A wonderful, wintry Thanksgiving with the Allens

 All Categories, Food  2 Responses »
Nov 252010
 

Thanksgiving 2010 with the Allens


Erin picked me up on Tues­day at SeaT­ac in the midst of a win­ter won­der­land for the Seat­tle area.

We all had sev­er­al fun snowy days, a deli­cious Thanks­giv­ing din­ner, fun out­ings to the Seat­tle Art Muse­um, Pikes Place Mar­ket, Guay­mas on Sun­day for live music with great food and grog, and the Expe­ri­ence Music Project along with numer­ous games of Mex­i­can Train. Erin, Scott, and I also made it to Gold’s Gym sev­er­al days for a nice bal­ance to the hol­i­day indulgences.

Erin again is award­ed the win­ner in the best sin­gle themed con­coc­tion cat­e­go­ry: fan­tas­tic turkey on The Day, sev­er­al great turkey sand­wich­es, turkey enchi­ladas, and turkey lemon­grass soup. And for her fan­tas­tic pump­kin pan­cakes a for­ev­er grate­ful public.

Many thanks to all the Allens for anoth­er mem­o­rable vis­it for the Unc.

 Posted by at 5:25 pm

Nostalgia and SYTYCD in L.A. with the P’s

 All Categories, Dance, Food  5 Responses »
Nov 162010
 

Car­ol Preston, Nan­cy Palmer, and Ashe ven­tured south to the big city to see the “So You Think You Can Dance” trav­el­ing dance cir­cus at the Sta­ples Cen­ter. Car­ol had a lead from a friend to dine before­hand at Clifton’s Cafe­te­ria on Broad­way. I have been there many times, most of my vis­its occur­ring over a half cen­tu­ry ago. It was quite the mag­i­cal place then (the shot in the upper right could have been tak­en at the table next to ours):

2010-11-16 Clifton's back in the day

Some of the con­tem­po­rary din­ers; turkey on the left, beef to the right

2010-11-16 Dining at Clifton's Cafeteria before the show

and a shot of the P’s and a C with a P in front of the log cab­in area with­in all the oth­er fun water­falls, cave like struc­tures, etc.

2010-11-16 Dining at Clifton's Cafeteria before the show

Then it was on to Sta­ples Cen­ter for the won­der­ful show. It worked out to per­fec­tion that the three of us were there as Car­ol and Nan­cy are huge fans, knew all the play­ers, i.e. dancers, and could enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly ping pong their excite­ment back and forth for the entire evening. I had a great time too, inter­lop­er or no

2010-11-16 So You Think You Can Dance at Staple's Center

And the whole Sta­ples Cen­ter neigh­bor­hood, whoa Nel­ly! Its an excit­ing and throb­bing BIG City ener­gy source. It was worth the trip and price of admis­sion just to walk around in it.

To top off a great night in L.A. what bet­ter than to charge down the matrix of free­ways, favorite tunes blast­ing, miles of bright red tail lights lead­ing us forward.

 Posted by at 7:30 pm

You can go home again (musically speaking),
you just need the right technology

 All Categories, Music  3 Responses »
Nov 152010
 

Gene Shaw's Carnival Sketches


This record­ing by Gene Shaw I pur­chased in the six­ties and it has always been one of my favorite jazz record­ings. Many of my old favorites have been released on CD but thus far not this one.

I had been think­ing about dig­i­tiz­ing it for a long time and final­ly today was the day. I still have my high qual­i­ty turntable and pre­amp from the six­ties so it was just a mat­ter of plug­ging them into my com­put­er and play­ing the record while record­ing the out­put of the pre­amp with my excel­lent Sound Forge soft­ware. After­ward Sound Forge has an easy tool to reduce the clicks and pops and then I saved the file in WAV for­mat to retain all the fideli­ty of the record. Using iTunes allowed the nam­ing of the artist, album, track, etc. as well as tran­scrib­ing it to Apple Loss­less for­mat for easy trans­fer to my iDevices.

