more urban exploration

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

little tandem

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

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: