Travel – Zing Blog 2

Comings and Goings

It was another busy week. We got home from our trip Monday morning and it was straight to work. Wednesday evening we went to see a rock show, Cyndi Lauper at Madison Square Garden. Had dinner in the Persian place Jeannie likes before the show. Cyndi put on an excellent show. The band was great, and so was the light and video show, and she can really still sing. There were lots of costume changes, and a fair amount of long storytelling intros to songs. Between the two, they rarely played more than two or three songs without a pause. Ah well, she’s got alot of great, fun hits.

Friday night we went up to Boston for the OrigaMIT convention, which was on Saturday. It’s fun to be able to say I teach a MIT every year, even if it’s just origami. This year I taught my Flying Fish, since I recently folded a bunch of the for the OUSA holiday tree, and made some improvements to the design along the way. This year’s convention seemed a bit more low key than other years, and the only person I really ended up talking to in any depth was Brian Chan. Erik Demaine did his usual lecture on his research, and this year seems to have made good progress in cracking the layering problem, which central to the whole question of modeling origami in software. After the main classes were over, there was a group activity, a design challenge. For the prompt “things you find in a kitchen” I folded a cake with a slice cut out, and the missing slice out of another sheet of paper. Interested 3-D geometry challenge.

We drove Saturday after dinner. It was good to get an extra hour of sleep Sunday morning, and finally have a low pressure day off. The weather was nice so Jeannie and did a bike ride, maybe the last of the year. I went sixteen miles in a little over an hour. Also took the Mustang out for a ride, and raked up the leaves in the yard, which we hadn’t done since before our trip.

Monday came and I was pretty exhausted today, and also feeling out of sorts with it getting dark so early now that the clocks have shifted. Ah well, looking forward to not having to do any traveling for a while, and get some things done at home.

Way Out West, Part II

Wednesday we got up early to watch the sun rise. Then we drove out of the Grand Canyon to the east, crossed the Colorado River somewhere around Antelope Canyon, and swung north into the legendary realm of Utah, a place I’d never been before. The maps app said the trip was about five hours, but for us it was more like eight, because we kept stopping for scenic overlooks along the way and doing short hikes to the local vista. It was amazing to see the way the landscape changed over the miles. The Grand Staircase with its layers of all different colored rocks was particularly amazing.

We got to Bryce in the late afternoon and had time for a hike around the rim to a place called Sunset Point. We dipped into the upper part of the canyon, then back up to the top to watch the sun go down. (Fun fact: the sun doesn’t actually go up or down, or around the Earth at all. It’s the Earth spinning that creates the illusion of the sun traveling across the sky!) We were staying at the lodge in the national park here to, and had drinks dinner at the restaurant there. Very yummy. There was no TV or wifi in the room. Next morning we hiked into the canyon. Bryce is much smaller than the Grand Canyon and you can reach the bottom in an hour or so. But the rock formations are the most amazing to behold that I’ve ever seen! So we spent at a few hours hiking around the canyon floor and eventually up the other side at Sunrise Point.

We had lunch there before we took off, then it was another drive across the mountains and desert to Zion. This one was only two hours or so long. Coming into Zion from the east, we had had to drive thru a long tunnel and down an intense series of switchbacks to get the main canyon. We weren’t able to get a room in the park lodge here, so we stayed in a hotel a little ways outside the park gate. We had dinner at a really good Mexican restaurant that from the outside had a vibe like From Dusk ‘Til Dawn before things turned weird.

Friday we hiked around inside Zion, which was really beautiful like everything else, and had looked alot like Sedona actually. Walked along the river at the bottom then up a side canyon to a series of pools and waterfalls. All of these hikes were pretty big – over five miles and 1,000 feet vertical. We ended up at a saloon in the village right outside the park gate having a couple drinks and a late lunch.

Saturday we drove from Zion to Las Vegas, Nevada. This was a short ride by this vacation’s standards, only a couple hours. On the way we stopped at a dinosaur discovery in St. George, Utah. The main attraction there was a giant slab of natural rock which had been cleaned up and had a roof put over it. The rock reveal thousands of dinosaur footprints and told the story of how it was once a sandy beach and shore of a shallow lake.

