Meatmachine.info

Watched a few little bites of Science of Sleep the other night, and this song has been stuck with me since. According to those in the know it’s just a modified cover of Velvet Underground’s After Hours. I like the cat version more though, so that’s what I sang.

Chanson des Chats.mp3

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One of the three classes I’m taking this semester is Intro to Machine Design. In a nutshell, the professor takes us through all the stages of building a machine, from listing specifications to design analysis, project management, construction, and ultimately testing.

Right now we’re working in small groups to finalize our concept designs, and we’re just about to start making scale models. Yesterday my partner showed me a catalog from an extruded aluminum framing manufacturer, and it got my head swimming with ideas. So today Brad & I met up for a while to talk about designs for a framebuilding jig.

We put some ideas on paper, and I now I’ve got some questions to ask my Mech professor about the materials. Soon soon soon.

Tonight I worked on trigonometry homework for a few hours, and then rode over to the library to borrow a chemistry textbook to do my homework for that class. Spending the time and getting my homework done is giving me a king of satisfaction that I’ve never tasted that much of before.

I haven’t written any music for a few weeks. I have learned some new covers this weekend though. I’m debating now wether to go to bed and be a happy shiny person in class tomorrow at 8am, or if I should record something for you. We’ll see.

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Also:

If you’re looking to go long-term with this (I am a cycling coach btw) then be prepared to understand that cyclocross is the most anaerobic thing you will ever do on a bicycle, bar none. Translation: if you do not like pain, don’t bother. Cross is the only discipline I can think of where you start out in a full sprint, then go FASTER. You’re essentially sprinting into and out of every barrier section, every turn, every change of surface… pretty much everywhere. There’s no respite. If you think this sounds fun, well, it totally is, but then I’m a pain addict adrenaline junkie. Also, don’t think that just because the races are short, that by definition they are easy. The funniest thing I’ve ever seen is aerobic athletes from other disciplines who are all like “oh hell, thirty minutes?! I can do ANYTHING for thirty minutes!!!”. Yea, okay Geronimo, tell me that on your fourth lap, when your legs feel like cast iron pilings, that 18” hurdle feels ten feet tall, that measly little 10’ runup looks like Mt. Everest, and all you really want to do is find a quiet corner to go lay down and die… or puke, your choice.

-How do you train for cyclocross races?

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Tonight there was a gathering at Ryan’s house. He’s dropped out of school to do journalism work in Burma, and he’s leaving on Tuesday. We all talked about his plans, his unknowns, his hopes.

We ate chocolate cake and drank. MaMuse played two songs, and I played two songs for Ryan after most everyone else had left. I stole a copy of his visa photograph and stuck it in my wallet.

The group reassembled at the Tion warehouse, which I guess is now “The Frame”. There was music and lights and people dancing with their arms moving in long slow waves. All I wanted was some Mogwai/Microphones style noise to drop in onto the melodic Zimbabwean performance.

I regretted paying all of $15 for admission, and carefully peeled back the perforated adhesive on my “non-removable” glow in the dark wristband. I gave it to Julia so she and Robert would only have to pay $15 to enter, instead of $30. We had all been told it would be just $5 at the door.

“That’s like paying $7.50 each, not too much.”

“Yeah, that’s the price of a bad movie.”

I came home and set my new alarm clock for 7. Tomorrow I’d like to sprint my single speed up Humboldt before heading to the market. Then in the afternoon it’s schoolwork in the library. After that I dream of recording some music, but we’ll see how my luck turns out.

Now I go to bed, my lips are sticky from small exotic candies.

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The other night, feeling all wrapped in words, I pined over the telephone to Xue.
“I wish I had a diary.”
“But you do,” she replied, “it’s online.”

So here we are. The last couple of months I’ve felt like I haven’t had the time to write here, but the things I’ve wanted to write about continue to flow in from one side and out of the other. For example, over Labor Day weekend Brad, Ryan and I rode north from Chico to Lassen National Park and back. We left Friday night after nine and weren’t back in town until at least ten on Monday night.

The first night we rode up to Inskip, taking full advantage of the full moon. It was bright enough that lights were rarely necessary to see the road. We climbed until maybe 2 or 3 in the morning, when I decided to quit. We pulled off the main road onto a small dirt stretch, made some dinner, and slept as the sun started to lighten the sky.

