1:00 p.m.

Right now, we're flying to Vancouver in a Dash 8 aircraft over the Rocky mountains. One advantage of being in a small plane is that we fly quite low, so the view, to put it mildly, is spectacular. I've seen Mount Baker countless times and I never get tired of it, especially from up here where it towers over everything around it, and its bright snow contrasts so greatly with the dusky blue of the other mountains. The Fraser River winding through the whole thing completes the picture.

11:45 p.m.

After landing in Vancouver at about 1:30, we went right to the hotel, checked in, dumped what stuff we didn't need, and got on the road to Mission, in order to avoid the rush hour traffic. As it was, the pace was somewhat pokey.

When we pulled into town, it took a while to find the church due to all the one-way streets, but finally, we saw it with Bill's truck in the parking lot. We parked beside the truck, and as I was getting out, I heard Jim laughing around the other side; I went to see what was up, and there was Bill lying on a moving blanket soaking up the sun. When he saw us, the first words out of his mouth were, "You guys are really going to love the sound in here." As soon as we entered the church we saw what he meant: it was a moderate size, with a capacity for about 500 people, and it had a high cathedral ceiling paneled with tongue-and-groove wood. We went up to the pianos, played a few chords, and heard warmth and reverberation. Playing in churches is a wonderful thing, so we are sorry when we see concert organizations move to newly built theatres, which tend to look wonderful, but whose sound is very dry; this may be fine for the spoken word, but is really lousy for live music.

After the rehearsal, we looked forward to playing in such a live space; predictably, the concert was a wonderful experience for us, and the audience responded in kind. It's almost impossible to put across music with its full impact in a dry hall, whereas a live sound makes it exiting for both us and the audience.