In Vegas the weather was hot for the first time since we’d arrived out west. And unlike everywhere else we’d been, everything was very crowded and noisy. Last time I was in Vegas was in the 1990’s, so it was interesting to see what has changed. In the afternoon we walked along the strip and got as far as Caesar’s Palace, about halfway up. In the evening we went out to dinner with Jeannie’s cousin Lynda and her husband Carl, who moved to Vegas some years back. It was an Italian restaurant in the part of town off the strip where people actually live. That gave a different perspective on the city. Afterwards we went back to the strip, and starting at the Luxor worked our way back to our hotel at the other end, stopping occasionally to rest and have a drink and take in the sights. The highlight was at the Parisian, where a Moulin Rouge style burlesque show appeared right at the bar where we happened to be lounging. A troupe of cute dancing girls in corsets and fishnets shaking their thang, and a self-aware singer who broke the fourth wall to tell us all she thought the lyrics to Roxanne were really repetitive. We looked for opportunities to play some blackjack or roulette, but the tables had all been replaced by machines that made it feel like self-checkout at the supermarket and didn’t look like very much fun. Jeannie found an arcade of vintage slot machines and spent some money there but didn’t win anything. At least people don’t smoke indoors anymore.

The last day was the drive back to Phoenix to catch our flight home. We did this trip in the opposite direction thirty years ago. Back then it was mostly a two-lane country road across the dessert. I remember a sign in a small town in the middle of nowhere, Arizona saying “No gas next 150 miles.” You couldn’t even tune in a radio station. Well now that middle part of the trip is mostly a divided four-lane highway heavy with traffic, and the no-gas zone is more like 100 miles, and by the time you pass thru you’re in the sprawling exurbs of Phoenix. Compared to the other drives on the trip, it was pretty flat, mainly desert with groves of Joshua trees and Saguaro cactuses.

Our rental car, a Nissan Rogue, kinda sucked BTW. The flight home was uneventful, except that getting in an out of Kennedy Airport is a nightmare these days because of all the construction.

Way Out West, Part I

We just got back from a a great trip out west to Arizona and Utah. Sedona, the Grand Canyon, Bryce, Zion, and 24 hours in Las Vegas. Lots and lots of hiking. A good deal of driving. Epic scenic vistas galore.

Part of the purpose of this trip was for Jeannie and I to celebrate out thirtieth wedding anniversary, which was earlier this month. (We had thought we might do some kind of party or dinner for family and friends, but as it happened we weren’t much in the party spirit in the late summer and early fall. I ended up making a toast to Jeannie and thirty more years when we were visiting my parents a couple weeks ago.) In any event, Jeannie and I had taken a trip to Arizona the year we got married. It was our first vacation together, and my first time out west. So we visited a couple places we’d been to before, and some new places too. It was a good opportunity to reflect on our lives together so far and the way things change and stay the same across the grand passage of time.

The first stop on our itinerary was Sedona. We flew out Saturday morning. Our flight landed in Phoenix, and by the time we got our car and drove up there, it was late afternoon. We took a sunset hike up a nearby mountain, the first of many. It was only about two miles and maybe four or five hundred feet vertical, winding up from behind the local high school, which was across the street from our hotel, and took a little over an hour. But the view was amazing, looking down into the valley and across to the mesas and rock formations all around. Went out to dinner for Mexican food.

Next morning we explored the town a little more and did a little shopping because I needed new hiking boots, and we got some groceries too. Sedona has a vibe very much like a ski town because the main activity there is hiking. It’s pretty small with just one main drag, full of shops and restaurants, quite nice. If you leave town in any direction you’re five or ten minutes away from an epic hike. We chose one called Fay Canyon, which had a side quest to a natural stone arch, and a good scramble up the cliffside at the trail’s end to some great views. That one was maybe three or four miles and a thousand feet vertical. We followed it up another shorter, steeper hike to the top of another mesa, called Boynton if I recall.

When we were up in Buffalo a couple weeks ago, Chris and Mark told us that our old friend Keith, the crazy talented guitarist for Event Horizon, was living in Sedona, and gave us the name of the band he was in. We tried to find him but he didn’t have any gigs the weekend we were there. Nevertheless, we had dinner at a bar where he was scheduled to play the following weekend, and left a message. He was always a difficult one to get a hold of. It would be amazing to hear from him.

