Drumbent - Tales of (Mostly) Music and Motion

New old winter bikes

2012-01-05T01:20:00.001-05:00

My faithful old winter bike was getting pretty rusty after 8 seasons, and I was also getting rather tired of the mtn. bike frame geometry and wide tires. It was a very stable set-up, but with a studded front tire it was annoying to ride on those days of clear dry roads. Sure, I could have another wheel handy with smooth tire and swap it in, but I also felt the need for a second bike for back-up purposes, if nothing else.

So as an experiment last winter I took an old CCM skinny-tire bike, swapped in an aluminum front wheel (for decent braking) and used it as a "dry roads" bike. I ended up using it as often as the mtn. bike, and quite enjoyed how much faster and lighter it was, especially when towing one of the two trailers.

This year I wanted to go the full route and build up a pair of hybrid bike frames; one with smooth tires, another with winter tires (studded front, knobby out back). This way I would have my choice of bike for whatever road conditions, as well as a back-up in case one bike flatted or broke something right as I was heading out to a gig. So through the season at the re-Cycles shop I kept an eye out for suitable frames / bikes. Both bikes were to be built with very low gearing for trailer-towing in winter conditions, so top gear is usually the cruising gear, and everything else for uphill or towing. If I want to go fast downhill I'll happily just coast...

First up is called Winter Bike #1, only because it was the first one I put together (WB2 is further down). A late-80's Nishiki touring frame came in. It needed a fork, and the one from my deceased (hit by a taxi) hybrid bike luckily fit just right. The frame has some rust and even a small dent in one tube, which allowed me to not feel bad about using what was once a nice frame as a winter bike. This beast has smooth tires for those days when roads are clear and I have some distance to travel and don't want winter tires adding drag.

I ended up with very tight clearance for the 46-36 double chainring due to the cartridge bottom bracket I happened to have on hand, and should perhaps put in one with a longer axle. Yes, the rear shift cable just touches the underside of the front derailer cage.

Indispensable front "crap flap" was added to the bottom of fender to keep slushy salty spray from hitting (and sticking to) the frame.

Modern v-brakes added for excellent stopping power (remember that I often tow a loaded trailer in winter since the Mighty Cargo Trike goes into hibernation).

Yellow crate on rear rack adds both practicality and visibility. Seasonal Xmas led lights run off a small 12v battery w/inverter, though will be removed very soon.

Adjustable stem is great for getting the bike dialed in, but needs a little attention to keep from gradually wearing out and getting loose.

Simple non-indexed drivetrain, with nice wide-range 6-speed freewheel of 14T to 32T!

Lightweight aluminum handlebar, fat grips for winter mitts, and light and bell stuffed on there. Note stylish yellow cable housing.

Winter Bike #2. It was a complete Nakamura hybrid bike, showing some rust and so like WB1 no qualms of using it for winter. I kept the cantilever brakes but had to build new wheels (my 6th and 7th times ever doing so), since the front was getting a new generator hub and the rear a used internal-gear hub. (Yes, these Xmas lights are also coming off soon.)

This is what a studded tire looks like. It does a nice job of grabbing in slippery conditions, and you know it's working when the non-studded rear end fishtails. Having the rear wheel wash out is usually recoverable, but having the front end do so usually means a wipe-out. :P On the old bike I did try riding both tires studded one year but the amount of drag was not worth it.

This bike gets an added treat - a Shimano generator hub! This little device will supply power to the not-yet-installed custom led lights RGB is putting together for me. No friction from this thing like from those old sidewall generators that leaned against the tire!

Shifter for the Sachs 7-speed hub. Now only available in twist-grip form (which I dislike, especially with big winter gloves) this thing is like gold, as the entire unit of shifter/cable/hub clickbox has to be replaced as one.

If you've ever tried to mount a single chainring on a crank meant for three, you'll find the bolts are too long, because they are made to join the larger two. While short-stack spacers (used for BMX and fixies) can be purchased, the cheap solution is to take a worn out chainring and carve away just the areas around the mounting holes, leaving nice, if slightly irregular, spacers as shown here

Drive side of Sachs 7-speed hub. The click-box is where the indexing takes place, and it usually comes with a metal guard arm that clamps to the axle and projects out to protect the unit if the bike falls over. Since the rack-mounted crate sticks out even further I can leave the guard off, which means one less things to fiddle with during a wheel / tire change. Rear cog is a 23T from my old winter bike, while front ring is a 38T.

Left side of Sachs 7-speed hub, showing coaster-brake (back-pedal) arm and receiver for trailer hitch (WB1 has same receiver, so both bikes can tow either of the two trailers). Maybe I should paint over some of that rust...

Unlike WB1, this rear wheel did not get full close-fitting fender since that design often packs up with snow. So a plastic spray guard is attached under the rack. And like pretty well all my bike, the rack holds the handy crate.

I fastened this piece of platicized cardboard in place to keep snow churned by the rear wheel from dumping into my boots and also on the chain. Time will tell if it simply just packs up with snow...

Front mount for spray guard, with a twist of stiff wire to keep things in place.

DIY drum case

2011-11-13T04:24:00.000-05:00

My latest drum purchase. This is a westernized version of a Thai drum called a "klong yao", made by Toca out of fiberglass. It is quite light, and has a fabulous bass tone, as one can imagine by the length of the body. At local drum circles I am usually one of the more experienced players, so having a drum that can both drive the groove and help steady it is important, and this one is much better for that than my old Remo djembe. Remo makes a similar klong yao, and I tried one out many years ago but balked at the $400 price tag (it also weighs more). The Toca one is around $200 and Dave's Drum Shop here in Ottawa can bring in any Toca product (it was fun browsing the catalogue...).

But of course a drum needs a case! Many folks carry their hand drums in bags, and I'd thought of buying a gym bag and lining it with foam, but since I'm often hauling more than one instrument at a time something that could better protect the drum as I squeeze gear through doorways was needed. For my small jazz kit I had extended a 12" case to fit three small drums, and I used that same idea for this one. So, start with one retro 70's drum case (again from Dave's Drum Shop) and add some foam. Note leather strap with buckle instead of modern plastic buckle.

To accommodate the lengthy drum an extension was needed. My material of choice for this is sheets of (used) corrugated plastic and duct tape (yay for our petrochemical industry). In this case, a stash of abandoned signs from the Reform oops Conservative Party had been found a while back and now were being put to much better use.

Test fitting.

The trick to getting coroplast to bend is to use a utility knife to score one side. Then add duct tape...

Tabs of duct tape hold things in place, and a few full wraps of tape will be added when all sheets are in place.

Perfect fit.

Looking good! For now the strap is lengthened with a bungee cord. If I find an old belt that is long enough I could use that instead.

2011-07-13T13:59:00.000-04:00

The cargo trike is now in its eighth year of operation. One thing I had to decide upon over the winter was the battery pack for its electric assist, as the most recent one had started to die late last year and I barely squeaked through November with it (though through proper charging and management I did get two years out of that pack, which was darn good).

I'd been using sealed lead acid batteries (SLA) since the assist was installed, but that is not the best technology for the high power drain of such a set-up. Over the years I was advised to look into a lithium pack, but they were darned pricey (SLA was $200, lithium $800 at the time). But the prices have come down, and my friend BlackBurnPete told me of Ping Battery in China. This Ping fellow was getting excellent reviews of his products on e-assist forums, as he apparently has done his homework to make sure the batteries and their technology are reliable.

So this is what I ordered: http://www.pingbattery.com/servlet/the-12/48V-15AH-V2.5-LiFePO4/Detail

My previous pack was 12AH (amp hours) but being an SLA pack something called the Peukert Effect comes into play so the it only delivered perhaps 8AH. The above lithium pack is 15AH and does not suffer the same effect, so I'd be getting almost twice the range!

One can feel a sense of trepidation sending money to an overseas seller and hoping everything will be OK. And this transaction was problem free. He notified me as soon as the payment was received and that he would let me know when it was being shipped and provide a tracking number. It arrived as advertised, and as the leads are supplied bare I asked my friend Charles R., who had done electrical work on the trike in the past, to add Anderson connectors.

Since this pack is smaller I simply cut down the battery box (easy to do when made out of coroplast and duct tape) and added some foam padding underneath, since instead of four solid SLA batteries I now had an assembled bunch of smaller lithium ones, and vibration might cause connections to fail. Perhaps this thing is rugged enough as it is, but it is little effort to add this protection. One addition is the piece of recycled plexiglass added to the top so I can see the LEDs for the battery management system.

This uses the same Anderson connectors as before going to the controller, but the charger uses 3-pin XLR (yes, same as a microphone, which could be confusing for a drummer like me).

The battery management system, the proper design of which is the key to having a healthy battery pack, It makes sure all the cells are properly balanced when charging.

The biggest advantage to this new pack is that one does not have to constantly recharge a lithium pack. SLAs can get damaged due to sulfation if left in any state of discharge, so if the trike is going to be parked for more than an hour or so the pack has to come out and get recharged. So for almost any gig I did I had to take the charger with me, unplug the pack, and take it all into the gig and make sure it was hooked up. And then reverse at the end. It was not the end of the world, but just one more thing to deal with when getting to the job. But just like your laptop, a lithium battery can be drained will not suffer any damage. So unless I have a rather lengthy ride (more than 20km return) I can wait to recharge when I get back home.

Now that part is fabulous. And the more I use this new set-up the more I like this aspect. But in the previous incarnation the pack just sat in a bracket in the cargo box of the trike, since it was almost always being removed. Now it can stay with the trike, but just lying out in the open is not a good idea. Time for a sort-of hiding place...

Cut through the floor, bolt in a cradle made from aluminum strapping recycled from my first trailer (that got damaged in an accident), then line that with coroplast and add the ubiquitous duct tape.

Drop the pack in (notice even more foam, since the trike has no suspension beyond its fat tires), hook it up and off we go!

So far everything has worked out very well. Charles updated the wiring, and later cleaned out a troublesome Anderson connector that had temporarily rendered the assist inoperable. I've very much enjoyed NOT having to always take the battery pack with me into gigs (try taking a duct tape-covered black box with wires sticking out of it into a Federal Government building), and while I've not yet had to test the full range of this new pack I've been happy not to worry about how far it can go for the trips done so far. So it looks like a big thumbs-up for this new set-up!

More water fun

2011-07-10T23:01:00.000-04:00

Well, my camera died a second time! Three weeks after getting it back and only my third time using it. Same lens issue as the first, so I waited again (only five weeks this time) for it to come back from warranty. But upon reloading the memory card I was reminded that I did take some photos in May of the still-high Ottawa River overflowing its banks a bit.

Swingin'!

2011-05-16T01:15:00.000-04:00

One of my favourite things to do as a drummer is to play swing music. The grooves are fun, and you set the tempos, keep everyone on track, and interact with the sections and soloists. It's even more fun when there are dancers, especially if they happen to be semi-pro / professionals! Back on May 1st the Ottawa Jazz Orchestra (formerly the Impressions in Jazz Orchestra) teamed up with Ottawa's Swing Dynamite for a fabulous evening.

The OJO doesn't tend to play the usual "In the Mood" type of stuff - we like to get into plenty of Ellington, some early Twenties, and more esoteric but still swinging tunes. And the Swing Dynamite gang loves us for it. Below is an edited iPhone clip taken as the end of the evening drew near. But while most folks might wish to start slowing down, this crowd likes to get faster! So these last tunes are pretty up there tempo-wise, but your correspondent was able to keep up. Exhilarating stuff...

Spring water fun

2011-04-28T00:55:00.000-04:00

I'm a bit behind on posting, mainly because my year-old camera got cranky and is in for warranty repair. Among other things, the cargo trike got a new hi-tech lithium battery pack, and I'll post about that as soon as I can take photos.

In the mean time, I have a nice photo spread of the the annual Spring waters here in Ottawa, featuring shots of both Rideau and Hogs Back Falls.

Where the Rideau River meets the Ottawa River there are a pair of falls due to Green Island (site of our former City Hall) sitting right on the escarpment's edge. The western falls aren't that interesting, so it's the eastern one that gets all the attention. And since this river controls the level of the the northern half of the Rideau Waterway, a LOT of water passes through when the Spring melt begins.

For some background on the Rideau waterway and the falls, I recommend this site.

Also, a few years ago I took some video footage of the falls and the blasting that occurs to break up the ice:

The falls in full roar.

This beast is used to lift the square timbers that close the dam.

Not sure where they can even find wood this large anymore.

Some interesting ice formations can occur.

Now up to Hogs Back Falls. This where the canal splits off from the river at Mooney's Bay.

To get there by bike I took the pathway alongside the canal, and it loops over the Falls and back under the roadway. Except that the subway was still filled with ice!

Ah, here we go, the dam is wide open and in full flood.


At this point the camera started to go wonky and the lens would not extend, so that was the end of photos for a while.

A foggy soggy day

2011-03-06T03:33:00.000-05:00

Saturday March 5th was quite the weather day. Overnight snow had turned to rain, and the humidity was something like 200%. In my walking travels that day (glad I was able to avoid cycling) the roads were a mess, the sidewalks were an icy mess; it was just, well, a mess everywhere!

Walking on Metcalfe St. I saw the Peace Tower through the gloom and decided to get a bit closer for some mood shots.

The along Sparks St. to Confederation Square, with the War Memorial in front and the Chateau Laurier through the fog.

On the way home, and the intersections in places could be a bit of a challenge. My waterproof boots passed their test.

James St. was completely under water in some sections.

'Twas bad enough that City crews (ok, one lonely front-end loader) were out unblocking the drains.

The sidewalks were fun too. The well-traveled ones were just wet in places, while others had ice under the water.

who needs a car?

2011-02-10T23:46:00.000-05:00

Folks often say "I need a car to move large items", but that's because they haven't got a bike trailer! Most utility trailers can haul whatever you can fit in a car (note the word "in", not "on top of"), and of course my cargo trike can often carry what some cars can't. ;)

I recently had to get both my old TV and my old CRT monitor off to the recyclers. The City of Ottawa has a Take It Back program, which lists local businesses that will take your recyclable items that are not part of the weekly blue / black box pick-up. The Staples store on Bank St. was listed as taking the stuff I had, and a quick call confirmed this and also that they do not charge a fee.

So, hook up the coroplast trailer and find that the two items fit perfectly!

The trip was all of five or six blocks, but the funny thing was when I arrived at the store. I walk in carrying the TV, wearing a bike helmet and obviously looking like a cyclist, and tell the young staffer that I have two items for recycling. She doesn't even blink at the fact that I'm carrying a TV via bike, and when I go and fetch the monitor she asks, upon my return, "anything else?". I had to admire her blithe professionalism...

yet ANOTHER trailer!

2010-12-20T21:12:00.000-05:00

Ok, so here we go once again with another trailer build! Well, like the last one, I did not build the frame, but simply added a box to a decommissioned kids trailer. The reason for this one? With the cargo trike in winter hibernation I still like to move my drums by pedal power as much as possible. In past winters I've borrowed the big trailer I built for my friend Bridget a while back, but it is bigger than I need, a bit too flimsy for the weight of drums (side rails bend more than they should), and a real pain to store in my basement due to its size.

I decided for this year that since I'm don't really want to tow my bigger kits across town (there's VrtuCar for moving those babies), and that most of my downtown gigs are with the small jazz kit, a trailer to just fit that would be ideal. Yes, it looks quite similar in size to the other trailer, but here's why it's different:

The other one, being made with an aluminum frame, a bit of plywood, and lots of coroplast (corrugated plastic) is nice and lightweight for hauling and keeping dry the various amplifiers and electronics and small drums I use in my dance class gigs. It is fine for towing this sort of stuff for quite a few kilometres, but between it's a bit flimsy for the weight of a drum kit, and the fact that its dimensions make it just a bit too small for the kit sealed the issue. So now I have one trailer for lightweight and long haul, the other for sturdy and short haul.

This newest trailer is built from 100% recycled or leftover materials. The only new items were the bolts, and even they were surplus from previous trailer / cargo builds.

A simple plywood box bolted to an old trailer frame. It's previous incarnation was as a kids trailer, complete with webbing and buckles and straps, but all were in questionable shape. A friend's friend gave this to me just before moving out of town, saying "hey, you like trailer projects...".

