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you have been warned... when gretainthebox.com expires in January, I will be deleting this blog. Thanks! SAC

its all about the mojo, baby

Compared to a lot of other amateur guitar hobbyists, I've never owned a lot of instruments. You can only play one guitar at a time (or you can do something ridiculous like Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick does, he'll strap on three or four guitars and switch them during the concert), so I've never seen much point in having more than a couple on hand at a time.

For years, I always wanted to make sure I had at least one acoustic and one electric. My first guitar, that my parents bought for Christmas after my 14th birthday (and getting a guitar was an entirely default position - they'd bought me a nice Zenith radio/turntable/8 track combo stereo for Christmas the previous year, and I had gotten seriously into ELP, and had begged to play something cooler than Bb clarinet - first I wanted keyboards, but Dad wouldn't consider putting even an upright piano in the house and a $1000 Moog synthesizer was entirely out of the question.

Apparently a set of drums was out of the question as well, so I finally bludgeoned them into getting a guitar), was a Yamaha acoustic dreadnought with action so high that it would leave dents in my fingers if I played it more than an hour at a time. I was coming up on 9th grade, they got me lessons with a local jazz guitarist, and I picked up chords fast enough to be the guitarist in the junior high jazz band... with a borrowed amp, and they dropped a pickup into the guitar (awkward setup really) that fed back like mad... so I ended up getting a Stratocaster/Peavey amp combination and that was my rig through my junior year in high school... before senior year, everyone was hassling me about "playing a rock guitar" in jazz band, so Dad found a used Gibson ES-335 that we dropped $350 for, and while I loved the way that guitar played, it also suffered from feedback issues.

But I hung on to both electrics for a long time. I'm sad to say I can't remember when I sold the Stratocaster - which was a piece of junk made when CBS owned Fender and had squeezed all the profit they could out of the company by cheapening the instruments - but I sold the 335 in the early 2000s because, well, I had a second wife that burned through money like K Street lobbyists... I managed to salvage a small amount of the sale price - which was to a local music store - and picked up a basic Ibanez GAX-70 SG style electric guitar so I still had something to play. The Peavey was long gone at this point, replaced by a Traynor Block 100G - a Canadian made Polytone knockoff that had been slowly dying for several years. I don't know where the amp went, because during the meltdown of my marriage in 2006, Wife 2 sold the amp and my effects pedals out of spite when I was out of the house, then claimed "I don't know what happened to your stuff - you must have misplaced it." I had also sold the original Yamaha years before, using the proceeds to buy a classical guitar my senior year in college. I don't remember when that classical left the fold, either... I also had a very nice Fender acoustic I'd bought at a music store in downtown Lynchburg that Wife 2 smashed in a fit of anger... anyway, enough dirty laundry (although I really liked that acoustic guitar - it had mojo that no acoustic I had before or since has had)...

On my journey out to California, I brought with me the Ibanez, and eventually found Watermelon Music in Davis, and picked up a 30 watt Vox modeling amp so I could rock out again. I had taken a long hiatus from any type of performances... the last time I played in public in a real band was in the summer of 1985 at a Seniom Sed (that's Des Moines spelled backwards) Friday afternoon beer party held at Noellen Plaza in downtown Des Moines, near the still controversial Crusoe umbrella sculpture.

I discovered the jam session started by Sac State music professor Joe Mazz @ Capitol Garage late in 2008, and started playing almost every Tuesday night and finally, after a couple of decades of playing for the Four Walls Band, I was playing live again, and regrowing some of the skills I'd lost as a player. I remember when I decided to leave UNI my freshman year, where I played in Jazz II - as a total non-music major - Bob Washut tried to talk me into staying, and taking some music theory because he thought I had some real talent.

Being young, dumb, and horny, and the UNI campus being a place where high school girls from NE Iowa went to get their degree before marrying their farmer boyfriends and popping out 3-4 kids, it wasn't exactly a great place for a young, dumb, horny nerd to be, so I kind of ignored Dr. Washut (who in retrospect was giving me a very high compliment considering I was not a music student) and transferred to Iowa, played for a couple of semesters in Jazz II at Iowa, and got sort of disgusted with the whole music major thing. UNI has since grown a very good jazz studies minor program that Washut built with players like me in mind as a way to keep the bands there stocked with good players without having to recruit all over the country to get music students to come to a campus in freezing cold boring Cedarloo, IA. But they do make hellacious Everclear punch up there. At least I made hellacious Everclear punch, and learned (the hard way) to stay the hell away from MD 20/20. That stuff should only be used to remove lead paint.