Anyway, Monday morning we lit out for our next destination, the Grand Canyon. On the way we stopped at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, after several hours of winding thru very scenic canyon and mountain roads. This is something we both had always wanted to see. Percival Lowell of course was a famous astronomer who discovered the once and future planet Pluto, mapped the famous canals of Mars, and contributed in many other areas. Other astronomers there mapped the moon in the 1960’s and discovered the cosmic redshift that led to the expanding universe model of cosmology. The tour was fascinating; they showed us several working telescopes and explained about their history, construction, operation, and how astronomers use them in their research. We would have liked to have been there at night to look thru the big telescope, but Flagstaff is very remote and we would have had to spend the night. As it was, we got to look thru a few ‘scopes in the daytime. One was trained on the sun and had filter at the alpha red wavelength emitted by hydrogen. As a result it showed mainly the surface of the sun and not the white and yellow light blasting from within. The sun actually looked like a ball and not just a disc, and was covered with the hairy fuzz of solar flares, each much larger than the earth. Another ‘scope showed Venus, which is apparently visible in the daytime if you know where to look and can block out the light of the sun.

After several hours more of driving thru very scenic mountains we arrived at the Grand Canyon, shortly before sunset. We were staying in a cabin at Bright Angel right in the park, at the very edge of the chasm. This was something we’d done thirty years before, and was a special memory for us to revisit. The room had a view looking right out over the canyon, and a fire place which was now gas but thirty years ago had been wood-burning. That evening we had dinner at El Tovar, the fancy classy restaurant there. When we were there the last time I declare the steak I ate that night the best I ever had, and over the years it has gained legendary status. I ordered the steak again, and I must say it was a damn good steak. But I supposed I’ve had plenty of great steaks over the last thirty years. For dessert the chef spelled out Happy Anniversary in chocolate on the plate, which was quite nice.

Tuesday was the biggest hike of the trip, down into the canyon itself. It was a beautiful day for it, although they’d had snow just a couple of days earlier. (We had perfect weather the whole trip, although the air was very dry and the elevation made the sunshine extra strong.) The trip was three miles in, going down more than 2,000 feet in elevation. It was basically endless switchbacks scratched out of the cliffside. But you know, breathtakingly beautiful, and fascinating to see the shift in perspective that came with the descent.

A word about the colors. Everywhere we went out there the rocks were really red, to the point where it affected the way you other colors. Basically all the colors were really vivid and seemed to pop. You’ve never seen a more intense blue sky (maybe that was the elevation too) or greener scraggly desert shrubberies. The pants I was were appeared tan under normal circumstances turned green on the trail. And Jeannie’s hiking boots, which were normally grey, turned blue. Totally wild.

It took us a little over two hours to get to the three mile point, which was about halfway to the bottom in terms of both distance and elevation. After we paused for lunch, it was the long slow climb back out, relentlessly uphill for three miles. We were told to plan on taking twice as much time to climb out, but for us the total trip was right around six hours.

After a rest we decided to walk along the rim trail to a vista point to watch the sunset. It was a bit further than we expected, another two miles or so, so we ended up taking the bus back to the village.

A word about sunrises and sunsets. You can really appreciate the optical effects of the earth’s atmosphere at the tops of these cliffs cuz you can see for miles and miles and miles (oh yeah). It’s best to look to the horizon opposite the sun. You can see the shadows climbing up the rocks in the opposite side of the canyon, and really get a feel for the earth turning. You’ll see a blue zone in the sky that creeps up underneath the pink. After the sun set it continues to rise, as the pink begins to fade. This is actually the shadow of the earth itself, causing the night to fall.

At the end of the night we went out a dark place at the end of a parking lot to watch the starts. Amazing, clear skies, just tons and tons of stars. I don’t think I remember ever seeing the Milky Way like that in the fall.

Next up: Utah!

On the Way Home

We finally got a weekend at home to relax. This week we passed a big deadline at work, the release of Permission Slip 3.0, delivered on time and without any major problems. I also finished re-architecting and deploying the key generation and storage mechanism for OSIRAA, the API compliance test tool for the Data Rights Protocol, after a long and deep debugging adventure, thus unblocking the road forward to testing. And, I submitted Plutonium Dirigible to get CDs made and put on streaming services, so that project is officially completed.

Last weekend we were traveling again, this time up to Buffalo. It was good to see Mum and Dad and talk about things. They are doing basically okay, very stoic, which I guess is not too surprising.

I also saw old friends Mark C. and Chris S. I hadn’t seen either of them in many years, although we used to be very close, so it was great to reconnect. Mark and Chris were the drummer and piano/synth player in Event Horizon, our prog jazz fusion band that was together for a number of years and was the vehicle for alot of musical growth. We were in several other bands together around that time, and both of them stood up at my wedding, which, by the way. was thirty years ago this week. Chris has a new wife and baby. Life has a way of moving in circles sometimes, and after many adventures they’re both back living in Kenmore, just a few blocks apart, in the neighborhood we all grew up in.

