The Stretch of Vitality

Fruita 2013

2013-04-25T01:51:59.376Z

So almost a month has again slipped by between blog posts. To be honest, I've been feeling in a bit of a "waiting for inspiration" funk although the calendar indicates plenty of busyness nonetheless. OK, so let's roll back to just after Honk!Tx.

Went to a March Fourth Marching Band show at the Fox on March 28 with Sarah and a friend of hers. Seen essentially the same show (with increasingly impressive acro/stilts performances) about 6 times now. Still dream about going on the road with that band. The next day was a bit of a whacky one. We had an Afronauts dress rehearsal and then I went to Shine for a Pink Mammoth burner dance party. I actually wrote about that experience extensively but decided that has to remain in the offline private journal as it's a bit racey for the public forum. In summary, it was a fun but weird evening.

Saturday Afronauts played a pretty good and fun gig opening for Moksha at Shine. Stephen had a sudden and unpleasant separation from his wife and left town permanently immediately following our set. He will be missed. Eric, Alice, and I chatted a bit and decided it was about the right time to throw in the towel on the Afronauts project. We discussed with the band a bit and there was more vocal expression of surprise and desire to patch things together than I anticipated, but still we are done, at least in that configuration. It is indeed bittersweet, though.

The next two weeks were pretty much hold the steady course. Rehearsals with GGO, Legitimate Front, and Jasmine, Elise's birthday party, some climbing, and some computer side project work. I ran sound for the Aircat Aerial Arts student show.

This past weekend I went on a CHAOS trip to mountain bike in Fruita, Colorado. It's the same trip I did last year. This time there was threatening rain but it was all bark and no bite so we ended up fine and got plenty of good riding in. Next time I should leave a day earlier and do a bit more riding. The trails are really world-class there.

At the moment I'm at Canon Mine Coffee in Lafayette with Jasmine and Jeff my housemate. Jasmine and I are about to give our second public performance of the sax/cello duets we've been working on. Jocelyne my other housemate left today for a 3-month east coast tour, so the house is now in bachelor pad mode. Jeff and I were just griping about the dirty dishes situation we may need to talk with Alex about.

Honk!Tx

2013-03-28T03:02:37.979Z

Last Wednesday I flew out to Austin, Texas for Honk!Tx, a festival of community street bands. Shaun from Gora Gora was on my flight and several other honkers toting instruments and megaphones were making connections in Denver and on our same flight. My accommodations for the night were at a hostel in Austin, and a friendly man with a British accent at the airport information desk warned me sternly that it was in an unsafe neighborhood and be careful walking the several blocks from the bus stop to the hostel. Shaun and I took the $1 Capital Metro bus together, and I got off near the hostel. The neighborhood looked mostly fine to me if a bit pedestrian unfriendly. I picked up some hairspray since there happened to be a Walgreens right there. I didn't end up using it since most of my transportation was by bike and I was wearing a mohawk-incompatible helmet.

I at a meal at the Mexican restaurant on the corner and then walked a few blocks to the hostel, which backs directly to the lake. The hostel living room was fairly cozy and the bedrooms were not so much, as you might expect of dorm-style sleeping for $25/night. But it was OK. Alice flew in later that night and got into the hostel a bit after 1 AM.

In the morning I made some pancakes on the hostel's griddle and worked a few hours. Then Alice and I took the bus to East Austin where our Honk community host house was. Our hosts were out for the day but left a key for us so we could settle in. I worked from there a bit and then headed to the East Village Coffee shop to work the remainder of the afternoon.

After dinner Alice and I walked 1.6 miles or so to downtown for the pre-festival Brass Band Blitz event being held at Red 7. We got some food truck BBQ and watched WWF wrestling before heading into the venue. Once in the venue, Alice went to warm up her trumpet and found her first valve wasn't working. We frantically saught help to see if anyone could repair it, but no one was able to do much, especially without specialized tools. However, Alice found out she could actually mostly play it as it was and we went to parade up 6th St with the contingent from Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band (many bands did not yet have all their members in town). 6th St in Austin is basically bro bar central, and for the most part seemed like they could care less about a mostly-steampunk-adorned marching band parading down the strip. When we were almost back to the venue, Alice realized her third valve slide (A small U-shaped section of the trumpet tubing) was missing and went back to look for it. I offered to come with her, but she declined (in retrospect, I should have gone with her despite her refusal). So I finished the parade and then went looking for her. I found her on her way back to the club pretty shaken up by the night's struggles including the valve breaking, losing the slide, and getting bothered and cat-called by the drunken assholes on 6th street while looking for her slide. We went together and made another pass through the parade route, but as you might expect, we didn't find the slide.

