 0700 with brain going "Oi! Mush! It's 1300. Where are the four mugs of tea I should have had!???" and a cracking headache. Tea, breakfast, and back to bed, eventually surfacing around 1100.
And so to Duckon, via Frys, where I splurged about $360 on about £300 worth of hi-tech gear (including James' Xmas present, but don't tell James). Checked in to the room, to be advised by janmagic and ericcoleman (later confirmed by a phonecall) that my roommates (filker0 & spiritdance) were stuck in Cedar Rapids in the middle of the Big Wet that was Iowa surrounded by water. Helped billroper unpack and set up his stall (18' of filk CDs). Noticed lack of mine.
We scurried out for food (a very un-British in its speed Chinese) and back in time for a panel on how to jam, with chirosinger, mofilker and chasophonic) - great fun, including an accordion/guitar version of "Whiter Shade Of Pale", and I got to use anach's rather nice Trinity College octave mandolin.
And thence to the filk circle, which was fun and laid back - borrowed an acoustic for a couple of songs, but spent most of my time noodling on the OM. High spots included mrgoodwraith's Before The Dawn filk, a jam on a tune with ericcoleman and sweetmusic_27, jamming with sexybass, and just generally chilling.
Bed, in (in the absence of anyone else in the room) the king-size. Uncomfortable.

Sat 14 Jun

Breakfasted with almeda and sister, thence to Bill's stall. Ran into jerusha, and between us hatched devious plan to get my CDs to Bill in time for his next con. Phoned Anne, to ask her to give 5 CDs to Heather Dale at oreouk & demoneyes housefilk/concert the following day, so I could get them off Heather at Contata, give them to jerusha, and she could give them to billroper at the next WindyCon meeting. And thus was the plan for fannishpost.com born....
Panels - one with sexybass and mysticfig on recording your own CD, and then with gundo, ericcoleman and mofilker on the care and feeding of stringed instruments (Mike's Advice On Care Of Guitars: support and befriend your local luthier. You know it makes sense.).
Caught (for the first time) Ookla The Mok in concert, followed by the always brilliant mysticfig and kaath9, and then had dinner with them plus Rand. We talked rock, particularly the Who. Fun :) After that, did a bit of instaband practice with mysticfig, kaath9 and chirosinger, caught mofilker and then sexybass and sposter's sets, before waiting for toyboatband (gundo, ericcoleman, anach and mike46)'s to start.
This took forever, due to them being on after the very slow art auction, but start they eventually did. Kickass high-energy rock arrangements (and in some cases wholesale re-factoring) of filk standards. mysticfigand I joined them on stage for Sweet Home Chicago/Mary O'Meara at the end, which was fun. (My one comment? Less distortion in the rhythm guitar sounds at stage levels, guys :) )
Noodled in the hall with filker0 (who arrived early/mid evening with spiritdanceand family) and others for a while, before heading to bed.... sofa-bed this time and, you guessed it, still uncomfortable.

Sun 15 Jun

Breakfast with D+M and kids, then off up to the room again to pack ready for checkout and run through stuff for my set. Tried writing a tune for "This Is My Land", unable to come up with anything not trite and lame.
Set went well (despite being in the furthest away room), packed audience, the loan of billroper's gorgeous Guild, anach's octave mando and filker0's Succubus, and help from spiritdance and sweetmusic_27 all made it great fun. Set list was (roughly) Before The Dawn, Reasons, Over The Hills And Far Away (the Sharpe theme), Crow On The Cradle (Show of Hands style), Lily Of Barbary (PJ Wright), Jack, Childhood's End, Sic Transit (Ferry On Thursday), Cassandra, Leviathan's Farewell and Three Days Away. phillip2637 recorded it, and has it as MP3s which I certainly have no problem with folks hearing. (Was asked for an encore, completely spaced on the fact I'd pencilled in "Never Going Back Again".).
After that, watched (and enjoyed) Riverfolk (chirosinger and chasophonic)'s excellent set. Grabbed lunch from the consuite, ran through instaband stuff again (for the benefit of anach on bass) in time to perform our song (Queen's '39) at the closing ceremony.

After that, spiritdance gave me a ride to IIT in time to check in before the start of YAPC::NA.

Duckon in summary? Had a ball. Thanks to janmagic for letting me have a set, and everyone (including the folks I forgot to namecheck) for making me feel welcome.

Comments

[phillip2637.livejournal.com]

If you've been able to collect the MP3s, let me know and I'll clear them off that server. (It doesn't have a great deal of capacity and I mostly use it as a temporary transfer point.) You may, of course, distribute copies as you see fit. :-)

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

Will do so this evening :)

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

remove at will :)

[flabosib.livejournal.com]

I have the tea and brewed myself a lovely pot of tea last night. It didn't "solve" everything, but it did help very much.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

You're more than welcome :)

[ericcoleman]

My one comment? Less distortion in the rhythm guitar sounds at stage levels, guys :)

We'll definitely work with that. The comments on this show gave us a ton of ideas to work on.

Oh, and I didn't get a chance to ask you at the con. You reset the Pod near the end. I liked the sound, did you change the amp, or just the overdrive? I sometimes wish that the Pod turned back on to the sound you had when you turned it off, even if you didn't save it. I have lost more good setting because it doesn't.

Oh, and I would love to hear your show, since I was a gerbil and missed it.

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

All I did was pull the drive back a bit, and the output level up a bit.

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

As an aside... that 'HiWatt' sound you had dialed up for me works a lot better if it's backed off just a shade. You should find that if you juggle it just right, it'll go almost clean if you play gently, and get that Pete Townshend crunch if you thrash it. That's certainly what I was aiming for.

[singingpatient.livejournal.com]

hey Mike, Carla Ulbrich here. just "friended" you (another noun verbified, so sorry, proper English, lying in its grave)
great getting to know you a bit and watching you ahve so much fun on stage @ contata. maybe i'll see you in Heathrow! :)
or better yet, somewhere (anywhere) else in England (or another con here stateside)
tata old chap
hope you had a safe ride home and you and luggage are swiftly reunited

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

Nice to meet you, too :)

[chirosinger.livejournal.com]

Hiya Mike! It was great to fianlly meet you and to play with you. Hopefully Graham, Chas, Bonnie and I will get the chance to head over your way sometime. I hear y'all have some great conventions on the Eastern side of the pond.