Since this trailer takes the place of the big cargo trike during the winter some flexibility is needed with what it can move. I was thinking of a hinged tailgate, then remembered I had this metal grid stuff from years ago. And I thought if the grid layout even roughly fits the width of the trike I'll use it, and it did, quite nicely! It's held on with easily removable zip-ties for now, and allows long things to be carried as they can poke through the grid.

The wood was bolted together using 1/4" bolts with nylock nuts and surplus aluminum channel I had found years ago at Cohen and Cohen. This channel stuff has also been used for both the cargo trike and the big trailer.

Since I was using scrap or leftover items I found two pieces of plywood for the bottom. One sheet would've been ideal, but these needed to get used up. Of course a brace below the seam might be good, so I added a piece of 1x3 for this, which also doubled as a support for the rear end since the box overhung the trailer frame (I then notched the wood so it would rest on the crossbar).

The brown bolts were from some old melamine cabinets.

The hitch is a bit primitive compared to the Chariot ball and socket on my other trailer, but seems to work just fine.

Box is held to frame at three points. Two out back, and this one in front. This allowed me to use existing holes and not add more than necessary, as any holes can provide entry points for moisture (all other existing holes from when it was a kids trailer were tightly covered over with electrical tape).

Despite a long coroplast "crap flap" hanging from the winter bike's rear fender, some salty spray still hit the underside. So a coroplast spray guard was added to the trailer's front.

A few days later, and some additions. Fenders installed, and eye-bolts replaced a few of the reg bolts so a tarp could be added over top if need be. In the past I've used coroplast for fenders, but these lovely orange things, while a bit short, could not be passed up.

I think the only remaining improvement to be made is to change out the old hitch for a Chariot one as on the other trailer, because right now I have to undo the winter bike's axle bolt and change the fitting for each trailer.

More HPVOoO parade fun

2010-11-24T13:14:00.001-05:00

Last Saturday the HPVOoO gang took part in our local Help Santa Toy Parade. We've been doing this annually since 2003, and our thing is to dress up Richard's Greenspeed tandem recumbent trike towing the big organ trailer as our main float. Then the rest of us cycle around it on our mostly dressed-up bikes and trikes.

For this year we came up with the idea of dressing the rig up as an old steam locomotive, with lights being used to delineate the form. A blog was put together for sharing design ideas, then a bunch of us gathered at the re-Cycles shop on a Saturday afternoon (only doable because re-Cycles had switched to being open on Sunday for the winter) and got things underway. More work was done throughout the week, and on parade day it was fabulous!

Details on the build here: http://hpv.tricolour.net/train.html

Lots of photos: http://tricolour.net/photos/2010/11/20/hpv.html

The main feature was a real diesel train horn, which Richard went looking for and was actually able to acquire! It sounded awesome (and very loud) when we tested it (hooked up to a compressor), and so it was incorporated into the design. It was a great hoot (literally) during the parade.

More links to the parade at: http://hpv.tricolour.net/events-2010.html

Even more whistle / flute creation

2010-10-07T23:20:00.002-04:00

I decided to revise the bend in the copper Bass whistle, and added a neck strap. The strap consist of the three pieces: a sleeve of bicycle innertube around the instrument, with a key-ring slipped in, and a clip-on strap.

The playing position with the lower bend was OK, but this more conventional bend feels even better. Now to spend more time playing this thing and getting used to the finger hole spread...

Time to give this beauty a final polish and then a spray coat of lacquer.

Next up: The low D pvc whistle sounds quite nice, and since it has a detachable head joint I decided to make two more bodies for it, one being in D minor (same scale as D but just a flatted 3rd), and then a weirder one in what I finally figured out is called "Phrygian Dominant". This mode has lowered second, sixth and seventh notes that result in a scale used in lot of Arabic and Middle Eastern music.

The only challenge with this last one is the large reach to the last hole! Since the third note (F#) is in the usual place and the next note is a minor third down to the flatted second I have one heck of stretch. This is being dealt with by using my pinky finger instead of the the third finger, and I also use this technique on the Bass whistle, and does not feel odd since I'm so used to playing recorder when the pinky is used for the bottom note. As a matter of fact, since my third finger sits idle with this technique I could be silly and add a hole under it, resulting in a major / minor scale!

D major on top, then D minor, then the Phryg.-Dom. scale.

More flute / whistle creation

2010-09-16T02:39:00.000-04:00

OK, so in the previous post I showed off some tin / cro-moly / pvc whistles I've been making.

This next one is a Low Bass in "A", made from 1" copper pipe. This pipe (about ten feet long) was salvaged from the previous location of the re-Cycles shop, as the old heating system was being torn out with lots of pipe up for grabs. I'd saved the longest pieces for future projects at the shop, though I was thinking more for railings or similar than for instruments.

Here I've attached the external windway and am filing out the fipple hole:

Yes, it be a long beastie. Roughly 31 inches! Note the amount of tarnish, and how nicely that polishes away with some fine steel wool and lots of elbow grease:
First hold drilled - it's in tune! More or less, of course. Always need to do some filing and fine tuning:
Et Voila! It will take a while to get it really polished up. There's some discolouration along the back that I may or may not fuss over, as I think it'd need some sort of power buffer to get rid of it:

The 2nd and 3rd whistles along with the new guy:

I knew that the holes would have to be fairly far apart. And while I have big hands it would still be almost impossible to play if the holes were kept inline. So some judicious angling was needed. As it is, I cannot easily reach the last hole with my third finger, though can do so with the pinky and it's just large enough to cover.

An alternative would be to learn the "piper's grip" used on bagpipes, where some holes are covered by the joints of the fingers. Otherwise I've hit the limit of how long I can make one of these things and still play it without adding keys:

The beak and windway:

I was already planning to put a tuning barrel on the thing, which would help reduce its size when being transported. Then I thought perhaps a bend would help with the reach, because part of my energy was going into just holding the thing out at an angle so I could play it properly. So the one thing purchased for this whistle was the 45 deg. coupling:
Yes, it might look a bit odd, sort of like those old oboes or clarinets from the 1700s. Aesthetically it would've looked nice with the bend nearer the beak, but then it would not have packed down as nicely. I guess I could add a barrel in the middle AND have the angle near the beak, but then I'd just be adding more weight to what is already a pretty hefty instrument (probably weighs twice as much as a normal flute, and those things even have keys and related mechanisms on them).

The big thing is how does it sound? Actually, really good! :)

I can so far play a full two octaves and they are all in tune. I'm actually rather amazed it came out as well as it did, but that's mainly because I'm not much of a diligent craftsman and tend to rush my projects.

But one thing I'd been pondering... would the sound change much if I used the traditional windway and fipple? With the above whistle being made in two pieces I could simply make another top piece and try it out. So I carved a windway into another piece of dowel, and hammered out a fipple...

I didn't have a dowel of sufficient diameter for the tube, so some masking tape was employed (and yes, of course I need to do some finishing work, like sanding!):

Everything I've read advises that this is the most critical area of the sound. Just a millimeter or two in terms of the fipple's width, length, or depth can make a noticeable change. So lots of room to fuss, and I'm not the most patient person with such things...

And how does it sound in comparison to the exofipple design? Well, so far it actually sounds more pure, more flute-like. But it's a whistle, not a flute, and so I actually prefer the tone of the exofipple head sounds, which sounds so nice right now. So I'm not in a hurry to experiment with this newest head, but will keep it around and play with it at a later date.

So Yay for a fabulous Bass Whistle in A, made for about $5 (not counting wear and tear in drill bits, etc.)!

DIY tin whistles

2010-09-14T03:46:00.002-04:00

For the dance group my wind instruments have been my recorders, both alto and my recently-acquired tenor. I've been wanting to get a "Low D" tin whistle for a while now, which is one octave below the usual penny whistle. As with pretty well all of my non-drumset instruments, I'm not all that interested in playing the folk / ethnic music these were made for, though I do make sure I know what that music is about and its history. Because with the dance group I'm usually working in situations of improvised music I'm always looking for new ways to express myself, and the low whistles can have a rather haunting, beautiful sound.

So I was going to buy one, and but for some weird reason the Susato I'd ordered from a Canadian distributor never arrived, and they were baffled as to why, so my order was canceled and money refunded. While this was getting sorted out I'd been reading up on do-it-yourself whistles, and now presumed this order foul-up was the universe telling to get on with making my own.

There are some excellent resources on the Net for this, both websites and YouTube videos. I was rather intrigued by the ideas offered at http://www.ggwhistles.com/howto/ and also http://rjaysplace.com/exofipple/ . So I decided to try it out, and so what kind of tubing should I use? Well, why not start with bicycle tubing? It's not, given my pedal-powered proclivities, like I don't know where to find any. ;)

So I cut up an old dead Peugeot road frame. This first one was just to try the external windway concept, and so I initially only drilled the fipple hole, put a plug in. Now, with a conventional whistle the windway is carved out of the top of the plug. But with the "exofipple" design it rests on top of the tube. So I taped on a windway made from of a slice of handlebar! It sounded suprisingly fabulous, so I drilled the other holes rather quickly in roughly the right places just for fun. The whole thing is a bit sharp, as I had not bothered to set a specific pitch by cutting it to length (since it was supposed to be a one-note test).

The handlebar windway. I made this using the end of an aluminum handlebar, which worked nicely because the outer edge is beveled.
Fipple view:

So while it 's a bit wonky it does work. So the next step was to use a prize piece of tubing, this one being from my old bike that was damaged when I was hit by a taxi a few years back (i never really thought about why I did not just scrap the bike right away, but I'm now very glad I didn't!). This tubing, unlike the old Peugeot, is made from triple-butted cro-moly steel, and much lighter. Unfortunately it's also black and scuffed up, so not much of a looker...

Fipple hole drilled:

Wooden plug made from an old broom handle (yes, this will need some sanding):
Cutting the windway from the handlebar:

It's kind of hard to put visible drill markings over black paint, so I used masking tape.
I left the tube's cable housing guides on. The middle one makes for a fine thumbrest.
Yes, the holes do not line up as well as they could have. I'd like both a decent hammer punch, and a drill press!
Note how much taller this windway is than on the green whistle. The small hole in the wood is for a hook so I can hang the plug while its gets varnished. The hole will disappear when the the end is cut to make the beak.

Yay for lots of cut-up bicycle tubing to play with. But I later realized most of it is too short, so the ideal bore to length ratio cannot be achieved. For low whistles (the kind I want to build) I need lengthy tubing from really large bikes!
Even the black whistle's bore might be a bit big for its length, but it sounds fine. Oh, and it is in the key of "G".
Now on to more fun, and time for an actual Low D whistle!

I made the first one out of pvc pipe, but messed up the hole calculations due to reading the ratios for short whistles, not long ones. Doh! So then I grabbed an old squeegee mop, and its shaft was made from aluminum. This one came out right! But boy, the reach to the lowest note is a bit of a stretch, but I'm getting used to it. This last whistle is a bit too breathy, so I'll file the windway down a bit so it's not so tall.

Note in the photo below that the black on, while shorter, has a wider bore. So it's definitely the loudest of the bunch, and when the re-Cycles shop scraps its next large road bike frame I'm grabbing its downtube to make a nice cro-mo Low D. ;)
The cro-mo whistle now sports a correct beak. The whistles are certainly playable without the beak, but having one is more comfortable.
The pvc's windway. Obviously not going to spend any time smoothing it out and cutting the beak, since there's no way to correct the intonation issue. It's all part of the learning process!
The two Low D whistles. Note that the pvc's holes are mostly too far up the pipe, making them sharp. Note that only holes 6 and 3 (from left) match the upper whistle.
Upcoming whistle projects: an in-tune pvc one (in either D or C), and also one out of copper pipe. I will want to make a pvc one using Guido's plans (no exofipple).

I'm also intrigued by the "overtone flute" concept (look up "fujara" on YouTube), and the idea of making both a Japanese shakuhachi as well as a S. American quena. But these last two have a a bit of a learning curve, so we'll see if I first make them, then ever get a sound out of them.

Oh, and I would also like to acknowledge the fabulous accumulated wisdom in the forums of Chiff and Fipple, and the fine info from junkdojo on YouTube.

Propeller Dance - "Shedding Light"

2010-08-15T21:55:00.006-04:00

Ok, I wandered away from this blog again... Mostly because I tend to upload stuff to FaceBook first, but also because my new camera creates such large raw files that my old Mac Mini was struggling to keep up when processing them. Now I'm using a nice G5 iMac with four times the RAM and double the processing speed, so things are rockin', and continue to be about four years behind the cutting edge. ;)

Back in early June the Propeller Dance group held its annual year-end fundraiser on the 11th and 12th, and this time we did two nights at the Arts Court Theatre. It turned out to be a hot ticket event, as both shows sold out! Photos are below...

I've done a ton of work with the group so far this year, as I continued not only working with the Monday evening class but also with the main performing group. And there have been quite a few workshops as well, and for a change these have continued into the summer. Since Dominique St. Pierre has always been the perf. group's main musician we did not want to leave him out of the big show, so he was able to juggle his schedule and Propeller found the cash to pay for both of us! So we got to create the music together and it was great fun. A video of the show should be forthcoming.

More photos of this event are at David Scrimshaw's Flickr page.

Our shows were on the Friday and Saturday nights, and Thursday was for dress rehearsal, so we musicians loaded in on the Wed. night while the stage set was being constructed...

Testing out lighting patterns...More or less complete...

Fellow musicians Mike Essoudry and Dominique St. Pierre get things organized...My rig. Yes, it resembles those keyboard stacks from the 70's, but it made life easier, since sounds often have to be changed quite quickly. Just had to thrown some plywood together for a stand and voila. At left, Roland Handsonic HS-10 (digital percussion pad). The lower keyboard is my venerable Kawai K4 synth (now about 20 years old!), while upper one is an M-Audio Key-Rig 49 triggering soundfonts on the petite iBook at right (which also played a few loops). On the Kawai sits my Aulos alto recorder...The silent auction during intermission. It brings in the dough!

Members of the main performing group gear up for the show...

more urban exploration

2010-05-30T23:30:00.001-04:00

My friend Andrea and I, when we don't go for bike rides, go for long walks. One day we wanted to get away from the city, but since it was March the ground was pretty mushy a hike in the woods was not desirable. So I suggested exploring Victoria Island in the Ottawa River.

This island, along with its counterpart Chaudiere Island, was heavily industrialized in the 19th century, and as anyone in Ottawa knows, Chaudiere Island still has the old EB Eddy plant (now Domtar) all over it. Most of the buildings on Victoria have been cleared away, but not all. And it's the remnants that fascinate. There's also an old log slide, still intact, passing through a valley, but pretty much hidden by foliage. But there's not much foliage in March so photos could be taken. Here's what we found along the way.

A tree slowly eats its name tag:

Right near the a First Nations pavilion was a weed that appropriately resembled a dream catcher:

One of the many water channels feeds this hydro dam. This channel runs alongside the rec. path that heads east from the War Museum.

A nice view eastwards, with quite a few Ottawa landmarks. From left, the Alexandra / Interprovincial Bridge (1901), the National Gallery (1988), St. Patrick's Basilica (1868), and the Parliament Buildings (1876 and 1916):

Andrea lends her support to the recently renovated Library building:

The Portage Bridge cuts across the island, so on the north side the path crosses out over the river using this cantilevered structure:

More trees eating things:

Another channel, this time on the north side, with the water being churned from an outlet of another small hydro station:

This building was put back to use as the Vertical Reality climbing gym:

To its left is another channel:

Over which goes this channel to the above-mentioned hydro station:

Back on the south side, off the rec. path channel is this closed gate for the log slide:

Opposite side:

And it continues along the valley:

cool new drum

2010-04-18T12:24:00.003-04:00

Back in February my younger brother Mike was in India for a few weeks on business, and emailed me asking if there were any musical instruments I might want? Well now there's a fine idea! :)

So I asked him to pick up what is a called a dhol, or dhola, drum. So Mike found a local shop that made them, and chose a medium-sized one. The best part was the price: $60 Cdn., and that included the sticks and case. Of course then Mike had to shlep it from India to England to Ottawa. Thanks bro!

