my favorite cargo sled (for loading pallets of stuff onto planes)
A chapter title I wish I had written, from The Career Woman's Cookbook,
in the NZ lounge of the historic Hillary Hut.
I'm afraid to jinx it, but I'm pretty excited about all the music happening. My roomie has insider status at a building I've eyed for years but never been in: the Paint Barn doubles as a rehearsal space after business hours. This week, I played piano and clarinet and guitar and cello (barely) and sang. Yes, there is a nice new cello here, and I can scrape the bow across with some satisfying resonance at least half the time. It was a fun discovery made possible by repeated power outages. All is not well with our electrical supply, and we went through three of five back-up generators. (Don't ask me why or how the generators failed mechanically; rumors abound of bolts sheering, fan blades expelled, and improbable gremlin destruction.) Decades of delayed maintenance and power overdraw is finally catching up with the system, thankfully during summer while sunlight shines in the windows. Still, it's a challenge to peer at mysterious food in the gloom of a de-powered galley, let alone cook it. Oh yeah, and we desalinate our drinking water from the ocean, so no electricity means no water, either.
And so with limited lights, rationed water, and no intra- or internet, music folks wandered around until we found each other. Joe and Patrick and I had the cello, a guitar, and a banjo, and I knew just where to go. There's a small dorm on the far side of town, as yet uninhabited this season. The lounge of the Mammoth Mountain Inn (I have no idea why it's called that) has large windows that look out to the ice shelf, two long couches, and decent acoustics. It's the perfect place to pass around a bottle of wine, sing some love songs, and speculate about who we should eat first if the power completely stays off for good.
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