Dark Eyes (Squeezebox Throw Down IV)

Six more inches of snow today. Yesterday we really nailed down the Minnesota winter sound, not Bob Dylan, not Prince Nelson, not even Whoopee John Wilfart; I posted The Pines - to drag us through the solstice with their heavy morose tunes. Here's the flip side - Hawaiian shirts!  Now I give you Dan Newton and his Cafe Accordion Orchestra - another of the Twin Cities bands that is locked into Paris's Gypsy Jazz past. It's faster, maybe more upbeat on the surface, but still with a core of melancholy.

Hypothetical Color Schemes?

 Let's assume a hypothetical bicycle that might be built someday.  For the sake of discussion, let's say the head tube and the panel on the seat tube will be painted red, and the graphics will be red. (And in spite of what your eyes tell you, the two reds above are exactly the same.) And let's say that the red is really a dark, pure red, not a computer generated red that looks almost brown. Now we need to talk about the ground, the main body of the frame and fork. It has already been determined that black and red are the devil's colors. We are making no judgement on whether this is a good or bad thing, but we would like to explore other options. Another option to be examined is a bronze-gold metallic. Keep in mind it's a metallic gold, not brown like it photographs. The red being a given, are there any other choices that have been overlooked?  Whadda think ? And pass another beer please.

Visual aids:  http://tinyurl.com/Imron-color-chart

Fork crown

lug set

A Depression In The Pines

The solstice approaches as a dark rider. We trudge through the short days and long nights of a bleak and frigid monochrome world of windswept white and gray. The entire state of Minnesota is struggling through the throes of  Seasonal Affective Disorder. We don't suffer from SAD; we are SAD. The snow is sad. The black broken branched trees are sad. The very bitter biting wind whipping out on the tundra is sad. How do we cope with this oppressive bleakness? We listen to uplifting music. We listen to The Pines sing their snappy, toe-tapping little ditties - very, very, very slowly. And once again the weight has been lifted from our shoulders and our souls are light.

Don't Let Me Go

I'm all dressed up
Ain't got nowhere to go
Is there something on your mind
Is there something I should now

Take me, take me
Far away into your dreams
And just leave me be
Just leave me there for evermore

Don't let me go
Not even if I start to cryin'
If true love lasts forever
Then I guess it don't matter if we die then

Don't let me go

I got a bird that whistles
I got a bird that sings
I got a little baby bird
With a big broken wing

I'm gonna pretend this is heaven
You know, just in case
I get up to the gates
And they don't recognize my face

Barb Allport's Soda Cracker Cookies

Ingredients:
· 35 soda crackers
· 1 cup butter
· 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
· 3/4 cup finely chopped walnuts
· 1 cup packed brown sugar
Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Line a 15 x 10 inch baking pan with foil and grease it well. Line the pan with soda crackers. 

2. In a medium saucepan, melt the butter. Add the brown sugar and cook stirring it until it dissolves. Bring to a boil and cook about 3 minutes, stirring constantly. Immediately pour mixture over the soda crackers. 

3. Bake for 3 to 5 minutes or until the mixture starts to bubble. Spread the chocolate chips over the hot cookies. Let set for a minute. Spread the chocolate evenly. Sprinkle with nuts. Let cool, then cut into bars.

I just received a report from Barb. It seems that both her husband, Duane and I are not on top of our games today. I haven't heard how Tom is doing. We are attributing this unease to the large quantity of spicy food (and sweet cookies) we ate, rather than the copious amount of wine we drank before, during, and after the meal. It started with bottles of some nice Cabernets and ended with tipping and shaking the carton to get the last of the White Zin out. Then when it was late and we couldn't find any more wine, we walked home to our waiting beds.

Your Daily Hit of Willie

This one is worth it if only for the high lonesome sound of Riley Baugus on the old-time mountain banjo.


And this one is for Reverend Dick down at the Church of the Sweet Ride:

Amen.

This Too Shall Pass, or '52 F4 Triggers Chain of Events

Some people truly understand their medium.



Thanks to Nanc Sather for this outburst of fun.

The Man Who Wasn't There

Visuals from the movie The Man Who Wasn't There by those good Minnesota boys, Joel and Ethan Coen.  It's interesting, the Coens, Sen. Al Franken and NY Times writer Thomas Friedman all grew up three or four blocks from each other. Music is by Jimmy Dale Gilmore who's from Lubbock,Texas. I don't know who he grew up with. Well, I guess that isn't so, he grew up with Butch Hancock and Joe Ely. Sorry, kind of rambling off a tangent there. Some time ago I posted Jimmy Dale singing Mack the Knife from the French movie Un Prophete. That's pretty good too if you appreciate his eerie hyper-nasal voice. Which I do.

