I'm not telling...

I mentioned the other day that I'd gone on a trip before that I hadn't told my parents about. Here is that story.

April 3o and May 1, 2008 there were two MAJOR concerts in England to celebrate the King's Singers 40th anniversary. The first was to be in London, the second in Cambridge at King's College. The year before, dad and I had planned to go. But this was when the dates were unknown and as soon as he found out when they were, he bailed. Teaching or some such nonsense ;) But I had this idea in the back of my head. I had over 100,000 frequent flyer miles. I could go to England on my own!

Thus the scheming began.

Poster from King's College Concert

I hemmed and hawed and finally decided that if I could buy tickets for the Cambridge concert, I would go. (I knew there were still London tickets available.) I called up Cambridge via Skype and they had tickets...good ones, so I started booking everything.

Then I thought it would be funny if I didn't tell my parents that I was going. To understand this you have to understand two things about my relationship with my parents. First, I tell them almost everything. They know what I'm worried about, whether I went to the doctor this week, and who I had lunch with last Friday. That's just who we are. Second, they are not worrywarts. In fact, when I was in Mexico for 3 weeks and our tour guide was getting death threats and Canadians were being held hostage (local to where we were), what was my mom most worried about? That I wasn't wearing my seatbelt in the cab. Because it didn't have seatbelts.

So I knew that my parents wouldn't mind being left out of the loop. And I wanted to do this to see if I could hide something from them. It was HARD. But Simon and Ben got to hear all of my planning instead of my parents.

What I look like after a day of biking

I even went on a 30 mile bike ride through the Cotswolds on my own. Because I could. And because it started in Moreton-in-Marsh, home of Ian Kellam, whose music we often sing in choir.

I concocted a ruse about why I wouldn't be calling my parents that week (which they bought) and let them know via email that they should call Ben if they needed to get in touch with me while my broken phone was being serviced.

I thought you should know my phone died... If you need to reach me you can email me, have Anthony IM me, or call Ben. I should have this all sorted out by the middle of next week...I hope :)

love,

Kate

Then I took off for England. On Thursday, May 1, I mailed them a postcard of the King's Singers concert, confident it wouldn't arrive til I was back on American soil on Tuesday, when they could call me. I got an email on Monday, May 5, entitled "so."

Got a very mysterious card from England.
You sneak!
Love,
Dad

Since when did the British postal service work that fast? But nevermind! I called them from the Newark airport the next day and they were highly amused.