After that we went to visit Lizzy and Josh at their new apartment in North Buffalo, just a few block on the other side of Kenmore Avenue. They have a very nice place, and the main decorating them is legos galore. I always admired that neighborhood when was growing up, with it’s tree-lined avenues and well-kept Victorian houses; it’s good to see the neighborhood is still that way. They’re right near Hertel Avenue, with a district of restaurants and shops.

Back home Michelle is home from school visiting. The weather remains nice. It’s been a super pleasant autumn so far, with mainly warm and sunny weather and beginning to get cool at night. Haven’t really turned the heat on yet. Much better than last fall, when it rained pretty much every day. I’ve been continuing to do alot biking. This weekend I went twenty miles on the local rail trial. Hope to get a few more long rides in before it turns cold, and get up to thirty by the end of the season.

This week I’m trying to finish up some origami Flying Fish for OUSA’s holiday tree at American Museum of Natural History. I also have some ideas for a couple new models that I hope to complete for a convention coming up in November. So watch this space for that.

And the Wonder Will Set Me Free

This past weekend Jeannie and I went up to the greater Berne area, in the hills between Albany and the Catskills to visit Kathleen and the kids and participate in a benefit concert in Martin’s honor. We had to get up early Saturday so I could be there for rehearsal. I hadn’t used my rock keyboard setup in a while, so Friday night I plugged everything in and turned it all to make sure it still worked and sounded good, and if I still remembered my way around the controls of my synth. Then I tore it all down, figured out what to pack, and pre-loaded the car.

The rehearsal was at the East Berne Band’s drummer John’s house. He has a nice rehearsal space, set up a bit like mine in that you come in thru the garage and don’t have to go up or down any stairs. I’d met the guys in the band briefly once before, and had been texting and emailing them, so I felt pretty good about the situation. John sent me a list of tunes to learn a few weeks ago, then last week sent me a mostly different list. One thing that was for sure was that we’d be doing two of Martin’s original songs.

The band consists of John on drums and vocals, Dan on bass and vocals, Chris on guitar and backing vocals, Jim on keyboards in the summertime, and sometime vocalist Lorissa, who wasn’t at the practice. They’re all excellent musicians, who sound really good together, and the vibe was very relaxed and friendly. They’re very versatile and can handle everything from the E Street Band to Brittany Spears. We ran thru a good part of the setlist they’d given me, focusing alot of the time on Martin’s songs, which they asked me to sing. Everyone said I sound just like Martin. I guess that’s not far from the truth. I’ve been going over some old recordings we did together and can’t always tell who is singing what part. I was playing sax as well as keyboards and singing. I’ve been playing more and more on Martin’s old sax, a Selmer Mark VI tenor from the late 1950’s and really growing to love it.

After that I went back to Kathleen’s house and hung out with her and the kids. We’re trying to spend some time with them, be more of a presence and get to know them better individually. This time it was mostly Charlie and Abbie I was talking with, with Match interjecting now and then. I also seem to be their dog Gus’s new best friend, having played countless rounds of fetch with him. I spent some time talking with Kathleen’s father Charlie too. We went for a hike later in the afternoon in some nearby woods overlooking the escarpment and, at the furthest point out, offering a scenic view of Albany. Apparently it was one of Martin’s favorite hikes. Kathleen and Jeannie and I went out to dinner with John and his wife Linda, who had been raising alpacas for their wool. Abbie and Ellie and their cousin Bailey came too.

Next morning we spent more time with the kids. Jeannie taught Abbie how to fold Sonobe modules, a kind of geometric origami system that’s very popular. I helped organize some stuff in Martin’s studio. I found a notebook of some of his older songs. He never seemed to write down his chord progressions, but sometimes there were hand drawn tabs in the margins. He liked to explore patterns alot and figure out the names of the chords later. The concert was out at a brewery about a half hour from the house. I got there around 1:30 to set up. The stage was out at the edge of a big lawn behind the brewery, bordered by wildflowers all around. Out in front was a bunch of picnic tables and a shelter. A very nice scene. With four bands on the bill the stage was pretty full: two drum sets, three keyboard rigs, multiple guitar amps. The bass player Dan was in all four bands, so we pretty much front and center the whole time. The first two bands did a mixture of covers and originals, all very good. The overall vibe was a cross between the Grateful Dead and the Barenaked Ladies. I spent the time meeting and talking to alot of Martin’s friends. He definitely made an impact on people. Alot of people seemed to be part of extended family clans, like Martin and Kathleen. Also a whole networked scene of musicians. There was a food truck there that served dumplings. Very yummy.

