JBlog

I moved my small rack tom back into my kit today via a universal clamp with a tom holder.

Tags: Drums

The local music scene in Champaign is alive and well!

After being out of the loop for a decade, I’m happy to report that Champaign’s live music scene is still alive and well. I just attended the first of three nights of the Great Cover Up at The High Dive. A bunch of great bands played but the gem of the night was the Mike Ingram band covering local great Lorenzo Goetz. Mike’s a solo artist but he enlisted the services of my fellow bandmates Tom and Guido on the guitar and bass, respectively and … wow. I wish I could put into words just how incredibly good the show was. And I can’t believe how fortunate I am to be playing with those guys again. They are undeniably the best guitar and bass combo in C-U.

The Great Cover Up, for the uninitiated, is a festival of local bands covering music by other artists. The idea is that each band picks a different artist to cover and learns 3-5 songs for the Cover Up. Covered tonight were Buddy Holly, David Lee Roth (Nate Jones from Brother Embassy did a great Diamond Dave!), Beastie Boys, Lorenzo Goetz (local artist) and some DJ and drums combo I’d never heard of. Whatever. It was truly great in all regards. You’d be hard pressed to find a scene like this in a town this size anywhere else in the country.

I hope that YOU support your live music scene, by the way, especially if you’re a yute and you go out a lot. Forget about DJs. Go see a good band.

Tags: Brother Embassy, live music, Lorenzo Goetz, Mike Ingram, The Great Cover Up 19

Playing in the snow

Still playing in the snow

90s Daughter!

Tags: 90s Daughter, Crazy Grandpa, home, snow

Pretty stoked about this gig in about 10 days. We’re playing at my buddy’s bar, Radmakers, in Tolono. He has a deal worked out with a limo company to offer round trip rides to Radmakers from Champaign for 10 bucks, which will also get you through the door at the bar. Pretty good deal!

http://www.90sdaughter.com

It should be a great night of 90s music!

Tags: 90s Daughter, Radmakers

Played my first gig with Guido’s project this past Friday night, along with Squaring the Circle and Brother Embassy. Only having rehearsed with the group twice, I was a little nervous about how well it would go over, but I think everything came together nicely. I’m supposed to be picking up audio of the show and I will post a link to a song if any of them sound OK, but it’s a board recording so it’s going to sound pretty unbalanced.

I wonder about whether it would work to get a couple of decent condenser mics to record the room in the future. Seems like it would give you a better sense of what was actually going on in the room while playing. The board mix, while it sounds good if you’re listening live, is very unbalanced because not everything needs to be boosted as much as other things. For example, board mixes tend to be very vocal-heavy compared to the drums because of their relative need to be amplified.

Two 90s Daughter gigs coming up in December. The first, on December 18, is at Fatman’s Warehouse in Danville. We’ll have another a week later on December 26 in Champaign at the Cowboy Monkey.

Tags: 90s Daughter, Breathe Jam Session, Brother Embassy, Squaring the Circle

Link to my bike results.

Overall Results

Age Group Results

This race was a 1000 meter swim, 21 mile bike around the southern half of Rend Lake, and a 5k run along a very nice paved trail.

I stayed in Benton, Illinois at the Super 8 and was awoken at 4:00 AM by, presumably, a drunk person revving his very loud diesel engine outside of my room for a good 5 minutes. It seemed clear that his intent was to wake the sleeping patrons of the motel, and he succeeded in waking at least me. What would make anyone think such a thing is fun is a mystery to me.

Finally, he could be heard to be driving away from the motel and after tossing and turning I think I slept occasionally until I got my wakeup call at 5:45.

I met my dad and his wife Karen in the lobby of the motel and we walked next door to have some breakfast, but when we got to this Mexican restaurant, we found it to be locked with no lights on. After we stood there for a minute, two guys arrived at the restaurant and unlocked it, telling us it would be just a moment and they’d let us in. I didn’t really understand how they could get a restaurant ready to open in “a moment”, but true to their word, they let us in, served some some horrible coffee and passable eggs and oatmeal.

