Alpine

After a quality sleep trackside in tiny Marathon, I moseyed up to the counter at the local breakfast spot for some down-home Tex-Mex to start my day. There I was, the guy who has lived in big cities his entire adult life (prior to going mobile), reading a book (a Vonnegut title I picked up at the Mineola libary's book sale for a whole quarter) while the three locals in the place were each buried in their cell phones. Alas, is nothing sacred?

Properly sated, I returned to the Chinook and knocked out a pile of orchestrations for the show before packing up and hitting the road for Alpine.

If it seems like I've been dragging my heels in this remote stretch of the Lone Star State, it's because there's mail arriving for me in nearby Fort Davis in a couple of days, and therefore not much point in being in any sort of hurry. So it is that Alpine is the home du jour, and with its population in the vicinity of 5000, it feels like one seriously swinging town compared to where I've been in recent days. And get this – they have actual 3G coverage here!

I realized today that I'm rusty with this whole elevation thing. While practicing the horn this afternoon, I found myself frustrated by the fact that nothing felt right. Then while pondering the situation over a beer this evening, I remembered that I'm up at around 4500 feet, and that reeds get noticeably harder with altitude. Just a little while ago, I dug out some softer reeds that I had laying around, put them to the test, and am feeling much better about myself now. 

The saxophonists out there know what I'm talking about – our general sense of self-worth at any given moment being directly tied to how well our reeds are treating us. So pay attention nomadic saxophonist wannabes – you'll need to maintain two sets of reeds in order to manage this lifestyle with sanity intact. One for the mountains, and one for the lowlands. I know that sounds like one set too many, mainly because it is, but the situation is what the situation is.

 

And hey, look at that. Yet one more neat-o Texas county courthouse. Just when you thought you were safe...

Marathon

As I suppose is likely to happen when one falls asleep in a town with a three-digit population, I was woken early this morning by an impressively qualified rooster. There was a time when I would have found this to be irritating as all hell, but today my very first thought was "somebody's raising chickens around here – maybe I can buy some fresh eggs!"

I inquired at one of Sanderson's few shops, and the nice old lady behind the counter proceeded to make a few calls to the local chicken owners for me – on a vintage rotary telephone. How's that for small town mojo? Remember when talking on the phone meant standing in the kitchen and not being able to move more than a few feet from the wall? Alas, I struck out on the eggs in the end, but seeing that little bit of history made the hunt worthwhile.

Onward ho, as I fired up the Chinook and proceeded to hold the steering wheel at a 30 degree turn, as I fought the day's intense winds into the next town of Marathon (population 430). According to my calculations, that means if you evenly spaced the entire town's citizenry along the length of an actual marathon, there'd be just a little more than a football field separating everyone. Somehow, running 430 football fields doesn't sound so bad to me.