Except for taking the batbike to the shop and deciding to try a new battery. To see if that takes care of the hard starting problem. But what has me concerned is replacing the rear tire. It is bald, making me ponder it may not have been replaced because I suspect that involves removing the sidecar. But I didn’t buy a vintage vehicle to save money. Plus I picked up some tubes to extend the scooter footrests. The factory issue are useless as they are too far under the motor fairings for the rear passenger. My replacements will have to be installed and fixed with a cotter pin for each usage, such as today when Estelle and I went to Home Depot. She found this an engaging date, so of course I explained how only fancy-pants dudes won’t take their gal to a lumber store. She’s learned not to take me too seriously.
We (Estelle and I) strapped an 8-foot shelf to the batbike and drove it here, where it is destined to become the recording counter. Trent is likely wondering why everything is taking so darn long but the working space is heap cramped. Estelle’s planned a motorcycle trip but it was too warm. We sat in the shade on the porch for a few hours. I showed her photos of my days in Merida (Yucatan Peninsula) and the places I walked in Chichen Itza some thirty years ago. Merida isn’t Merida any more. I saw the streets designed for donkey carts now choked with tourist cars. And satellite mushrooms on the once old-world hotels. Sad.
Desert Fox? No, not Rommel, but a portable gold panning machine. Watch the video. The [machine] cost is $339. The logical question is why no link to that video? Easy, here is a link to Jayda and her little operation, which is much more fun to watch. The intro to her video tells us Jayda is no stranger to prospecting. Nosiree.Then I noticed a documentary on the Western Desert, which I would not normally watch, but I was astounded by how Montgomery was presented as a genius who defeated Rommel. To be fair, Rommel was accurately portrayed, but Monty is the standing joke of British incompetence. He didn’t defeat Rommel, Hitler did. None of Montgomery’s plans ever worked, they were battlefield patch-ups. After the Germans slaughtered his first waves, he used six-to-one superiority to overwhelm his opponents. It’s not the only time Monty’s application of brute force was relabeled as brilliant strategy.
Or how about that nonsense Monty captured all the “axis prisoners”. Capture my eye. They were Italians who walked into the prison camps on their own because the Germans had commandeered all their vehicles, probably because the Italians weren’t using them to fight a war. And then the video makes a big deal that Monty accepted the German surrender, like he personally defeated Hitler. Nonsense, Monty’s big event wasn’t even a surrender, but an armistice (look it up) and not even from an army officer, but a former U-boat captain. This Monty has to be exposed as the pumped-up Whitehall answer to Rommel’s fame.
The German cookie. It’s from the bakery and comes in two patterns. Half-and-half, and the cross pattern shown here. The batch of dough is identical but I swear to you that the cross pattern tastes better. As you see, brunch is often accompanied by study, a holdover from my marathons at Denny’s back in college. The counter by the pay phones is where I developed my habit of reading an entire textbook cover to cover before going back to learn anything lesson by lesson. Hey, is there a bite missing out of that cookie already? Man, I’m fast.
ADDENDUM
My musical background? I don’t have one, in any commonly accepted sense. I heard but never learned the 12-bar blues until I was over 30. But I did independently figure out the I-IV-V progression when I was eleven years old, played in a band at twelve and started (not joined, started) my own band at thirteen. I struggled with piano lessons for years and practiced every day, but never to the point of playing piano professionally.
What you get today is the result of creating that band. It’s not like I had any help or any instruments. The guitar, for instance, was something I’d seen in the Sears catalog and had to convince a local friend (Jerry Walker) to buy one before I could even try it out. For reasons. The same with all the instruments. I had to scrounge one, learn it myself, then teach somebody to play it.
One such instrument was the electric bass, and the reason I taught these was because they were simpler to play than the keys. I didn’t have the patience to teach anyone keys. But the difficulty of single-handedly starting a band under these bleak circumstances meant I could not devote the required time to learn proper keyboard riffs. I lived to regret this.
It’s been described how I learned bass because it was so hard to find a good player. But upon closer inspection, I re-learned bass after a lapse of almost ten years. My background left me so destitute I could not afford to play bass during my twenties. A bass requires an amp, which in turn requires a vehicle to move it, which in turn requires—you get the idea. I could afford a bass, but not afford to play one.
What put me off to guitar? Distortion. While I liked the fuzz (Fender Fuzzbox) sound, when I was twelve, I heard Hendrix. I did not care for [what at that time I called] guitar theatrics, nor could I begin to afford the bewildering array of pedals and gadgets entering the market. Things would be much different if I’d had anything like such resources, but I did not.
[Author’s note: There was a second reason. My father did bring home a guitar when I was already eleven. The problem was that I was already eleven. I knew not to dare accept any “gift” from his direction or you’d never hear the damn end of it. He once “gave” me five bucks for scout dues. That was the first and last time. I eventually was forced to work four years of “summer holidays” for that lousy fiver. Yes, forced. I already knew way, way, way better than to touch that guitar.]
