One year ago today: June, 2016, I’d rather . . .
Five years ago today: June 18, 2012, complete with fat doorman.
Nine years ago today: June 18, 2008, my $3,500 band.
Random years ago today: June 18, 2011, Bozo of the Decade.
That’s the Rebel with the Denver Fender strapped to the seat, in travel mode. It’s slightly bigger guitar than I’m used to but it’s hard to beat the sound. This shows me taking the guitar to Snapper Creek last Thursday. One the home trip, it I also had a suitcase on the bike. I have no shame what things look like down the freeway. I would not mind if every trip in my life had been such an adventure. The guitar is to give Agt. R a stab at learning these tunes. I’ve already got it figured out I have to go solo. That means a lot of vet clubs and old folk’s homes. I may be royalty on the bass but on guitar, I’m not that good. (Later, I'm keeping the guitar for myself. I forgot what a beauty it was.)
There you have it. The entire trip to Miami, including extras like $35 to visit the science museum and buying breakfast was $177. Well within my travel budget of $75 per day, and one of the reasons I say I could just travel permanently any time I want to. But life is strange, by the time I can travel all I want, I have a nice home I prefer to stick around. Travel is not the same when you are over 50. You never meet anyone, or at least you never meet anyone worthwhile. And when you do meet a nice one, she’s over-attached to her cats and can’t move to Florida.
Ha, and the day I arrived back here, the situation shows how well I’ve become at positioning my self to be indispensable. My absence brings things to a standstill. Now, don’t read any negativity into that condition. I don’t use it to get myself mix in where I don’t belong. You must be thinking of someone else. But I’ve got decades of experience making sure nobody can swipe my ideas and cut me out of my own deal. That’s what I mean.
And poor Agt. R gets hit with it both barrels the instant I leave town. I’m still the only one who can actually fit the lantern pieces with the jig fast enough to make a profit. Careful of what I said there. Agt. R admits until he met me he never saw anyone do these calculations. He would build a bench no matter how many hours it took and then just sell it for what he could get. While he does not follow the entire sets of my formulas, he totally grasps the vast advantages it gains us over any potential local competition. According to him, they’ve not only never seen it, they cannot imagine it.
Carrying on, we’ve come into possession of a compound miter saw. At least that’s what it looks like to me. It would have to be set up and I am already completely out of work counter space. Maybe in the red shed, but there are already things like wood lathes and spray booths crammed in there. That miter saw can make all but the longest lumber cuts for the lantern pieces. Now that we’ve got it, we desperately need it. Funny how that goes, huh?
Duchess of Cambridge.
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This is where I need to learn the ropes. I was rounding the corners of the lantern stiles and plates with the best router bit that was handy. That was the style called round over in the accompanying chart. Then I discover that no such bit was available in the 1860s. Instead, the other cut shown, a chamfer, was the popular finish. I have not measured the angle yet, but a simple cut like that would sure be nicer than constantly changing the router blade to cut the glass channels.
Attention to detail is kind of important but that gives me a question. Why not just figure out what point the shopper gives up paying attention and just built it to that degree? Remind me to look up when routers came into popularity with the home builder. Since it is a totally electric device, it had to be invented, right? My design has to be the most realistic on the market. The online videos I’ve watched don’t mention jigs. Today I’ve got the jet lag that would normally have set in when I was at the other end of my journey, so don’t expect much. I need the down time.
Both cuts will work fine the way I designed the jigs.
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are other people’s
opinions. Their lives a mimicry. Their passions a quotation .”
~ Oscar Wilde
Also, I stopped in Lake Placid, if I didn’t already say. The people actually called back but I was already more than halfway home by then. But make sure I visit, that’s something like eight times in a row now we’ve missed the connection. Man, I was right there, I had the guitar with me, this has got to improve. It’s just over an hour’s drive. See photo, I’m no expert but I believe this format of full-sized guitar is known as a dreadnaught. When you read the next passage, keep in mind that the crowd I would be entertaining with a guitar act is not the same one I’d play bass solo for. It I was brave enough to do that bass solo, I could be out gigging right now.
The sixth one I can’t figure out how to play is “On The Road Again”. It has a strange strum that I can’t get right. But when you add things up, I can play 23 songs. That’s stretching it a bit, since I’m counting “Heartaches By The Number”, which it is practically impossible not to be able to play. But it means if I can plow up another 9 songs, I could get myself a gig of my own.
I know pro guitar players who do it with as few as 24 songs, and one of the best, Johnny D, has had the same 26 songs for decades. Others know only a few chords and capo everything. I had plenty of time to think about the new guy on this trip and all the telltale signs are that he is not going to deliver. It does not take a month to ace “Jambalaya”. Remember, guitar is easy. It is only the majority of semi-talented guitar players who can’t learn anything except by rote that think it is hard.
I measured out the plywood and I think I can make a custom guitar case, maybe another for the bass. They might even have corners reinforced with drywall bead, who knows? Glad to be home, I worked in the shed for a couple of hours, listening to the rain. I improved the jigs so that they will work with spring clamps instead of the more cumbersome and slower C-clamps. Now, you out there keep all this a secret and you know why. If you want to live vicariously through some of my adventures, don’t tell people anything they could copy, see? The more money, the more I travel, a simple formula.
ADDENDUM
I created a spot where the miter saw can sit, but it is inconvenient. I further looked at the scooter tip-over. It drained all the battery acid into the ground. I removed the caps and they are dry, so it must have been lying on its side a few days anyway. I don’t know where one can buy distilled water in this town. The left hand-brake was also empty of fluid, so that will also need to be looked into.
And fix that shed door, the one JZ fixed last June. What? Well, it turns out JZ does not have a lot of experience fixing barn doors. The shed has mini-barn doors.
There must be something it is good for. It could be just some cheapskate souvenir but somebody did fly it across the Atlantic. Your turn. Then I did the best I could to watch another hour of the movie “Talk To Her”. It’s well acted, but dreary. This lady bullfighter gets gored and winds up in a coma. The male nurse that looks after her daily also has another patient in a coma, a lady he was secretly in love with. He advises the bullfighter’s boyfriend that women need to be talked to, even in a coma.
Now, if you ever need experience talking to women in a coma, go check if the phone company is hiring. While the movie covers a lot of emotional ground, and does it well, it is too predictable. Like how she goes to weddings just to cry. Don’t people know the church had nothing to do with weddings until the Pope decided there was good money in it, similar to how divorce lawyers look that the same situation.
Near the movies end, and it is a long movie, the male nurse gets his coma patient pregnant and gets thrown in a jail for the insane. The plot takes all these weird twists at the end, where this is not enough time to resolve any of them. Later, I finished watching the movie. The lady comes out of the coma during childbirth, but the baby is dead. They keep her recovery from the male nurse, who commits suicide. The lady bullfighter had meant drop her boyfriend and the movie ends with him and the recovered coma lady meeting at a ballet. Because everybody knows these southern Europeans are so deep they do everything with class. That's why opera is such a big deal in El Paso.
Watch this movie if you have nothing else on tap. It covers a lot of emotional ground, which makes the movie disjointed, but ensures there will be something you can connect with. For me, it was the passage where the guy says his biggest regret is that when he has any fun in life, a moment later he is in agony because she is not there to share it with him. That, I can identify with. But this movie is not for everyone.
Last Laugh
(Meanwhile in Germany.)
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