Thunder storm and a broken tooth

Hi everyone,

First of all, merry christmas and happy New Year!
2 weeks before christmas I had been up and running 10-14 hours every day in order to get all kinds of music related things in order before going abroad for over a month.

I never went to sleep the 22nd since I had a flight early next morning. Instead I was up all night checking off the last things on my to-do list before I left.
Instead of going straight to Los Angeles to work on the album with Jimmy Westerlund, I went by Floirda instead to have a few days of holiday before rolling up the sleeves. I was very close to miss the flight.
My first flight was delayed by 45 min which left me less than 3 hours to go through passport control, get my bag and go to Gatwick Airport from Heathrow to repeat the whole thing. It was a lot of running that day. When I got out from the airport I was unsure whether the train or a taxi would be the fastest.

The answer came quickly when a random guy asked if I needed a ride somewhere. He almost started to sweat when I told him I needed to be at Gatwick airport 30 min later, and asked if he could drive like the main character from the movie "Taxi".

He sure did. It normally takes 45 min, but he made it in 30.
After all that running and sweating it it sure felt like christmas when the lady at the check-in desk told me they had upgraded me to Business class, because the plane was full.
I've never been in Business Class before and excited like a little kid I couldn't stop pushing all the small buttons while going up and down with the chair.

I slept like a rock and managed to trick the jet-lag. However, only one day later my sleeping rythm was about to get 3 times worse.
In the morning of the 24th I left with a small sailboat from St. Petersburg in Florida to Destin. The trip took 3 days.

I haven't sailed many times in my life, but it seems like I'm chased by storms. I had just managed to sleep for a few hours the first night when I got something thrown at me and heard "Jess, put on your life jacket, we're getting hit by a thunder storm". I took a look outside the waves had already got up to 4 m. It became a real challenge to keep the balance and many times I flew across the room which resulted in a new collection of bruises.





The storm continued the whole night and the next day with a wind between 20-25 m/s. Sleeping was almost impossible, so instead I spent a lot of time on deck and even caught a tuna. Except for being covered in blood and smelling like fish for the rest of the trip it was by far the best tuna I've ever had.  When we finally got to port the ground was moving under my feet. That night I slept like a baby.


















Destin turned out to be just as cold as Finland and it's been a bit of a struggle to keep warm. During the days the guys have been working on the boat and I've been preparing my up-coming trip to Midem (a big music business event in Cannes).

















My New Year turned out to be even crazier than the sailing. The first day of the new year I woke up with messed up knees and feet, a broken tooth, a big bump in the head, a blue nose and a number of scratches and bruises.

I hate violence more than anything but seeing someone I care about getting attacked by 2 big guys outside of the bar, simply made me snap. Before I knew it my adrenaline was 110%, I threw off my high heels and jumped on one of the guys and punched him in the face.
He quickly returned the "favor", hit me in the face and I fell head first to the ground. After that there's a big black out but apparently I got back up because I have a blurry memory of jumping one of the guys back holding my arm around his neck.
Somehow we managed to stop the fight, the guys left and for the weirdest reason our first reaction was to crack up in laughter. I'm really not sure why. It might have been the adrenaline or just the happiness of being ok.





 Next morning I felt like someone had dragged me behind a car and kept finding new bruises and scratches. Luckily most of my tooth is still whole and only a small piece missing. Even though I practice martial arts and stunts, I can't say I'm a fighter and as I said, I hate violence, but sometimes you can't avoid it.

The next stop would have been LA where I'm about to spend a couple of weeks with the producer Jimmy Westerlund to work on some songs.
Somehow the travel agency didn't realize that I'm supposed to fly from Destin to LA and not from St. Petersburg where I started my trip. I didn't realize until a couple of days ago that I had the wrong ticket. After some thinking I decided to sail to Alabama instead and continue from there.
Before rolling up the sleeves in the studio I'm gonna go Skydiving if the weather allows it. It has been on my "to-do before I die"- list for quite a while now.

So far it's been a great trip filled with new experiences and I'm sure there will be a lot more to come. I'll let you know all about it in a week or so.

Rock on!

Jessica Wolff