Mode of Transport to sessions

Just wondering, but hopefully this could be more than just wondering inasmuch it may stimulate some discussion, what is your means of transport to your preferred session?

At present I’m lucky. I go by motorbike wherever I want. OK, that doesn’t include my ultra-local Blythe Hill Tavern, which on a Thursday night is a 3-minute walk away. I started up that session, with the help of some other committed players, as a *regular* Thursday night affair, slightly over 10 years ago. I started it up because I have always started sessions close to where I have lived. I like to be able to play locally.

Returning to bikes, one other thing about a big bike is that if you turn up at a session which you wish hadn’t and hate being there, you can just….ride off.

[Which brings me to another subject. If you find yourself at a session which you very soon discover you hate being at, how do you politely pull out? I just eff off. Make a few excuses then haul ass. Don’t engage if you don’t enjoy.]

……Moving swiftly on, I can get to a couple of other local sessions easily on two wheels, and even to some not so local like those in Kilburn in which I have recently been made very welcome. Those take me just 45 minutes.
I couldn’t do that if I had to rely on public transport or a car. I used to do either of those, sessions in London or the odd paid gig/session to other, but usually I ended up losing the will to live .
How do other members here cope? Stay local and walk? Brave the vagaries of public transport? Brave traffic jams by car? Risk their one chance at life by chancing it on a pushbike? Cab? Just get so legless you don’t know who the fvck got you there or drove you home?
What about Dr. Spear? Have you ever ridden your hoss to a session?

OMG Jeremy’s editing software stuff is makiing me makke laosd of splelling mistakse, freiakang me out

I walk to the station get the train from Newcastle to Durham for a session, to me it is totally worth it, even though I have been stranded out in Durham one or two times!

I walk/cycle to the city-centre Newcastle sessions, have been known to get the bus/taxi sometimes too.

The analytic session.org member will by now have noticed that I don’t drive anywhere, the reason? I can’t afford to!

The basket on NYCs bikeshare can hold a banjo securely. And presto, additional bumper.

HK, Wouldn’t that make you a target for road rage?

"just wondering inasmuch it may stimulate some discussion,”

The Devil makes work for idle hands…

For additional discussion when free time is abundant:
What should you put in your kitchen bin before leaving for a session?
What colour are the best walls in rooms suitable for pub sessions?
If my mandola falls over at home and no-one is there, does it make a sound?

🙂

What a funny question. I get to session the same way I get anywhere else - foot, car, train, bus, aeroplane, which ever is most convenient.

But the one mode of transport I wouldn’t even consider for sessions is a motorbike - broken bones heal themselves, but my fiddle is far too precious to take the risk.

>The Devil makes work for idle hands…
Indeed. So why did you even bother answering?
…….
>What a funny question.
Yes. In the cold light of day it does seem so.

Preferred mode of transport to sessions? Chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce. You travel to your session in comfort, with no worries about drink-driving. Session no good when you get there? A simple command of: “Home James!” and you’re soon back in your baronial country residence.

Take the Cadillac convertible in the summer, of course … 😉

The closest session from here is the Harp in Amherst, MA, about 17 miles north, which means I have to drive my car if I want to go. There’s another session I also would like to try, but it’s in Glastonbury, CT which is about a 40 mile drive by car. Unfortunately there is no reliable public transportation to either session.

As to leaving an unproductive session, I’ve never had that experience!

Chauffeur driven Ford Fiesta for me. Honest.

Once a week my son gets me to the session pub on time and collects me when I’ve had enough. It’s only a five mile round trip but it’s priceless.

Other occasions I drive myself to. Best of all when it’s a late finish to Saturday night and I can listen to the shipping forecast and coastal weather reports on Radio4 (UK)) whilst driving back over the hills. Not like ITM, I’ll grant you, but poetry nevertheless.

http://www.martinjetpack.com/
Idle hands indeed.

Watch out for that late night shipping forecast. Danger of narcolepsy at the hypnotic comforting voice telling you who are warm of gales in biscay.

True in summer I agree, but in a winter gale on a 1200ft hill, it can feel like I’m crossing Biscay in my car. Comforting then to be told that the hurricane’s actually a thousand miles away in Fastnet.

I drive to sessions. Not a lot of public transportation near me, not that runs to the right places at the right times.
By the way, celticagent, if that session in Glastonbury you were thinking of visiting is Hanafin’s, I just checked it out last week, and it is a nice gathering, worth a bit of a long drive.

Well, I drive us there, and my wife, who prefers not to drink alcohol generally, drives us, and sometimes others, home.
It’s not that far, actually, and the main reason we use the car is that she doesn’t like the wait for the bus, which is only on a 15-minute service by the end of the evening.
When the session was at the top of the hill, from where we live, and not halfway down the other side, I even used to walk home if I didn’t have the patience to wait for a bus. One night it had been snowing, and I was carrying two instruments, and slipped. Fortunately I landed on the hardshell guitar case, and not the soft bouzouki gig bag.

I still can’t find any sessions that are close (If anybody lives in VEgas, starting one would be nice, but, not sure if anybody lives here.

Whatever you do BB, dont drive there on your motorbike!

Motorbikes aren’t so bad, you know. In 2012 in the UK there were 328 motorcycle accident fatalities. Proportionately for London this would be 39-40 deaths. But men aged between 35 and 55 riding bikes over 125cc on *rural roads* remains the most likely scenario for an accident and account for two thirds, ie, over 200, of all motorcycle crashes. So the number for London is most likely much less, 10-20, maybe, as many bikers use just 125’s, or smaller, even mopeds and scooters. This is possibly much the same as fatalities on pushbikes which so far this year is 13 in London. And as motorcycles generally cover much greater distances mile for mile, I propose it could be even less than for pushbikes. Gory statistics, I know, comparing death for death, but there is a great misconception that as soon as you get on a bike you’re dead. It just isn’t so in reality.

I won’t, I’ll drive my talking car.

’68 Ford Transit van. I play the piano so I have to use the old van to get my piano to the sessions. I took the van and piano to Miltown Malbay this year as they had piano classes for the first time ever. There were 8 of us, three total beginners, with pianos in some lady’s living room up the Ballard Road. It was difficult at times getting my piano into Friel’s when it was crowded.