One year ago today: April 20, 2016, not just any stick.
Five years ago today: April 20, 2012, the book “Fifty Year Wound”.
Nine years ago today: April 20, 2008, no overhead shade.
Random years ago today: April 20, 2009, I did that!
Here’s an ingenious device. I’ve never seen or used one before, so I’m supposing some of you have not either. It is a water trap for a compressed air line. Compressed air heats up, but as it cools, it drops some of its humidity and that can foul your lines. I thought water trap and water filter were interchageable until I purchased this remarkable item. It doesn’t have a filter.
The water is periodically drained by depressing an ordinary tire tube valve stem, it is almost dead center of the photo between my thumb and forefinger. Oops about the picture quality, I’ve mislaid the Vivtar, so this is a still from my cyclecam. You know you can enlarge this pictures with a double click. These traps are cheap enough to install near each tool, but this one is connected to the main tank outlet.
One thing I have to grant these yard pigeons is persistence. The new cage on the feeder only allows birds of cardinal size or smaller to perch. But these pigeons don’t quit easy. They try to peel the lid off the top of the feeder, which is removable so I can fill it, but won’t come off unless the feeder itself is lifted from the bottom. I’ll fix so even that can’t happen. This morning that one pigeon didn’t give up for over an hour. It’s all instinct but it is hard not to attribute some intelligence or emotion. Yes, I know it is called “anthropomorphization”.
Maybe I should learn to quit as well. So, tell you what, I’ll take the weekend off. That doesn’t include music and minor puttering around.
Marumbi Station.
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Fun or what, the entire afternoon was gone to music practice. Some songs we find easy, others there is a clash of musical styles. However, unlike South Florida, this doesn’t resolve into a shouting match. It is well understood that each of us have played some tunes a certain way so you bet there are some sour notes. Ah, but you want to know the overall analysis of the situation, you want to know if this is picking up, and if not, why not? I am not going to say “gossip”, but that’s what it is.
Well, let’s just say that the guy has all of the guitar defects and they have to be overcome one at a time. Not so easy when a dozen can appear in one song, or where the guitarist didn’t know of any such problem until it gets pointed out. So yes, we had teething problems. But we also had tunes that were spectacular right away. On the others, it is not so simple a thing as just showing what is wrong. So, you want to know what the major guitar defects are at this time.
A) playing the studio rhythm part instead of duo rhythm
B) playing the bass riffs, a definite no-no.
C) reverting to comping
D) leaving out intros or other riffs
E) trying to play a lead break to just a bass line
F) lower guitar notes clash with upper bass notes
These are the big ones when a guitarist is inexperienced at duo work, but even there you have to be careful. You can’t just tell them. You see, guitarists often think the two-guitar gigs they’ve done in the past are the same as a duo. Wrong, totally wrong. Also, my rule to do a faithful reproduction of the original is too often taken to mean part A) above, and that is not at all the right context. Often, to do a good job of it, both the bass and rhythm might have to play riffs or patterns that are not even in the original.
Examples of each would be, in the order above, “Don’t Rock The Jukebox”. The studio rhythm of that piece is terrible for duo work, no matter how well you ace it. Next, “Long Haired Country Boy”, that fancy part is a bass riff, please don’t play it in unison on guitar. I know there is a slight studio overdub on the original, but trust me, that does not work on stage. “Oh Lonesome Me”, Jag was the only guitarist to date who could play the same rhythm all the way through—and he’s never heard the song. The next item is any song with a lead break. No, you cannot stop playing rhythm and change to a lead break, you have to chord through it, or do a Chet Atkins. The bass is not your backup instrument, ever. In a duo, it is an equal. And take that bass knob on your amp and turn it to neutral. You don’t need any guitar low end when there is a bass.
Other than that, it was a great session. The new guy needs a nickname, so let’s try Sarge. It’s becoming easier to note that he could do a solo, but if he does, he’ll get clobbered by the acts already in this town. Forget about air conditioning his shed, it turns out he is only renting. He knows enough music theory to queue me in without shouting chords and such, though he has a tendency to play what he hears rather than how the song really goes. When he’s singing his numbers, I go along with it. But my tunes need it done right.