The East Berne Band went on third, and we started with Lorissa singing, doing a bunch of songs which we hadn’t rehearsed and I didn’t know about. So they called out the key (sometimes) and I followed along by ear and watching the bass player’s fingers. I sang Martin’s songs, One of These Days and Making Miles, and both went well. I almost made it thru without breaking up, but then I looked out into the crowd and there was Jeannie and Kathleen crying. Still, overall a fun and joyous occasion. At the end of our set, a bunch of musicians from all the bands came on stage for an epic jam session to close out the day. Tons of fun. Lots of good feeling and healing energy. I hope they do it again sometime. Meanwhile we’ll be back up there to visit again before too long.

Summer’s End

Jeannie and I ended the summer on a bit of a high note, with our traditional trip to Ocean City, Maryland. This was a quick one, just two nights, but the weather was beautiful and we got in some good lunches and dinners, a sunset cruise, swimming in the ocean and walking down the boardwalk. The highlight was spending an afternoon biking around Assateague Island. This time we parked at the visitor center and took our bikes over the bridge onto the island. This added a few miles to the ride, which is a good thing, plus some nice views on top of the bridge. The whole area is incredibly flat; we might’ve been on the highest point in the Delmarva peninsula. An added bonus is we got to skip to long line of cars waiting to get into the parking lot.

Zero to Sixty in Three Days

Adventure July continues. Jeannie and I just got back from a long weekend up in Buffalo, with a side trip to Canada. We drove up Thursday night after work. Listened to Sheryl Crow’s The Globe Sessions in the car, and early U2. Friday we had lunch with Larry and Jackie at a place called the New York Beer Project. Lovely stone and glass architecture, good food and brews. I learned there’s such a thing as an International Bitterness Unit. Wonder if applies to coffee, or people, or just beer.

Friday night we went to the wedding of friend Scott and his new bride Sue. She grew up on Tonawanda and went to my high school, and the church as right near where I grew up, although I’d never been in it before. The reception was at the old Wurlitzer factory in North Tonawanda, which was unused for many years, but now has a banquet party space in the tower. The whole thing was very nice. There were a few friends there with whom I’ve kept in touch with over the years, and a larger circle of people whom I haven’t seen since college and didn’t immediately recognize. A fun night of catching up. Congratulations Sue and Scott!

The next day we took it easy. I went for a walk around the lake with my Dad. Later in the day I went for a skate around the neighborhood on my rollerblades. I haven’t done any skating this summer, mainly since I’ve been doing a ton of biking, but my parents’ town is much flatter then mine so it was a good opportunity. I have an app now to do metrics, so I can say I did two laps of the neighborhood in 35 minutes, just under 5 miles. That’s about twice as fast as walking and half as fast as biking. Saturday night we went out to dinner with Lizzy and Josh, at a place on the Lake Erie with a view of the sunset. Fancy drinks, yummy seafood. The west coast of New York State.

Sunday we went with my parents up to Hagersville, Ontario, hometown of famous drummer Neil Peart of the rock band Rush, for the sixtieth wedding anniversary celebration for my Uncle Gabor and Aunt Mary, a backyard barbecue party. More good food and wine. Lots of family on my Mum’s side. My Uncle Ron and Aunt Emoke, and cousin Barb and her husband Al, such wonderful people I don’t get to see often enough. Their son Curtis just graduated from university this spring with a degree in biomedical engineering and is working as a field tech way up Sudbury. His girlfriend is studying computer graphics and animation. Curtis has my origami book and has folded most of the models. All my Mum’s cousins were there too. I haven’t seen most of them in many years, since my kids were little. Many are former tobacco farmers living all over central Ontario, and most of the rest are involved in professional motorcycle racing. Good to catch up and know that they’re all doing well.

Monday Jeannie and got on the road early, and on the way home stopped at Letchworth Park. It’s among the most scenic places in New York State, known as the Grand Canyon of the East because of it’s three famous waterfalls on the Genesee River. Again I hadn’t been there for many years but had visited many times when I was younger, so it was good to check it out and do some hiking. We stopped for lunch at a place called Big Dipper Barbecue off Route 17. It’s become one of our favorites. After so much traveling we have a few weeks off to unwind and get some things done at home before it’s time for the next adventure.

Jazz and the Mountains

Just got back from a nice vacation to the Montreal Jazz Festival and the Adirondack mountains. I feel like I’ve been in one long run of deep focus between work and music and other things, so it was a welcome break.

