Balkan Camp and NodeConf

After Honk Fest West, I had just a few days home. On that Friday, March Fourth Marching Band played the Louisville Street Faire, so I held a BBQ at my house beforehand and then we walked to watch the band, which was really fun. Afterward the whole burner community from the concert came to my house for an after party, including a couple of the M4 band members, which went until after 2 AM. I cleaned up the house and got to sleep around 3 AM, but needed to get up at 5:45 AM to catch the bus to the airport for Balkan Camp.

My flight to SFO as delayed so I was worried my ride from SFO to Mendocino would leave without me, but thankfully they waited. We drove up the 4+ hours into the gorgeous redwood forest. At Balkan Camp, I took saxophone class with Vlado Pupinski, who studied clarinet at Oberlin, and brass band with Michael Ginsberg from NYC. I also took a class in Balkan Folk Dance and studied some makams from Turkish folk music with microtonal tuning, which is pretty tough on a saxophone.

The food was great and I loved being outdoors but always in the shade of the thickly-cluster redwood trees. I got a ride home Tuesday evening and spent Wednesday in San Francisco with my cousin Ed before my next summer camp event: NodeConf.

I was at NodeConf Thu-Sun hacking on JavaScript with most of the node.js community around the bay area and the US and a few overseas folks. It really was a summer camp thing with four square, slack lining, kayaks, canoes, swimming, camp fires, s'mores, the whole nine yards.