Then I was off to the transition area at Rend Lake. I arrived there shortly after 7:30, checked in, got my cool new black TShirt, set up my bike and accessories in the bike corral, and began to prepare myself mentally for the reality that I would soon be leaving the 46 degree air for 70 degree water and then back out of the water into hopefully slightly warmer air.

I “warmed up” (if such a thing is possible in water that temperature, I don’t know how to do it yet) by swimming a couple hundred yards, then got out of the water for a head count before heading back into the water. When the race began, I was near the front of the pack. I started strong but soon fell behind the fastest swimmer. There were a few elbows and knees thrown here and there, but it was a fairly peaceful swim. I’m still not at all accustomed to swimming in open water. I find it difficult to stay on the stroke for such a long period of time without turning.

I was the 12th person out of the water (about 5 seconds behind an 11 year old boy!) and ran the hundred or so yards to the corral, then proceeded to take 4:36 seconds to prepare to bike. It should have taken me slightly over 2:00, but because I had blistered in my previous tri I wanted to be sure to wear socks. The socks didn’t go on easily as my feet were still wet and the socks were pretty tight. I also threw on a very tight Under Armour shirt that was difficult to pull over wet skin and a cycling wind breaker over that. I had to snap my runner’s belt on, get my helmet and decided whether I wanted to wear my gloves, which I didn’t. So all that took way longer than I wanted it to.

I was finally on the bike, though, and after arguing with the velcro straps on my shoes for a minute or two was able to sneak my feet into my shoes and began to pedal in earnest. I downed about half of my energy gel as soon as I got on the bike and before too long I was passing people. I passed quite a few people on the ride, including one of my old high school buddies and his girlfriend, both of whom had absolutely destroyed me in the water. I caught Jon going over the bridge and then caught Steph about five miles after that. I passed a few more people and then slipped out of the cycling shoes before sailing in to the bike corral.

The run was the best I’ve had of any of the triathlons I’ve done. I somehow managed 8:18 per mile for an overall run time of just over 25 minutes. I was happy with that, but happiest with winning my age group (35-39) and placing 6th overall. A better T1 transition would have had me in 5th place overall, but I’m happy with a top 10 finish.

Swim was 12 fastest
Bike was 3rd fastest
Run was 19th fastest

I met dad and Karen at Cracker Barrel for lunch on the way back to Champaign and gorged myself.

It was a good race!

Tags: last chance, rend lake, Triathlon

That’s right – the Wednesday Night Fights are done until next year.

There were about 13 riders who left the Burwash lot, but only 12 bikes. Two of them, Luke and Jay, shared a Raleigh tandem bike and were ridiculously fast.

We headed for Seymour even though the wind was out of the east, which meant we had a tailwind while we were all still pretty fresh and strong. We clipped along at around 25 mph for most of the ride there. I was feeling pretty good until we shed a couple of riders about 2/3 of the way to Seymour, at which point the tandem bike got its first chance to pull the group. The speed jumped from 24-25 to 27 or more and I learned fairly quickly that I wanted no part in that kind of sustained speed, so I let the pack drop me and did some interval work with my aero bars.

I was still moving at 22-23 mph, which isn’t too shabby for a solo effort. I passed through Seymour and was about to turn down Rt 10 to head back to Champaign when I noticed the pack up ahead about a half mile had stopped to wait for me. I wasn’t expecting them to do that, so instead of turning down 10, I caught up to them and we were off again.

After crossing Highway 47, the pace picked up yet again and this time I tried to stay on a wheel for a little bit, but I only managed to hang on for a couple of minutes. I was shelled out the back and did an easy pedal all the way back down Bradley. Shay had been dropped shortly before me and eventually caught up. We rode side by side at 20-21 mph until he turned off to go down Rising and meet the group back at Burwash, where Dave had ordered up some pizzas. Since I’m not an official WC member and because I was pretty close to home having come in to the west side of Champaign, I just pedaled home.