Jeannie and I drove up to Montreal on Monday, which also happened to be Canada day. We arrived mid-afternoon and our hotel was right downtown where the jazz fest was, so we just walked out into the street to enjoy things. The festival is centered around their big performing arts center call Place des Arts, which is on the level of Lincoln Center here in New York. The streets around it are closed to cars and become a big public party space with several outdoor concert stages, and lots of vendors for food, libations and merch. Several other clubs, bars, theaters and other venues host concerts as well. We found a Canadian Asian fusion place for dinner in view of one of the stages. I had a Bloody Ceaser with dinner because, when in Rome …

The main act that night was Robert Glasper, who is sort of a jazz-soul-hiphop crossover guy, somewhat comparable to Kamasi, except he sings and plays keyboards, and his band consists of him, a bass, drums and a DJ. The music was generally groovy and soulful, with some songs featuring modern and minimalist ideas juxtaposed against the main groove. The band were excellent improvisors, individual and collectively, going beyond just taking solos to build moods and structures and atmospheres. It was cool to see the DJ as an integral part of the sound too.

The next day we lounged around the hotel in the morning and got breakfast, then went for a big walk in the scenic downtown dominated by old stone buildings, and finally out to the waterfront. The weather was beautiful, sunny and not too hot. We checked out a science museum on a pier with lots of interactive hands-on exhibit. We got lunch at a cafe nearby: poutine, shrimp and avocado salad, and some Molsons. We bought some souvenirs including a stone sculpture of an Inukshuk in the shape of a human figure. If it can be carved from a single stone, it seems like it might also be a good subject for an origami model too.

That evening the big musical attraction was Joshua Redmond with a new group in one of the theaters in the Place des Arts. The band were excellent and featured a vocalist in addition to the rhythm section. She and Joshua on sax did really cool tight harmony sections together a few times. The theme of the new record they were touring for had to do with the concept place so most of the songs had the name of a place in the title, including some standards like a mashup of John Coltrane’s Alabama with Stars Fell on Alabama, and a surprising way-out jazz version of Hotel California. I’ve seen Joshua a few times at clubs in New York, but this performance was a whole ‘nuther level. There was also a really excellent light show in the theater, which enhanced the sound and mood alot.

After that we took more acts on the outdoor stages, including the Low Down Brass Band, whom we heard on our first trip to Montreal six years ago. Wow, how the time flies!

Next morning we took another walk around the city, looking for baked good to bring back to the States for our friends Mark and Kelly in the Adirondacks. I also picked up a nice-looking (and, it turned out, lovely-tasting) bottle of whiskey at the duty free shop. We arrived in the high peaks area mid-afternoon, and when for a hike at a place called High Falls Gorge on the Ausable River near Mount Whiteface.

The next day was the Fourth of July. Out main adventure in the morning was a bike ride up a rail trail from Saranac Lake to Lake Placid. It was twenty-two miles round trip, my best distance so far of the season, although we took a fairly leisurely pace, and stopped for a while at the turnaround point. This was Jeannie’s fifth or sixth big bike ride of the year. In the evening we went to a party hosted by Mark’s friend Cory, at a very nice summer cottage on a nearby lake. Cory happens to be a passionate cocktail mixologist, and has the best home-bar I’ve ever seen made in a former woodshed. He was very into mixing drinks for everyone using a whole array of bespoke elixirs, infusions, spirits and spices. Like a master chef for drinks. Huzzah!

Mark and I talked at length about improvisational music and the challenges of breaking out of genre boxes and other expectations to explore new frontiers. In addition to his main group Crackin’ Foxy, Mark has been exploring the world of looper jams using pedal and an electric guitar. He played me lots of interesting loop-based stuff from the classical world, including stuff featuring cello and clarinet.

After the party we headed back into to town to try and catch the fireworks show, but we were too late. We ended up at a local bar called the Watering Hole, which I hadn’t been to in many years, and used to be kinda run down but is now very nice indeed. They had a live band doing funk soul party music featuring a trombone player. Alot of fun.

Friday we went for a canoe ride on some nearby lakes. Not quite as epic as some canoe rides of seasons past, but we were out on the water for over two hours. That evening we drove out to a concert venue near Lake Champlain to see Nate Wood doing a project called Four. Nate is a one-man band and quite astounding. He plays drum with one hand and both feet, and also guitar or bass with his other hand (using mainly tap technique), all augmented with some keyboards played in interstitial free moments. The amazing thing is not just that he can do all this at once, but that it actually sounds musical and cool! The songs are basically structured improv jams with a sort of prog-rock-meets-jazz-fusion sound. My kind of weird!

