The Only Soprano Sax in Town

When we went to Cyprus a couple of months ago, I brought along the new soprano sax that I bought, a very inexpensive (and consequently not terribly good) instrument, which has the advantage of being light, small, and, if it's damaged or lost, not a big risk.
I don't like to go without playing at least every other day, if not more often. I've invested a lot of effort in getting as good as I am, and I'm struggling to maintain my level as well as improve. But it's not only the compulsive side of me: I enjoy making music. When I travel, I usually don't bring printed music with me, so I play what I remember by ear, I play various exercises, and I improvise. This time I brought my portable computer with me, and I have some pdf files of Realbooks on it, so when I couldn't remember a song, I could look it up.
We were staying in a pension in a tiny village in the Trodos Mountains, and when I played, the sound carried all over. Usually I don't like to impose my practising on everyone else in the vicinity, but people kept telling me that it sounded nice, so I was undeterred.
So there I am, in the bedroom, in between phrases.
Sometimes I think there's an inverse relation between the amount of equipment a person owns and the level of his or her skill. The worse you are as a photographer, the more cameras, lenses, and accessories you acquire. The worse you are as a musician, the more instruments you own.
Of course, like a lot of clever statements, that one isn't true.
Some excellent photographers own dozens of cameras, piles of lenses, and so on, and some excellent reed players might own every kind of woodwinde imaginable. There are different kinds of artists: the ones who keep working in one medium, in one way, forever, finding creativity in depth and concentration, and the ones who take up one medium after another. It's a question of personality, of course, and also one of searching. Sonny Rollins, for example, found the tenor saxophone, and that was enough for everything he wanted to express. But a player like Yusef Lateef used the oboe and other instruments, always looking for the instrument that would play the music he wanted to play.
Anyway, in the end, it's not the instrument, but the music!