From Wikipedia: "The drum consists of a wooden barrel with animal hide or synthetic skin stretched over its open ends, covering them completely. These skins can be stretched or loosened with a tightening mechanism made up of either interwoven ropes, or nuts and bolts. Tightening or loosening the skins subtly alters the pitch of the drum sound. The stretched skin on one of the ends is thicker and produces a deep, low frequency (higher bass) sound and the other thinner one produces a higher frequency sound. Dhols with synthetic, or plastic, treble skins are very common."

Mine has a plastic skin with mechanical tuning on one side, and a traditional animal skin with rope on the other. The skin side is the "bass" tone, and the sound is modified by use of Syahi, which is the black tuning paste one sees on tabla drums. For this type of drum, usually played with sticks that would wear the paste down, it is applied on the inner side.

The plastic side is cranked up for a very cracking sound. It is really loud! :) When I use this drum indoors I often play it with my hands, or maybe the stick on the bass side. If I start using the stick on the high side it gets pretty hard on the ears in an enclosed space.

I had one unfortunate thing happen with this drum. Shortly after getting from my brother the shell developed a crack! I took off the plastic skin to find that the split started about halfway down and made it right to the rim of the high side. The shell was under such tension from the tuning that it overlapped itself. The good news about this was that I just applied carpenter's glue to the overlap, then popped it back together (obviously the tension had been greatly relieved since I had to remove one skin). Two straps around the drum to hold it for 24 hours, and the drum seems fine.

A friend of mine with experience in imported instruments said that the shell would have been desperately lacking moisture. It came from humid India, got stored in various cold airplane holds, then got taken out in the dry Ottawa winter. He said theat first thing I shuold have dne was to remove the heads and apply oil (any vegetable or nut-based oil) to the shell. I duly did so (using olive oil, since that's all I had on hand) and the drum has remained stable.

I've mainly used this drum with the Propeller Dance classes, and it is a lot of fun when the dancers really need to be stirred up because this thing can do it! :)

Catching up.

2010-04-18T12:19:00.002-04:00

Yikes, I've really let this blog wither on the vine! Three months since my last post is a bit much.

Not too much happened in February, though the re-Cycles shop got an offer to relocate into a much better space, and conveniently right door to the one we were in! So once that got set in motion (we moved March 13) things have been a bit of a blur. I had to work up a floor-plan, and get the move organized, and we're still cleaning up and sorting stuff, since the move happened (like last time) right on top of the start of the busy season. I do have photos of a cool drum to post, and am collating the various photos taken of the shop's relocation. Time to get back at it!

Cool IJO gig this weekend

2010-01-20T11:47:00.002-05:00

Last year the Impressions in Jazz Orchestra tried something a bit different. Well, quite different! We assembled a small version of the orchestra (five horns, two strings, bass and drums) and let the audience tell us what to play. No rehearsal, and no idea until we hit the stage as to what was going to happen. And it worked! Everyone involved had a fab time. And so this coming Saturday we'll try it again!

"Whose Solo Is It This Time? - Explorations in audience-directed musical improvisation".

Saturday, January 23, 2010, 8 PM - National Arts Centre Fourth Stage

http://www.impressionsinjazz.ca/NAC-230110.html

Propeller Dance fun

2010-01-14T23:23:00.000-05:00

I almost forgot to post my pics of our annual Community Day last November!

While our annual fundraising show is a big event each June, this one is far more informal, for family and friends to see what the various classes have been doing during their Fall sessions. Propeller Dance President David Scrimshaw has fine action photos at his Flickr account, so I'll just post some from my perspective.

Oh, and speaking of our June fundaraiser, did I mention that the group's LIFT show was voted Best Dance Performance of 2009 in Xpress Magazine? :)

My gear on the left, Mike Essoudry's (Thursday class) on the right.Mike taking in the show while he wait his group's turn:Jason Sonier (Saturday kids classes) with his assemblage:My gear. Yes, the laptop is a bit precarious up there, especially with dancers often flying around. Perhaps need to rethink that a bit.Missing (but joined in later) was Dominique St. Pierre. He does the music for the performing group, but due to his busy schedule I took on the task for the classes last Fall (and again for the Winter), while he still does most of the outside gigs. I do many of those as well, mainly because I have a more flexible schedule than the other musicians.

Oh, and while this was Community Day, it's still a fundraising event, and many munchies were donated to the cause. The front see-through bin holds my almost-famous chocolate chip cookies.

Xmas tree stand hack

2010-01-12T22:44:00.001-05:00

I hadn't had an Xmas tree in years, but since my nieces were coming to stay for a few days for the family holiday gathering I thought it'd be nice to put one up. I picked out a 5-footer from the Market, and brought it home in the trailer.

One problem, though. Since I'd not had a tree for a while I f course had not opened the box of decorations during that time. So as I sorted through the box I found the cup / holder part of my old tree stand, but not the support legs. Where the heck they went is now lost to time, but how was I going to put up my tree?

I could have gone to a local thrift store and found a complete stand, but that'd be too easy. But fashioning legs had a challenge, because the receiver for each legs was fairly small. What did I have that was narrow enough but strong? Drum sticks! :)

I sawed off some old hardwood sticks about six inches from the tip. The important part is that each tip was small enough to fit each receiver, but then flared out a bit so that there was enough wood to receive a wood screw up through a plywood base.

It worked, the tree stayed up, and the cats did not try to bring it down. :)

bikes on parade

2010-01-01T21:25:00.004-05:00

The HPVOoO gang once again took part in the annual Help Santa Toy Parade here in Ottawa. This year things were a bit different, as the event was moved from Bank St. (due to concerns it might not be ready after a long season of construction), and it was also moved to the evening hours.

What was cool about this is that now everything could be lit up in festive fashion, and many of our bikes were festooned with LED xmas lights powered by inverters and small 12V batteries. We also had a quite a few kids from Richard's neighbourhood arrive on the various machines in his fleet, and they had a lot of fun.

The new route went from the War Museum to City Hall, via Wellington St. past Parliament Hill, the Elgin St. to Laurier. The turnout was amazing!

We had, of course, the main float vehicle (the tandem trike with trailer) towing a load of kids plus tree plus Frosty:And I was riding the Rainbow Chopper:And we had recumbents:And we had tallbikes: And we had pedal-electric pedi-cabs:

(All photos by Richard)

Many more photos at Richard's parade page.

And we also have video footage! Check out Lane's YouTube page.

And special mention for Charles Richer's amazing Gumby LED man!

more music / bike mixing

2009-11-30T21:36:00.005-05:00

One of my many drums is a synthetic West African djembe. I chose this type over a real one mainly because it requires zero maintenance, and can also endure a certain amount of abuse, which is handy when I use it for street events and that sort of thing.
Usually this type of drum is played either standing up with a strap, or sitting down with it between your knees, and you either rest the base on the ground (tilting it to allow the bass tone to come out) or hold it up off the floor with a waist strap or on top of your feet.

With the Propeller Dance groups I need to sit, and it can be awkward holding onto it when I have other instruments to play, as at the very least I have the synth and sometimes also the e-drum pad, the laptop, and other devices (see my post on the gear). There are commercial floorstands available, but they cost money and seem a bit bulky. Being both cheap and reasonably creative I decided to make a stand based on available materials.

First up was a RIMS mount for a 14" floor tom. The RIMS has the legs attached to it and the drum sit in the cradle, as opposed to the legs directly attached to the drum. This is to reduce resonance losses from the legs touching the drum then the floor. (I've personally never had a problem with a big floor tom not ringing enough, but the system they use for rack toms works very well indeed, and I've been using them for 25 years now). I bought this thing cheap many years ago and never used it for its intended purpose.
The challenge is that the djembe is 12" in diameter, while this is 14". So the opening needed to be narrowed down. So, I scrounged through my pile of surplus drum bits (it's about the same size of my pile of surplus bike bits) and found a 13" rim.
Two opposing lug holes handily lined up with two on the RIMS, so they were bolted together.
It still needed to be narrower, but I also needed some way to cushion the drum. I first thought of using a 12" bicycle innertube, but that'd probably be too bouncy. Then I came up with this:

A solid foam 12" tire - excellent! :) And taped it in place.

One drawback, which became obvious when I started using it, is the how the legs attach. This is an early version of the RIMs concept, and the old "screw pushing against the chrome metal plate" does not grip all that well.

New versions have a better set-up (see link above), and I'll take some old floor tom leg brackets I have and MacGyver those onto this rim. In the meantime, it more or less does the job and does not look too shabby.
One added benefit to the bike tire is that I can use it with the drum off the stand. Because when sitting the bottom of each tuning lug tends to dig into one's thigh, and the tire will act as a cushion against this.

vintage velos

2009-11-12T19:06:00.004-05:00

Some very cool old velomobile and other recumbent designs at: http://mochet.org/

little tandem

2009-10-18T23:44:00.004-04:00

I recently came into possession of a small-wheeled tandem bike. I think it was made by Miyata, as it's called the "Miyarenter" (perhaps it was designed for use by bike rental outfits?). If so, then it joins my little tilting trike as yet another "perhaps made by Miyata".

Those twin, umm, top tubes give it a nice swoopy look, no? The bottom/ down tubes curve up to become the seat tubes, a design also used by those old cheap Euro folding bikes from the 70's, like this one:

Hey, it's yellow too. :)

The tandem currently has only one gear, but there are a few cable guide braze-ones on the rear-most chainstay that indicate it may have sported either derailer gears or an internal-gear hub.

The gearing is rather low, which I guess is fine for when it's carrying the weight of two people. Though I frankly don't know how much those typical crappy 20" tires, holding only about 40psi of air, would cope with two people. At least not two large people. If I was going to seriously use this thing I'd swap in some Schwalbe Big Apples or similar, since those can take the weight and also give a nice cushioned ride (I use the Apples on the cargo trike). Of course, like some of the other interesting machines I have it's a bit small for me...

Oh, and if you look at the rear wheel its hub has what looks like a rotor for a disc brake! I'll need to get a better photo of that, after I try to hook up an old Shimano disc brake unit we had lying around at the re-Cycles shop. Not that this tandem really needs a disc brake (nor the extra weight of one); just that it would be way cool to actually find a use for this old brake.

Another idea I had was to turn this thing into a poor man's Xtracycle. I could use the rear seat tube and some clamps and fashion some sort of way to carry loads on the rear half. Y'know, for those trips that don't require the big cargo trike... Hmm...

Curious street feature

2009-09-20T23:23:00.003-04:00

On one of my walks about town (doing more of that for exercise these days) I came across something that has me scratching my head:

What the heck is it for? It is situated on the east side of Ralph St. in the Glebe, just past Holmwood Ave. at the edge of Brown's Inlet. As you can see, there are no signs indicating its use as a waiting area of some kind or whatever.

It's very fresh and new-looking, and was obviously purposely done and with a specific shape. And it sits there all by its lonesome.

It's too small to be much of a bus stop (if this was a bus route), and it's too narrow for just about anything related to a vehicle that might park alongside.

At least there's a rather nice view looking over top of it:

cargo trike update (again)

2009-08-23T21:48:00.005-04:00

Structurally this trike has held up quite well into its sixth year of use. Building it out of square-tube mild steel was not the lightest way to go, but it certainly has been strong.

The one area that has always been suspect is the bar that connects to the frame and holds the "steering" arms that I hold onto while the front end pivots below me. When we built it the plan was to bolt it to the frame like a handlebar using a BMX-style 4-bolt stem. But the threads in the the bottom part of the stem plate got damaged by the heat, so we said heck with it and welded the plate to the frame and the bar to the plate.
(Yes, the bar has a bend in from when some accidentally dropped the frame right after the weld.)

As you can imagine, this bar sees a lot of flex, and while I did insert a wooden dowel into it as well as put braces where the upright bars meet it, we figured the main joint at the frame might start to fail some day. And it did - last last year I saw a crack developing, and finally this Spring I took it over to Johnson Welding for repair (my friend and co-builder Juergen having gotten too busy with his new business for welding projects).

The guy at Johnson asked me to remove all the paint:
and take out the dowel, then he would try and tap in a thicker steel insert tube, then weld the crack. I decided to also add a pair of braces from the bar back to the frame for some triangulation, which is what should've been done when the trike was built. I fashioned them from the chainstays of a dead 10-speed bike from the scrap pile at the re-Cycles shop:
The welder got those in place, fixed the crack, and was able to add the sleeve. The work is a little rough and the braces are not perfectly centred, but hey it only cost me $40.

I then applied primer and gold paint and it looks fab. And the repair should hold for the rest of the trike's life.

dare to compare

2009-08-20T00:43:00.003-04:00

The Impressions in Jazz Orchestra, with whom I've been drumming since early 2006, plays a wide variety of music under the "jazz" umbrella. And some of that is the wonderful music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.

At a concert earlier this year one tune we played was the beautiful "Isfahan", written by Strayhorn. The lead was originally done of course by the amazing Johnny Hodges, but we had our very own Sandy Gordon for this, who is quite well versed in this genre, and he did a fabulous job.

But it's not just about getting the lead, with all its bent notes and huge expressivity, but also in the backing parts. The trombones have some short figures that need to be both soft and precise, like someone playing the chords on a keyboard. And there's the gorgeous ensemble work in the bridge that needs to flow and swell. And then there's the drums, just swishing quietly on the brushes through the whole thing. ;)

And as we played this tune to a rapt audience, that feeling came over me, the one that pretty well all musicians hope to get every now and then - that we're doing it right, doing it justice, and I'm almost having an out-of-body experience. (This is one of the reasons I love playing drums - that I get to be in the middle of this sort of thing but not have a part, at least in ballads, as demanding as most of the other players, which allows me to listen and enjoy what's going on.) So we sailed through this beautiful tune, and as it ended I thought "damn, we did it", and the audience seemed to agree.

I knew we had recorded this concert (and there are audio clips on the IJO site), so I asked orchestra leader Adrian Cho for an mp3 of this one. I've uploaded it so you can hear it, as well as two versions by Ellington (both on YouTube) for comparison. I think we came pretty darn close...

http://drumbent.com/mp3/Isfahan.mp3 (our version)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuRhdxnPCJ4 (Ellington studio version)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2U1MGX8SLU (Ellington live version)

Let me know if you agree! I know I'm highly biased, but I'm also critical when we do not capture the magic. With this one I think we did.

cool bike links

2009-08-05T23:49:00.004-04:00

Some good summer reading.

CCM catalogue from 1918:

http://www.archive.org/details/bicycleaccrepair00canauoft

Bicycle accessories catalogue from a Toronto supplier in 1900:

http://www.archive.org/details/bicycleaccess00riceuoft

This Online Vintage Bicycle Museum is a public internet database for fellow enthusiasts of vintage bicycles and tricycles.":

http://oldbike.wordpress.com/

"The name describes any 3-wheel vehicle, including un-motorized 3-wheel delivery tricycles and ordinary pedal tricycles; motorcycle and scooter pick-ups and vans.":

http://triporteurs.wordpress.com/

Mark Twain's "Taming The Bicycle":

http://www.online-literature.com/twain/1323/

unhinged on a bike

2009-07-26T20:46:00.004-04:00

No, 'twas not I that was unhinged, but someone else...

Late this afternoon I was walking home and had just crossed the construction mess that is Bank St. I got onto James St. and saw what looked to be an older East Indian couple sitting on some steps, perhaps waiting for someone. What drew my attention was that there was a guy with a bike saying something to them in a loud voice, and I realized he was insulting them (stuff like "f-ing immigrants").

They tried to ignore him, and I was wondering what to do. I was across the street, and it was one of the moments that can happen where you have to decide very quickly whether or not to get involved with people you do not know. I thought what he was doing was pretty awful, and after he walked away from them I thought it was over, but then he went back and started in on them again, and they looked pretty nervous and got up to leave.

I then decided that if this guy thought he was so tough he should pick on me, not them, so I shouted "hey, it would be good if you left them alone!". He looked my way and then got on his bike and cycled into the middle of the street, shouting more abuse and I basically said "look, leave them and me alone and just go home". He stared at me briefly and I realized he would probably not try to attack me, and instead he just pedaled slowly as I walked and shouted general abuse my way. I thought "well, the other folks are safe so I'll just let him do this for a bit and then get away from him at the next intersection". I didn't know whether he was mentally ill or high on drugs, but also did not really need to find out.

