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!
 

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. 

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: 

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.

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!