However, my point, which as usual I'm taking f o r e v e r  to get to, is that I did grow as a player at UNI, but lost some of those skills and my interest in playing music which was kind of stupid considering that's all I did in high school... partly as a way to keep my sanity in the whole process of surviving the silliness that is high school. And 20 years of banging away on acoustic guitars and fooling around with about 20 pages of fake book notes for a couple of hours every few weeks (I used to go weeks without playing guitar or even thinking about it) didn't grow my skills but it did keep them from completely going in the toilet.

It wasn't until - ironically - that I was kind of on my own driving out here in April 2007 in a 1981 Buick Skylark (but it only had 69K miles on it - there's a whole story attached to that car but I promised I wouldn't grumble about dirty laundry because, well, its done), paranoid to stop and look at any of the Great West because I was afraid the car would never start again - it had a carb and just *loved* to diesel when you tried to shut it off after it had been driven for a long time. I mean, we aren't talking about 10 seconds of dieseling here; I timed it once at three minutes and wondered if the car was going to blow up more than once (so I made sure to stand outside what I figured was the probable blast radius). But bless my late parents, they provided transportation and salvation at a time it was sorely needed, and the only condition was the St. Christopher's medal that was pinned to what was left of the interior roof liner had to stay with the car - it did when I sold it for $400 to some dude in a used Mercedes that I figure probably did not have it smogged with a Cali tag (I kept the Iowa plates on it for two years yes I'm such a rebel) and sent the $400 back to my folks because my Dad needed a molar pulled and they had no money for having a molar pulled.

Either the car was used for Something Very Bad, or its tooling around Northern Mexico all jazzed up and still smelling like its going to explode from gasoline vapor at any moment.

That car had mojo, though, even though no one here would ride in it with me, because, well, because it was old, smelled bad, and more importantly, it didn't have air conditioning. I drove it for almost two years here before I snagged my 2008 Civic Ex, which while not a sexy car HAS A MOONROOF and more importantly, doesn't smell or appear in any immediate danger of exploding. The car is like me - in the sense that I like things that are practical and reliable, which kind of explains the guitar collection I have now...

Because I kind of have one. Its not big, and I don't think its going to get much bigger because guitars take up space (well, you can get wall mounts and hang them up but I really don't have a room to dedicate to guitars). About the time the Vox showed up I also bought a cheap Yamaha dreadnought at Costco, but ended up donating that to the SSPCA (which means its probably in some hipster's Midtown apartment by now that snagged it at their thrift store) because it had sucky high action (god I miss that Fender acoustic).

But part of the personal musical revival thing involved going to Watermelon and playing the guitars they had on the walls. Its a Fender/Ibanez/G&L shop with other brands sprinkled in. That's where I found the Jet King III, which was a copy of Ibanez's "pawn shop" guitars of the 70s - its a Jazzmaster copy. It was fun to play but then I decided I needed a 'real' jazz guitar which means I bought the Ibanez AJD91 which is just really an ES-339 but with a cool Stratocaster body shape. Then Fender released their Blacktop series guitars, I played the Jaguar, loved it, bought it, then came back for the Jazzmaster... in the meantime, I sold the Jet King and the GAX70 because I'd upgraded my collection with the AJD91 and the Blacktops.

I had been reading a lot about the revival of the Telecaster as a popular "must have" part of your guitar collection, and I'd also found that none of the three electrics I had really had much mojo - where you just hold the thing in your hands and go "this is it. I could die now and at least I had ONE decent guitar." So, when Davis and Meredith were here this summer, we went to Watermelon one day, and I found a Candy Apple red MIM (Made in Mexico) Standard Telecaster that I picked up, and started playing - and I was more impressed with it than I'd been with either of the Blacktops or the AJD91. Surprisingly, Meredith was whining "Can we go? Can we GO?" whereas I figured Davis would be the bored one, but he wanted to pull the $1000+ instruments off the walls and touch them. I almost bough that Telecaster that day but both kids started getting whiny so, as to not bother the other customers, we took off.

