Ukulele Tonya

Note: This is long; it’s written for those folks who wonder what it’s really like to attend an ukulele festival and like to know the details. If you just want the photos, go here.

Pre-Festival:
Sunny weather, warm aloha and hot ukulele playing were on this weekend’s agenda as I traveled to the San Francisco Bay Area for the Northern California Ukulele Festival. Held in Hayward, this festival is the 15th annual for this group, making it the longest-running mainland ukulele event. While the day-long festival is on Sunday, there were some great pre-festival activities slated the day before the event so I headed out from Paradise early on Saturday morning. While I love my merlot special edition Miata (and the UKALADY license plates would have been especially appropriate for the weekend’s activities), it feels like an awfully tiny car to be slipping in and out of lanes on high-speed Bay Area freeways—so I toodled down in the ever-trusty 1986 Mazda 626; not a lot of style to the car but it got a whopping 41 miles per gallon—and at almost $4 gallon, that was more than appreciated. It’s about 3-1/2 hours to Berkeley, so I loaded up on a wealth of Hawaiian and ukulele CDs, aimed the steering wheel south and ventured out of the Sierra foothills and toward the Big City. (Read on …)

Life isn’t all strumming and four strings—I drove over to San Francisco last week to attend MacWorld Expo and experience all things Macintosh (and frankly, to enjoy some top-notch dining and the freshest Dungeness crab on terra firma). I’ve been attending MacWorld since 1987 (when it was a much smaller event) and never fail to find software that makes my life easier—and hardware to keep my day-to-day computing more delightful.

Dad and I have been MacWorld regulars for a decade or so now and this year was no different—he flew into Sacramento Airport and we toodled down I-80, across the Bay Bridge and unloaded luggage at our favorite hotel (to be kept a secret since it’s small and “undiscovered” at this point).

Our first day included several hours at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and, of course, dinner out (thanks, Dad!).The next morning found us at Moscone Center to claim our MacWorld “Exhibit Only” badge holders. What a mess the whole registration process was this year; my guess is they’re going to get a lot of complaints from folks who elected to save the $2 mail cost and pick up their badges there. We already had our badges (we’re not gonna waste limited show time to save a lousy two bucks) but we still had to ferret out the elusive badge holders in the midst of the masses of Macintosh enthusiasts. (Read on …)

There were no ukuleles waiting under the Christmas tree for me yesterday morning (since I hadn’t asked Santa for any there were no surprises there), but there were three delightful ukulele ornaments from Santa Claus on the piney boughs to delight me.

Perched on a sturdy branch (sturdy because this is one is hefty in weight) is a resin ornament featuring a barefoot Santa playing an ukulele. The chord he’s playing isn’t like any I’ve seen before (picture an A string with fingers down on the third, fourth, fifth and sixth frets—I guess he’s playing an Eb single note really) but he’s blissfully contented as he sits beneath a palm tree bedecked with a star (and a candy cane) and sitting beside a Hawaiian thatched-grass hut. Maker: Island Heritage. (Read on …)