Sunday
The next morning was already going to be our last at this convention—why do cons always have to go by way too fast? We packed our things and cleared out the hotel room, left our luggage and instruments locked up at the front desk, and tried to take in as many people, filk, and events as possible before it was all over—without starving, of course. Kjenjo and Silva didn’t want to have breakfast at the diner across the street again; the calorie bombs from the day before had been enough for them, but I was eyeing the vanilla cream-filled banana-pecan pancakes, so I arranged to have breakfast with the Sassafrass singers (who understood my scientific interest in eating as much exotic breakfast stuff as possible and let me try a bit from all their plates).
But first, there were still the last few items on our schedule: We didn’t want to miss the Stone Dragons, because behind that name lie none other than Tom and Sue Jeffers! They had stepped in at the last minute and taken over the concert slot of another filker who had to cancel, and I was very grateful to them for that. Tom is a terrific guitarist, as anyone who saw him last year with Dandelion Wine on the Filkcontinental stage knows, and Sue sings with a very pleasant alto voice—unfortunately, their set was only half an hour long, but in that time, backed by the always fantastic Judi Miller, they had me rolling on the floor laughing with a song about two rednecks who make crop circles (I won’t soon forget the sight of Judi rubbing her hands with delight and stamping invisible circles into the ground), and shortly after, shed the first tears of the entire convention during a heartbreaking song about Medusa.
The two acts that opened and closed the set—a filker named Maugorn, who plays banjo and guitar very well but prefers to sing endlessly long songs, and Marty Coady Fabish, who sang a cappella for another hour—suffered, in my case, from my growing hunger and the increasingly pervasive cold in the filk cellar —I realized I’d gotten far too little sleep that night (the one or two hours in the filk circle turned out to be more like three or more), and I was glad to finally get back into the warmth and have breakfast.
And then it was over. I said goodbye to everyone, thanked Randy and the other Concom members, hugged Silva and Kjenjo goodbye—their journey would take them three more weeks through North America—assured Sassafrass that they really, absolutely had to come to Germany, picked up my luggage at the front desk, and got into the car with Tom and Sue. Out of Pittsburgh. Off to Toronto. Four or five hours by land, with a detour to Niagara Falls and a brief moment of nervousness at the border crossing as I left the U.S. and entered Canada, with the cow game and the most entertaining long car ride of my life. Fantastic days in Toronto, which went by so quickly and yet were so filled with adventure and music that I can draw on them for years to come—nice people, reunions with Jodie Krangle and Judith Hayman, new friends who would have loved to keep me there right away—but that’s another story, and it’s one to be told another time.