Some tunes are naturals for acoustic and bass, so I’ve been over-complimenting whenever he plays something like that. Example, “Whiskey River”. My hope is that he’ll learn to get away from playing guitar rhythms and start playing accompaniment rhythms. Think of it like the way I play bass. If I played it like the original, most of the time you wouldn’t know what I’m doing. Yet every song I play, the audience knows almost instantly what it is. This doesn’t happen by accident. All I’m asking is you change the rhythm part to something that rapidly identifies the song—to the audience.
“A man's home is his castle,
in a manor of speaking..”
Again, the rehearsal went well into the late afternoon. This kills the day, so I took the batbike eastward to Haines City for a brew. Sigh, Crystal did run off with that dodo, they went to Texas. But I see her reasoning. Single mother, no skills, and the rest of it reads like a case study in making mistakes. But you can’t quantify chemistry and I would have taken her away from all that. Now, at the bar, there is another single mother, maybe 25, but looks better than that. She’s taken a shine to me.
Don’t laugh unless you’ve seen me around young women. I do not, repeat, do not ask them out or suggest anything. No innuendos, no hustle. If this one wasn’t Latina, I’d have followed up on the spot. What? Listen, Buddy, if I don’t have anything in common with a babe, then I certainly don’t have anything in common with her grandmother. You may not like that concept, but around me you’d best get used to it. I would drop anything to date a babe again.
Some trivia, discovered while I was looking for something else. The main repositories of gold are not banks, but sunken treasure galleons. Pirates often attacked in shallow water, or drove the ship toward shoals. The idea was not to sink the ship, but to capture it. Thus, if it went aground or sunk near shore, the gold could still be recovered. Pirating is a very inexact science.
Thus, most of the unrecovered gold is in water less than 60 feet deep. The trick is finding it, but if you do, 60 feet is within diving distance. The estimate of the gold value is today’s trivia. Nearly five billion dollars. That is a hefty pile of money, ole boy. That reminds me, I have more research on the dredge.
ADDENDUM
Deeper examination (pun intended) of the available videos show that the fancy add-ons, like the highbanker, are not worth the extra hassle unless you find a particularly rich deposit. In the creek, these are deposits, not seams. The word is to loose the extras and just use a regular sluice. This information brings the operation down into the range where it is affordable just to try it out. We have a line on an old dude up the road who has two sluices he is not using.
Here is a similar DIY mini-sluice on a pair of inner tubes, which seems a fragile arrangement out in the woods. Note the tethering lines and the rather compact size of the motor. A few horsepower seems sufficient for a 2” operation. This can easily be carried in the bed of a pickup, and two guys can lug the motor into position without getting, say, a heart attack.
See also the small size of the dredge. Commercially, these are sold in 3 foot sections, which you can add on to any length you want. l would stick with the smaller unit until you hit paydirt. The sections affix together using wing nuts. Once this contraption is ready, the task is to find black sand. This is where we might have an edge. I have experience treasure hunting at the library and you know all those documentaries of the sea-going salvage ventures? How they always say the real work is in the archives. Well, now I’m finally paying attention.
I had presumed Agt. R had some experience at this, but no. Same as me, he is learning from scratch. His plan was to place the dredge beside the boat in the outrigger configuration I described on day one. However, my research shows a better design may be mounting the sluice and motor directly on the boat, where you see the inner tubes in the above photo. The motor clamps above the trough and the weight pushes the stern down at an angle. You then adjust the water flow instead of the slope.
An alternative is floats. He was judging by the styrofoam models shown in the catalog, but if it is to float, why not a couple of pontoons fashioned from large PVC sections? And lose the outrigger, I say, because I can’t see how that could be made to float level with the boat. Agt. R is also after shark’s teeth and arrowheads, which I wouldn’t know until I stepped on them, heavy. I’ve given the go-ahead, since my research has lowered the startup costs from $2,400 to a tenth of that, providing he can get that old guy’s sluice at least on a trial basis.
However, I’ve already got one rule in place. No matter what you find of value, not a word goes out to anyone until it is too late to matter. So don’t be expecting any covers of me on Fortune 500 even if I score. Mind you, my sudden trips to various world capitals for tea and sandwiches will likely be a giveaway. Gold, you say? Gold. Could a man forgive himself if he didn’t at least try? It’s not like we’re Millennials, but they’ve created a world where everybody’s chances of making a legitimate living are, shall we say, politically equal. Serves them right.
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