Saturday we hit the dirt seconday roads leading that wind between Inskip and Butte meadows. I was happy to be running 35c tires, but wish the Panaracers had a bit of shoulder tread to them.

We arrived by lunch, and happened upon a BBQ rib cook-off at the Bambi Inn clamper bar. Free meat, potatoes, and bread for all. Beers were bought for us. We rode on through the afternoon and another moonlit night until we reached a campground just south of the park entrance. Big fire that night, plenty of fuel.

We spent Sunday in the park, climbing, swimming, descending, eating.

It’s a beautiful stretch of road that snakes up and over those mountains. Traffic was forgiving on the way up, and completely absent from our descent to the Manzanita Lake campgrounds. We almost got booted from our unreserved campsite though, and I nearly froze to death, but we made it through the night.

The next day was long, fast, hot, downhill, and long. From the North entrance to the park on 44, we rode all the way back to Chico. There were some amazing views coming back into the valley, some wicked 15% grade descents followed immediately by 10mph turns, and a handful of flat tires. It was thrilling to wake up at the base of a mountain and watch it fade beyond view by late afternoon. What’s more exciting is the notion that this kind of trip is so easy to embark upon. I want more.

See the whole photo set here.

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I’m starting to realize that there may not be enough time in the day for me to do everything I want to do. Furthermore, there may not be enough moments in a week for me to fill with the experiences I’d like to have, or seasons in the year large enough for the times I’d like them to encompass.

Drawing, writing, riding, playing music, photography, cooking; they all require pretty regular practice and study of methodology. That is to say, I feel like I’m not very good at any of these things, and I need as much practice as I can get.

The trouble is, I don’t think it’s possible to keep a regular sketchbook, blog once or twice a week, get a few hundred miles in the saddle, record a new song every week and a half, photojournal my life, and cook a new meal every night. Especially not when half of the time I’m awake I’m at work or in class.

So my time gets rationed, not just within each day, but over large spans of time. Some things like playing music are constantly on the agenda. Others like drawing and writing can fall to the side forgivably.

The trouble is, I not only want to get better at all of the things I like to do, but I also want to learn to do more, and to simultaneously excel (or at least pass) at other required tasks like school and work. I guess there’s relief in the thought that I’m still relatively young, and that what ought to matter isn’t that I’ve marked every item on my list, but that those tasks that do get completed are done with a fervor.

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So last week I brazed some brake bosses to the fork of the new/old Raleigh. Brazing is a process of joining metal in which two pieces of a certain material (in this case steel) are held together by a joint of a different metal with a lower melting temperature (in this case brass). Before the steel fork leg and the steel brake boss could be joined, they both had to be cleaned to avoid contaminating the brass fillet. This was achieved by sanding them down to bare metal, and by applying an acidic flux that also serves to draw the flow of molten brass.

After prepping the parts and holding them in place with a temporary fixture, the oxy-acetlyn torch comes out. By mindfully heating both steel elements to roughly the same red-hot temperature, you can ensure that the brass rod will melt and meld to both of them easily. What needs to be kept in mind are the different properties of the parts to be joined that will affect how quickly they heat up, how long they hold their heat, and how the blazing jet of flame will push the molten brass along their juncture.

Once the joint is brazed, the fork is functionally done. However, it is æsthetically far from perfect. (An aside, I just really wanted to use the ‘æ’ character, even if it’s not entirely correct. Æ!)

The torched flux becomes very hard, but is easily removed by soaking in water. After sitting in a bucket for a day or two, Paul brought the (only somewhat) cleaner fork to me at the bike shop where I spent several hours after closing filing, riffling, sanding, and smoothing out the fillets. The brass looks much better now, and I’ve a much higher appreciation for masterful brazing that requires only the minimum of cleanup.

Brazing for the first time was very satisfying, and the process of juggling multiple metal and mental pieces was no more difficult than I imagined. That is to say, I believe this is something I could come to do well with practice. Loose plans have been made among like-minded cohorts to work in tandem on some initial frame building this summer. That is to say, we have most of the tools and materials, and we have enthusiasm.