Saturday we drove to a weekend of catching up on chores and things including doing yardwork in the ninety-degree heat. Jeannie and I did another bike ride Sunday morning. I did sixteen miles with an average pace of 14mph, a personal best for speed this season so far. Today Jeannie took off for an IT Admin conference in Pennsylvania; she’ll be back Friday.

Another Sunny June

Summer has arrived in earnest. I’m still busy with work and projects, but have been making time for some low-key relaxation and enjoyment. This is important because I feel like I’ve been working since February on the same set of things, and while I’ve been making progress and getting things done, I’ve also been getting weary of the grind.

Michelle is home from school for the summer. Today she started her new summer job, an internship for her study in civil engineering. She’s very excited. The work is mainly inspecting, reporting on and supporting repairs on train bridges in The Bronx. It’s the kind of work where she needs safety boots and a laptop computer with AutoCad. Apparently steel-toed boots in women’s sizes are hard to find at shoe stores around here so she had to order them over the internet. The company provides the computer and software. Rock on!

Meanwhile, Lizzy has enrolled in grad school to get her Master’s degree in Business. This is a mainly online program she can do while continuing at her day job. A year ago she told me she had no interest in grad school. I think she changed her mind because her boyfriend is pursuing a medical degree, but she says it’s to open up her carreer options going forward. Either way, rock on!

In my own little scene, things are grinding along as I’ve said. Things are getting done, but everything is harder and taking longer than one would hope. My day job has entered an unusually chaotic phase, and I was temped to write in my weekly status update today “EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE!!!” but instead wrote “repeated build failures; we are working with the enterprise team to resolve the issue,” which is really just the tip of the iceberg. We’ve hired a new in-house engineer who will start in July, which should help things going forward. Meanwhile the MVP for my more R&D-ish project moves ahead one obstacle at a time, when I have to time to work on it.

The Global Jukebox is approaching the release of version 3.1.0. We’re in the final testing and bug fixing phase. So stay tuned to this channel for future announcements.

The new album by my jazz group Spacecats has been mixed and mastered and ready to publish for a few weeks now. All that remains is the album cover. I put together a cover featuring images of the band members taken from video stills. We all agreed the quality was not the best, so at rehearsal a week ago we took a bunch of new pics of the group as a whole, both playing music and posed at various spots around the studio. I’ve gone thru the images and narrowed it down to a handful of semifinalists. The next step is to drop them into to composition, see how they look, and play around with them until I get somewhere cool.

The OUSA convention is drawing near. I’ve dusted off my list of ideas for models and begun folding, starting with creating exhibit-quality versions of models I’ve already done, then moving on to explore new territory. This year the convention isn’t until late July, so I have a whole extra month to get it together. I also need to decide what I’m going to teach. Probably one of them will be my Spacecat, a variation on another cat, Sophie. I’ve recently refined the Spacecat, changing the proportions and folding sequence, and the final model looks better. Trying to work thru the final sculpting now and looking for the right paper.

I’ve been working out and biking alot, but it’s been a bit uneven as my energy level hasn’t always been the best I’m working thru so weird random pain in my shoulder. I seem to be mainly over it and back up to full weights on everything the last week or two. I still haven’t taken a ride with Jeannie on our local rail trail, but hope to this weekend. I’ve been doing the local loop of my neighborhood (about 4 miles with hills and traffic) about three times a week, and have done the Nature Study woods (longer, no cars, some bumpy trail-ish hills) twice now. We’ve only done one two hikes this spring too. Need to get our into nature more.

We did do some fun things the last few weeks, and at least the major spring yardwork cycle got done, although next weekend starts a new round. Memorial Day weekend I went to a Mets game with Jeannie and Michelle and Mary and Lou and their kids. I don’t care that much about baseball but it was a fun hang, and our seats were in the shade. Amazingly, the Mets rallied in the bottom of the ninth for a come-from-behind victory! We’ve also been doing a bunch of barbecues and hanging out by the firepit in the backyard, listening to playlists from summers past.

