It's a dear...

Wilderness

Our hotel is called the Wilderness Edge; so obviously Steve's mac decided to blow up in homage to survivalist instincts.
We played pool, table tennis and table air hockey, whilst being watched by an inquisitive deer; but after 2 hours that was enough of that!
My computer was still alive so I enjoyed watching the last 2 episodes of Danish drama The Killing, as well as episodes of Silk and Monroe...
What? We're here to work are we?
Gig tonight - but we have been told there's lots of stuff on in Pinawa tonight [population 1500] - so who knows what will happen.
Richard has been at the lights [and the lighting guy] for 2 hours yesterday, and since 10am - such fun!... so they should be spectacular.
This is the Deer capital of Manitoba, as evidenced mainly by the large amount of poo pellets all over the ground... I have seen 6 actual deer. No bears yet.
We did find that wonderful Northern American thing [in small places mainly], the espresso-coffee-shop-plus-bookshop... hoorah for that.... but I did take Mike on an excursion trying to find it... it is indeed 200 metres from the hotel.
Wilderness Edge...? ...not quite.

The weather turns

This was the view out of my bedroom window when I awoke on Monday morning... lovely, but not perhaps what one expects in [even the north] of the Southern States in late March...

The snow did finally disappear, however... it felt as if this was presaging the weather in Canada, however, sitting here in Winnipeg, it is much milder, and was sunny when we arrived.

West Jefferson was a lovely community, and a very appreciative audience... and one of the best at joining in... their ra-ta-ta-ta-tas in Chanson d'amour were fff ! Also their usual lighting person was ill, and so Jim stepped into the breach, and did a splendid job. I got a bit of cycling in in the hotel gym, before we spent a day travelling up north.

The pilot on the flight from Toronto to Winnipeg was retiring after 40 years (luckily he did not decide to go out with a bang); thus, for the first time, we witnessed an airport custom, at both airports the plane was given a guard of honour by the firetrucks and given a ritual soaking.... cool!

So we are here in MB... off to Pinawa at lunchtime after a morning in Winnipeg...

Carole...

Forgot to mention below what a splendour it was to have Carole Sterckx with us for our gigs at Paris and for the bulk of the German adventure… ..always a cheery countenance, and a great help selling our CDs (even when we have forgotten to tell her that we are not allowed to!), and of course, keeping in touch with our friends worldwide…

Her German language expertise, also a wonderful help on the latter tour. We are lucky she can get time off from her sensible job at the German Historical Institute London to accompany us.

…and whilst forgetting things, also forgot to mention that we had another pianist in Bonn – Sam Hogarth – we met him at a concert in a barn in Surrey last summer, and he works at the Cologne Opera, playing and conducting. He was therefore very much on hand for a gig in Bonn; he also has a passion for jazz – perfect for us!!

Wright Brothers

Fantastic morning at the field where the Wright Brothers first achieved powered human flight...
...a brilliant museum with this great art deco memorial on Kill Devil Hill (down which they took a memorable failed attempt to fly which nearly killed Wilbur!)

Their self-taught engineering was quite remarkable, and their perseverance too. Unlike the reverse story later in the century, it was the Americans who did not want to invest in the new technology and so they travelled to Europe to get some more funding. Poor old Frank Whittle had the opposite journey with the jet engine just a few short decades later.

I was delighted to learn that they thought that the power bit was the easy part, and that control was king, so they did some 600 test glide flights to get the plane structure correct, and tested 200 wing designs in their tiny wind tunnel... before they got to fly the kitty Hawk with its (light) engine, which they also built... wonderful endeavour...

And as it says in the museum... from Kitty Hawk to the Moon in 66 years....

Shops for the London Quartet

Well, America is consumer-driven... and we found we each had a shop all for ourselves [yep, no-one else was there hardly]....

hmmmm...

I was going to go to the gym....