As we both got to James and Kent he accelerated and turned left, the wrong way onto the one-way street. Problem was, he was riding down the middle of the road with three lanes of traffic heading straight for him! He half fell / half jumped off his bike, and made a motion at the traffic like "come and get me" and started waving his arms and shouting as the cars slowed and dodged around him. Then he grabbed his bike and threw it at one car, and that's when I remembered that I now have a cell phone and that this would be a good time to use it!

I called 911, describing the situation as he threw the bike at yet another car (he missed both times), and they asked me to stay until Police arrived. Just as they said that, the guy, after wandering around for a few moments, threw his bike for a third time and finally hit a car. The driver slowed and stopped for a moment, then turned down James and did not come back.

Just after this a cruiser arrived, and as it pulled up I saw the guy walking off southbound on the opposite sidewalk, with his bike still in the middle of the road. I pointed him out to the officer and she ran after him, and she was joined by another officer at Gladstone Ave. They all disappeared around the corner for a bit, and while I waited a fellow came out of a nearby house, sating he had seen most of what had transpired and that he had also called 911.

Then a third cruiser arrived, and the officer go out to talk to us, and as he did yet another fellow walked up - the driver of the car that had been hit by the bike. From there it was just talking and filling out statements, and the officer said they had grabbed the perp. The original officer returned, the perpetrator was in the back seat of the second car, and they then double-checked our statements (I was the only one that had seen it all from start to finish).

Just as I was leaving the scene I heard the driver of the damaged car say to the officer "my car is over at James and Bank because that's where I was going to pick up my parents". I asked him "were your parents sitting at the apt. building there?" and he said Yes. This was bizarre - I had called the perp. away from them, and then he manages to hit their son's car with his bike; only after trying to hit two others. Now that's one of those Twilight Zone moments...

And this is all on top of the three separate incidences this past week where cyclists were hit (and in at least one case killed) by motorists.

Cyclecide

2009-07-09T15:26:00.003-04:00

A profile of the amazing bike collective known as Cyclecide. I love all of it, especially the Rimshot Bike, because "your joke can be lousy but you still get the rimshot". The "pedal-powered carnival" may be the ultimate in HP fun:

Now there's a job description: "Artist in Residence at the Dump". :)

Propeller Dance gig gear

2009-07-02T15:46:00.006-04:00

June 19th saw the annual fundraising gig for Propeller Dance. In past years this event took place at the NAC's Fourth Stage, but this year it was moved to the new home of the GCTC.

The show had performances by all of the weekly classes, plus the main performing group. That meant around 70 performers! I've been providing the music for the Monday classes with Renata for many years now, and for this event I was also asked to help out the Saturday morning kids and youth classes. This was because Jason Sonier, the regular Saturday musician, was not going to be available for the show, and so I had to take over the final four weeks so the two classes could put their shows together.

(This meant getting up far earlier than I am used to on Saturday mornings, then having one hour to pack up, load out, trike home, unload, grab food, and get to the re-Cycles shop for 1pm!)

Over the years my equipment for these gigs has evolved. After buying a bigger amplifier and adding other gear, my current set-up uses:

The Behringer keyboard amp, Kawai K4 synth, Boss looping pedal, Roland Handsonic 10 percussion pad, an older Mac iBook, and my very latest tool, a Korg Nanopad. The laptop has been great because I can set up various loops and fade them in and out or make them do interesting things, and the Nanopad is an interesting (and very cheap) MIDI controller that I'm mostly using to trigger soundfonts. For the Sat. kids class I also added my "street drum", originally put together for Grasshoppa Dance street performances.

In past years Propeller Dance's accompanying musicians have tended to be in the shadows for performances. This year we were right onstage, though due to space limitations we needed to tuck ourselves into a corner.

The other guys, Dominique Saint-Pierre (main performing group) and Mike Essoudry (Thursday group), are also using varying degrees of technology. Here's a view of my rig:
Dom uses a Yamaha synth, microphone (sometimes run through a delay unit), djembe, the same model amp I use, and he recently bought an older Roland Handsonic 15:
Mike had an interesting set-up using a mix of acoustic and slightly more "primitive" digital technology:
Yes, those are Discmans! Mike loaded these with loops he'd burnt onto CD, then ran each through its own mixer channel to be faded in and out as needed.

A closer shot of my gear. The Nanopad is right in front of the laptop:
A rear view of the collective gear during dress rehearsal:
This event was a lot of fun, though we musicians did not help each other / jam along during pieces as in the past, because the performances have gotten a bit more structured. But Dom did invite us to jam along on the final performing group piece, which, after a run-through during dress rehearsal, came off quite well.

David Scrimshaw has a ton of performance photos on his Flickr pages. I really like this one of our Monday group during the show:
And yes, as always I used my cargo trike to get to this gig. ;)

Jazz festival gig

2009-06-23T12:24:00.002-04:00

I'll be performing this coming Thursday at noon at our local jazzfest, this time with the new quartet Art Nuvo. And it's a free show: http://www.ottawajazzfestival.com/e/lineup/june25.html

This group is comprised of myself on drums, Rick Rangno on trumpet and fluegelhorn, Ian Clyne on piano, and Tom Denison on bass. As mentioned in an earlier post, we were in the recording studio back in April, putting together series of original compositions form Rick and Ian. That should be released sometime in the Fall.

This group is a good challenge for me, as it's an opportunity to play some real jazz. Meaning that we're focusing on original material and not just playing the same old standards all the time (which is what a lot of us get stuck doing when folks hire a jazz group). I've been nicely encouraged by the lads to play a bit more "out" and go for it, which I'm happy to do. ;)

I'll be triking to this gig, of course...

newest oldest bike

2009-06-02T23:36:00.007-04:00

I've just acquired a rather old but still completely functional steed. It's a CCM "Red Bird", and the serial number dates it to 1937! Holy smokes, that's 72 years ago!!

I plan to get more info on its history from the guy that passed it on to me from a friend of his.

The only things I've added were the bell and a perhaps even older seat (which is covered with some black fleece, but under that is some worn leather with horsehair padding!). The bike did have its old-style seatpost that is shaped a bit like the number 7, and I'll see if I can fit this seat to it.

The bike has its original but rather faded paint, but some of the detail work is still there:

as well as various stickers:

and the rather cool head badge, where the name is cut out of the metal:

The bike rides just fine, but has a few issues. The easiest to fix is a slightly reluctant coaster (back-pedal) brake. I'll just open that up for an overhaul, and do have some replacement brass brake "shoes" if they are needed.

A little more fussy is that at some point the bike's hubs got re-laced into cheap steel 27" rims, when it originally came with Canadian 28" (700C) wheels. I'm presuming they are the original hubs, as they have oil ports that seem to match the one on the bottom bracket shell.

The single rear cog even has a slot in it for easy spoke removal, which is a feature not seen in a long time.

These replacement chrome-plated wheels with their skinny tires and flat braking surfaces just do not look right on this bike.

I have access to a complete front wheel from the "railing bike" at the re-Cycles shop (a dead CCM from 1945 that was going to be an outside sign bike, but instead now graces the shop's library railing), as it did not fit the installation and was simply snoozing in a basement corner, and had escaped being spray-painted. I dug it out tonight and was pleased to note that the painted rim matches my bike!

So I either use this wheel as it is, or only its rim and lace in the bike's original hub (this other wheel does not have an oil port). For the rear wheel, I could either remove the one from the railing bike and carefully strip the spray-paint (and simply substitute any old single-cog wheel), since it wold be the correct colour, or find one online.

The bigger challenge is that the stem is seized, and its bolt loose. It has probably been this way for quite some time, and I fear that the stem bolt has snapped off inside at the top of the wedge. But the bolt, while loose, will not back out, so until I can get it in a vice and tug it out I can't see what is really going on.

I'm applying some Liquid Wrench inside the head tube at intervals to start freeing up whatever rust might be holding things, but if the bottom end of the bolt is stuck in the wedge then I may have to unfortunately cut off the stem. This would allow me to dismantle the headset and pull out the fork, then hopefully get the conjoined mess out. Via the "English Roadsters" discussion group at OldRoads.com, I've been offered a replacement stem if needed.

An interesting feature on this bike is that it sports non-cottered cranks. And it is not the usual one-piece / Ashtabula crankset. I was told that CCM pioneered this, but need to get more verification.

And here's the most worn part of the bike:

I'll post more photos as the "restoration" continues.

Fun book

2009-05-30T01:32:00.003-04:00

Flights of fancy can be a very good thing. Sometimes they can lead to new and interesting things, and sometimes they are just a bit "out there", and make you think.

I'm browsing through a .pdf version of a book full of all sorts of wonderful weirdness called the "Codex Seraphinianus". Some are calling it The World's Weirdest Book, with images such as:

I think it's a hoot. You can download the pdf file (50meg.) HERE.

Frank Zappa drummers

2009-05-13T13:18:00.000-04:00

While I'm not the biggest Zappa fan, I certainly do like some of his music, and some of it I like a LOT. I have always appreciated what a musical free spirit he was, and how he had some of the best musicians on the planet in his various bands; people like George Duke, Terry Bozzio, Steve Vai, Vinnie Colaiuta, Ruth Underwood, etc.

And for all the silly stuff that most folks know him by, he also wrote some of the most complicated music any musician ever had to read. And they often had to play it while engaged in some musical comedy routine. But they could do so because they knew the music cold, as Zappa would rehearse his bands eight hours a day, five days a week for at least two or three months before heading out on tour. That's a lot of work!

I just came across a cool roundtable discussion featuring ex-Zappa drummers organized by Terry Bozzio, who played with him from '75-'78. With him are Ralph Humphreys ('72-'74), Chester Thompson ('74-'75, later tour drummer for Genesis), and percussionist Ruth Underwood ('68-'76). Ruth had basically stopped playing after Zappa because, well, any other music was not going to be quite as interesting!

http://www.drumchannel.com/entertainment/3016.aspx

7 episodes, and there's a link on the page of the first one to a 4-drummer drum jam that lasts for 42 minutes!

More drums 'n Zappa - Terry with the "Zappa Plays Zappa" band last year (led by Zappa's son Dweezil), playing "The Black Page". This was written for Terry by Frank back in 1976, and the tune got its name from the fact that Zappa wrote it in a slow time signature, so all the fast stuff is in 32nd notes and the page looks like a blur of ink. Terry is joined by the aforementioned Steve Vai for Part 2:

(Steve Vai first came to prominence as Zappa's "stunt guitarist" in '81, to play parts that Frank wrote that even he could not easily play on guitar. Vai had transcribed some Zappa guitar solos while he was studying at Berklee, and Frank paid him to continue that until Steve graduated and then joined the Zappa band.)

catching up...

2009-04-21T00:10:00.003-04:00

Two weeks ago I observed my 50th birthday. At some point I'll start acting my age, maybe when I'm 60.

Here's one for the numerologists in the crowd: within a period of three weeks I turned 50, my step-mom turned 80, and my niece Marianne turns 20. So I'm in the middle, with a fabulous woman 30 years on either side. ;)

My birthday week was a tad hectic. On the Monday I was at the re-Cycles shop from noon until 5pm, then had to zoom home, gulp dinner, then load the trike and head off to the weekly Propeller Dance gig (where the gang gave me a fabulous pre-birthday celebration).

On Tuesday, I was up at 7:30am (yikes!) to head into the recording studio for three days with a new group I've joined called "Art Nuvo" (more on them later). I was home from that by 4:30, then off to a b'day dinner 'til 8pm, then picked up at 8:30 for an IJO rehearsal that lasted until about 11:30.

Wednesday saw another 7:30am wake-up, and I got home from that session around 4:30 again, then had a 3-hour choir rehearsal from 6-9.

Thursday was like Tuesday, without the b'day dinner in the middle. Thankfully I had nothing booked for Friday, and I did as little as possible. Ok, so I spent three hours sorting stuff at the re-Cycles shop, but that was on my own schedule, and it had no music! My ears were a tad fried by this point...

The following weekend was busy, and by then I had run myself down and was sniffling with a cold by Monday. And it became the worst cold I've had in three years (after not being sick all winter), and I spent a bunch of time half passed out on the couch. So if spread out over the past two weeks I guess I did a normal amount of work. :P

While I was sick I watched an excellent BBC documentary about the Second World War, produced in 1973 and running for almost 24 hours. It had been uploaded to YouTube in the allotted 10-minute increments, so it took a while to wade through, both mentally and emotionally. But I finally have a full understanding of the insanity of that war: approx. 60 million dead, and half of those were Russians. The Nazi ideology, the various cold and calulated programs they put in place, how much the German populace bought into it all... (let's face it - none of it would've happend if most of the people had not wanted it.) Truly wrenching stuff, but I would consider it mandatory viewing.

Here's the playlist link.

IJO gig this week

2009-04-13T20:58:00.004-04:00

Got another cool concert coming up with the Impressions in Jazz Orchestra.

We're doing the fabulous "Far East Suite" by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn, along with a newer work called the "Chicago Concerto", written by Richard Peaslee. This is for baritone saxophone and Big Band, and was originally written for jazz great Gerry Mulligan.

Mike Tremblay will be the bari soloist, and some of the music is giving us quite the challenge (odd time signatures and that sort of thing). Rick Rangno will also be playing a beautiful piece by Peaslee called "Nightsongs" for fluegelhorn and strings.

Full details at the IJO site. I'll of course be using my cargo trike to get to this gig. ;)

tech blending

2009-04-11T00:23:00.003-04:00

Last summer I bought a new mouse for my Mac, and in December I bought a new electric razor. They look similar enough to confuse me in my morning dopiness if I shave while at the computer...

folding trailer

2009-04-11T00:18:00.003-04:00

A friend of mine sent me this link: A wheel-y unique idea for commuter cyclists: Milton university engineering student co-inventor of collapsible bike trailer.

back on the trike

2009-03-29T23:26:00.003-04:00

I got Kyoto out of its winter hibernation this past Thursday.

On Wednesday there was still a bit of ice piled in front of the door to its trikeport, and once that was cleared I still could not get the door open! Prying the top edge back I could look inside and see ice on the gravel floor of the 'port, and the front wheel had ice up to the rim. Joy...

But on Thursday I was able to pry the door open a bit more and reach in and lift the front wheel out of the ice out easily enough, and it was no worse for wear. Then I eventually got the door free and the trike out (the rear wheels did not have ice around them). I adjusted the brakes and cleaned the chain and put the small battery in to check the lights and signals, and all was well.

Friday was a beautiful day and I put the battery pack for the electric assist in and went for about a 10km roundtrip doing errands. It was nice to be back on the beast (currently my only recumbent) and I'm looking forward to using it once again for moving gear after almost four months of using the winter bike and trailer(s).

The next day I had to do a shift at the re-Cycles shop from 1-5, then from there straight over to the NAC for a soundcheck and gig at the Fourth Stage. The trike makes this kind of thing easy to do.

And so begins Year Six of my cargo trike adventures. :)

Jivewires gig tonight

2009-03-20T16:46:00.003-04:00

A little late in posting this, but...

The Jivewires are playing at the Rainbow tonight. This is the make-up gig for the one canceled two months ago due to heat and water problems at the club. In the band tonight are Steve on vocals and trombone, Rick on trumpet, Zak on alto sax, Brian on tenor sax, Dr. Dave on guitar, Tom on upright bass, and me.

And check out our new website! The old one was OK, but not put together by us. I maintained it over the years, but Steve has now redone it and looks after the updating.

fun with power tools

2009-03-13T13:54:00.000-04:00

Anyone visiting the re-Cycles shop will see two rooms; one being the front "sales" room, and the other the work room. Some folks might even get to see the basement, where the largest room holds all the donated bikes that have come in (which at this time of year have mostly been made ready for sale and are awaiting the Spring rush).

Then there's the smaller basement room, where we store scrap metal for eventual recycling, dead tires awaiting recycling, supplies, spare parts, etc. This room also contained appliances that had long been taken out of use but never removed, such as the building's furnace (each tenant now has their own furnace) and water storage tank (for the old hot water radiators). These things took up a lot of room that we really needed. So we got the landlord's permission to remove them and hired a contractor.

