To hear the related 5-minute audio file that I uploaded today as my Morning Journal flash briefing for Alexa devices, please click on the play button below:
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza do Vancouver
During my layover here at O’Hare Airport I’d like to share some impressions of the pilgrimage I took to a recovery-fellowship convention in Vancouver with my friend Gil.
As is usual in the sleep-deprived afterglow of a big event, I don’t know where to begin. During FaceTime with my sister Stephanie just now, I appeared ready to talk her ear off in response to her simple question, “How was it?”
Let’s start with music, because that’s how the weekend began. Gil and I arrived at the Vancouver Convention Center in time to join a pier-shaking Block Party concert by a band whose name I have not been able to fetch from the Internet.
Yesterday, after our last supper in Gastown, a cool neighborhood near the convention center, we happened on a more intimate evening of music. As we prepared to head back to the Airbnb condo after supper at the Water Street Cafe, I spotted a sign for live music starting in a few minutes upstairs.
We settled in at a table just as Jeff Baker and The Bad Pennies began a 90-minute set of tight, thumping blues and rock tunes. Jeff and a guy named Francesco played guitar, with Mark Milner on bass and Guenter Schulz on drums.
They were snuggled into a corner of the cozy room, in front of big windows looking out on the harbor and mountains. As they played, a massive cruise ship inched away from the pier, brilliant in the setting sun.
Jeff played a classic Taylor guitar he bought on Valentine’s Day in 1984, the year Darlene and I were married. “I’ve been in love with her ever since,” he said as he cradled the instrument. In one of his songs, his throaty question was, “Have you ever loved a woman so much you can’t leave her alone?” Oh yes.
During one chorus we heard a low and deep whistle through the windows. It turned out to be the famous Gastown Steam Clock, which marks the hours with a puff of steam and a tone that, in that moment, fit perfectly with what The Bad Pennies were playing.
In fact, many things seemed to fit perfectly during Gil’s and my journey to Vancouver. Not that we didn’t have mishaps and drama, like a frantic last-minute quest for his passport this morning, minutes before we had to catch the SkyTrain to YVR.
“Would you be offended if I offered to look through your suitcase?” I asked him. Not at all, he said. No passport there, but I did succeed in repacking his bag to my obsessive specifications.
Finally, when we were both out of ideas, I set two chairs side by side and asked him to sit with me in silence for two minutes. It only took 30 seconds for him to stand up, walk to his knapsack, unzip an outer compartments, and reach immediately for the passport he had securely placed in a plastic bag.
As we rode to the airport, I imagined us as legendary pair of adventurers.
“Who would you be, Don Quixote or Sancho Panza?” I asked Gil.
We agreed that at different junctures, either of us could play the idealistic dreamer or the practical cleaner-upper of messes.
“I never read that book,” Gil said.
“Me neither,” I replied.
But it still seemed right: two friends leaving Vancouver, already imagining our next adventure.
And how to carry the message of recovery to others.
