A RAGBRAI Rider who carried a banjo:
R.I.P. Michael “Moon” Mullen
This guy was the original Ragbrai Banjo guy who rode in 41 Ragbrais. He died of cancer on May 22. I only started riding in 2005 and there were some years that Moon and I actually got together and did some banjo jamin’ but I never saw him at the old “Peanut Butter Jam”. On this year’s ride, I was approached by a few of Moon’s friends who asked me if I knew him. “We all knew Moon”, I answered.
Some Live Music around FoCo:
Mary Ellyn at the Cupboard
Tuba Christmas at Oak Street Plaza
Electric Banjo & Drumming at Jim’s house
Went to Boulder to play for the tribe:
The Alexandria Ensemble was there too
And some guest performances
I took some more pictures but the lighting in the place (a microbrew house in Boulder) didn’t do well. Other people took much better pictures. That’s life. Also, the tribe’s website is HERE .
The strange case of musical veggies:
The vegetable piano was a big hit
How could the green pepper play a note?
And then there’s the soda straw flutes
OK, this worked at the Rice Science Night and I had left over straws so…
Tube percussion
I like that they had this nice chair to sit in when you played this instrument
Banjo playing frog
I bought this frog for $1 and put a location sensor in it’s nose. The sensor signals go to an Arduino Leonardo that interprets the signal and sends a command to a laptop for processing. The frog “plays” a banjo tune depending where you stand.
I started making this tube percussion machine for the Music District show next week. Here are some pictures w/o any more text:
Watch for posts about this next week.
Hey, this is year 10 for us!
These girls were playing the Surdos
And here is a sample of the bike riders
This year’s pirate ship is bigger!
And there were some interesting out of this world costumes
Of course BLOCO EM FOCO was there!
On the road again, this time starting in Onawa, Iowa:
Looks like we have here Lois, Barb, Ken, Sue and Jim getting ready for the first day of the ride
Onawa, Iowa is where the Darrow Pipe Organ company is located. I stopped by their shop located at 421 Pearl Street in Onawa just by chance as it was just a block away from the Ragbrai Expo, a good thing too, because there was not much new at the expo this year except for the Tide booth where I won a stainless steel coffee mug.
Biggest tractor award
Goes to this Case Quadratrack Mega-tractor parked out near some main street in Iowa someplace.
A sign of our age
No, we didn’t stay here, but this was the first Ragbrai we did where there was NO CAMPING! Oh, one night we stayed in a rustic cabin in a state park that had a bed and was air conditioned, but the bathroom/shower facility was located in another building. Other than that, it was Quality Inns and EconoLodge for us.
Weld two school buses together, what ya get?
The Bus Maximus of course. Since we didn’t make the campgrounds at any overnight, I didn’t get a chance to meet up with some of my favorite Ragbrai teams and their buses but we saw this one in the parking lot at one of the meet-up towns. (I did get to meet Lee Dog of the Tall Dogs again this year for a short time).
Thomas Rest Haven in Coon Rapids
This place sold Gyros for lunch and the residents were having a great time using water guns to shoot at the passing cyclists. I had heard that they were pretty accurate marksmen.
With Iowa State mascot, Cy the Cardinal
The Iowa State ‘Cyclones’ were called the Cyclones since 1895 but it was too hard to dress some volunteer to look like a a system of winds rotating inward to an area of low atmospheric pressure so years later the university chose a bird for their mascot.
The ABC computer
I made a pilgrimage to the Durham Center to see the first electronic digital computer ever built, but of course the exhibit was on loan to a computer museum in California. There were a few vacuum tubes and a memory cylinder on display so it wasn’t a total loss.
Jacquie Phelan and the Ragbrai Banjo
Jacquie, also known as “Alice B. Toeclips” is a famous cyclocross racer and founder of the WOMBATS. From an interviw: She has been called “the outlaw queen of mountain biking.” Sometimes, she plays the banjo.
Six Miles outside of Melborne, IA
In this picture, upper left is an Iowa State Patrol vehicle with a large audio speaker on the roof. On the right, THOUSANDS of cyclists safely crossing a highway. Bottom center is an official Iowa State Patrol wireless body microphone connected to a left-handed banjo.
Wilton, Iowa
In a caboose playing banjo for an hour. Another Ragbrai complete. No rain, no heat, no humidity. Best Ragbrai ever?
Bloco em Foco was there!
Live music and dancing
Bloco em Foco on a covered stage
Too bad it was raining but at least we didn’t have to deal with hail (like in Greeley) or flooding (like in Johnstown) . We actually had a great time at the festival except some of the food trucks were forced to leave for not having the proper permits (Boulder has strict laws– I’m sure we broke some noise laws as well?)
Here are our wonderful performers!
From the awards show (maybe) for best picture category
This is the cast from the movie “The Making of a Giant Stepp” which was entered into the 4th round of the 48 hour film fest, which means that some of us stayed up all night editing a really goofy but perhaps funny six and a half minute movie. If anything, we should at least get an award for “Oldest Team on the planet”. Who knows?
Oh Boy, this is going to be GREAT!
Stop-motion technician making intricate changes to the clay model
The premier of “The Making of a Giant Stepp” won’t be until the FoCo Fringe Festival sometime end of July, but just to warn you we have decided to include a stop-motion scene to the “48 Hour Movie Festival” simply because the organizers said they have yet to see stop-motion in any of the entries to date.