And Mr. Contractor actually showed up. Once. He had quoted two nights to shut off services and disconnect, and then cut things up enough for us to add to our metal scrap pile. Well, he got as far as shutting off power and gas and some of the water and left things to drain. Then he disappeared, as contractors so often do.

By the time the Christmas Holidays rolled around a month later we figured the guy was gone, and somebody had to finish the job. The shop had recently bought an angle grinder with a nice cutting disk, so I thought what the hell I'll see if I can do the job.

The furnace was pretty straightforward. A few pumps had to be disconnected, and I could tell they had been put on not long before the furnace had been decommisiond, as the bolts came undone easily (and the old dead pumps were lying nearby). The pumps were taken by HPVOoOer Mike Watson for a project, so nice to see them reused and not scrapped when they were perfectly good.

The big water tank was another thing. It had cut-off pipes sticking out of it so I presumed it to be drained and started cutting into the bottom pipe. And water starts spraying out! Just what I want when using power tools... (the tank had water, but obviously not enough to overflow the upturned open pipes.)

A quick clamping repair was made using a section of innertube and a hose clamp. The tank needed to be properly drained, and fortunately fellow HPVOoOer Charles was upstairs working on his winter bike. It was off-hours, but I was glad I'd let him use the shop while I was downstairs, because he was able to scoot the few blocks back to his place and get a garden hose. This was attached to the tank's drain plug and left overnight. (He also took the above photos of me.)

The next day the remaining pipes were cut and the tank was waddled out of the way. The furnace consisted of a sheet metal top resting on a core of metal and fire bricks. That core was extremely heavy, and I could only heave it aside by squatting and putting my shoulder to it.

The various cut pipes were sorted by metal type for our scrap removal guys (copper being the most valuable), and then all taps and fittings removed.

The grinder was a fabulous tool for this project. It certainly would not have been a fun task to do all the cutting using only the shop's hacksaw...

A little while later the scrap guys came and hauled most of it away, and it took three people to get the furnace core and big water tank up the stairs.

TV show

2009-03-07T00:05:00.004-05:00

So the TV segment wasn't too bad. I still talk a bit too quickly at times, trying to get out the things I wish to say. But overall I'm OK with how it went.

There doesn't seem to be an embedding feature on the CBC's website, so here's the direct link to the show. (My segment starts around 6:57).

If the link fails for some reason please go to the show's website and search for "Thursday March 5".

Me on TV

2009-03-02T16:44:00.000-05:00

In January I was asked by CBC-TV to do a short feature on cycling and trailering my drums in the winter. Later that month on a nice crisp day I met up with reporter Amrita Singh and a cameraman at Bank and Sparks. The program will be aired this Thursday at 3pm, and available online afterwards.

Below are the details from the CBC:

Thank you for being part of Living in Ottawa. Your story "Drum Bike" will be aired on Thursday, March 5...

... Living in Ottawa airs at 3 PM on CBC Television. See below for a list of CBC television channels in our area. After the initial airing the episode will be posted online and will be accessible to your family and friends to watch at www.cbc.ca/livinginottawa. Click on “search videos” and search by the airdate or segment title to find past episodes. Where to find Living in Ottawa on CBC Television: Channel 8 - Rogers Cable, Channel 208 - Bell ExpressVu, Channel 303 - Star Choice Channel, 4 - with antenna Channel 2, - Videotron Cable - Gatineau

more trailer stuff

2009-02-28T16:02:00.003-05:00

My friend Tanya (aka crazybikerchick) liked my trailer and wanted her own. During two of my visits to Toronto we got it built (yes, I brought the conduit bender with me) and she was going to blog the details. Well, she hasn't been blogging as much as she used to, so I told her I'd post some photos.

The design is the same as on my website, using conduit for the frame, a Chariot hitch, and 16" wheels. Tanya later added her own Rubbermaid container.

Family stuff

2009-02-05T23:43:00.003-05:00

Last summer was tough for my family, as my Dad died (age 92) in July, then one of his younger brothers (my uncle Tom) died in August. Tom's funeral was held in the patriarchal family town of Bowmanville, Ont., where the family had founded and run the Bowmanville Foundry from 1901 to 1988.

My brother Mike and I drove down in his Honda Del Sol (not really a sports car, but just a cute little two-seat Honda Civic), and before heading back home I wanted to get a photo of Rehder Avenue.

Our great-grandfather Christian Rehder started the foundry business, and it remains one of the town's major employers. Christian later bought some land to create a little subdivision as an investment, and why not name a street after the family?

Footnote: the current owners of the foundry commissioned a book about our family, the business and the town, and it was published in 2002. While I knew many of the facts and figures, I was heartened to read some very positive things I had not known about.

One being that during the Great Depression business of course dropped off significantly, and Christian showed all the employees the order book and told them how bad things were. But he was not going to lay anyone off and would give work as it came in. And to help them out he said he'd cover any basic purchases at the local grocer, so that no one had to go hungry while waiting. He had always intended to keep the company small to maintain quailty control, and doing so also allowed him to give back like this.

The second was when the union came calling. My grandfather Ernie had taken over by then, and was incensed over the implication that a union was needed. As noted above, the company had always looked after its employees, granted in a old-fashioned patriarchal way. My Dad was summoned to deal with the negotiations, and once the union was in everything went well, with company management dealing directly with the union reps in all future contract talks. There were no work stoppages or grievancs filed in all the years the family owned the business.

It's nice to know that I did not come from a line of greedy corporate types, and perhaps that's where my community-minded ethic comes from.

More fan mail

2009-01-26T03:42:00.005-05:00

I recently received another email from someone who had built a trailer from the plans at my site.

He did up a web page with full details. Thanks Eugene!

cargo trike update

2009-01-11T13:58:00.007-05:00

I had few posts about the cargo trike in 2008, but that's mainly because it runs fine and there's little to report! It did exactly what it was supposed to do with little fuss, and was used more than any previous year. Few long trips like in 2007, but that's fine; the short trips more than caught up the mileage (kilometerage?).

I think the only failure was having three spokes break in the front wheel. Which is pretty good, considering that I built it myself three years ago, and it hits whatever road debris I don't steer around with the weight of me sitting on it. And without suspension. The real adventure was having to cut, thread, and install three custom-length replacement spokes. They are not a common size due to the large hub in a small wheel, and when I built the wheel I customized enough spokes for the job, and no spares. But this replacement job was made easy by the re-Cycles shop now having the necessary threading tool (thanks to whoever donated it to us!).

Improvements for 2008:

- built a coroplast rain cover for the cargo box (why did I wait four years to do this, and put up with a tarp?).

- replaced the battery pack (I abused the old one by not recharging it often enough).

- replaced the excellent but worn down Schwalbe Big Apple 50mm wide tires with new 60mm ones (the 50s went on my trailer).

The last ongoing issue was the electric assist acting up in rainy weather, partly because the wiring connectors would pull apart and let moisture in. Juergen (my co-builder and e-assist guru) suggested replacing the stock ones with Anderson connectors, and last Spring, with the help of our friend Charles, the swap was done.

(Yes, the trike's paint badly needed touching up, and that was done shortly thereafter.)

This change, as well as relocating and covering the motor controller to protect it from wheel and road spray seems to have solved the problem, though I did not ride in the rain as much as in 2007.

So it looks like the concept has matured and stabilized. I was able to ride the trike into the first week of December, and now it hibernates, awaiting the non-slushy-salty roads of Spring.

walkin' the drums

2009-01-03T14:17:00.000-05:00

Back in mid-December I had a gig near City Hall, about ten or so blocks from my place. Normally I'd just hitch the big trailer to the winter bike and off I'd go, but we were a few days into our transit strike and the traffic had been a bit nuts. With snowbanks at the roadside I could not easily slip past motor vehicles with the trailer, and I thought about walking it.

But the trailer has the standard flat hitch-arm to mount to a bike's left chainstay, so that's a bit awkward for tugging along behind. But in my basement I had the frame of an old Cannondale "Bugger" trailer (lovely name) that I'd been saving for a project. The plastic body was gone, as was the hitch clamp, but it did still have fabric stretched across the frame. The important part is that the hitch-arm is the old design that attached to the seatpost, which makes towing by hand doable.

The main thing was would my small jazz drumkit fit? As luck would have it, the largest drum case JUST fit in between those rails (which were gently bent up to keep the drums out of the wheels).

It all fit, so off we go! Of course as often happens during winter here in Ottawa the roads were in better shape than the sidewalks. It was a bit more of a slog than I would've liked, but I got to the gig just fine, and was rewarded with a stunning view of the moonrise over Lisgar Street, as this one was apparently the best one of the year (people were out with cameras on tripods).

The ironic thing was that for some reason traffic was no worse than usual (perhaps being a Friday night many left work early to avoid rush hour) and I could've biked / trailered without a problem!

Here's the quartet for the gig, with Kenny posing as Serious Bassist by using the bow:
And outside, ready to head home:
And yes, that's my suit bag on top. When moving drums by human power it can get a bit sweaty, and showing up in a rumpled suit tends to not impress the clients. No matter how much they are impressed / bemused / bewildered that the drummer arrived under his own power. ;)

More trailer adventures

2008-12-28T12:50:00.003-05:00

I had to build a new cargo box for the small trailer. This, by the way, is a modified Chariot kids trailer, which replaced my dead homebuilt one. It was donated to re-Cycles with the fabric in bad shape - stained and ripped. I did not need the support arms that went overhead to provide a canopy, so they were bent down and other mods done. The box I'd installed was a Rubbermaid container, previously scavenged from a ravine, and it was literally cracking from the workload of the previous winter. The box could also not hold my synth keyboard (the one used for the Propeller Dance classes) properly.

I wanted the new box to be long enough for the snyth, and strong enough to hold the amplifier, which is a fair bit heavier that the one I used last year. So I used plywood for the bottom, but good old coroplast for the sides and top. The pieces were "sewn" together with zipties, a technique I also used on the tailbox for my old recumbent bike.

Here's the trailer, with box removed (in foreground) and plywood bottom in for test-fitting.

Note that I had to notch the wood to fit the two vertical posts.

Test-fitting of the snyth:

Nice red coroplast pieces (again from a scavenging job)...

...stitched together.

And bolted to plywood floor.

And duct tape to cover and strengthen the joints. Instead of heating and bending the 'plast as I did with the tailbox I simply slit it halfway through and then folded it. Still plenty strong.

The inner upright posts are anchored to the outer horizontal ones through the 'plast.

The front frame tube drops, and the plywood was perhaps not going to hold all the weight at the front without bending and cracking, so a support was needed.

Since the wheel axle support bolts poke up through the frame rails I leveled things off a bit with some blue foam.

Loaded for the winter Community Day gig for the dance class. I added some of the same yellow reflecto stuff I used on the sides of the trike's cargo box.

The box works well, and it's nice to finally have a proper cover instead of always using a tarp. The only drawback to using coroplast for the box is that it won't take a lot of abuse in terms of having awkward / ill-fitting items stuffed inside, but of course doing that sort of thing (like transporting the ski-bike) is what cracked the Rubbermaid bin...

The single-sided wheel mounting makes for easy tube and tire change (a plus in the winter), and a few days later I swapped out the crappy no-name tires for a pair of Schwalbe Big Apples that had done five years duty on the cargo trike (now a little too worn for that heavy use, but still perfectly good for a trailer). The great thing about these tires is that you can run them at low psi (for passive suspension) but the sidewalls do not deform and they still roll well.

2009 update: a winter of towing the heavier amplifier has made me realize that it's just a bit too much for some of the hills I have to climb for the dance group gig. So I went back to the lighter, lesser-powered amp and it's fine. Since it's also smaller this allowed me to lop off about four inches of height from the box, which has the added benefit of making it much easier to get the trailer through my basement door. Yay for various small victories...

In the news

2008-12-24T00:05:00.000-05:00

For the past while I've been musing about quitting the music business, at least in terms of music being my primary source of income. And by December I'd made up my mind, as the Xmas gigs just did not come through for me this year, and have been dwindling steadily over the past decade. And not getting a New Year's Eve. gig for the third year in a row cinched it. (More on all of this at a later date.)

On Wed. the 17th I had a noon-hour gig at the Clarica Centre downtown, and I was looking at it as my last pro gig. And on the morning of I got a phone call from Kate Porter, the Arts reporter with the CBC. She had been referred to me by another CBC employee, Emily Chung, who I know from the HPVOoO cycling gang. Kate was conveniently doing a story on how Xmas gigs for local musicans have been dropping off, and we arranged for her to interview me after the gig. Emily also showed up, and took a photo of me playing in Tom's trio, and that ended up on the CBC website with the story.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2008/12/17/ot-081117-xmas-party-music.html

Kate also called over a cameraman (the CBC building is across the street from the Clarica Centre) as she wanted to get a video of me loading my drums onto my trailer and cycling off. The guy hustled over and seemed a bit unimpressed that this was "news", but the footage ended up on the TV news that night, though I did not see it. Kate's story ran on the "All in a Day" radio show, though it was only 2 minutes long (I need to learn to talk in soundbites - the poor woman probably spent far too long trying to find a snippet out of our rambling 20-minute chat).

The highlight for me was just after the story, as News Producer Laurence Wall (whom I'd met earlier in the year when he was MC for an IJO performance) chatted with host Adrian Harewood, and described my bike and trailer and how dedicated I was. :) Thanks Laurence!

And Emily just informed me that a photo Kate took of me using Emily's camera ended up in a CBC photo gallery:

http://www.cbc.ca/photogallery/canada/1858/ (photo #23)

where I work (continuing series)

2008-12-13T14:07:00.002-05:00

I haven't posted regarding this series in a while, where I like to show the different places a musician might be asked to perform. Sometimes you get a nice big stage and an attentive audience, and many times you're stuck in a corner and folks are hardly paying any attention.

Last Thursday I performed with the IJO at Dominion-Chalmers church, a beautiful building with lively acoustics, and a pipe organ console right in the middle of the "stage". I took some photos of the empty hall before everyone arrived for soundcheck and the show.
And one photo of the gig, courtesy of photographer Brett Delmage (more at the IJO website).

To get to this gig I used my cargo trike, which got pressed into service even though I had technically put it away for the winter (once salt gets put on the roads). This is because the large trailer, made for a friend who lets me borrow it back in the winter, could not hold this drum kit due to the large sizes of the drums themselves. I may have been able to pile it all in and bungee it up so it looked like the Grinch's sleigh all loaded with Whoville toys, but the roads were mostly bare and dry (meaning no wet slush) and I only had to go about nine blocks, so the trike made sense. I won't get into how it took me 20 minutes to go those nine blocks because of snarled traffic due to a bridge closure...

The next night I played a jazz quartet gig for the local Thai community at a hall off Riverside Drive. It was the 81st birthday of the King of Thailand, and he happens to be a jazz fan (I recall references to him in jazz books when I was younger). We played four of his personal compositions, then some standards. Also on the bill were some traditional Thai dancers, and throughout the hall various samples of food and drink were to be had.

Thai women can be distractingly pretty. ;)

At evening's end they all gathered to sing some birthday wishes to their King, led by the Thai ambassador (who was at the lectern at right):

Young drummers, pay attention to this handy tip: it's always good to set at least one drum level so it can hold food:

The following Sunday was Community Day for Propeller Dance, of which I do accompaniment for their Monday class. It was in a basic rec. hall that had the acoustics of a gymnasium, but fortunately the music did not have to be too loud and did not bounce all over the place. I simply set up near a corner, and then go hunting for a chair or two or table for the keyboard (since I'm traveling via pedal power I like to keep the weight down, so I don't bring a stool or stand with me).

(I should've taken the photo from further away to show perspective with the room, but oh well.)

I have a fourth entry, but it also involved a new way of getting to the gig, so that will get its own post.

Real Hobbitts?

2008-12-11T01:31:00.000-05:00

I've always had an interest in anthropology, and a few years ago things were shaken up by the discovery of some controversial bones on a small Indonesian island. They seemed to be of little people that may not have been Homo Sapiens, and they existed up until recent times.