There were still a couple of aphids out last night, but the lethal clouds we had ridden through the previous week seem to have been gathered up by the wind and pushed to Indiana.

Also broke the fender on my Trek yesterday afternoon. Of course, we’re going to get rained on for about half of the day today, so I’ll need to get the fender replaced today. I’ll need to visit Durst to get that chore done since CC doesn’t open until 10:00 and it will have started raining by then.

Oh … I’ve been asked to fill in on drums for Live Karaoke Band tonight. My buddy Jeff is unable to play for the next two weeks, so I’ll do the best I can to provide some beats for Tom and Guido. Very excited about this and hope I can pull it off without too many mistakes!

Tags: "group ride", aphids, live karaoke band, seymour, Wild Card

GROSS

I don’t know what else to say.

It was a short ride. New high avg speed of 21.5 mph, which was cool. But … GROSS

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/14158703

Tags: "group ride", soybean aphid, Wild Card

So that’s what they are! They’ve been driving me nuts on my bike rides. I’m covered in hundreds of them by the time I finish my three mile commute home. Here’s the story by Phil Nixon:

Soybean Aphid Migration Obvious byPhil Nixon,

Large numbers of “gnats” in the air in northern and central Illinois are probably soybean aphids. High infestations are present this year as far south as Interstate 70. Close examination will reveal a one-sixteenth inch long insect with a translucent green abdomen, black head and thorax, black antennae, and large oval transparent wings.

When aphids land on something, they probe it with their sucking mouthparts to see if it is good to eat. People with sensitive skin may feel a slight prick, but it is unlikely to leave a mark. Others are unlikely to feel anything at all.

These insects are migrating from soybean to buckthorn to lay eggs for the winter. Although this migration occurs over a six-week period, heavy migration typically lasts for one to two weeks. Control efforts against these winged migrants are not practical, nor recommended.

Soybean aphids pass through 15-18 generations during the summer on soybean, where they feed on the sap of the soybean plant. They live on the leaflet undersides as similar-sized, yellow to cream insects. At the end of summer, they migrate to buckthorn. Buckthorn, Rhamnus spp., is a glossy-leaved, thorny shrub common along the edge of forests and in disturbed areas such as fencerows and along streams. On buckthorn, these migrants give birth to another generation of females that mate with arriving, winged males. They then lay overwintering eggs on buckthorn. These eggs will hatch in the spring, the aphids will complete a couple of generations on buckthorn, and then fly to soybean for the summer.

Tags: soybean aphids

So my phone has this slideout keyboard, right? Right. It’s great for texting, emailing … anything that involves having to type a lot. Well about 6 months ago, it started throwing random letters on the screen when I’d hit a key. Like 6-8 characters of rubbish. Sometimes it would bring up the start menu, open some random application or send a text message while I was in the middle of typing it.

It’s an intermittent problem. Sometimes I can go days without having it happen and other times it happens several times in one day. So I brought it back to the Sprint store today to have it replaced. I figure I may as well get my money’s worth for the $7 per month insurance charge.

The girl at the front desk takes my phone, brings it back to their “tech” and he brings it back out several minutes later and says he can’t get the problem to happen. Well … no kidding. It’s an INTERMITTENT problem. I can’t stop what I’m doing it and bring it in to the store when it randomly happens, but I use my phone a LOT for work email and it’s become a huge pain when the problem occurs.

Obviously, they try to get me to upgrade my phone since I’m close to the end of my contract, but I don’t want a new phone. THIS ONE WORKS JUST FINE except for that one problem.

They say they can’t do anything for me since they can’t verify that there’s actually a problem.

Looks like I’m switching to AT&T on 11/3, when my contract expires.

Thanks a lot, Sprint. I’ve bought two $400+ phones from them over the past 4 years, have had a plan that’s run me close to 100 bones per month and they’re obviously not too interested in keeping me as a customer.

Tags: cell phone, Sprint