Sunday, March 31, 2013

Easter hop

I got up early today and did a ride up at Crandalls. That place has become really good, I like the mixture of techy (not much) along with the twisty, hilly tracks. Zig and Zag out there are classic, love 'em. The fact that its a five minute drive from my house just makes it all that much better.

I felt great heading out. I'll admit I was gunning for some KOMs (King Of the Mountain in Strava) early in the ride. I retook it for the sections I was hammering on. It felt really great to be out in the woods cranking out the miles - while I still enjoy road riding, mountain biking will always be my first love, being out in the woods and challenging myself technically is just too much fun. I think aerobically mountain biking is tougher - you can always pedal more slowly on the road, the terrain in mountain biking just doesn't allow for "taking it easy" at times.
 

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Lunch ride

I know same old boring loop, but it is so great to be able to leave the garage, crank for an hour and be back in front of the computer. I have to figure out how to manage my effort better I end up having to rest on sections because I'm going to hard in other sections. I guess I want to be able to hammer the whole ride. I am certain its better to ride at 75% for the whole ride rather than riding harder and gassing out. I think a certain part of this has to do with me riding in gears that at too hard. I am trying to go in lower gears and spin rather than pushing high gears with more resistance. I have to read some books or something.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Lunch ride

I have a standard lunch loop of 14 miles that I can easily do in under an hour, its a good mixed ride with some good climbing, but nothing too serious. Today I decided to take the bike to do some banking instead of my normal loop. This ride looks weird on Strava since I took the shortest path in both directions (I needed to get back for a call). My house is basically at 900' above sea level and the bank is at 300' above sea level, so its pretty much all coasting on the way down and all grunting on the way back. It really wasn't that bad, once again the worst part of the ride was pointing the bike home, I wanted to keep going.


Weekend fun

This past weekend was a bit of a blur. Aaron played his first match of his last season at Salve on Saturday so we went up to Newport to watch him. Its amazing to see him play now and think back to that spring of his Senior year in high school, we visited the campus and watched a tennis match. I asked him if he thought he could play on this team "no way" was his answer. Now four years later he's the Captain and the number one player. Great to see that kind of growth in his game as well as in his confidence.

He looked really good playing, though the conditions were tough with gusty, variable winds. I can't recall ever seeing so many whiffs in tennis, the ball was getting blown all over the place. I'm sure it will be a tough season for the team, but I know Aaron will take good things from his college tennis career.

Sunday we went down to Sacred Heart to see Emily. Well we actually went down because she was having car troubles. Fortunately/unfortunately the car didn't make the noises that were concerning to Emily, but we had a really good time going out to brunch and generally talking with her. I see so much emotional growth in Emily. Its a strange transition, one minute you're talking to your kid as a child, and the next minute you're talking to a young adult. It seems to have happened so quickly. Update, I found a blurb on SHU's website that mentions Emily!

Sunday afternoon we got out for a road ride, it was cold again, but we soldiered on. I did an hour and a half of riding then came back to the house to pick up Dawn for another 2 hours of riding. Good stuff. I guess this has become our standard 2 hour loop. This area is really great for road riding, well except for the crappy road surfaces this time of year. Tolland has a lot of road work to do this summer!
 

Sunday, March 17, 2013

A little wood harvesting

The last bass I made had a couple of pieces of spalted maple in it from a tree that fell in a forest where I ride mountain bikes. I have been thinking ("thinking" understates how much this has been on my mind) about going back there with a chainsaw and getting more of the tree. Its just sitting there rotting on the ground.

Today I took a hike out there. I put the chainsaw in my multi-day pack and headed out. It was probably a little over a mile from the closest parking spot to the tree. All downhill on the way there, all uphill on the way back.

The log is huge and my chainsaw is not, so I had to figure out how to tackle it. I spent probably an hour cutting, it wasn't easy. Spalting is basically the beginning part of a tree rotting, so there's a fine balance between cool spalting and punky worthless wood - this tree is on its way to punky worthless wood. I'm not sure the stuff I got was worth the effort, but I'll know more after it thaws and dries.

The scene of the harvest - I left my water bottle there for scale - there's some nice spalting in there:

The chainsaw by itself on the way down was heavy, but completely manageable. The chainsaw plus three pieces of wood was unbelievably heavy. It reminded me of the first time Dawn and I went hiking in Hawaii and we brought EVERYTHING in the packs, it was miserable until we made the decision to ditch all unnecessary stuff, except this time I couldn't ditch anything. I made my way back to the car one step at a time and it ended up really not being that bad - my legs got quite a workout. I wrapped my chainsaw in a towel (that's what you see poking over my shoulder).
Here's what I brought out. I'll see how this dries before I make any plans to get more each of these pieces are about 3" thick: 
I'm glad I scratched that itch, hopefully I can stop thinking about it now. 