After the parade there were band performances throughout the night at Red 7, alternating between the indoor and outdoor stages. It is common in Austin for venues to have two decent-sized stages, it seems. Most of Gora Gora was in the process of arriving that night and by around 11 PM or so, a quorum of the band was all there hanging out and listening. I particularly enjoyed the set by the Bucharest Drinking Team and how loud some of these bands are without any amplification.

Most of the band wanted to stay for the entire Young Fellas Brass Band Set, which went until nearly 2 AM. I was exhausted at that point and just wanted to go to sleep. We walked home and stopped along the way at a food truck to eat. We almost walked past it as most of the lot was dark and looked empty and closed but JJ ran across the street to investigate the one food truck that had a set of strip-lights still on and indeed, that one was still open and serving Jumbalaya on a stick. By the time we got home it was 3 AM and poor Doug our host gets up at 6 AM to cook breakfast every morning. The house is a small two-bedroom rectangle plus a small camper in the back yard and the hosts were housing themselves plus eight band members that first night!

I slept on the floor of the guest bedroom just using my little youth-sized sleeping bag as both blanket and bedding. Friday morning I got up and slipped out to East Village Coffee again to work just enough to record our weekly sprint demo and do some last minute bug fixes. But officially, it was a day off, so back to the house I went at noon for a rehearsal. The band had saved me a breakfast burrito, which I devoured and thoroughly enjoyed.

After rehearsal we walked a mile or so to a house that Honk was using as a loaner bicycle depot and picked up 4 bikes we would be relying on heavily for transportation. Stephen, bless his soul, drove his van by himself 14 hours hauling most of our instruments and gear, and this would prove key to getting us where we needed to be. Friday night we biked to South Congress for a round of performances at 2 venues next door to one another. We played the smaller of the two venues and the crowd was small but enthusiastic. After the performances we crawled around the area a bit and glommed together with some folks from Bucharest Drinking Team. We ate pizza at Home Slice and Shaun and I got cupcakes from the food truck nearby.

On the bike ride home the chain broke on my department store loaner mountain bike and we had to take turns having other rides push/pull me up hills and then have me coast down. We made it back though.

Saturday morning we got a late start and headed on bike over to the park where the day's performance were centered. We were on line to get breakfast tacos when we realized our show time was not 1 PM but noon, so we had to high-tail it over to our spot, set up, and play an hour set. That was a pretty fun set and I was grateful for cloud cover most of the morning and early afternoon. After our set, Stephen found a parking spot created by God right next to the venue, so we stashed the gear and headed to the home-cooked community pot luck lunch, which apparently the volunteers go all-out on and it was quite delicious.

In the afternoon we watched other bands perform including the Yes, Ma'am Brass Band, Bucharest Drinking Team, and a local Austin high school band that was great. We played an hour set at 4pm and it was very well received. Afterward we relaxed on the Spiderhouse patio and had some beers.

Saturday evening was another pot luck home-cooked dinner and we hung out and had a good time. I think we eventually biked home for a rest before heading to the Russian House to play a late gig from 11 to 1. The Russian House manager (a 9' tall Russian woman) was very supportive of Honk!Tx and had bands playing their Fri/Sat/Sun.

Sunday we biked over to the park where the parade started. As things go organized Mike and Ian made a clutch burrito run and got everyone breakfast which we scarfed down immediately prior to stepping off for the parade. We paraded a big rectangle and then hung out in the park all day while bands played 8-minute sets on the main stage. We followed Emperor Norton and joined forces with them for one tune before playing out mini-set. The crowd response was very positive and I think there were enjoying the pretty wide variety of musical styles bands played. There were traditional songs from Oaxaca, pop tune covers, Balkan folk music, an arrangement of Holts's "Mars", Second Line New Orleans music, etc.