Kirby Miles Berg

Over 20 years ago on this date my younger brother died in a house fire. He was about 30 years old at the time and left behind a young daughter that never got the chance to know her father. Because time passes, the dull ache gets pushed further back in my memory, but it never goes away completely. Of course it has a little more edge today. Somehow he deserves more, but I don't have anything else to say right now.

Hookin' Bumpers

The streets are pretty much snow-compacted right now. When we were in our early teens we used to "hook bumpers". This required the snow-compacted streets, slippery shoes (leather-soled penny-loafers at that time), a distracted driver and a teenage sense of safety. When a car pulled up to a stop sign a couple of us would discreetly squat behind the car in a ski-jump position, hook our hands under the bumper and wait for the free tow. It's a real blast at 20+ mph. I don't recall anyone getting severely injured. How can that be possible? Nobody ever decided to back up? 

Blog Traffic

I started this blog in January of 2008, mostly as a convenient way to share pictures and build specs for a couple of old bikes, to share some old family pictures, and news of family and friends. I am not a writer. As I have said, for the 50 years leading up to January 2008, I didn't write anything other than personal checks. Over time I started writing a little more and posting some music videos. Slowly people wandered in and sat down, mostly people with an interest in vintage bikes, but not all. Some tired of the BS and drifted away. Others stayed and became friends, if  someone you've never seen can be a friend - digital friends, people that aren't actually real - just an email address or a blogsite out in cyberspace. Sometimes I suspect you are all bored middle-aged housewives sitting in front of your computers, smoking Salems in your pink fuzzy bathrobes and bunny slippers, creating a new persona for yourselves so you can come out and live in the edgy, exciting world of vintage bikes and dead music. 

In my mind I am writing for relatives, childhood and high-school friends, and another handful of bicycle hacks. Today I noticed on my Blogger Dashboard a category called Stats. I guess I've never paid any attention to it, but today I selected it. I discovered that yesterday 224 people visited 1410 Oakwood. 224 people and it's rapidly increasing! Where the hell did all you people come from? And why aren't you commenting once in a while? While I appreciate that people find something of interest here occasionally, at another level it's kind of unnerving, because I didn't realize it was happening. If I'd have known that people were actually reading it, I wouldn't have been so cavalier in my proof reading and editing.

So, if you chose to, speak up and tell us who you, and what you like or don't (not that it would change my modus operandi anyway). Give us links to your blogs. Hell, we could end up being as creepy as Facebook. I may start another blog to post the more personal and local things. Let me know what you think.

- The Management

Democrats Move 2012 Convention to Metrodome

Most Appropriate Venue, Party Bosses Say

MINNEAPOLIS (The Borowitz Report) 

– In a move that took many political observers by surprise, the Democratic National Committee decided today to move its 2012 nominating convention to the Minneapolis Metrodome.

Insiders questioned the wisdom of choosing a venue which collapsed over the weekend, but Obama political adviser David Axelrod told reporters, “Quite frankly, we can’t think of a more appropriate site.”

Giving reporters a tour of the Metrodome facility, Mr. Axelrod said, “The Metrodome has taken a lot of hard knocks in the press, just like the Democrats have. But you can’t believe everything that you read. We’re a lot stronger and a lot tougher than you might –“

Before he could complete his sentence, Mr. Axelrod was felled by a chunk of the Metrodome’s ceiling and rushed to the Mayo Clinic.

Resting comfortably, Mr. Axelrod said he still thought the Metrodome was an appropriate venue for the Democrats, but added, “We’re also looking into some Carnival Cruise ships.”

In other political news, Christine O’Donnell said she is so excited that the national health care plan was found unconstitutional, “it almost makes me want to read the Constitution.”

As Pure As the Driven Snow

That isn't frost on the window, it's wind driven snow. Oh ja, it wuss a bad storm, ya know.

It's over now, and we're left with a crisp, windy white world - clear blue sky and glaring sunshine. The snow plow has finally liberated us. Our walks and drive have been cleared. I'm pooped, sitting in my long underwear, trying to cool down, back in the warm house after my body adjusted to the outside, shoveling and wrestling a snowblower at the 20 below zero wind chill. My body will be paying the old man aching back stiffness toll tomorrow. Age is not turning out to be a toll free road. For now it feels pleasant being a little too warm.  

Lorna's baking. She just hollered from the kitchen that she screwed up the batch she's mixing and will have to make a double batch. That's too bad, a double batch of my Grandma Nellie's sugar cookies. These are not the thick ones that are rolled into balls and flattened with a fancy jelly glass, nor the really buttery ones with sugar on top. These are the firm sugar cookies she rolls and cuts out with a pinked-edge cutter made from a canning lid just like Grandma's. You know, the sweet dunkers you can break in two, dip in strong coffee, then nibble off  the coffee softened edge. A double batch, that's a real shame.