Where Saxophone Players Meet

In September 2006 my wife and I took part in a fundraising walk along the Inca Trail in the Andes, Peru. To do this we first had to raise £2650 each (as well as our airfare) in aid of our chosen charity which is APEC, a charity which has saved the lives of my wife and children and countless others throughout the world. The trek was actually a different trail and was a lot harder. It involved walking up to 11 hours a day in some mountainous terrain at an altitude of about 15,000 feet. The organisers gave us a training schedule which started in July.

Trek Photos

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Training Schedule

The schedule starts with a couple of 2 hour walks (easy). (A normal walk is about 3 m.p.h. but with a few stops and gradients it usually works out a bit less – more like 2 m.p.h. when walking up and down hills). The main bit of training means a 4 hour walk one weekend, then two 4 hour walks the next with a couple of brisk 1 hour welks on the weekdays. This progresses to one 6 hour walk at the weekend, then two 6 hour walks the next weekend with brisk 2 hour walks on the weekdays. Then on to the 8 hour walks, ending up with 2 consecutive 8 hour walks (aaarghh!). We are trying to make the walks as “realistic” as possible, ie lots of gradients as you might expect on the Inca Trail, but I imagine there is not the same type of pub for lunch. I’ll also be taking my panpipes on the training. But not up the Andes, I’ll leave that to the locals.

It struck me that here was a bunch of people doing something for charity. Something that was potentially (and really was) “tough and miserable” to quote the words of Kelso, one of the team leaders. Not only the toughness and miserableness of exhaustion and altitude sickness but in addition I’m sure there were quite a few (like us) combining it all with something we hate the idea of, i.e. camping. Not just normal camping in a civilised campsite, but in a very basic and cold site. No showers; toilets are either a long queue for a chemical jobby (excuse the bad pun) or a hole in the ground. You don’t know whether to be happy about the fantastic starry sky or dread the cold night ahead that it means. You wake up at 3.a.m. needing the toilet and wonder if it’s best to get up then and put all your clothes on and navigate to the toilet and hopefully get back to sleep, or worry whether you can hold it in and go back to sleep until the 5.30.a.m. wake up for breakfast.

The good thing about this trek was the food. The local porters and cooks did an amazing job. A nourishing breakfast of coca tea, quinoa porridge and pancakes was ready by 6.00. We set off, they then packed up camp and set off (with all the tents, sleeping bags etc, food, water and toilets) and overtook us in time to set up and cook lunch, we ate a hearty meal, they then packed up and set off with all the stuff, overtook us and set up the evening meal.

All that in sandals and no Goretex.

Apart from one round of begging emails to friends and clients, my fundraising has all been via donations on my website and forum, along with any advertising revenue from the sites. We were initially going to try yardsales and fundraising parties, but so far things are looking quite good as it is and I’m quite close to the target £2650, but of course it will be nice to make more.

Luckily the main site seems to be quite popular, I have plenty of jazz and saxophone tutorials which unlike many comparable online resources, are available free of charge, but I do of course suggest that donations for the fundraising are welcome.

“Sampleaid” is working particularly well. This is where I make my own custom made working audio files available. Many music producers have such a library which they have built up over the years, and are usually a jealously guarded personal unique resource, and mine was no exception until last year when I decicded to make part of it available via downloads and CDs in order to help with the fundraising. I set up a “Sample Aid” paypal account so the funds can be kept away from my own business earnings and all the income can go straight to APEC.

The saxophone instruction DVDs are also selling very well, but I have to buy these from the producer so can only donate the profits to the fund. They are also available from Amazon and various other on and offline retail outlets so I have a bit of competition with those.
The UK Saxophone Teachers directory is not doing so well. I thought that this would attract more applicants than it has. I’ve raised a small amount with it, but realised that it needs a lot more publicity and work getting it networked via other online directories. I won’t give up on this, but because of the amount of work it will have to wait until after the Peru Trek.