I had a visit from the sibling that's still taking my calls. I don't know how he does it. He's very generous and has tremendous spirit. He was out fairly close to us to help a friend celebrate a 25th anniversary and decided to kill the week coming out to the farm.
It's a butt ugly time of year to come, but he's made of strong stuff apparently. With the snow melting it leaves the world looking grim with the winter debris everywhere.
When he tried to catch the flight to bring him into our neck of the woods, his plane was grounded due to fog. He decided to take an overnight bus across the prairie. There were nineteen stops along the way and a lot of hours. He had a lot of gear with him. He had a suitcase full of gifts and a dismantled electric guitar. The amplifier was boxed up separately and weighed about 14kg. He was a little worse for wear by the time we picked him up at 8:00 am. We drove through freezing rain to get him. Winter storm warnings were issued for that day and forecast was for them to run through the week.
Two big Colorado lows came in and dumped a pile of snow and knocked out the power in long spells. The schools were shut down for two days and the wood stove was cranked up. I did have plans to get some of my friends involved in his visit, but it was just too ugly to ask people to travel anywhere and I wasn't interested in driving anywhere. I didn't even split any wood that week. Shock!
Mighty joined us for a couple of days and was very helpful. I'm grateful to have her help with the logistics of meal preparation and clean up. She's good at seeing what needs to be done and just doing it. She may have had expectations about her uncle that required some adjusting, but I think that's why she made the effort in the first place. That was, to get a reality check on that connection. I'm loving her and she's looking better every time I see her.
We played guitar and ate. I sure didn't sleep much, but I did have a very good time. The northwest of the U.S. produces some amazingly hoppy beers and his suitcase was within one 20oz beer of being overweight. I'm not kidding. He likes to say that he travels light, but there was nothing light about the suitcase. It was very light on clothing, I'll give him that.
Thursday he had to be back in the city to catch a flight to Vancouver, and then on to pick up his car to drive a big chunk back to Seattle. I think we left home shortly after 3:00pm and headed off via Steinbach. The roads were quite dodgy and there was quite a bit of blowing snow. With a brief stop to get some ear rings looked after for his trip home, he found that his phone had gone missing.
Now, everyone loves their phone and he had just dropped off the map from work clients. We don't have cell coverage here or at best it's really sketchy. We can't get broad band service without major expense either so he was really on vacation. He lives on his phone. It does everything and we dragged our feet through drifts of snow around where the car was, trying to find it, but it was nowhere to be found so we headed north to the #1 highway and watched one car freshly spun into the meridian snow, well off the road and hopelessly stuck all within the first few minutes of becoming northbound.
It got much worse as we progressed and 60km/hr felt like racing speed. It was very slow going and somewhat spectacular with a wide variation in vehicle speeds to contend with. Some folks were roaring along at what looked like highway speed and others, like me, were crawling along. As we crossed the flood way I suggested it was pretty hairy driving and others pointed out that it was better on our side. Looking over to the east bound lanes there were five or six vehicles twisted up, pointing in precarious directions on the overpass. It was some of the most challenging driving I've ever done and I've done a lot of it. I wish we had the sense to take some images. The over pass across the Symington rail yards was a perfect horror show of driving conditions. Ripping drifts of snow screaming over the raised highway like a wind tunnel test. The sun was low in the south west to back light the scene and it was spectacular. I took a nano second to appreciate it and then got back to the job of getting us to the city in one piece.
By the time were were done with him, the guy looked a little haggard I must say. I thought maybe he hadn't taken time to shower, but no, he had showered and just hadn't reaped enough benefit from the experience. Ugly. I avoided mirrors after that until I could get some rest.
Once in the city it was pretty easy going, but we knew we had to get back home still, so we dropped the traveller off in the departure lane and put our collective tails between our legs and headed south. We had a very slow and treacherous drive home. We were very nearly in a serious accident that I saw coming in my rear view well ahead of time, but I need to go to bed so you don't get that bit just now. Suffice it to say that the round trip was a five hour ordeal with us getting home just as night settled in at 8:00pm. Brutal.
He's from the west coast where the daffodils were blooming. I'm sure between the weather, the poor bed and the ultra casual lifestyle of the materially poor and hopelessly disordered, we must have rung every drop of energy out of the poor man. We loved his story telling abilities and enjoyed having an entertainer of his calibre around. With any luck we'll see him again this summer when we'll see if we can get his Tom on the dirt bike. How attractive do you think broken collar bones are to his mother? Don't answer that.
The phone showed up, but not soon enough and then it took a week with the postal service to get back to him, but from all reports he's safely home and recovering well.
There was a lot of guitar played. Manon really took it to her uncle. It was funny to watch and it's been funny to reflect on just how that went down. She's a card. Hopefully Mighty will find a way in too. Boo is off, back in love with and old flame, exams, preparing for summer work and generally MIA so she missed all the action.
Friday was repair day for the Ibanez RG220-B. I had done some study before hand on the setup of the floating bridge and we had it up and running once we threw the rule book out, but not before many frustrating hours had passed. Friday I ripped it all down again and applied myself to ridding it of some of the wear to the bridge anchor pins and the bridge pivot knives. I think I ruined a couple of good files doing it, but the job is done well and the guitar is much better. The tremolo comes back into pitch very well now which it didn't before.
My hunch was that with decent gear one can make just about whatever tone one wants with the aid of an amplifier and a well adjusted instrument. I win. These guitars aren't fashionable with the die hard American made crowd, but they represent a new generation of electric guitar that has some very distinct advantages in playability. I gambled on this one, thinking that if players like George Benson preferred these types of guitar necks along with the death metal crowd, I could likely find some middle ground.
The amplifier helps that line of thinking along a lot. It's a VOX AD30VT and it can and will blow your head off if provoked. I can get some very clean jazz sounds and I can also get some great raunchy over driven power chord action going and everything in between. I've been having a riot with it. There are so many variables to keep me entertained. PU is grateful it's out in the guest house. I've learnt a lot about guitar setup as I have dialed this one in. I've just about toasted the first set of strings already and for the first time in memory my fingers are sore from playing. Having the electric has given me a whole new appreciation for the performance of my Perry, so both have been hammered on hard in the past two weeks. Daryl's web site is worth the peek if you're into craftsmanship at all.
We were treated at every turn. The fast lane for a week! Thanks Unca.
No comments:
Post a Comment