Archive for July, 2016

RAGBRAI ’16

Sunday, July 31st, 2016

Somewhere in Glenwood. Iowa

It’s 6:50 AM. Time to unload the bikes!

It’s also when we heard an ambulance rushing to the scene of the first RAGBRAI fatality; A pickup truck hit and killed one of the riders heading out to the river to dip his tire. Not the best sign on the first day. Also, half a block down the alley was the camp for the TALL DOGS! I didn’t see Lee Dog however.

A Covered Bridge

Not anywhere near Madison County, possibly the town of Delta, Iowa.  Lots of old buildings here. Not really a RAGBRAI pass through town, but still some welcome signs around. It was also a “short cut” to Sigourney, Iowa!

Yes, this is in Delta, Iowa

There was a dentist in town named “FEAR” and they still had a sort of museum with his chair and drills, but it looked like it had been closed for at least 20 years. Just a note to the fact that my old dentist in Fort Collins was James Mangle.

Poor Bike

This was not the best Ragbrai for me. The first three overnights had poor cell phone reception and then my pedal fell off (The threads got stripped) and I had to wait for the SAG to get me into town (only 8 miles to go!). The picture above shows this guy on the Big Wheel passing my disabled bike. Having poor phone reception meant I couldn’t contact other musicians on the route and find a location to jam. Poo!

Centerville, Iowa

Centerville was a neat town and I believe it to be the best town on RAGRAI this year! The organizers chose the theme “There’s No Place Like Centerville” from the Wizard of Oz movie and put a lot of time painting a “yellow brick road” and decorating KYBO’s.

Centerville, Part 2

A visit to the Appanoose County Coal Mining Museum where someone took my picture and somehow I found it while searching the internet.

Centerville, Part 3

A photo with the Pancake Day Queen, Miss Madison Mooreman (see here for the Register’s interview ) . The question is about the size of the town square. Just how big is it? Well, OK, it’s not 18 million square feet like the one in Xinghai, China but Miss Madison says it, and there was a sign that said that Centerville has the LARGEST TOWN SQUARE IN THE WORLD. This is defined by the fact that the roads around the square have no stop signs, hence, it’s the largest continuous town square  in the world! Get it?

Maybe Unionville, Iowa

This picture was taken by a group of riders out of Texas who publish some kind of fitness blog out of Austin. Imagine, ME in a fitness Blog! ??

The Big Big Bass

Sunday, July 10th, 2016

What do you do with a 22 inch kick drum?

Make a Bass Banjo!

Here we have some method of lifting the playing surface up over the standard drum hardware. Since the head does not have regular banjo brackets, these two triangular pieces of wood were glued into place to hold up a finger board at the right angle needed (at least in theory).

Head detail

A sturdy broom handle was used to bring up the rear after attaching it to the heel of the neck… at least that’s one way of doing it and it still falls within the normal design specs for a cigar box guitar or banjo.

Sliced drum

This dimension was based on a simple ‘2X’ proportion in that here we have a 22 inch diameter head and a banjo head is ‘around 11 inch diameter’ so, everything else is twice that of a ‘normal’ banjo. At least that’s how it was planned to work.

Frets added

I used a hand router to make grooves in the fingerboard and then glued the fret wire onto the grooves. The wire is from the wire that used to hold up political yard signs.

Testing it out

With the traditional weed whacker strings and a nice bridge we now have a bass instrument suitable for the orchestra pit or some other type of pit in hell where banjos belong.

Taking it out on the road with the dog and the Black Sheep

Could this be carried on the great feast of the RAGBRAI ? Would I want to drag this thing 500 miles across the state of Iowa?

Jamming with the folk

Finally some people who appreciate bass banjo! This was at the CROMA festival, also known as the Central Rockies Old-time Music Association. The fest was somewhat west of Berthoud, Colorado so it may have been more like in the Northern Rockies, but I guess CROMA sounds better than NROMA. OK?