6/15/06
Some days, the blessed saint Joan Armatrading tells us, the bear eats you. Some days you eat the bear.

And some days, you and the bear both get a free ride down the Mighty Meatgrinder Whoopee Chute at the Weird Karma Fun Park. Talk all you want about destiny and God's will -- shit happens, bear in the woods or otherwise.

It all started out innocently enough. Just a quick little weekend getaway, a two day arts festival in Wilsonville Oregon, just a hop skip and a freeway exit or ten south of Portland, a well-remunerated two sets of music and a chance to visit with our dear old friend Theonie, the director of the festival and a substitute mommy from our perpetual road-tan days. Back when we'd gaily alternated between flame-on and flameout, her house and grounds had always been a refuge for us and our assorted beat-up conveyances, and we looked forward to seeing her and the old stomping grounds again.

With the orderly care of long tedious experience, we packed our current conveyance, a Butt-Ugly Black (Pantone 7734) 89 Dodge Grand Caravan, with instruments plus food, clothes and medical supplies for an overnight excursion and launched off down the I5 corridor, margins decorated in all the glories of high spring in the Northwest. We'd given ourselves a generous schedule and took our time, pausing to picnic in a Safeway parking lot in north Portland before wending down to the show.

The Wilsonville Festival of the Arts was sited in a pleasant city park that includes a fountain installation and the Oregon Korean War Memorial. Booths displayed a variety of arts and crafts and the entertainment ranged from school jazz bands and local folk-fusion groups bristling with accordions and electric guitars to the headliners: us, actually. I lugged instruments and our folding ramp in from the wilds of the parking lot and we proceeded to belt out a solid 45 of that voodoo that we do so well to a sparse but attentive audience (the big crush had come mid-afternoon and thinned out well before our 5:45 start time).

We finished. I started putting instruments away. Sandahbeth started down the folding ramp. And then something went terribly terribly wrong. Maybe the chair or the ramp was misaligned, maybe she oversteered, but the next thing any of us knew S went tumbling out of her chair onto the lawn, her whole weight on her right knee.

We straightened her out gingerly, determined (we thought) that she wasn't too badly hurt and bundled her back into her seat. Her knee was skinned and swollen and she complained that she couldn't lift her leg. Mama Theonie put her festival director's foot down and I transferred S (painfully) to the van, whereupon we all trooped off to the local emergency room. The attending physician tapped her here and there and sent her off for x-rays, which revealed that S had broken her right femur just above the knee.

The nurses whisked her off to bed and gave her strong sedatives. I stayed the night at Theonie's place, a rambling chunk of greenery in the midst of horse country, in a state of unparalleled despair. Here we had just barely dragged ourselves out of the Valley of the Shadow of Hospitals, only to be unceremoniously flung back in. What would become of our groovy summer? Holy crap! Etc.

The next morning the highly competent orthopedic staff (one thing you get in horse country is good orthopods) proceeded to excavate S's thigh and neatly and sweetly screw her bone back together. Everything went swimmingly and the doctors were optimistic that she'd be able to go home in a few days. In the early afternoon I went off to the show and played our other set solo to another sparse but attentive audience only slightly bemused at the absence of the better half of the Celebrated Duo Of Chickadee Glen.

Think this movie's over? Think again.

Late the next afternoon I jumped in the van to go visit S, put it reverse and gunned it. The trannie made a rude comment and suddenly reverse had left the building. Just like that. That loud sucking noise was the proceeds of the weekend venting into the vacuum of automotive oblivion.

Galvanized into full panic mode, I wasted yet another day determining that 1) The trannie was borked, 2) I couldn't bank on a cheap fix, 3) None of the shops within limping distance (first gear still worked, barely) could get to it before we needed it and 4) No suitable replacement vehicles were available in the immediate vicinity. Bright and late that eve I boarded a gleaming northbound Greyhound and, like Napoleon leaving Moscow, crawled home to Seattle to find wheels.

Despite being unwillingly introduced to some of the ugliest vehicles I've ever had the misfortune to meet, I lucked out and, with the aid of Wha?, a friend with wheels willing to waste time and gas on my quixotic quest and good ol' Craigslist, I managed to find a suitable minivan in a price range that I could actually afford in a day, hidden away in mystic Renton in the possession of a Chinese couple who'd owned it since it was new.

So -- happy ending. I drove back to Oregon and picked up Sandahbeth (literally -- the docs advised her not to put any weight on the leg for three months) and we blasted back up to Bainbridge Island to play a gig and then went home and slept all day and all night and got up on Sunday to go play church in Mt Vernon and then came right back to Seattle where I played an extended Jewish wedding with the Klez Katz. And then, finally, we came home.

We have to go back to the dentist this week. What a relief.