After our set and hanging out at the park drinking the "Beauty Tonic" moonshine one of the bands was giving out we heading downtown to Stubb's BBQ before our relatively early Russian House gig/jam. This ended up being essentially the after party and musicians from many bands showed up and jammed in a massive and massively loud group.

Around 10 PM the CEO of my company, who lives in Austin, and the founder, who was visiting, showed up. I had not met either of them in person before. They sampled some of the bar's signature infused vodkas and we chatted a while before Mike and I had to bike home.

Monday I returned my loaner bike with the busted chain and walked to East Village Coffee to work for the morning. Shaun stopped by briefly as well. I walked to downtown to Progress Coffee for lunch and worked the rest of the day there. That was my favorite of the 4 coffee shops I tried in Austin. After work Monday I went to meet my old Opsware co-worker John Rogers at The Gingerman for a beer. He has been living in Switzerland for several years so I probably haven't seen him in person since 2006 or so. I hit Hut's Hamburgers for dinner and then took a bus south along Lamar to my friend Andrew's apartment where I would stay Mon/Tue.

Tuesday I took the bus up to Flipnotics coffee and worked there in the morning. I hit Mesquite BBQ for lunch and then worked the afternoon from Austin Java (across the street from Flipnotics). Definitely too many free-wifi-guilt coffee/tea drinks were consumed that day. After work Andrew and I walked along the lake a bit, hit Whole Foods, and then walked around the UT campus a bit before turning in. Andrew gave me a ride to the airport early this morning and I worked from home after I arrived.

Overall, this was basically a band geek's dream festival and just the tiniest taste of rock star glamour. All of the musicians were really fun, friendly, and goofy. We had our share of surprises and adventures, too, with Alice's trumpet and Steve's tuba having problems in addition to my bike chain breaking. However, Stephen found a hundred dollar bill in his thrift store shirt pocket, which was great! I liked visiting Austin a lot and feel like I got to see most of the key neighborhoods. It was much colder at night than I was expecting so I could have used another layer of clothes but was mostly fine with my windbreaker.

Crossfit Evolution Complete

2013-03-09T17:31:28.895Z

This morning was my 6th and final class of the introductory "CrossFit Evolution" training program. It snowed about 2" last night and continues now, making the roads slushy and wet. My housemates had juggled our cars into the garage and driveway to make room for the plow to clear the street in front of my house should they choose to pay any attention to our cul de sac. Jeff had asked me if I was going anywhere last night before blocking my car in, but I forgot I had early morning crossfit. I didn't want to wake them up just to get their car keys, so mountain bike it was.

It was actually pretty stable and it's just 3.2 miles so no big deal. Today's workout was the "fight gone bad" which consists of 5 minutes of continuous 1-minute exercises followed by 1 minute rest with 3 total sets over 17 minutes. I presume the name comes from either mixed martial arts or boxing, which is pretty cool. I've always been amazed at the heart of mixed martial arts athletes slugging it out through a long fight.

After the workout, the gym owner Julia said to me "now go ride your bike, you freak", and it occurred to me that if people aren't calling you a freak periodically, you're probably not living up to your potential.

:-)

Turkey Cake with Strangers from the Internet

2013-03-07T01:16:28.252Z

So Sunday we had a gathering of friends down in Denver to venture into the culinary realm of Turkey Cake. The host was a former AirBnB guest who now has his own long-term apartment on the 16th St mall in Denver. I also had my 2 housemates from Airbnb, 1 housemate from CraigsList, and a girl who stayed with me via CouchSurfing . Ages range from too-young-to-drink to middle-aged. It just goes to show you can meet fun and interesting people on the Internet.

So the Turkey Cake is something Chris has made for the past few years. It's pretty brilliant. The base is a turkey patty which is basically meatloaf style. Then there are layers of mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberries, sweet potatoes, an "icing" layer of mashed potatoes, and topped off with mini marshmellows. It was really delicious and we followed it up with Bavarian chocolate cake. Detailed photos here are below.

