How about this custom rig I met along the way to Savannah? We pulled into the Mile 104 rest area, the first one on the road out of Miami. Can’t have them any closer, I say, or people would start living there. It was a dude on his way to Daytona and that trailer and trike are completely hand built. Stereo and a cooler built in. He referred to my ride as “old school”. I rarely ride tandem along the freeway with other cycles because it seems they have difficulty traveling at an exact constant rate of speed. This is something I do for hours at a time.
Back to the present, it’s another ungood day, it’s like I can’t shake the world’s low-life idiots off my back. Here was a perfectly good day eaten up by logistics and chasing around. I point out the odd day like this is nothing compared to the full-scale dork-brains you have to put up with when you work for a living. But it is amazing that you never really get away from it even after retirement due to their sheer numbers. For example, the scooter should have been a twenty minute operation. Walk over there, drive it back.Instead, suspecting it would not be ready, I took the eBike over. Not ready. So I said cancel the job, just make it run. eBike home for two hours, wait, then back. Drive the scooter here and park. Start the batbike, drive back, pick up the eBike, drive back home, unpack and park both. Three hours down the drain. You see, they wasted time because they knew I had alternative transportation. I explained to them they had no right to think like that, but of course, it was like talking to the wall. Or to a Canadian, where everything they could see, hear, or smell when they walk in uninvited automatically becomes their business and even if it isn’t, your objection just means they’re onto you.
But I cannot be angry, for can you imagine the situation if I’d had only the one vehicle? It is unfortunate that this is now the way most American businesses operate. They perform just below the mark where it would cost you more to throw up your hands. I could see they left my job until last until last thinking there was no way to call it off without hiring at least one tow truck or walking all the way there. They didn’t know I could lash the eBike onto the batbike, and stood there gaping as I pulled away. That is how you lose your best customer.
Music is my escape on these episodes. Whenever possible, I locate the tab charts on-line. Why make extra work for yourself if you can already read music? A good chunk of advice here will set you straight. “Do not try to make a career playing bass by reading charts.”
You see, those charts are fokt (another term you read here first). Some of the worst tabs written are the bass parts if you can find them at all. In fact, except for a tiny cadre of extremely well-know older music, I have never seen any bass tabs that accurately portray the bass music as it should be played. And I don’t idly make statements that severe.
Worse, a lot of the tabs are written by guitar players without a clue. The worst bass players are guitarists who think “bass is easy”. That’s where all the dipstick bass “styles” came from—the brain dead guitar players twisted concept what is cool. Like playing bass with the thumb. Only a half- to three-quarters retarded guitarist could have cooked that one up. It embarrasses me to watch them play that way. Still, you should learn about tabs if you’ve never seen them. Be alert for guitarists who call a chord chart the tab. I told you already they are clueless.
There exists an element of humor if not hilarity in reading bass tablature from a guitarist. You see, one of the worst “herd mentalities” you’ll ever find in America is the three generations of guitarists now aged 30 to 60. As a bassist, I can read the tab and chuckle at the countless mistakes. Guitarists who write bass tabs have “guitaritis”, that disease than makes them think all other musicians are sub-human. They “hear” the bass lines only a certain way because they lack ability to do otherwise.
They also write bass tab from the wrong standpoint. Instead of realizing it is a separate instrument, they write what in their limited scope tells them, as a guitarist, what they think others should be playing to back them up. There, I just described 99% of the bass tablature that is out there.
Okay, okay, you want one example. How’s this: most guitarists don’t know the individual notes that make up their chords. They see bass as “roots and fifths” because that is the best most of them can personally manage—even when they play lead guitar boxes (repetitious patterns) on the bass. Take a random chord, say F6. When he’s playing an F6, he thinks the bass should be playing an F or a C note, where I’m playing a D. He thinks that is “wrong”, but the D is what makes a 6th. End of lesson.
Promo pix. Every band has promo pix and contrary to public belief, it is not always the audience that has the higher IQ. Here is my promo shot before and after. It seems some people were being confused by the before picture as to which person was the bass player. I say it was obviously the one with the torn jeans.
ADDENDUM
Another review of the ads for mobile homes in Broward and Palm Beach shows the parks are getting far more coordinated about disguising their pad rental rates. There is a concerted effort, clearly, for these outfits to not be up front about this ongoing cost. Here are the rates as of February for the places I’ve checked out—and rejected. For this kind of money, you can buy something.
Seville $450
Pinecrest $450
Home $485
Weiners $500
Royal Palm $550
Seminole $550
Siesta $450
Moonlight Ranch $580
Golden Trio $485
Bamboo $500
La Siesta $478
Rexmere Village $681
Paradise Village $681
Deerfield Lake $649
Carefree Cove $630
All of these parks have raised their rents the same general percentage on every New Year’s since 2008. Generally, these places don’t tell you the rents, you have to waste time looking through each individual ad. None will tell you the rent over the phone or by e-mail, they want you to “come in and talk”. Despite more demand for economical living space, the number of parks still in business is declining, not growing. There is some connection there but I can’t quite my finger on it.
But you gotta love Carefree Cove. Yep, carefree as you please as long as you can come up with $630 every month for the rest of your life. That’s exactly half the average US social security check, but I’m certain that is nothing but coincidence and more coincidence. How else could it be explained? And quit asking questions.
By comparison, the rent at the 3/2 triple-wide I found for Wallace was a mere $400 per month. If he’d had the integrity to keep his promises, he’d now be living like a king instead of counting off the remaining days in some windowless basement suite. Where he really got me was not the money (I’ve got all that back already and plenty more) but that when I took his word, I quit looking. That’s what really tripped me up for those two years. But that was then, this is now. The right deal could come along any moment.
[Author's note 2017: the right deal took another three years to appear. But by that time, I bought it for cash.]
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