It took me a few hours for this ini­tial LP –> dig­i­tal tran­scrip­tion. One of those was wast­ed try­ing to get the sound into the com­put­er. It turns out Win­dows 7 has this func­tion dis­abled by default so I ran around that bush for quite awhile until I searched the web and found an answer post­ed by anoth­er frus­trat­ed user.

Now that I have the tech­nique mas­tered I’m all set to make more of my old favorites portable and more eas­i­ly playable.

 Posted by at 7:19 pm

A Great SunDay and SunNight riding my bicycle

 All Categories, Bicycling, Food  3 Responses »
Nov 142010
 

The day start­ed out warm and clear with Tom rid­ing over around 8:30. He and I rode out the bike­way, through UCSB and on to the end of Hol­lis­ter via Cathe­dral Oaks then back along Hol­lis­ter to the Star­bucks in the Camino Real Mar­ket­place where Ashe bought a low fat turkey giz­mo and an orange juice. We rode back up to Cathe­dral Oaks then stopped at a nice spot to eat our items.

2010-11-14 Great Sunday Riding Bikes

After I got home from the ride and ate lunch I decid­ed to fig­ure out how to mount my NiteRid­er Blow­Torch head­light on my bike. I haven’t used the Blow­Torch in a few years yet I love to ride at night, way past time to get back to it! Jeff and I had been exchang­ing thoughts on such this past week and I final­ly was able to step out­side the box and real­ize that the Blow­Torch han­dle­bar mount could, with a bit of padding, rotate nine­ty degrees and secure­ly mount to the han­dle­bar stem. Then it was only a bit of drilling and saw­ing on some 1″ x 1/8″ alu­minum and, vio­la, the ‘Torch was all ready for a test ride in the dark.

2010-11-14 Great Sunday Riding Bikes


I wait­ed as long as I could then left the house a lit­tle after 5, first rid­ing over to Tom’s to drop off some things he’d lent me then on down to the end of the wharf where I took this shot.

2010-11-14 Great Sunday Riding Bikes


I returned home via Shore­line (real­ly dark now), over to Hendry’s Beach for a nigh­t­ime view of the ocean, and up Las Posi­tas. A won­der­ful ride at each end of the day, it does­n’t get much bet­ter than this.

 Posted by at 6:21 pm

Eric and Ashe take three cycles on two rides

 All Categories, Bicycling, Motorcycle Riding  2 Responses »
Nov 072010
 

2010-11-06 Eric runs the Santa Barbara Marathon


The day fol­low­ing the marathon Eric was feel­ing good enough to take a leisure­ly 17 mile bike ride out to UCSB and back so we took the Mon­dia down from its bat like place­ment in the rafters and inflat­ed the tires. It also had a bro­ken front shift­ing cable which we eas­i­ly replaced then rode off toward UCSB.

When we returned we swapped bike gen­res and took the Suzu­ki over to Earl War­ren Show­grounds so he could try it out. We had a fun 10 or 15 min­utes until the care­tak­er asked us to leave 🙂

 Posted by at 4:00 pm

Eric runs in the Santa Barbara Marathon

 All Categories  4 Responses »
Nov 062010
 

2010-11-06 Eric runs the Santa Barbara Marathon


My won­der­ful nephew flew out from Den­ver yes­ter­day for a vis­it and to run in today’s San­ta Bar­bara Marathon. Tom and I sup­plied the ride to the start then caught Eric every four or five miles along the route to pass him his ener­gy drinks (images one and two above).

At mile 21 Phyl­lis, Car­ol, and Vir­ginia were on hand to cheer him on and, for Phyl­lis, a quick hug and birth­day wish from the marathon­er (image three above). Ralph was also on hand cheer­ing him home at the finish.

Click on one of the above images to view more images and some videos of the day. The videos are large so may take awhile to load and run. If the videos are not run­ning smooth­ly but are stop­ping and restart­ing the best thing to do is to ignore the show until it jig­gles its way back to this screen then restart it by click­ing on the above images which should allow smooth view­ing on the sec­ond run through.

 Posted by at 7:00 am