Dunava tour

This past weekend, my choir Dunava toured to Eugene and Portland, Oregon.

We started by renting two Priuses. (Prii? We could not figure out the plural of Prius.) By going "green" with car rentals we hoped to save some money on gas. (I'm not sure this worked, as the Prius gets better mileage in city driving, not on the highway). The brand new cars were fun to drive and came with all the latest electronic bells and whistles, so we could connect a phone or iPod via Bluetooth, listen to our favorite music (and sing along) and all talk to the other car through the car's speakers.

To break up the drive, we went only to Portland on Friday night. We left at 7 PM, hoping to avoid rush hour traffic, and arrived around 10:30 PM. We all stayed with Dunava friends or family. In the morning we headed off to Eugene for an interview on KLCC, the NPR affiliate.

After our radio gig, we walked to the WOW Hall, site of our evening concert. There is a poster wall outside the hall, where some of us posed for a quick pic.


The Eugene gig also included a performance with the local folk dance band Kef. After the radio, members of Kef fed us lunch and we rehearsed the songs we planned to do together. After the previous late night, the radio gig, a long walk, food, and a rehearsal, I was pooped, and took a short nap with another Dunavette. Dinner was at  Cafe Yumm!, a Eugene favorite serving what tasted like Mexican-Asian food (beans, rice, cheese, cilantro, olives and Yumm sauce, a combination of tehina and soy sauce). Of course we had to get dessert at Sweet Life Patisserie, where I bought a chocolate truffle tartlet to eat after the show. 

The show went very well, although had a small audience. I was told we sounded great. The hall has good acoustics, so we didn't need amplification. We sang for about an hour, and then took a break while Kef set up. We joined them on their first number and again at the end of their dance set for a lesnoto medley. I danced until my makeup was practically running don my face from the sweat. We again had overnight home hospitality. My hostess was also from the Bronx, so we had a lot in common.

After a huge breakfast on Sunday, we got back into the Priuses (Prii?) and returned to Portland. Our first stop was to give a short performance for our director's grandfather. Then some of us crashed, but M, S and I went to Powell's Books, where I spent a blissful 90 minutes browsing their large collection of science fiction and fantasy. I found a title by favorite author Marion Zimmer Bradley which I didn't already own. The three of us next went to dinner at Ken's Artisan Pizza where we sat outdoors in the sunshine and shared a green salad with beets and Beecher's cheese, a pizza with roasted spring onions, mozzarella and fresh herbs and one with anchovies, fresh basil and tomato sauce. Delicious!

TaborSpace, our last concert venue, is a community coffee house located in a church. The room has comfy chairs at tables and nice acoustics. More Dunava family and friends attended this show, which also was well received. But I have to say, after three performances in less than 24 hours, I was exhausted.

We piled back into the cars around 9:30 PM to head home. It took longer than expected, partly because of some nighttime road construction, and partly because we stopped twice for potty breaks and a snack. I finally rolled in the door at 1:30 AM and was in bed by 2:00.

It was a long, fun weekend, filled with singing, dancing, Dunava bonding, and lots of talking. On Monday morning I woke up a baritone, and today I have progressed up the scale to a tenor. Still, I had plenty of energy thanks to the Afinitor+Aromasin+Faslodex combo, and I was thrilled to be able to participate!