119th day sober. The air quality's at around 160 and the 130 air last night was kicking my ass so ... I'm not gonna play. The last time the air was this bad, I wasn't out playing trumpet in it, just riding my bike which wasn't much of a problem. But playing trumpet ... wow. Make it kind of amazing that so many old-time players smoked.
I tried out the 3D mouthpiece last night and it's interesting. Enough so that I was going to take it busking today. For my $30 I've essentially "bought" being able to go to a couple of notes higher with more ease, but it also has a "sharper" tone.
But all I could think about for today was going back over to the music store and having another look through that table of mouthpieces. I took an extra $100 cash with me, and a magnifying glass to look at the little stamped numbers on mouthpieces, and was out the door a couple of minutes before 3. I was at Park Avenue Music at 3:40 or so, and they were closed.
Needless to say I was pretty disappointed, but on my ride back downtown I had plenty of time to think about it and I realized this was the same sort of situation as in my first few years on Ebay. There were a lot of places with hours too weird, or in a weird location, or whoever ran the place weird or even creepy, that I would get deals in most people didn't go there.
Park Avenue Music has contracts with all the high school bands and such things, so they're not really all about walk-ins. They're right down the road from Bellermine, where drum and bugle corps' train, and across the street from a big old high school, and not hard to find in any case being diagonally across from the Rosicrucian Museum. But Joe Blow Guitar Player isn't walking in on a whim. Or Mrs. Soccer Mom whose kid thinks he might want to try the trumpet. If the place were not so walk-in-unfriendly, I'd not find killer deals like I have because the mouthpieces would have been all bought up.
Oh, well, I thought, I'll find a way to spend some time then go see the free concert at the university. I went to Recycle Book Store for a Kurt Vonnegut book I've not read yet, then Whole Foods for some hot food and a cold can of seltzer water and a bottle of fancy coffee. Then over to Lee's for a couple of butter croissants, one for now and one to have with the coffee while at the concert. And going to the university to eat the first croissant, I'd have a chance to nose around and see the concert being set up.
So I rode around and didn't see any signs of anything starting, and finally picked out a bench to set on by the library, after moving a book someone had left, some novel with an African-American slant. Then a skinny black guy walked up and I said, "I'm sorry, were you sitting here?" and he said he wasn't, and it turned out we were both interested in the concert, but not sure if it was this week or next. We finally found a sign put up and it's for next week.
So that was that. He was a math major, and I said I guessed we were both bad at math, regarding dates and he had a real laugh. I offered him a croissant (that sneaky guy in Lee's had put 3 in the bag when I'd only asked for 2) but he said he didn't like them much.
After eating one myself, I stopped by the Amazon place for bubble mailers and the guy there said I ought to come before 5, because that's when they toss out the trash. I got two, anyway.
Then I rode on home. This awful air isn't even that great to ride in.
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