Saturday Night Guitar Madness - Albert Collins

Last Saturday's post got me to thinking about everyone that I saw at the Maintenance Shop when I was at ISU. I think I pretty much saw the entire Alligator Records roster. One of the best was the Master Of The Telecaster, Mr. Albert Collins. This clip has a kickin' horn section and two "bonus" guitar slingers, Ms. Debbie Davies and Duke Robillard.



Note: Debbie Davies will be playing the Red Stone Room on the 14th of March. I'll be there, will you?

Elegent Weapons

I've been prompted to pull out and dust off my copy of The Little Schemer to brush up my LISP skills, after seeing this toon (please click the image to do it justice) over on xkcd. Now I just need to find a decent LISP compiler for this WinDoze box. That and figure out how to find more hours in the day...

Check out all of the fine toons by Randall Munroe at xkcd.com.

Saturday Night Guitar Madness

Peter Lang is someone that I've been listening to for a long time. How long? Well... I was in the audience at the Maintenance Shop at ISU in 1977 when he was recording the show for use in a live album, Prime Cuts. YouTube has a video of a television interview on Minnesota Public Television in 1977 where he played Wide Oval Rip-off, which opened Prime Cuts and was taken from the ISU show. Enjoy!

Captain! We're Having A Power Fall-off!

Where's Mr. Scott when you need him? Man... I'm sitting here 3+ hours after today's V3 class at the Shala and I still am whooped. I did the 90 minute spin class at the gym this morning, after Round One of me wielding the snow shovel. Then it was to the cafe for a latté and muffin. Then back home for Round Two of snow removal. A brief recovery and then it was off to the V3 class. We did a number of "interesting" things, as usual. By the time we got to Urdhva Dhanurasana, I believe my arms could be best categorized as toast. I managed to get myself home and passed a snow plow as I turned up the street. It was now time for Round Three. I don't believe that the snow will be answering the bell for Round Four, but you never can tell. Right now, I'm hoping to crawl into bed early tonight. Not sure how much sleep I may get tonight because of major work stuff happening overnight. We'll see. I'm hoping I am recovered enough to do the Primary Series class tomorrow and maybe a little bike ride.

Cycle Oregon 2009

Well... I sent a note to a friend of mine asking if he's going on Cycle Oregon this year. I'd ridden it with him in 2005 and 2007. They announced the route on the 7th and the ride has already sold almost all of it's 2000 slots. Steve said that he was going and so... I'm now "all in".

At the moment, I am in the throws of complete self doubt. It's a very different sort of riding that I do here in Fly Over, aka Iowa. For example, the total distance of RAGBRAI this year is 442 miles and about 22.8k feet of climbing. I'm thinking nothing about this, *yawn*. In contrast, CO 2009, is 437 miles and by my estimate, just about the same amount of climbing. Nothing on that route is at altitude. So why the self doubt? Maybe it's a day like this:

By eyeball, my "guess-ti-mate" of the climbing for the day is about 5500 feet. The real difference, in riding here vs. riding there, is that it done in two climbs, the first being something on the order of 9 to 10 miles long. Then there is that descending stuff. In Fly Over, it's up and down, sapta again, rinse and repeat, ad nauseam, until your legs have been properly tenderized and morphed into useless stumps of quivering jello.

Well... I now have the proper motivation for cranking up the training this year. I'll be hoping for 20 mph winds out of the west now and then so I can simulate the climbs... Just ride straight into it for two or three hours. Now... Where did I leave that 27 tooth cog?

Saturday Night Guitar Madness

Don Ross is someone that I've been listening to for awhile. I first heard him on NPR back in 2001. I was very, very impressed with what I heard. Now it's your turn. Enjoy!



Loaded, Leather, Moonroof

A Harbinger Of Spring

Well... I was feeling the need to replenish the beer supply the other day since I was down to my last 4 bottles of 2 Below. I was hoping to pick more of that up. So... after abusing myself at the Saturday Vinyasa III class at the Shala, it was beer run time. I headed over to HyVee in Rock Island. I wandered in, grabbed a trolley (British for cart), and headed to where the 2 Below should be. I found the New Belgium products, but... no 2 Below! There was 1554 and Fat Tire, but no 2 Below. There was one other beer sporting the NB colors. Something called Mighty Arrow. Upon further inspection, I discovered that it's NB's spring seasonal. So... I picked up a six of it to give it a test drive. It's an IPA, which is right up there in my book. After a bottle of it, I'm thinking that I'm glad it's spring. It grades out as a B+ over at Beer Advocate.

Global Warming!

If you heard reports on the news today about a large pasty white object moving at low speed on the bike path don't be alarmed... It was me riding home from work with bare legs. I just could not pass up the chance to ride sans tights. It was actually cooler than I normally will ride without covering the legs, 65F, but hey.... 60 degrees? February? How many times is that going to happen? I managed to get a grand total of 34 miles in today despite a meeting at work that went into overtime.

It's going to be heading back toward reality tomorrow. The forecast calls for rain and a high of 45F dropping throughout the day. Oh Joy! There there is that white crap that may be falling on us Friday and Saturday.

Saturday Night Guitar Madness

The friendly folks over at The Aristocrats have been doing Saturday Night Guitar Madness and I've decided to play along too. So... I humbly offer this tasty little morsel. The California Guitar Trio doing a cover of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.

On The Down Slope

Man... It's been a long day. I didn't have near enough of the alkaloid referenced to the left. I also wimped out in a major league fashion today. I rode over and caught the bus this morning since the air temp was a balmy 2F when I rolled and then there was that wind out of the northwest at 14mph. I wasn't really in the mood to suffer this morning. When I was loading the bike, I managed to slip on some ice and hyper-extend the left knee. It's not been happy since. So... I decided to do the bus home since I didn't want to find out it wouldn't work where I couldn't get an easy extraction from my stupidity. It seem to work ok for the ride from the bus to the house. So... I elected to go to yoga at Indigo tonight. It wasn't the best practice and the knee reminded me that it was there a couple of times. Right now, I have a fair amount of ibuprofen in me and a liberal slathering of Polar lotion on it and the calf. We'll see how it is in the morning.

I'll probably be wimping out again in the morning as it's supposed to be -3F for a low.

Note: The graph above is from Tom Edwards. You can purchase a lovely coffee mug with this graph on it here.

Stupid Rodent

That stupid rodent, Punxsutawney Phil, saw his shadow again this morning, heralding six more weeks of winter. It it were up to me, February 2nd would mark the beginning of open season on these vile weather prognosticators. His New York City counterpart, Chuck, took a bite out of Mayor Bloomberg. I don't know what that predicts.

The ride into work this morning wasn't nearly as icy as I expected it would be. That said, it was still very slick in places. The studs were worth their weight in tungsten carbide steel. On the ride home, I managed to "recover" a nice set of work gloves.