Another early morning as I try to repair the water leak. You know, I’m no plumber but it seems to me if I was going to design pipes, one thing I would insist on is that the inside diameter of the next largest pipe always matches the outside diameter of the next smallest. I know they had many design considerations but I also know all such designs are compromises and they should have got it right the first time. The building isn’t as square as I thought. In fact it is more than an inch off square. Every few feet I have to allow for the discrepancy. I’m also no carpenter and I know I’ve been referring to saws by the wrong names. What I call a jig saw is really called a saber saw, but it neither looks or functions like a saber. So I’ll stick with my own convention on this one. Eric came by before noon and tells me there is a plumbing supply specialty house a few miles west of here on Pembroke. I know, that should say Penbrook, but they wouldn’t be that easy on the mapmakers.
This information saved me a couple of hours, so I worked on the deck, leaving only the cutout area where the piping is to be mended. The area I built is stronger than the structure holding it up. Heat or not, I also changed the car oil and checked all the obvious spots and it looks fine. Remind me to look up how to upgrade the air conditioning seals. Maybe I’ll get an estimate from a regular place first, times are pretty lean out there.
Unfortunately I hit rush hour leaving here, and it took me close to an hour to travel seven miles. The plumbing store had just closed when I pulled up. That doubles the wasted miles and time. I put my monthly $60 gas in the tank earlier today and the bad news is the last fill-up only got me 233 miles, or just over 15.5 miles per gallon. Even allowing for the extra short trips and heavy loads, that is pretty grim. One of the contributing factors here is the hardest to measure, and that is the effect of bad drivers. That is totally why it took me 51 minutes to travel 56 blocks in a straight line. For the last two miles I got caught in the fast lane behind some fat slob doing 15 mph and missing every light, but I could not pass as I was not sure where the turnoff was. Florida East Coast likes to run trains at rush hour, don’t forget. I’ll be watching my mileage very closely.
I was a little too slow deciding go out for dinner. Marvelous Coffee is no more, they folded up y’day. The Hippie said he had done all he could but the crowds were not there. He even went in one Friday because they regularly had a jazz band and he was the entire audience. In Florida unless it is tacky and tasteless, it just does not sell. There is probably a Burger King down the road doing a brisk business. Music, even good live music, is not in itself enough of a draw any more and I, for one, will not make the error of blaming the economy or the clubs.
I don’t know the answer, but I know that what I used to do has got to change. But right now, except for billing myself as “topless”, my only idea is a comedy country-based duo, and others around me are too slow to see any merit in the concept. Maybe they are waiting for every venue in town to close up under their feet before they’ll try something new. I’ve seen that before.
It was early enough so I went over to Donovan’s and played for, wow, three hours. No wonder I’m tired. The guitarist from New York was there. He continually has equipment problems of one kind or another. He was the only other musician and the club was dead. On the way home, I was the only car on [all eight lanes of] the freeway between 154th and Ives Diary, I have never seen such empty roads in this area before. It’s creepy. One gets the impression that the only thing holding the system together is people on credit who don’t want to admit something has really gone wrong this time.
