When the weather gets hot, people in the Bitan area like to go sit on the suspension bridge in the cooling breeze. They bring little plastic chairs, bags of food, and sometimes little radios with them. Entire families can be seen sitting with their backs to the railing, chatting up the neighbors a few feet down.

The other day I was crossing the bridge carrying the baritone I picked up in Tainan, just back from the repair shop. The guy did a pretty good job fixing the dents in the bell, but not so much on the dents elsewhere…I suppose they were more difficult to get to. I also had no luck in finding a new mouthpiece, as it seems to require a special size they don’t carry here.

An old guy and a woman I took to be either his wife or caretaker saw the ratty baritone case and almost did a little jig of happiness. “What is that? A horn?” he asked excitedly.

“It’s a baritone,” I said.

“What’s that? Is it like a trumpet? I play trumpet, you know,” he said, gleefully humming a little jazz riff. So I opened it up and showed him. I played a few bars of nonsense and we were immediately surrounded by a crowd of onlookers. I handed the instrument to the old guy, and he played a few notes.

The crowd dispersed. I guess they weren’t interested in an old Taiwanese guy playing a baritone so much. It turned out that he played trumpet for decades before hurting his back while lifting a heavy stack of sheet music. It was clear that his wife/caretaker didn’t like his involvement in music one bit, and he felt deprived of it. You would think he’d been locked away from his music for years from the way he acted.

We chatted and I got his name and number so I could invite him to the next Muddy Basin Ramblers performance, whenever that is. He said he knew the head of an instrument museum in Taichung that is full of musical wonders too great to describe, and invited me down to take a look some time.

The wife/caretaker frowned on all of this activity by her husband/charge, and she gently but forcefully steered the old guy back over the bridge, saying he needed to rest.

Tomorrow night at around 7pm I’m going over to the WWRN studios to re-record an interview with them. They had me over there last week but there was a problem with the equipment, and I have to do it again. John, the fellow who interviewed me, is also interested in having the Ramblers over for a performance/interview, which I think sounds like a grand idea. I’ve been itching to get back into music. I even bought a cheap Audio Technica microphone recently to try out with Garageband on my Powerbook. As a quick and dirty test, I recorded a short bit from the song “Saint James Infirmary” in four tracks: washtub bass, ukulele, muted trumpet and voice. The levels were really low, but Darrell massaged the mp3 a little and got rid of some of the noise. This is the result. Now that I know it works (basically), I might put a little more effort into the performance part of it.

Azuma, his wife Jane, Maurice and his girl Claire, Sandy, Jojo and I got together after a rehearsal yesterday afternoon to go to Rosemary’s Kitchen, the blue-shuttered/white stucco restaurant at the foot of the suspension bridge, for dinner. I was a bit worried that Maurice, who is a restaurant expert, wouldn’t find the place up to snuff, even though it’s quite good for the area. As it turned out, however, the food was excellent, and the only problems we had were with untrained waitstaff who didn’t quite know what they were doing. We got a spot out on the balcony overlooking the bridge, the swanboat beneath and the milling crowds of weekend tourists above. As seems to happen whenever going out to eat with Maurice, the wine, white in this case, just seemed to keep coming, and our whole party got drunker and drunker.

It was after midnight by the time we left. I have the impression that I was quite talkative, but I’m not sure I want to know exactly what I said. As far as I can recall, everyone had a great time, and I’ll just assume that’s the case until I hear differently.

There had been a couple of other foreigners on the balcony, one an older man who kept staring at me or us (I couldn’t tell from the distance), and a younger guy accompanied by a Taiwanese girl. He wore an army T-shirt, and I resisted the urge to go over and ask him whether he bought it or was issued it. At least until this evening when I ran into the guy at Athula’s and asked him anyway. Yeah, I suck. At least if I’d been all petty at the restaurant I would have had the excuse of being drunk off my ass at least.

On the bright side, I did manage to keep from taking any artsy pictures of the silverware, which is something I suppose. Ever since I got the wicked 10-22mm lens for my 20D, I haven’t really used my 17-85mm USM IS lens that much, and I’m thinking of selling it in order to add a prime or two to my collection, or perhaps a long lens…who knows?