Sick of February

2013-02-16T21:33:53.337Z

So I've had some kind of mild nuisance cold symptom continually for the past 2+ weeks. It's looking like I will have spent more than half of February under the weather. I blame my airbnb guest who arrived from LA spewing germs, but also think maybe it was the flu shot I got. I think the last of it is gone and within the next 48 hours I'll be back to 100%, but we'll see.

The sickness and having to skip a few events and spend most nights at home has had me bummed out a bit. However, it's warm and sunny today and I'm feeling much better. Jasmine and I rehearsed our sax/cello duets this morning with our customary Bailey's and coffee. My reed was working nicely so it was a good session. After Jasmine left for open workout at the circus center, I stayed behind and practiced for another solid hour. When my symptoms were mild enough to permit it, I've been trying to practice frequently to build up endurance so I can hang with Gora Gora Orkestar.

Once I finish this blog post, I'll be here at Atlas Purveyors arranging a Vampire Weekend song for Gora Gora to play at an upcoming wedding gig. After that, I have a few other tunes I'd like to arrange that I think would work great with our instrumentation.

Sorry, this post will be a bit scattered.

So I've been reflecting on aerial fabric and circus performance in general. I'm now toying with the idea that I'll not be able to develop the necessary flexibility to look good doing fabric and therefore I should give it up and search for something else. It seems like maybe Cyr Wheel could work, but the challenge would be develop the "sea legs" for it, which may or may not be doable for me. The prospect of squashing a finger also seems pretty risky given my vocation and avocation.

I've started reading Kenny Werner's "Effortless Mastery" book and I'm anticipating getting a lot out of it, but I'm still at the beginning.

Cirque Side of the Moon

2013-02-09T15:20:04.036Z

Last night was an awesome performance by the MOTH Poetic Circus. They did a show called "Cirque Side of the Moon" choreographed to Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" which was performed live by tribute band Wish We Were Floyd. There were acrobats doing Chinese pole, fabric, hoop, chain, triangel, and arm balances.

The way they had the evening set up was actually really nice. It's a big, spacious venue with 2 main rooms. There was lots of hanging around and talking for the first 2 hours or so and the music volume was pleasantly not too loud. Folks were doing some face and body painting and there were some featured dancers and stilters around. The audience took to the dance floor in earnest for the last hour or so before the performance started. During the show, about half of the audience was sitting on the floor, which sucks for me, but it was bearable.

The show and music were really great. The organizer had flown in some ringer acrobats from around the country. After the show, there was some more music, pole dancing, and live chalk drawing going on.

And since DSotM is not a very long album, the main show was done by 11:10 PM, which was nice. I got to see some of my aerials friends and a few other surprises such as Rom from CHAOS, Darrel from Burning Man, Spike from Dojo4 code and coffee, and Ashlyn from couch surfing. Ally is back from her aerials and figure skating gig at Dollywood so I heard a bit about that and her plans for her next show. Overall, I had a really fun time and think Deena did an awesome job putting it together.

Climbing and Vietnamese

2013-01-26T19:55:09.927Z

OK, still testing out the new blog system. Seems to work pretty well. I'm at Good Measure coffee shop in Louisville not far from home. There's a group of 9 guitarists here gathered around a long table trading songs and strumming away their Saturday afternoon. Yesterday at the end of the day I scrambled to get our new code deployed and then record screencasts for our weekly demo video, get the summary email out, and then scamper out the door to get to The Spot for a bouldering date by 6pm.

I bouldered with Shannon for a solid 2.5 hour session. We worked on some tough and interesting problems that we couldn't ever quite conquer. Then it was on to Chez Thuy for delicious Vietnamese food.

This morning I had leftovers from the meal and the peanut/shrimp sauce with veggies, pork, and brown rice was so delicious that I was almost moved to tears of gratitude. It might be time to relax the diet a bit more I think.

There's at least 3 fun things happening tonight, but I haven't decided which if any I'll be attending. Tomorrow more busking with Gora Gora Orkestar. This afternoon I'll be doing a little hacking here at the coffee shop and taking care of some errands.