Saturday, March 16, 2013

Find a reason...

Here's another new song. Honestly I'm not really happy with this one, I mean it has the same warts and uglies that all the songs I record solo have, I can overlook those. Its not terrible, but I just don't see it going anywhere. I initially thought the counter play between the bass and guitar was cool, after mixing in the rest of the guitars I think the bass sounds out of place. I'm not upset, or embarrassed, its just the way things go sometimes.

Oh and that's Version Larry in the picture, this was a band I was in 10 or so years ago. They have absolutely nothing to do with this song, but it was a picture I recently found so I included it here for no particular reason.

The song is about how religion completely controls some people, taking away their ability to reason - I'm not saying that happens to everyone who is religious, but sort of a warning that it can happen if you're not careful.

Neck wood for the Batar

I got the wood for the neck in last night. I looks great. I can't wait to start, I'll probably glue up the neck wood sometime next weekend. I think it would be good to have to have it all glued together for a while before I square it up.

I'll take this maple, cut it in half and spin it 90 degrees so its more or less quartersawn (not quite, but close):

Then cut a strip out of this piece of walnut, spin it 90 degrees and sandwich it between the two pieces of maple. This should give me a very strong neck and it should look pretty good too: 


Friday, March 15, 2013

First dirt ride in a while

I decided I'd try a dirt ride this morning, not my most energetic ride, but it was great to get out on the woods on my mountain bike. The North facing hills all had snow on them, I could ride on top for the most part, but I sunk in a bit too - so it added a bit of resistance. The ground was mostly frozen so where there wasn't snow it was a pretty good ride - maybe 25% of the ride was on snow.


A little design progress on the Batar

I found a website where you can enter in all the parameters for your instrument and it spits out a to-scale pdf drawing to lay out your fanned frets. Pretty cool. When you think about it, the amount of information on the internet really enables so many things. If I was building this thing even five years ago, I'd be completely on my own to figure things out, now not only can I find information, but there's an actual tool to calculate and draw this thing out for you, truly amazing.

The first pieces of wood will be here today, I can glue up the neck blank, but I won't be able to go any further until I get the bridge figured out as that will dictate the width of the neck and fretboard. I think I'll be making a mock up out of cardboard, just to see how everything fits together.

I found my bass pickups and I have a couple of suspected guitar pickups, due to the strange set up I need to fine pickups with a bar magnet and not individual string coils, they are out there, I just need to find the right ones.

Vacation day today, not sure if I'll go do a mountain bike ride while its cold and frozen or wait for this afternoon and do a road ride - with a high of only 42 its not very warm - especially on a road bike.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Lunch Loop

Great day for a ride today - nice warm sun, although it was pretty windy. Legs felt great, nice spin - moderate pace, I pushed a little, but mostly just spun. I was bummed to turn the handlebars back towards home!


Tuesday, March 12, 2013

...and so it begins

I imagine this will take some time, but I started accumulating parts for my next instrument build today - I got wood for the neck. I am going to build a combo instrument along the lines of a Novax guitar - 3 bass strings and 5 guitar strings on one instrument. I'm going to call it a batar I am probably biting off more than I can chew with regards to actually being able to play it, but I'm excited to start the build.

I'll have to find some stuff to sell so I can afford the electronics and hardware, I think I'm going to need to figure that out pretty quickly as it will dictate the neck dimensions to some degree. 

This one will be completely from scratch and have fanned frets. I've never cut slots or fretted a neck before so this will be interesting!

Music - the process of writing

Playing music is one of my passions in life, its a true escape. When I'm in the middle of a writing session or playing with the band, I am at peace. I know that sounds cliche, but its the only way I can think to describe it. In that moment nothing matters, everything is calm and I feel at peace with myself. There's no judgement, no thinking, just being. Just reading that back makes me want to gag, but I've re-written it three times and that seems to be the best way I can describe it.

The great thing about all this is I'm not a great musician, I think for the most part I'm barely passable, despite that mediocrity I love playing music. I will say that I have begun to really embrace the guitar in a way I have not in the past.

 It is amazing how far recording equipment has come. I've had a recording studio in the basement for 25 years and what used to take thousands of dollars and a floor to ceiling rack of gear can now be done by a single piece of equipment a bit bigger than a laptop (the one I have is a 2488 Neo). The sound quality on this HDR is miles above any other kind of recorder I've had - the fact that it cost less than $500 is kind of incredible too.

