The GeekHiker

No hiking this weekend. Just a weekend of cleaning and reading and watching movies and nursing the bit of poison oak I picked up on last weekend’s backpack. And listening to music.

Music is one of those (many) subjects about which I don’t know very much. It’s not that I don’t like music, I just don’t know it in-depth by any means.

My CD collection isn’t that huge as a result. I don’t have thousands of songs on my mp3 player. Heck, I don’t even keep regular track of bands. I know what I like, I have a small collection of CDs and songs, I often add something new when I like it, and it’s all good.

In my freshman year in college, listening to KFOG (still one of the best radio stations in California, and you can listen to ’em online) I discovered The Traveling Wilburys. Of course, I already liked Tom Petty & Roy Orbison and the lot, so I liked them immediately.

I knew that I wanted to buy their CD, and after a bit of searching, finally located it at a store in downtown SF.

I picked up the CD, saw that it was labeled at full price, and hesitated. I was a poor college student, thrilled to find Top Ramen on sale at the store at 10 for a dollar; a full price CD was an expensive proposition on my limited budget.

I sighed and decided to wait, at least until after the next meager paycheck from my part-time job.

And the album promptly disappeared from existence. Everywhere.

The CDs became rarities. I couldn’t find them in record stores, and only occasionally would I find them online on places such as E-Bay, usually at exorbitant prices. As much as I wanted it, I just couldn’t shell out fifty bucks for a CD.

As time went by, it became a bit of a quest. On roughly a yearly basis, I’d type “Traveling Wilburys” into a search engine or two (or ten) and see what came up.

And every year I was disappointed to find out the music was caught up in some sort of legal dispute, rights issue, etc. The likelyhood of the music ever being reissued seemed dimmer and dimmer.

Until a couple of weeks ago when Google produced this result, leaving me with a big grin on my face that the whole musical catalog of the Wilburys was being released in a beautiful box set.

This weekend I headed down to the local chain and found it there, the deluxe edition in its blue box, sitting on the shelf.

With a price of forty-five bucks.

I’ll admit it, I hesitated again. Forty-five bucks ain’t exactly pocket change. Well at least not my pocket change.

But it was just for a moment. I wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice.

Plus, I had a 20% coupon in my pocket. So, you know, score.

I finally got my Traveling Wilburys albums. It only took 17 years.

So I sit here, writing and editing, my feet tapping along to “Well it’s all right, ridin around in the breeze; well it’s all right, if you live the life you please…”

It’s all right indeed.