Tomorrow I’m bringing the rest of the frame over to Paul’s shop so I can braze some brake bosses to the rear as well. Hopefully I’ll remember to take some photos of the finished fork bosses, and maybe some shots of me wearing wicked cool welding glasses as well.

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I guess it’s been a while since I’ve felt like writing anything here, but I’d still like to keep this a relatively accurate written account of being alive. So here’s an unordered list of things I’ve been up to lately.

• Started doing some very rudimentary brazing with Paul’s help. I’m adding some brake studs to an enormous Raleigh from 1968 that’s been sitting in Brad’s back yard for at least two years. It will be the polo bike someday. Anyway, oxy-acetlyne torches are fun.
• I’ve been working on a few fresh songs. Finishing some and starting others. So far this year I’ve only completed nine, but I think they’re pretty good. Still working on a satisfactory method of self-releasing them over the internet, but working harder or the music itself.
• Starting next Sunday my two days off per week will fall on adjacent days, which means I’ll be able to go on two-day bike rides with a little camping action in between. I haven’t been on the bike much in the past few weeks, but I’m itching to get out there with some lightly packed panniers.

Here’s hoping I’ll get back into writing here a little more frequently. Until then.

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Yesterday afternoon at work didn’t go my way. There was a string of minor but multiplying mistakes on my part that left me feeling clumsy, sloppy, and incompetent. I closed the shop feeling like a bad mechanic, with the remains of a project laying haphazardly on my bench.

I returned to the shop at night though, leaving my apartment just before midnight. I wanted to clean up the mess I made, and not leave any loose ends for my coworkers to deal with (or more likely push aside and lose) the next day.

I really enjoy working in the shop at night, whether it’s on my own bikes or some other project from the day. There are no customers, there are no coworkers, there is only the shop stereo, the tools, and I.

Being alone it can be quite romantic
like Jacques Cousteau underneath the Atlantic
a fantastic voyage to parts unknown
going to depths where the sun’s never shone
and I fascinate myself when i’m alone
-Andrew Bird, Lull

I fixed the bike I had left in pieces earlier in the day. I returned each tool to their place on the board. I cleared away accumulated litter and sorted parts into vessels. Once the mess was cleared, I pulled an old hub from my private stash of parts in the basement.

It’s a Super Record low flange front hub from the early ’70s. I placed it in a truing stand, and with the axle held in place the hub shell could spin freely. The bearings are older than me but still spun smoothly. I tapped out some Simichrome polish onto the hub and begin spinning it rapidly by pulling a rag back and forth across it. The polish turned from white, to grey, to black as it gently ground the tiniest particles of aluminum from the surface. Tiny scratches disappeared and the finish shifted from a dull silver to satin, and eventually to a mirror finish.

The ride to and from the shop was perfect. No cars on the road, a slightly cool Summer evening, crickets. When I got home I felt better.

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I’m not very good at remembering the songs I’ve written.

Since 2006 I’ve written about thirty songs that I’d consider worthwhile, lost interest in just as many songs half-way through writing them, and learned maybe seventy covers. I’ve tried a few strategies for listing this music, but none of them have worked perfectly. My constant fear is forgetting. I can think of a few songs whose titles I can recall, but the lyrics and melody of which are lost.

Written lists in notebooks fail as my stationary affections shift from one book to the next. Typed lists are usually inconsistent and don’t offer enough information about songs’ lyrics or chord structures to be helpful when I’m feeling forgetful. Folders full of text documents are the best solution I’ve found yet, but don’t mesh well with collection of .mp3’s I’ve recorded.

So as a little introvert-nerd project I’ve decided to make a little .html database of my music, a catalog that will combine lyrics, chords and tablature, and audio recordings. By making this database available online I can access the lists from wherever I get a signal, and at the same time it makes the my Creative-Commons licensed music open source.

The only trouble with this plan is that it means I need to go through every half-decent song I’ve written in the past twenty-odd months and clean up the lyrics, figure out what chords I’m playing, and then process it into some kind of structured document. I’m sure I can knock out of a few songs every night when I normally practice.

Today I got the most basic elements of the database put together, along with the first two tracks from Interstate 80. Once I’ve got that album done I’ll put the whole listing online.

Until then.

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