Day 25 "In the trenches" (On the Road Again edition)

En route to San Antonio for the gathering of the tribes. Will try to blog or live-blog the conference as we go. You know it's TMEA weekend when you run into 3 different colleagues in the airport security line--and thank God! again for a small regional airport where it takes 12 minutes to check in and clear security--and 2 different graduate students who ask if you'll be free in SA for short conferences. Actually, we're at a point now where traveling, except for the ever-present stress of trying to get bulky and fragile musical instruments past TSA and airline watchdogs, is actually relaxing--where you can sit on an airplane and read for an hour, or in a hotel room where only people to whom you've given your cell number can find you. I expect to be reasonably bored with the majority of TMEA hour-by-hour stuff--because the convention and its vast merchandise displays are primarily geared toward K-12 educators--but I'm relishing the opportunity to get out of town for a trip where I don't have to play a gig. I like playing gigs, but for the kind of stuff that we do, it's not really just "show up, do sound check, play 3 hours, split for the after-party." For us, usually, we're "on-stage" (with donors, hosts, students, administrators, or whoever else is entitled to a piece of our time) pretty much from when we land to when we take off.

This is different, and welcome.