Last weekend Jeannie and took a mini-vacation to wild and exotic Connecticut. We went to Mystic, where they have the Seaport Museum featuring tall ships and lots of stuff related to ships and shipbuilding in the Age of Sail, including things like a blacksmith, cooper, printer and other 19th century shops, crafts and industries. They’re also actively restoring several historic sailing ships. There’s also an aquarium there, with penguins, sea lions, beluga whales, and all kinds of fish and even octopus. After that we went out to sushi for lunch. There’a cute little downtown a bunch or restaurants and shops, including a great seafood place. There’s also an 80-foot sailboat parked right there, a three-masted schooner, so we did a two-hour sunset cruise of the sound out beyond the river. The harbor is actually up the river a little bit, so first we had to navigate the channel out to sea. We crossed past a swinging train bridge that seems like the perfect focal point for an action set piece in some adventure film. There’s a train coming and there’s a tall ship coming, and the hero and the villain are fighting up in the control room, trying to gain control of the switch to swing the bridge open or closed.

Everything Under the Sun is in Tune

Been busy. Spring is finally coming. We had a few nice days in a row. The grass is starting to grow and the trees are turning green and other colors with fuzz. Over the weekend I got my Mustang out on the road, finished off some much-needed yard cleanup from a recent bout of storms, and best of all, got on my bike and went for a ride, ending that awkward time of year between the end of ski season and the start of biking season.

The weekend before we went upstate for the big solar eclipse. I’d never seen one in totality before. Jeannie and I drove up to Buffalo on Saturday, and noticed the traffic was fairly heavy one we got on the country roads the last hour of the trip. Excitement was in the air. Saturday night we hung out Lizzy and Michelle and Lizzy’s boyfriend Josh, and Larry and Jackie joined us later at the bar. The place had a tap wall with like a dozen different beers. Lots of fun. The waitress commented that it was unusually crowded because of people coming into town for the eclipse.

Larry and Jackie had driven down to Tennessee for the last eclipse, and Larry told me it was a life-changing experience. He didn’t seem that different to me, so I asked how it had changed him. He told me he it made him really want to see another eclipse. And indeed they drove out to Ohio for this one to try and get out from under the clouds.

Sunday Jeannie and Michelle and I decided to go to Chestnut Ridge Park, which is near my parent’s house, to see the famous Eternal Flame, something we had never done despite my parents having lived there for the last thirty years. It was still stick and mud season up in Buffalo, no sign on anything turning green yet. I think every other person coming into town for the weekend had the same idea, and the trail was pretty crowded, to the point where we had to queue up to climb over rocks in the last part. Still it was pretty cool to see, a jet of natural gas burning in a little cave behind a waterfall. Weird.

Sunday afternoon Martin and Kathleen arrived with the kids and their dog. My mum made a big family dinner for everyone, and my dad brought out the wine. Very lovely evening. Monday I slept in. I’d been feeling tired the end of the last week and it was good to catch up on my rest. I spent to whole morning hanging out and talking with Martin. After lunch we all went for a long walk in the park near my parents’ house. It felt like a low-key fourth of July. People had brought lawn chairs and drinks and even some telescopes to watch the big event. We got back to my parents’ house as the skies were darkening, and watched the totality from their lawn.

It had been mainly sunny in the morning, and grew increasingly cloudy as the totality got closer. Still there were enough breaks in the cloud for good viewing, if not very sustained. We had some obsidian discs from Mexico that were meant for viewing the sun, and they somehow made the sun visible behind the clouds. I think it actually only liked like it was getting cloudier; as the eclipse progressed the sky was getting darker because of that.

When the moment of totality arrived, it suddenly became nighttime. It was like somebody pulled the house lights down on the whole world. The temperature dropped, birds and dogs made lots of noise, and there was a ring of pink near the horizon. We even saw a few stars. Looking at the sun, there are a few moments when the clouds parted and you could see the corona, all dancing shimmering silver gold tendrils. Amazing. Life altering, even. Then a few minutes later the diamond ring appeared and just as abruptly as is descended, the night vanished. It was back to tepid daylight, which returned to full strength over the next hour or so. And wouldn’t you know it, it was bright sunshine the rest of the day, not a cloud in sight.

We dove home Tuesday, and again there was heavy traffic, particularly at the rest stops on the way. I’m happy to say we found some good places for lunch on the trip. For many years the only really quick and convenient option McDonalds. Their food was never that great but seems to have steadily declined in quality over the years. on the way up we discovered a new place, the Old Bat Factory in Hancock. They had a deli with sandwiches and wraps, very yummy. On the way back home there’s a seasonal roadside barbecue stand in Appalachin. Pulled pork and all that.

And, back in the music studio, I’ve edited together mixes of nine out of ten of the songs for the new Spacecats record. I know I said I’d tell you all about it, but I think I’ll save the story for next time, when I have some tracks ready to share.