Weekend of music

2013-01-22T02:24:21.773Z

It's been a pretty great long weekend. Friday night I was planning to rehearse with Jasmine, but she canceled due to her frantic elephant-making schedule. So I practiced the extensive book of Gora Gora Orkestar tunes I must now learn and memorize.

Saturday The Afronauts played at Twisted Pine. I had quite a few friends come to the show including Elise and a group of her friends, two of my housemates, a group of my mountain biking buddies, and another band leader I have been networking with recently. It was a pretty fun show and ended with a big dance circle out on the dance floor shakin' it down. Sadly the brewery is subject to zoning regulations that require it to shut down at 9pm, which is odd, but on the other hand it's easier to convince people to come hear a show that starts at 7pm vs 11pm. Also, Alice did up some pretty choice liberty spikes.

After that it was off to Shine for the Pink Mammoth dance party, which was pretty fun. I was sure tired by 1am or so.

Sunday I went to Tung's and picked his brain about some of the Gora Gora tunes. Then we went out and busked on Pearl St. We are raising money for travel to Austin for Honk Fest, so we're planning as much gigging and busking between now and then as we can muster. It was a lot of fun and we made decent money and had a few crowds gather. It was just barely warm enough to be doable, though. Afterward we went out for dinner and beers.

I'm testing my new web-based blog post authoring system with this post, so hopefully this works!

Aerial performance video

2013-01-19T18:43:09.121Z

OK, finally here's the video of my aerial fabric performance from our "Christmas Apocalypse" themed student show back in December. Yeah, the video quality is terrible. Yeah the venue is a rehearsal space and very much not a performance space. Yeah I haven't quite got good form or pointed feet yet. But anyway, it's still pretty cool, I think, and I'm more proud of it than I am embarassed, so here it is.

Here is the full playlist for the show if you want to see the other acts. It was really entertaining and I think given that it was a student show, the audience was really enjoying it.

First date bar hopping

2013-01-19T18:38:40.478Z

OK, this one has to go down in the record books as most surprising OKCupid date so far. I met my date at The Spot for some bouldering around 5pm. We had a good time climbing and chatting for a good while. We spent some time playing on the slackline as well. She ran into another guy she knows from salsa dancing who gave us some slackline tips. We were also chatted up by a quite gregarious 21-year-old CU student and his 19-year-old friend. Between climbing, slacklining, and goofing around, which included a spell of watching a father show off the climbing instinct of his infant daughter, which was pretty hilarious, we ended up spending nearly 3 hours there. Oh, and when I say we, I mean my date and I, her friend from salsa, and this other pair of friends we picked up at The Spot.

We went across the parking lot to Twisted Pine for some food and drink, but because of their weird zoning laws their kitchen has to close at 7:45, so we continued around the corner to Casa Alveraz. So the five of us chatted away including a delve into Objectivism that harkened me back to my early NYC days. Oh, and yeah, you could have guessed it. One of the students is a semi-pro cyclist and the salsa guy is a software developer and professional triathlete.

So we had a long and delicious meal there after getting fairly ravenous while climbing. I have to say Negra Modelo and carne asada is an awesome combination.

Done? Not by a long shot. By now it's 9:30 PM so we head off to downtown to Conor O'Neil's. My date and I chatted a bit more while our climbing buddies went to get coffee. Now the girl we met isn't of drinking age, so she goes home as does the triathlete. But eventually the other guy comes to Conor O'Neill's and joins us. Atomga is playing and Alice, Luke, and Tung are there hanging out and listening as well. It is warm, loud, and crowded with students. Alice and I sit in with the band for 2 tunes during their second set. Sitting in was really fun as at that point the band was at the peak of their groove and the crowd was really digging it.

We then bar hop in frigid 20 degree wether from Conor O'Neill's to the Sundowner. Here we encounter two inebriated young men wearing upside down kamakazi headbands. Guess what they do! Yup, CU triathletes. We followed them on to the Absinthe House, which wasn't our scene, so we headed to Catacombs. At Catacombes we played oversized Jenga and pool. My date lost a game of jenga and the stakes were she had to approach a stranger in the bar and kiss his hand, which she managed to do pretty handily. We were there until closing at 2am, which marked the end of my 9-hour OKCupid first date.