See more at:

http://www.nature.com/news/specials/flores/index.html

and

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/hobbit/program.html

A review of the above program:

http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/tv/hobbit-nova-2008-live.html

IJO Benny Goodman tribute

2008-12-02T04:02:00.004-05:00

This Thursday the Impressions in Jazz Orchestra will once again take the stage at Dominion-Chalmers Church, this time to present our tribute to the famous 1938 Benny Goodman Orchestra concert at Carnegie Hall.

http://www.impressionsinjazz.ca/DC-041208.html

The original concert was the first time "Jazz" was presented in a concert hall, and it was a roaring success. The concert was also recorded, though this fact was forgotten until Goodman found the discs in his house during a move around 1950 or so. The recording was subsequently released and went on to be one of the biggest selling jazz albums of all time.

I discovered this music when I was five years old and leafing through my parents record collection. After I heard Gene Krupa on drums my focus intensified (I had already been banging on pot and pans) and I just about wore that album out. I'm sure my family got sick of hearing it after a while, but not enough so that they didn't get me my first drumset when I was six! :) My drumming really started with this album, so it's quite thrill to be playing this music 40+ yars later with the IJO.

Technical notes: for this music I had to decide as to how authentic I wanted to get in its reproduction. Drum sets in the 1930s didn't have Ride cymbals (the largest of the cymbal family in diameter) for that typical"ding dinga ding" sound one most often hears in jazz. Time was mainly kept using press rolls on the snare drum (coming from that drum's military origins) and a steady 4/4 on the bass drum. The hi-hat did exist and was used, mainly as contrast to the rolls, with a closed dry sound for quiet sections, and a sloshy open sound when the music started to shout.

When I was growing up I saw clips of Gene Krupa (and others) on TV playing these old songs, but of course they kept with modern times and used the ride cymbal. But I also knew the music did not sound quite the same, and it took a while to figure out why. When I later found out the correct style I noted it but still used the ride like everyone else did whenever I played Sing Sing Sing. But when IJO dirctor Adrian Cho told me we'd be recreating much of the 1938 concert I decided to use the correct playing style.

The main issue for me has been to keep the press roll style swinging but also QUIET. It's a fairly busy noise going on, and quite fun to do, but it's really easy to let the volume build, and so I'm trying to behave. ;) If one listens to the original recordings one can hear Krupa snapping off rim shots and other little sticking tricks, which would interrupt the flow if one was playing a ride or the hi-hat, but since one is already grooving on the drum one can add comments to the sound without disturbing the rhythmic flow.

I'm also using thin 7A sticks, the kind I'd normally only use for quiet, small-group jazz gigs, as back in those days that was about the largest available. And that size helps keep the volume down and also reduces mass in the hands for the various sticking tricks. I guess if I wanted total authenticity I'd also use calf heads, but umm, no thanks. They are expensive, and like any natural product they are subject to humidity and temperature fluctuations, and the drums can go out of tune during a show as the room's moisture content changes. Instead I'm using Remo's Fiberskyn heads, which do a pretty good job at emulating calf. (I've used these on my 1966 Rogers kit for all my IJO large-group gigs.)

Probably the main highlight for me on this show is that we will be playing the FULL version of Sing Sing Sing, which means also the Part 2 that is on the recording but not in published sheet music (just about every version you hear of this song by any band will only do Part 1). Part 2 was a Head arrangement, meaning it was put together by the band at rehearals and on gigs without being written down at first. So while I've played this song many times this will be the first with the full version!

Toy Parade

2008-11-26T13:12:00.008-05:00

This past Saturday HPVOoO took part in the annual Toy Parade. In past years we've even won a few awards with our float ideas, but so far we've not been notified about anything for this year. ;)

As in the other parades, our modus operandi is to use Richard's Greenspeed tandem trike pulling the large trailer with some sort of theme on it. The rest of us circle around this rig on our bikes, which are usually also decorated. This makes the riding a lot more fun than just moving forward at the usual parade crawl, and helps us keep warm!

This year Alex supplied a large inflatable snowman, so that was put on the back end, then a tree was added, and room was left at the front for various members' kids to sit and wave. Our staging area was on the Laurier Bridge. It was a cold, windy day, and being on the bridge made us feel very bit of the chill. Below, the trailer prep begins (earlier in the week folks had gathered at Richard's to test-fit everything together so that assembly time would be quick).

Alex's bike even had reinder on it.

I rode the tiny trike. It's fun to ride, and I'd like to build one my size some day.

Charles is either doing a robot dance, or this should be captioned "Invisible Broom".

Snowman and tree and kids are all ready to go! (Though some are being silly and pretending to nap in the -10C windchill)

One does not see horses all that often in an urban environment:

I put my camera away once the parade started. Charles has some photos, and Richard's will be up whenever he sorts his server issues out. The parade was fun, and as always the route was packed with adults and kids. Afterwards we rode (still in parade mode) over to the Royal Oak by Pretoria Bridge for lunch.

bike light

2008-11-12T23:00:00.004-05:00

I arrived at the re-Cycles shop near closing time tonight and one of the guys says "hey Mark, someone dropped this off for you".

A curious looking thing, with an obvious seatpost clamp at one end. But what exactly IS it?

Those bumps on the thicker section look to be battery compartments:

Oh, it opens up...

To reveal a truly geeky thing:

And it lights up!!!

(It takes eight AA batteries, and a few of mine need recharging)

This thing is retro-geeky beyond words. I don't know if I actually want to fit it to any of my bikes, and most of you know I'm not at all shy when it comes to weird bikey things. Hmm...

Thanks (I think) to William Watt for dropping this off.

Halloween costume

2008-11-10T22:16:00.005-05:00

I had a few Halloween events this year, and thought it would be fun to make a costume. I bought some outlandish hats (who, moi?) at Value Village, but instead of using any of them I opted for a rather sinister look in dressing as a medieval plague doctor.

Here's what I came up with, using an old trenchcoat, my elderly "Indiana Jones" model fedora (didn't have a black hat), and the mask was made from a generic plastic mask from Wallack's Art Supply, to which I fastened a beak made from cardboard, tape, and some black fleece fabric. I'd like to make a better mask next time, preferably out of leather like the original ones. But this did the trick:

(thanks to RealGrouchy for the photo).

Yes, I know it also looks like Black Spy from Mad Magazine...

I wore this first for a Halloween party of the Monday dance class for which I do music accompaniment, then for a 'Ween night ride with HPVOoO friends, then later on to a party at my neighbour's place. It seemed to creep people out, so it had the desired effect. But it was NOT a good thing to wear while riding a bike...

The plague doctor wore what could be called the first hazmat gear. It was thought that the plague was spread through the air, and so he was covered from had to toe. The hat was what all doctors wore in the day (an identifier, much like a chef's hat), and the clothing was coated with wax to keep anything from sticking to it.

The beak of the mask was stuffed with herbs and camphor to act as a sort of gas mask, and while it of course did nothing to stop non-existent plague vapours it probably at least helped cover up the smell of dying and dead people. The creepy look also served as a warning to people, per a comment I found: "The Plague Doctor's appearance was actually meant to strike fear into the populace. There was no mass communication at the time and his appearance sent the message - 'Stay in your homes - plague is here. You may be dead within days.' It was a form of crowd control, basically."

X-rays from sticky tape

2008-11-10T22:13:00.000-05:00

This is rather interesting:

http://www.nature.com/nature/videoarchive/x-rays/

Bugs Bunny faves

2008-11-03T02:15:00.002-05:00

Reliving my childhood...

As a kid that actually liked some classical music I thought these Bugs Bunny episodes were (and still are) absolutely brilliant:

Long Haired Hare

Rabbit of Seville

May you live in interesting times - pt. 6

2008-11-01T12:30:00.001-04:00

"Decades of extraordinary growth have catapulted China to the top of the world's economic charts, earning the admiration of much of the rest of the world. Indeed, China's continued economic rise has been one of the few certainties of the 21st century. Increasingly, however, the China story is not one of economic miracle but of environmental disaster."

Full article:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/10/27/what.matters.huai/index.html

May you live in interesting times - pt. 5

2008-11-01T12:28:00.001-04:00

The God That Failed - The 30-Year Lie of the Market Cult

"Beginning with Margaret Thatcher's election in 1979, government after government -- and party after party -- fell to the onslaught of an extremist faith: the narrow, blinkered fundamentalism of the "Chicago School." Epitomized by its patron saint, Milton Friedman, the rigid doctrine held that an unregulated market would always "correct" itself, because its workings are based on entirely rational and quantifiable principles."

Read the rest here: http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd10132008.html

Interesting gig

2008-10-24T14:13:00.003-04:00

This coming Sunday afternoon I get to provide music for a dance event with Propeller Dance and collective gulp. While I'm use to coming up with ideas for the 1.5 hour Propeller classes this event is for 3 hours. So the various synths, loop pedal, and acoustic instruments will be getting a good workout!

Here's the blurb:

Contact improvisation JAM

Join Propeller Dance and collective (gulp) dance projects for an introductory contact improvisation workshop and JAM. Live music by Mark Rehder. Contact improvisation is a dance form exploring the physics of two (or more) bodies in motion. It can fly high and fast, or be subtle, slow and soft. It’s about connection, gravity, and fun.

When: Sunday, October 26th, 2008; 1:30 to 4:30 PM
Where: Routhier Community Centre, 172 Guigues Street, 2nd floor.
Cost: Sliding scale $5-10

This workshop is geared to dancers with some experience in dance and are comfortable with touch and contact between dancers. LIMITED SUPPORT will be available.

Wear clothing you can move in. No jewelry or scents, please.
Questions? Contact: collectivegulp AT artengine.ca or phone: 613-794-1102

An odd yet cool little trike

2008-10-20T22:46:00.004-04:00

I've come across this rather odd little tricycle. It was donated to re-Cycles, and when it came in we stared at the rusty frame and noticed the missing parts and went "what the heck are we going to do with this?". So I took it home to assess what was needed, and decided it could be revived.

It's a bit of a mystery as to who actually made this thing, but more on that later. For now we look at photos!

Here's how it looked when it was donated:

Nice, eh? The interesting thing about this little beastie is that the front half of the frame tilts! The pivot for the tilting mechanism (situated on the axis of the two rear wheel axles) was quite seized up, and the rear drum brake was also stuck.

Here's the back end:

Oil was applied to the tilter in a few doses, and after a few days and some wrestling it eventually broke free.

The 16" drum brake wheel was replaced with an identical unit, as through a stroke of goofy luck I'd had one lying around for a few years. It had come from a similar trike whose owner had left its parts at re-Cycles while he took the frame home to repaint, and never came back (one reason re-Cycles had to adopt a policy against bikes or parts being left overnight) .

Yes, that is a Shimano 3-speed hub with extra-long axle. Both chains had to come off for a good scrubbing.

Close-up of rear underside, showing pivot. The rubber sleeve encloses the U-joint the connects the central front chain to the right-side drive chain:

Here it is all apart, ready for some sanding and painting:

Since I was only painting with a spray can, I was not going to be anal retentive about making the finish perfect. I got most of the rust off, and the downtube is still a bit bumpy under the paint. I decided to go wit two strong colours, and settled on a dark green frame, with yellow fenders and chainguard. Of course I realize when I'm about to paint that those are also the factory colours for John Deere tractors...

So here is everything painted and awaiting reassembly:

The only original paint showing its robin's egg blue is the steerer tube, and a bit underneath the U-joint area.

And here's the assembled little beastie:

Yes, the entire front end tilts!

Halloween pumpkin and groceries fit nicely in the big Wald basket (it was missing its original one):

Now, back to the mystery. The head badge said "Sears" (of course the trike was not actually made by them), while the front fender flap says "Miyata". But there are no photos of a Miyata leaning trike to be found on the Net, outside of a few photos taken by my friend Richard of another local one here in Ottawa:

Note the design of the rear basket, as we'll refer to it later.

There IS a similar trike called the Bridgestone Picnica Wagon (and a newer Picnica that is a 2-wheel folding bike), and its rear frame, fenders and chainguard look to be identical to this Miyata / Sears. But the drivetrain is different, and from what I can tell this one does not tilt.

Here are two photos, one from eBay, and the other from random surfing (they look like twins, don't they? Maybe it's even the exact same trike in two different places.)

Now, recall the basket on the blue Miyata. It looks identical to the one on the above trikes! And so the plot thickens and I'm still going to presume that Miyata made my trike. Of course maybe Bridgestone made this trike for Miyata (not uncommon in the bike biz), but that does not explain the differences in the frame and drivetrain.

Mike Plummer and Kundstadt Sports recently confirmed for me that this was inded built by Miyata in the mid to late 1970's, as they sold a few of them back then. Since there's no info on the Net about a Miyata trike I'll perhaps become the main web resource for this little thing, just as my website seems to have the only info on the Auto-Mini folding bike (Google it and you'll see!). :)

I'd like to keep this trike for oddity's sake if nothing else, but it's way too small to ride comfortably. Its design really doesn't make much sense to me, but someone (or a design committee) put a lot of thought into it, and it got corporate approval to be manufactured. The tilting feature is cool, so it doesn't act like a regular trike and one can go around corners with ease, but then you also lose the stability while stopped that a conventional trike offers (because of course the frame will flop to either side if you're not paying attention). So all I can figure is that one gets the cornering of a 2-wheel bike, with the ability to carry a small load out back, and that's about it.

Oh, and just to make life interesting, Bridgestone makes a trike called the Minna, with two wheels in front!

"May you live in interesting times" - pt. 4

2008-10-06T01:45:00.004-04:00

And further on the subject of living in "interesting times", this 4-page (screen?) article from the Atlantic:

The $1.4 Trillion Question - "The Chinese are subsidizing the American way of life. Are we playing them for suckers—or are they playing us?"

Music and technology

2008-10-02T01:08:00.005-04:00

The past six months have been a tad hectic, and I recently went through my photo collection and realized I had taken photos for blogging but had yet to blog them!

This post is about an ongoing exploration into using technology with my music.

Back in the mid-1980's I had a Simmons SDS8 electronic kit, which was cool for a bit but its limitations eventually bothered me and I sold it. Around 1990 I bought a Roland SPD8 drum pad (yes, a rather similar model number to the Simmons), and used it mainly for recording and triggering MIDI at home, and only rarely in a live context. It's still a pretty cool machine, even almost 20 years later, as it has velocity filters which allow one to change the sound by the amount of force used when hitting a pad, and some of the newer machines don't feature this.

I dug mine out for live use this past summer with the Orbiters, a group involving 3/4s of the Steve Berndt Quartet. We did this for our Thursday gigs at the Metropolitan Brasserie because we needed to differentiate our music from what the quartet played on Sundays at the same venue. I stripped my kit down to bass and snare drum and a few cymbals, and added the SPD8. Bassist Tom switched to his Baliset, and Steve ran his voice and trombone through an effects unit at times. We played a mix of 60's and 70's tunes, ranging from the silly Flintstones theme to funky RnB that many folks would call acid jazz.

One of the reasons I did not use the pad in live situations all that often was because it needs an amplifier, and I did not have one and was loathe to carry one around when I already had drums and a hardware bag to transport. And electronic drum sounds have strong transients that need more power than a small lightweight amp can provide. But I bought the Behringer amp earlier in the year to use both for this project and the rig I use for the dance class, and it has worked out just fine. I even ran the pad through the Boss loop pedal so I could be my own extra percussionist!

Here's my view:

Including the two drumkit pedals the electronic ones make for five in total. The middle one is for bypassing the looper and running the pad into a separate channel for different volume or effects, and the right one is for stopping loops (the loop pedal needs to be depressed twice to stop it, which is not all that accurate in the heat of live performance). Yes, getting used to these pedals while performing has been interesting:

Tom and his baliset, while Steve tests the PA:

Tom has more pedals than I do, and even Steve has a pedal board:

All this technology gives a musician much wider variety of sounds, but while it's great not to have to carry around a ton of extra percussion instruments I do have to carry (and wrap up and put away) a lot of connecting cables.
In a future post I'll talk about the new Roland hand percussion pad I just bought. Yes, it too needs cables...

"May you live in interesting times" - pt.3

2008-09-29T02:55:00.002-04:00

And another interesting article, this time on the growing backlash in the U.S. to the financial bailout:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/26/news/economy/easton_backlash.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008092810

(Note that this is a three page article.)