I started playing with this current band about 4 years ago - we play mostly original songs and most of the ones I've brought are songs I wrote many years ago with various bands. I've had creative "spurts" in my life where songs were rolling out as quick as I could record them, but this last four years plus the three or so before it when I wasn't in a band have been a bit of a drought. Recently I've been making a bit more time to get in the studio to write and I feel like the creative streak is back. I've written 4 songs in the last 2 months.

Song writing is a very personal thing I guess. When I'm writing I try to not judge at all - I let things happen and see where they go. For reasons I don't understand at all the words usually go in a pretty dark direction. I am a very positive person so I don't know where this stuff comes from or why, I just let it happen. A lot of times the words are from an imaginary person's perspective, who is this guy and why does he hate life so much? I don't know.

So here's my latest creation, warts and all. I always consider these solo writing sessions as sort of rough drafts of the final songs, so there are always warts. Probably the biggest wart (besides my singing) is the use of a drum machine. I could spend time programming the thing so its not so 1, 2, 3, 4, but since this is a rough draft I'm willing to give up on a good drum track to keep the process moving.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Weather so nice I had to do it twice

Dawn and I went out for a ride this afternoon - having extra light is definitely nice.

Longest road ride to date

Did another road ride with John today, at 37 miles its the longest road ride I've done so far. I'm learning about drafting, but have to learn to chill out. I did too many pulls for too long and went too hard. I was pretty much blown up by the end, good stuff. I'll get it eventually. It was a really great ride, lots of climbing, lots of descending.

Friday, March 8, 2013

Snow dump again

The weather dudes said 3", then they upped it to 6+, but we were just on the border of the 3/6+ line. We got 20"+ of heavy snow. That was quite a workout getting the driveway cleared. The really nice thing was Emily is home and Dawn didn't have to work, so the three of us did the driveway in about 2 hours - much easier than the 5+ it took me last time. I love the snow, I really do, but I've had about enough... bring on spring.

It was still snowing when I took this picture.    

Emily manning the blower.


Our mushroom shot.

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Lunch loop

I got out for a nice crank on the road bike at lunch today. That is a nice way to spend an hour - felt great top to bottom even if I didn't do anything spectacular on segments. Most of the segments on this ride are practically private, but its still good to see how today's ride stacked up against others I've done in the past. If I haven't said it lately, I love that road bike, its so much fun. I say it so often because I can hardly believe it myself.


Saturday, March 2, 2013

Back in the US of A

I don't mind traveling for work, I really don't, but I guess I don't love it either. I spent the week in Paris, which to some would be an absolute dream. It was just ok for me. I've been to Paris 3 or 4 times before (all for work). I find it to be a dirty city, yeah parts of it are quaint and great desserts. Why don't people pick up their dog poop! Incredible! It was smeared all over the place - really not cool Parisians! I should say that when I travel for work it usually means long days (and nights) with customers, I rarely get even a few minutes to myself.

When I travel for work I try not to make a big deal out of being a vegetarian, and for the most part its pretty easy to find stuff to eat. There are places I've been where its a challenge - Houston and Atlanta are two places I can think of in the US. I am never one to push my ideals on someone else, I really don't care if you eat meat or not, I don't even want my vegetarianism to make you think about where we are going to eat. Its a choice I make only for myself, I hate it when it becomes an issue.

This is probably going to sound elitist or whatever, but I do think it says something about a city if the restaurants are veggie friendly. There's a distinction between a place that will create a veggie plate for you (i.e. removing the meat from a regular dish) and a place that actually HAS a vegetarian option on the menu. I just think there are enough of us vegetarians out there that a restaurant should have at least one option for us.

NYC, Washington DC, London, LA, San Fran and Melbourne have all been extremely easy to get veggie food in - in the UK most restaurants I went to had a little green V next to veggie options.

All this to say Paris is the worst place I've been to so far to get vegetarian food. My best meals were on the plane - that says something!

I get it, Parisians like meat, but it is a very international city and I really think they should have the options on the menu. While I choose to be a vegetarian, there was a guy in our group who was a vegetarian for religious reasons, I'm surprised an international city like Paris isn't more accommodating. In fact I was surprised at just how consistent menus were in Paris. I went to a big fancy restaurant with a view of the Eiffel Tower and a couple of smaller ones, the menus were pretty similar. I guess that's part of the charm of Paris that I don't get, its clinging to an old paradigm. Perhaps that's my ugly american side coming out, and I guess it is nice that they have a different culture, it just doesn't agree with mine :-D

Anyway, I got back last night, fighting jet lag today, but Dawn and I got out for a nice ride around Tolland, then I continued on and did a bit of a loop on my own. Nice 20 miles or so, even though Strava only caught the last ten minutes of the ride!