bigmacbear | GALA Festival 8 -- Saturday, July 12

gmjambear and I arrived at Sea-Tac Airport to find that the flight prior to ours had been delayed by about 40 minutes, with the result that they had to move to a different gate (it was a little confusing as it appeared that our flight was going to be delayed). After we boarded I saw Chris, our soloist for "Every Sperm Is Sacred", and a couple other SMC members were seated a few rows ahead of us on the first leg of the flight. I slept most of the way to Atlanta where we changed planes.

On the second leg of the flight we saw Ron from the Atlanta GMC (Gay Men's Chorus) who I met in Cincinnati in 2002; also one of the flight attendants, Kevin, was an AGMC member and had arranged to work this flight to get himself to Miami (he was attending but not performing).

At baggage claim in Miami we caught up with Steve from Captain Smartypants (our small ensemble directed by the lovely and talented Eric Lane Barnes). He arrived on an earlier flight but his bag came on our flight. Gary's bag met a similar fate, and they would eventually have to deliver it to the hotel. We all took a shuttle van with two members of MUSE from Cincinnati and a fellow who probably wasn't even here for GALA and said nothing the whole trip.

We checked in to the Intercontinental Hotel, went up to the Hilton to register with GALA, returned to our hotel and napped briefly before heading to opening ceremonies. On the way we saw Rev. Darrell from Rochester GMC at the people-mover station.

At the ceremonies we got a business card from our friend Mike who used to live in Rochester but is now singing with Buffalo GMC, also saw Mark who moved from Rochester to Kansas and sings with Heartland. Mark is looking well if a bit thin. I got to introduce Gary to Lamar who accompanies Heartland and pointed out Logan who accompanies for one of the Florida choruses and was playing the piano at opening ceremonies, and told him the story involving those two and Mark from the Singers Weekend in 2005 (scroll down to "Sunday" after following the link). We also saw Chris from Tucson and Ron from Columbus but didn't get a chance to say hello until later in the week.

After opening ceremonies we had dinner with Darrell, his friend David (also from RGMC), and Lee who is RGMC's new director. It got a bit late so we walked the two or three blocks back to our hotel. In the elevator we ran into Kyler, a much younger SMC member who has the other solo in "Every Sperm Is Sacred". He was looking just a bit sleep-deprived.