"May you live in interesting times" - pt. 2

2008-09-29T02:17:00.004-04:00

I've been following the Peak Oil theory for a few years now. This very interesting article on Matt Simmons, whose 2005 book "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy", helped bring attention to the issue:

http://money.cnn.com/2008/09/15/news/economy/500dollaroil_okeefe.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008092216

An excerpt from the article:

He found it in the form of hundreds of technical papers submitted by Saudi oil geologists to the Society of Petroleum Engineers over the past 50 years. Simmons spent the month of August 2003 sitting on his porch in Maine and grinding his way through the minutiae of technical accounts of, for instance, reservoir pressure and water-cut percentages, trying to piece together the challenges that the Saudi geologists had encountered in managing their precious oilfields. In the end, his conclusion was clear. "I finished reading the last paper on a Sunday afternoon," says Simmons, "and I sat back and I thought, Holy crap, this is unbelievable. I've just discovered the biggest energy illusion ever in the world. We're in big trouble. I'm going to write a book."

(This is a two page article.)

New threads

2008-09-25T01:12:00.005-04:00

I recently found a fabulous blue velvet jacket at Value Village.

It was one of those moments - I casually glance down the jacket isle and see the usual black, dark blue, and brown colours (though sometimes plaid and or tan show up in their glory). And I see this colour sticking out; not just blue, but crushed blue velvet! As with such things in life, if it fit and the price was right I had to buy it. Yup, it fit, and it was only ten bucks!

My first opportunity to show it off was at a recent IJO gig at the 4th Stage. I took it along as a gag to display in the dressing room, since I did have my regular dark jacket with me. But we had enough fun with it that bandleader Adrian Cho said "go ahead and wear it - drummers can get away with these things" (or words to that effect).

And of course photos were taken, and of each member of the 9-piece ensemble wearing it!

Here we go...

The drummer

Rick on trumpet

Bassist and bandleader Adrian

Mike on baritone sax

Trombonist Steve (he was gutted on FaceBook over this pic - hehe)

Martin on French Horn

Zak on saxes

Mike on piano

Dan on tuba

"May you live in interesting times"

2008-09-23T01:44:00.003-04:00

The title of this post quotes a (supposedly) old Chinese saying. With regards to what's going on in world financial markets these are certainly interesting times indeed.

Here's a sampling of various articles I've come across:

The first one is from Time, titled "How Financial Madness Overtook Wall Street". It takes six web pages but it's not a long read and well worth it.

Also from Time: "How We Became the United States of France"

Some eye-opening statements are being made, such as "the total cost to the US taxpayer is now close to $US2 trillion, and Congress is expected to pass legislation to increase the Federal debt limit to $US11.6 trillion. I believe current events will almost certainly signal the end of the global leadership for the US economy and the US dollar as the world's "reserve" currency. This is an historic event." From a lengthy but good article from Smart Company, "A ustralia's online magazine for entrepreneurs"

"Does anyone think it’s just a little weird to be stampeded into a $700 billion solution to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression by the very people who brought us the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression?" From "A Second Opinion?" by the New York Times.

"The trillion-dollar question is where is the U.S. government going to get the funds to bail out the financial system? The Bush administration’s tax cuts and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have turned a $200 billion budget surplus into a $400 billion deficit, not counting the costs to rescue the financial system." From "Shock and Awe on Wall Street - Worst Financial Crisis Since the Great Depression" by Fight Back News.

And a quote from an unattributed source:

"The United States has touted free markets as the holy grail, and even liberal democracies have been excoriated by Washington for not wringing out their last vestiges of socialism. Today, however, much of the US economy is about to be run by the central government, which is supposed to be where socialism went wrong."

Interesting times indeed...

Upcoming IJO gig

2008-09-16T00:01:00.002-04:00

This coming Friday night I'll be at the Fourth Stage with a nonet of musicians from the Impressions in Jazz Orchestra, performing "Rebirth of the Cool - An evening of cool chamber jazz". Full details at:

http://www.impressionsinjazz.ca/NAC-190908.html

Vagina Cycle

2008-08-28T12:16:00.004-04:00

Just a tad startling, no? One might say it takes balls to ride such an audacious machine in public, but that would not be quite the correct term...

Details here and here .

The first link was posted to the HPVOoO irc channel. Of course, then the bad puns started, such as:

If it had windows, would it be a womb with a view?
Would you call this a Menstrual Cycle?
Of course, in taking passengers she's offering a public cervix.
Building that must have been a real labia of love.

OK, so it's not really any kind of bike because it does not have any pedals and needs to be towed. But it's a fabulous example (some would say disturbingly so) of like-like art, along the lines of Ron Mueck's work:

Cool old bikes

2008-08-13T14:04:00.002-04:00

A neat video from somewhere in Europe, showing recumbents and tallbikes and other interesting cycling machines, but all back in the 1930's and 40's!

Thanks to Blackburn Pete for the link.

Toronto visit pt. 2

2008-08-02T23:19:00.011-04:00

More from this trip, since my friend Richard has been processing and uploading his photos (all photos below are by him, except for the two bikes outside Urbane taken by me).

On our way from Tanya's place to Urbane Cycles via bike path, and crossing the Don River.

On Queen's Quay Blvd., passing a trailer-towing cyclist.

And two folks engaged in some pedal-powered protest.

Outside Urbane, and saw this interesting lock...

Umm, I don't think the lock was bought in this shape. ;)

A Supercycle (Raleigh) Twenty folding bike, with braze-ons. Must belong to our friend Carey Chen of Urbane Cycles.

Front brakes too. I've featured some of Carey's "hotrod Twentys" on my folder page.

At Urbane, and bents galore!

Various trikes.

Compared to most shops, Urbane actually stocks internal-gear hubs, including the fabulous (and expensive) Schmidt Dynohub!

We leave the shop and head off to meet Tanya, and pass by the Batmobile sitting in alley on John St.!

Lots of people out to see this promo event, as the movie was opening that weekend.

Bat-cycle (non-HP)

We collect Tanya from her workplace and head off to Jen and Vic's pre-wedding BBQ. Here we're riding down an alley after checking out the Community Bike Network shop.

Who needs helmets when riding in the middle of the largest city in Canada on tiny bikes with rather questionable brakes? Not us... :P

The next day, T. and I arriving at the wedding on same bikes.

Quite a few people arrived by bike, so the signposts and other places to lock were filling up fast. We found another Auto-Mini, painted black, and locked our Twenty and Mini beside it. It's fun parking your bike at a no-parking sign. :)

Toronto visit

2008-07-30T14:32:00.005-04:00

Earlier in the month I was in Toronto, originally for the wedding of my friends Jen and Vic, and then the funeral of my father was added on to the weekend's events.

I met Jen and Vic separately when they lived here in Ottawa, as Jen was a volunteer with re-Cycles and Vic was a member of HPVOoO. They later met when I introduced them at a party at my place. So because of this (and the fact that I'm just a swell guy) they asked to be MC for the event, and I agreed, as long as I could wear an appropriate MC jacket! They agreed, so here it is:

(I'm talking with crazybikerchick Tanya. Photo by Brian Martin. More here.)

I bought that jacket about ten years ago while on a gig in Toronto, so taking it to the wedding was sort of like returning it Home. Or something... I was at a store on Queen St. and there it was, sticking out of the rack amongst the usual black, brown, (and occasionally plaid) items. It cost $25 - do you think I overpaid? ;) It certainly is a bit of a freak show, but like my odd chopper bike it's just the right thing for a certain mood.

Anyhoo, I was staying at Tanya's place, and we traveled around by folding bikes, since she has both a Raleigh Twenty and an Auto Mini. Quite coincidentally, my folders page on my website documents these same little bikes (though not these specific ones), and in fact I think I have about the only site on the Net that has any info on the Auto Mini (Google it and you'll see).

A bunch of HPVOoOers also made the wedding trip, with Richard and I taking the Greyhound bus together. Once arriving downtown we took the streetcar east to T.'s place, where I grabbed her Mini and R. got her beater bike (she had commuted to work on her Twenty). R. and I then headed west again to Urbane Cycles for a visit, and R.'s accommodations were conveniently nearby. I had not forgotten how much fun it can be negotiating streetcar tracks!

Then we met with Tanya after her work and cycled to Jen and Vic's BBQ party. Then later headed back east to T.'s, dropping Richard off along the way. By the time we got back I had cycled long enough (party was at Dundas West, her place is east of the DVP) on a small-frame folding bike!

The wedding was the next day, and we arrived on the little beasts:

Yes, two tall people on short bikes (I'm 6'3", she's 5'11").

I also got a great shot of Tanya on her Twenty, which captures a great sunny summer look (though the day was overcast and rainy):

The wedding was really nice, taking place in an old one-room schoolhouse (the oldest and only remaining Free school in Toronto). Everything went well, though it seemed that almost everyone had to take pictures during the ceremony, which was rather distracting. It made it seem like a bit of a paparazzi event! During the after-dinner party we could not get Vic to demonstrate any Lithuanian folk dancing, but we did at least get him (and others) into The Jacket (see the above link to Brian's photos).

The next day I rode the Mini again to get to family brunch downtown, riding on the roads, but then took the Martin Goodman Trail on the way back, which was rather nice. For the Monday funeral I was on the TTC to meet up with family, then after dinner TTC'd back to the Greyhound station and then home.

Extreme Cello

2008-07-28T17:24:00.002-04:00

I love this sort of thing:

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/music/story/2008/07/28/cellists-extreme.html

and

http://extreme-cello.com/

drumming and fitness

2008-07-26T15:48:00.002-04:00

An interesting find:

Clem Burke Drumming Project - "Clem Burke, drummer with the band Blondie, has been taking part in research study for the past eight years, which will reveal the physical demands of drumming during live stage performances."

And a BBC story on this as well.

This study reminds me of how much energy put out during the shows I did with the Trevor Finlay Band for nine years, and of course in my rock n' roll days back in Toronto and Montreal. I recall doing five to six shows a week when on the road and losing weight and trying to keep hydrated. One of my reasons for quitting touring was that I just did not want to expend that much energy each day, and at that volume! But even playing with the jazz quartet nowadays means constant motion with both arms and feet, so while I don't have as much upper body movement as before I'm still putting out a fair bit of energy. It's just that doing so is a lot easier on my ears now.

Catching up

2008-07-26T14:45:00.004-04:00

Has it really been a month since my last post? Well, just been busy, with some personal stuff on top of the usual music and bike mix.

My fabulous high school music teacher, Wally Atwood, who was so helpful in encouraging my music, passed away in June at the age of 78. Then, my father died on July 9. I'll have separate posts later on both of them.

The IJO played a great set on the final full day of the Ottawa Jazz Festival on June 30th. It rained on and off but the crowd stayed on (and even grew, awaiting the headliner Gladys Knight) while we played the music of Stan Kenton. I could not hear the sax section or even my fellow rhythm mates very well , but thankfully everyone was miced up and I could get a feed through a nearby monitor. It was interesting hearing both the trumpets very well acoustically, then the trombones a bit less so, from right in front of me, then have the saxes and others coming at me from my right side. But hey, at least I could hear everyone...

My Sunday Brunch gig with the quartet continues at the Metropolitan Restaurant, as does the Thursday gig there with Steve and Tom as "The Orbiters". The Orbiters have now picked up a Wednesday evening gig at the Foundation Restaurant in the Market, where we play on the patio if the weather's nice and inside if not.

Also, for the next bunch of Tuesdays I'm playing in Gatineau at the Restaurant Fiorentina on Blvd. St. Joseph. This is with a quartet comprising of myself, Mike Mullin on sax, Dave Arthur on bass and vocals, and Ian Clyne on keys and vocals. This too is a patio gig and dependent on nice weather.

A crazy day

2008-06-28T01:11:00.006-04:00

The month of June has been very busy and very good music-wise, culminating with the IJO playing a fab show at the Jazz Festival on Monday night, and a double-bill with the quartet for Canada Day. In fact, life has been more or less non-stop since re-Cycles moved into its new shop back in early April, as it seems there's always something that needs doing there, and now the shop is way too close to my place (3.5 blocks). But last Thursday was a special nutso day...

I have my regular gig with Steve and Tom at the restaurant each Thursday from 5-8, but Tom called me for another gig that was scheduled from 2-5. Now, we take these gigs because the restaurant one is not guaranteed - if the gig is called off due to the weather we do not get paid, so obviously one takes the gig with guaranteed money. But in the interest of not wanting to strand Steve by subbing out 2/3s of his trio, and also because we're mercenary bastards that want to make as much money as we can (wink), we came up with a plan.

We said we could do the restaurant gig if it was bumped to 5:30, because the 2pm gig was about ten blocks away in the downtown core. Steve said OK, but we made a hassle for ourselves, because there's no way to tear down from one gig, travel during rush hour, and set up for the next in that space of time! So we had to take gear for the later gig and stash it at the restaurant ahead of time, so Steve could pull the stuff out and have it waiting for us.

The 2pm gig was a quiet one in an office, so Tom had minimal gear and I just used two drums and cymbals, and then that stuff could be combined into the other gear for the second gig. But since we'd be moving it all during rush hour we knew we'd just be sitting in traffic forever, whether in Tom's van or with my cargo trike. So... we were going to move it on foot, using a dolly and a handcart. Why not, as it's certainly faster than driving at that time of day!

Here's how it went:

Noon: Tom and his partner pick me up and we proceeded to the restaurant to stash the gear.

12:20: Drove to the office building for the 1pm set-up.

1:30: Our sax player shows up and we do the gig from 2-5, and then the day turned rainy so we figured the 5-8 gig was off.

5:00: Packing up we had not yet heard from Steve via Tom's cell phone canceling the gig, but presumed it to be off since it was still spitting. So Tom calls his wife and she will pick us up and we'll just take our time through traffic to get back to the restaurant to collect the gear we didn't end up needing.

Or not...

5:30: Inching our way along Wellington St. and passing the restaurant (have to approach it from behind) and we see Steve standing on the opposite sidewalk obviously looking for Tom and I, since we're supposedly walking our gear down that sidewalk.

5:33: Make it to the back of the space and I run and tell Steve we're here and why we took so long. No worries, as the patio was just starting to fill up and we couldn't have started earlier anyway, but now that we're here let's go!

Turns out the restaurant had said to Steve that might as well wait on the weather until we showed up to decide if the gig was on, since they all knew we had to return. But Steve forgot Tom's cell number and so could not tell us this. So we were off the hook in terms of being behind schedule, we got the gig started at 6:00, and were able to play two sets until the rain started up again at 8:00.

So it was nice to finish early, because THEN Steve and I had an orchestra rehearsal from 9:00 til 11:30, and it allowed us time to grab some food along the way (oh, and also stop at our individual residences to pick up the sheet music we had both forgotten in all the hectic-ness), and then out to St. Laurent and Smythe.

So that was three music events pressed into just over eleven hours. I was very happy to finally fall into bed that night...

Oh, and today's Canada Day gigs? The first one was for the Mayor's Breakfast with a 7:15am load-in, so I was up at 6:00am. We did that gig, I came home and had a nap, then off to the second one at External Affairs because it had a 2:30 load-in. Then went and had dinner, then back to play from 6:00 till the fireworks.

And with that, it'll be a 19-hour day by the time I get to bed...

What a maroon... (to quote Bugs Bunny)

2008-06-28T01:02:00.003-04:00

Our mayor continues on his path of dopiness, this time posting ill-advised comments about various City councilors on his blog. Read all about it at this Ottawa Citizen page.

Propeller Dance Fundraiser follow-up

2008-06-12T01:24:00.006-04:00

I had a fabulous time last week at this event! The dance class that I work with performed at the Tuesday night show, and everything went well. Propeller Dance president Dave Scrimshaw has a pile of photos at his Flickr page. Ours is the group dressed in black and using pieces of fabric as props (above photo).

When I was at the official media launch of Propeller Dance the previous week, a profound thing was said. Both Renata and Shara (co-founders) said they are often told "it's wonderful what you do for these people", and Renata said (paraphrasing) "they also do something wonderful for us - they show us how to move in ways that our professional dance training never gave. So we all learn from each other."

And it's very true. People with disabilities, whether developmental or physical, have to work and play around certain "limitations". But those limitations just make a person find their own, very personal way of expressing themselves. Yes, you can indeed dance in a wheelchair! And these classes are for people of all abilities, so we indeed all help each other to transcend physical, mental, and emotional barriers.

For me, I've spent most of my life sitting behind a drumset and playing fairly straightforward music. Yes, I can of course improvise (and love to!) and am often looking for ways of putting my stamp on the music, but both with the Grasshoppa dance group and Propeller I often have to make music and sounds on the spot, and not always just melodic ideas or themes. And it took me a little while to feel comfortable with the idea that some of the more "interesting" ideas were musically valid. But the more I do this the more I know I'm doing the right thing.

But back to the event...

I not only get to provide music for this inspiring group, but as often happens when the various classes get together (both at shows like this and also our Community Days) the different accompanying musicians help each other out when musically suitable.

At all of these events the Sunday performing group is the main feature, and they were ably accompanied by Dominique St. Pierre (synth, effects, African flute, darabuka, and electronic effects) and Mike Essoudry (drum set, clarinet, and kalimba). I joined them where appropriate (as they also did with me), which makes things interesting because we do not rehearse this ahead of time. Dom and Mike have of course worked out the structure of their music, and so having me add my little bits won't throw them off. I have just have to keep my ears wide open and stay out of their way and watch for any cues.

Here's our collective set-up, with my gear on the left:

For my group, this is only the second time we've performed together, and I had to create sound for about 25 straight minutes with no delays or dead air between sections. And each of the seven sections had its own theme, so I needed to create different moods or textures throughout.

In order to do this I decided to add some more hardware to my usual set-up. So in addition to my trusty Kawai K4 synth, alto recorder, djembe, and percussion toys I included my 1990-vintage Roland SPD8 drum pad, a very new Boss RC-2 looping pedal, and ran it all through an equally new Behringer K1800FX keyboard amp (the little amp I use for classes is not powerful enough for most live gigs).

While the amp is great (having four channels, 7-band EQ, and built-in effects), it's that cool little looping pedal that made things interesting. I programmed the loops ahead of time with the synth and drum pad, and ran the pedal into its own channel, with the synth bypassing it into another channel so I could separate the effects. So I could fade the loops in and out and let one run while calling up another synth sound, or hold a synth chord or play the drum pad or djembe one-handed while quickly changing pedal programs.

Here are two views of my set-up:

The only tricky part was that I got both the amp and pedal about two weeks before the gig and so did not exactly have a ton of time (incl. only two rehearsals) to get familiar with them! And I'm an acoustic drummer before I'm anything else musically, and using electronics and pregramming, while not foreign, is not something I've much of in a live context. But as noted earlier, part of the thing with this experience is taking myself out of my comfort zone of sitting behind the drums and grooving. And I'm loving it!

So much so that I'm also incorporating the amp, drum pad, and pedal into my Thursday night gig at the Met with the Orbiters. Tom is playing his baliset, which has full MIDI capabilities for all sorts of sounds, and Steve is running his trombone and voice through an effects pedal at times, so I thought I might as well join the fun. More on that in another post...

And as usual, during the dance event the cargo trike waited patiently, sporting its new cargo box cover, made in my usual fashion from scavenged sheets of coroplast, held together with duct tape, and tied down with bungee cords. It so far has worked extremely well, keeping all the gear (both acoustic and electronic) as dry as possible.

Swap Box

2008-06-12T01:18:00.002-04:00

I had never heard of these things, and a month or so ago found this fastened to a lamp post a few blocks from my place. What a lovely idea!

Fellow HPVOoOer RealGrouchy has more about this at his blog.

The stupidity of Critical Mass

2008-06-02T16:16:00.003-04:00

I've been wanting to post my thoughts on CM for a while now, but the Interwebz once again have saved me the typing so I can simply provide links to others that have already said it:

http://www.joeydevilla.com/2006/09/29/critical-massholes-or-why-i-no-longer-ride-with-critical-mass/

http://www.joeydevilla.com/2008/06/01/critical-massholes-strike-again/

Propeller Dance

2008-06-01T02:56:00.007-04:00

I've been working with Propeller Dance for a few years now, providing musical accompaniment for the classes taught by Renata Soutter, who I met through the Grasshoppa Dance Exchange.

Propeller started out as DanceAbility, which is dance classes for people of all abilities, whether handicapped or in a wheelchair, as well as able-bodied people. It operated under the auspices of The School of Dance, and last year Renata and co-founders Shara Weaver and Alan Shain decided to go on their own and hence Propeller Dance was born (someone else owns the rights to the name DanceAbility, so they could not call it that as a legal entity).

The original class was (and still is) on Sundays, and it's the main performing group. Twice a years we have Community Day performances and once a year a fundraiser at the NAC's Fourth Stage. Our Monday class did well at our last Comm. Day, and is turning into a performing group in its own right, and so this year we will be at the fundraiser as well.

It's taking place over two nights this week, Tuesday June 3rd and Wednesday June 4th, though our group is only performing on Tuesday. I will be playing keyboard, djembe, percussion, and recorder, all during the course of our 20 minute segment. I've got a new Behringer amp for my keyboard, and a Boss RC-2 looping pedal that I'm still getting used to (just got it last week, and it's a neat little tool for making more involved music when one is the only musician). More on this gear in a future post, as I'm also using them on my regular Thursday gig with the Orbiters.

Please check the brand new Propeller website for more info on this week's shows.

Oh, and the Monday classes are out in Vanier, but in my years of doing this I've only used a car three times, with all the other trips done by bike (in the winter, towing a trailer) or via the cargo trike.

Three Speed Gallery

2008-05-25T00:50:00.004-04:00

Just added a new link to the "Elsewhere" section: http://threespeedgallery.blogspot.com/

Jim Thill at planetary-gears started this one "as an antidote to fixed gear gallery". I like the sound of that! ;)

re-Cycles media coverage

2008-05-19T11:53:00.004-04:00

In last Thursday's Ottawa Citizen the bike co-op was featured in a story titled "Five great places for a bike tune-up". The online edition only shows one photo, but the print version had all five shops across the top of the page, with re-Cycles featured first! There are a few inaccuracies - in our case our overhauled bikes do not range from $25 to $75 (our As Is bikes are in that range, while overhauled ones start at $100), but at least they didn't get our address wrong as they did for McCrank's!

And while it's nice to get the press attention, I was uncomfortable with the photo shoot. They want a photo of one person, since the photos would be small, and of course the want the "guy in charge". Easy to do with the other shops, but since ours is run as a collective I get a little uneasy when I'm singled out. Sure, I'm the Director and at times that will mean being viewed as a figurehead, but re-Cycles only works because of everyone involved.

drum trikes!

2008-05-16T00:51:00.003-04:00

Some of my friends call my cargo trike "drum trike", since it was built mainly to move my drums around. I have a recurring fantasy to create an actual drumtrike; that is, a trike and drums combined. Using my friend Richard's BMX trike I did sort of create one for a day...

...to accompany the Grasshoppas during the 2006 Canada Dance Festival, but will create my own some day.

But in the meantime others seem to have beaten me to it...

(No further info on this beast)

(From: http://www.lourider.net/home.html)

And:

(From: Pulling-the-Drummer-out-from-behind-the-Bandstand)

Back at the Met.

2008-05-16T00:41:00.003-04:00

No, not the famous Opera House, but the restaurant at Rideau and Sussex. We've just begun our third season of gigs on the plaza there, playing straight-ahead jazz for the Sunday Brunch crowd from 11am - 2pm, and "Swingin' 60's acid jazz" on Thursdays from 5pm - 8pm. And while we perhaps sound best to the crowd on the patio (because we face them) you can still enjoy the music by simply sitting on the plaza's perimeter.

And yes, I continue to use my cargo trike to get to these gigs.

(Previously blogged here and here.)

Hop to it

2008-05-03T03:10:00.006-04:00

The Grasshoppas wanted to celebrate International Dance Day. So the call went out and we teamed up with students from Sylvie Desrosiers' modern dance program for some noon-hour fun. I was the only accompanist, which was fine, though it was a bit hard to both take photos and keep the music going!

More at the Grasshoppa website.

A smaller group did a Hop back during Winterlude on the canal.

Cheap therapy

2008-05-03T02:45:00.005-04:00

Ever felt the urge to smack someone? (Well, that's rather violent, and I'd never go through with it myself).

Ok, ever felt like like hitting something with a stick (wait a minute, that's called "drumming"...).

Ok then... Have you ever needed to just get some frustration out? Well, here's the Net version of the old adage "therapy is expensive, while popping bubble wrap is cheap":

http://www.therightfoot.net/mystuff/whatever/swf/bubblewrap.swf

And make sure your speakers are on when you click "fresh sheet".

I've been blogged...

2008-04-30T02:54:00.002-04:00

... by Kirstin Endemann of the Ottawa Citizen. She contacted me regarding the re-Cycles Co-op for an article she was writing, and we found we had a music connection as well.

Earth Day gig

2008-04-21T23:22:00.002-04:00

Upcoming IJO gig

2008-04-14T22:36:00.004-04:00

This coming Friday night the Impressions In Jazz Orchestra offers up perhaps it's coolest program yet. We will be playing some great arrangements of the music from My Fair Lady, as arranged by Johnny Richards (best-known for his work with Stan Kenton). We'll also do the medley from West Side Story as made famous by Buddy Rich, which features your blogging drummer.

And to top it off, we'll also play a whole bunch of TV theme tunes from the 60's and 70's, mainly along the lines of spy and detective shows. So not only do I get to wail away on some great jazz, but also stuff like the theme from Hawaii Five-O, and Batman, and Perry Mason, and Star Trek...

Oh, and we'll even have Laurence Wall from CBC Radio as our "Guest MC and Quiz Master"!

For this show we are back at Dominion Chalmers Church, which has wonderful acoustics, but hard wooden pews to sit in. There are some seat pads scattered about, but you might wish to bring your own.

re-Cycles move

2008-04-14T22:11:00.004-04:00

On Saturday the 5th we moved the entire re-Cycles Bicycle Co-op shop to its new address at 477 Bronson Avenue.

While a pedal-powered move would've been interesting, we had so much stuff that it was just not practical. We rented a 16-foot truck, and it took three full loads! We had a good crew of people, and the first loading to the last unloading took only 6 hours. And that included waiting a half hour for the new space to be swept of drywall dust and the floor mopped, which was supposed to have been done for us beforehand...

The new shop is quite conveniently about three blocks from my house. And I don't feel at all guilty about it, as someone else found the address. I simply approved it. ;) We were able to close on a Thursday night as usual and open the new shop for a regular Tuesday shift, so we did not miss a single evening. Which was good, as this is our busiest time of year.

And now a few photos, while I compile a full page of them for the re-Cycles website.

The old shop.

Quiet Mike and Derek hold back the pile.

The new space has two rooms plus basement storage. This is the "showroom", slowly getting organized, with the entrance to the work room just past the shelves.

Most of the moving crew after beer and pizza (some had left earlier).

busy busy busy

2008-04-01T00:16:00.004-04:00

I'm currently a tad swamped...

The re-Cycles Bike Co-op has entered into a partnership with Causeway Work Centre, and on top of putting this together we have been scouting for a new location in which to set up shop, as they will use our shop facilities during the day, since the co-op is only open during the evenings. The new location has been found, and we're moving in this coming Saturday!

It's going to be a ton of work moving all the bikes and tools and parts and getting the new space set up, but it'll be worth it, as we'll finally have a proper retail space, and will no longer be in our old basement space surrounded by noisy band rehearsals (yes, I know - strange irony for me to be driven half-nuts by other musicians, but even the best bands sound bad when more than one is playing at a time!).

A rather nice aspect for me is that the new space is at 477 Bronson Avenue, which is only three and a half blocks from my house. This will make it much easier to just drop by and help out, aside from my role as the co-op's Director. And no, I did not find this location for us, so I don't feel too guilty about its proximity ;)

On top of this fun, the Impressions in Jazz Orchestra has another fab show coming up on April 18 at the Dominion Chalmers Church. One of the numbers we'll be playing is the West Side Story medley made famous by Buddy Rich. Since it's a drum feature I'm doing my best to get this piece memorized, as it's eight pages long and my hands will be way too busy to turn them!

I'm also rehearsing with local bassist Tom McMahon for some shows we have coming up featuring some of his original music. And after four weeks off my gig with Propeller Dance starts its Spring season mid-month.

All in all the month of April is shaping up to be rather stimulating! Now if the snow would finish melting so I can get the cargo trike out of hibernation, as riding the winter bike and towing a trailer for the past four snowy months has lost whatever "fun" factor it may have had...

dance show

2008-04-01T00:03:00.004-04:00

My friend Amanda Bon is a local dance artist, and she is in a show at La Nouvelle Scene this coming Thursday and Friday. She is also a very talented singer-songwriter, and I've been working with her since last September. We've done a couple of gigs and are constantly working on new music, and are in the midst of putting a demo together. Her "day job" is in Modern and Flamenco dance (both as teacher and performer) and I'm going to enjoy seeing her in action at the Friday show.

Parade fun

2008-03-17T14:24:00.003-04:00

This past Saturday the HPVOoO gang once again took part in our local St. Patrick's Day Parade. I could not attend last year, so it was fun to make it this time. Photos can be found here.

St. Patty's Day joke

2008-03-15T18:32:00.006-04:00

(Courtesy of my friend Ian in Montreal)

Paddy had been drinking at his local Dublin pub all day and most of the night celebrating St Patrick's Day.

Mick, the bartender says, " You'll not be drinking anymore tonight Paddy." Paddy replies, "OK Mick, I'll be on my way then."

Paddy spins around on his stool and steps off. He falls flat on his face. "Shoite" he says and pulls himself up by the stool and dusts himself off. He takes a step towards the door and falls flat on his face,

"Shoite, Shoite!"

He looks to the doorway and thinks to himself that if he can just get to the door and some fresh air he'll be fine. He belly crawls to the door and shimmies up to the door frame. He sticks his head outside and takes a deep breath of fresh air, feels much better and takes a step out onto the sidewalk and falls flat on his face.

"Bi'Jesus... I'm fockin' focked," he says.

He can see his house just a few doors down, and crawls to the door, hauls himself up the door frame, opens the door and shimmies inside.

He takes a look up the stairs and says "No fockin' way". He crawls up the stairs to his bedroom door and says "I can make it to the bed." He takes a step into the room and falls flat on his face. He says "Fock it" and falls into bed.

The next morning, his wife, Jess, comes into the room carrying a cup of coffee and says, "Get up Paddy. Did you have a bit to drink last night?".

Paddy says, "I did Jess. I was fockin' pissed. But how'd you know?"

"Mick phoned... you left your wheelchair at the pub."

snow fun

2008-03-10T21:00:00.006-04:00

Well, the snow just won't let up, and this past weekend's 56 centimeters has put us very close to our all-time record amount of snow. And while in my new place a contractor clears the driveway (though they're not very quick about it) I still have to shovel my way to the basement door, and my neighbours and I also do the front walkway.

Recall my post about clearing ice off the trikeport? Well, I've had to do that at least five times now, with upwards of 3" of ice thickness at a time. That has been a LOT of weight, but I did design the 'port to hold up to that. Most of the times though it has just been a matter of pulling the snow off, and yesterday was no exception.

There's a 4' high, 12' long trikeport under there, somewhere...

And the front walkway

After that was done it was time to meet some of the HPVOoO guys for a slushy bike ride. Our destination was Rideau Falls, to see how the ice was piling up now that the induced ice break-up is happening.

Along the way we passed some cars that might not move for a while:

The annual ice wall was not happening yet, but that could change in a day. Still pretty, though...

The prevailing wind has slammed enough spray against this railing to really cause a build-up:

This machine lifts out the squared timber logs that make up the water level control dam:

After that it was time to head to the Sunday noodle soup dinner. Here's the snow at Somerset and Arthur Streets. Keep in mind that in preparation for the incoming storm city crews had completely cleared the previous snowfall and all snowbanks 48 hours earlier.

Icanhascheezburger

2008-03-03T23:58:00.000-05:00

Some of you may be familiar with the Net silliness that is LOLcats. These are photos of cats (usually) with captions written as if the cats are saying them (for the most part). And of course being cats they don't spell well or use good grammar. ;)

A fine site for one's daily fix is icanhascheezburger.com/, and below I give you some of my faves from that site.