I was so impressed with the quality of the MIM Telecaster that about a month after the kids left, I ordered one - to avoid sales tax, of course - from Amazon, in black. It arrived, great setup, but there was a thumb sized dent in the body near the cord jack and the neck pickup cover was gouged. Reluctantly, I returned it as I did like the setup and sound, but after dropping the box back at UPS the next day, I drove over to Watermelon, and the Telecaster I'd played was still out on the floor. I walked out of the store with it, and now I can use it as a way to say to Meredith that its far better to be patient... because you never know when, or where, you're going to find mojo.

Guitars are funny... especially mass produced ones like Fenders (oh, this also has a maple neck, which at the time Leo invented the Telecaster, the whole idea of dropped frets directly onto the neck rather than gluing a piece of rosewood fretboard to the neck was completely radical and unheard of). You can play a dozen of one model - the same model - and find that only one or two actually feels good in your hands. Now, this isn't unusual in places like Guitar Center, because the instruments that are on the walls usually have complete shit for setups and they're being played by mostly male tween, teen and 20somethings who are not especially gentle in rendering their Iron Maiden and Metallica riffs.

I have not, for example - even at Watermelon, where the setups are usually decent (at least they check the setup out of the box) found a Strat that I like the way it plays, but on Columbus day I picked up a black MIM Standard Stratocaster that I almost hauled off and bought - it had a nice jazzy sound on the neck pickup. None of the Teles I grabbed struck my fancy (and if one had, it would have been MINE). Its not so much the sound, because I think in a blind sound test Teles sound like Teles and Strats like Strats - but its how the setup feels in my rather small and sensitive hands - if the guitar feels good to me and I can shred on it without having to force the pick, its what I consider a good guitar worthy of my consideration.

Anyway, even though I wasn't wild about any of the Teles, one of the sales clerks, a kid that looked barely old to be allowed to roam the store free range style without someone having a tranq rifle handy, was peppering me with questions about "how do you play jazz like that on Telecaster? How do you play so *smooth*? (I was using the iRealBook on my cell phone to play off of)" I do think the Telecaster is the guitar for me (this week, it is all subject to change, Thoreau/Emerson style at any time), and I've already had more than a few of my musical friends remark that "the Telecaster fits what you're doing better than the Jazzmaster (OTOH, the Jazzmaster is GREAT for grunge)..." so perhaps my mojo has finally found its home...

I am not entirely sure what this post is about upon re-reading before posting LOL

urban cow half marathon race report or a race like no udder

Ha, proof that I'm getting a little lazy, because generally I post these a day or so after the race, but I was so pumped with the result this week.

Urban Cow starts at 7:30 am, so I had to get up a little earlier than usual. Grabbed a quick frozen waffle (of course, I popped it in the toaster), jumped in the shower so my hair wouldn't look too hideous (ha, in the finish pictures it looked hideous anyway, so I don't know why I bothered), my run gear was already all set out, dressed, put on the Garmin, got in the car and drove over to Land Park. One of the upsides of having lived here nearly five years (gasp, has it really been that long?) is most of the race courses start and finish in the same place, Land Park being one of them. Parking is never difficult in the neighborhood, even with 5,000+ supposedly registered for the half marathon and 5K. The worst part is getting caught at the stoplight on Freeport Boulevard at the Fart Rail tracks. It stays red f-o-r-e-v-e-r. I knew I had plenty of time to find a parking spot and walk comfortably to the starting line, but still... I'm always a little freaky before races, regardless of the distance. Of course, I got caught at the red light... ugh. It *should* be blinking red before 10 am on a Sunday morning, because there's no traffic on Freeport until then.

Since I got there about 40 minutes before race start, the close parking spots were already gone. Temps were perfect - mid 50s, dry, it was clear (a bit of a disappointment as they'd predicted cloudy skies for the morning hours, but I'll take dry weather over running in rain anytime (especially after last fall's Apple Hill Harvest Run, where we ran in cold pouring rain...) and much warmer than when I ran this race the first time in 2007.

Based on my performance a couple of weeks back in Buffalo Stampede, I thought that I could probably run in the 2:10 range, and if I ran < 2:10, this would be my 3rd fastest timed half marathon since I started running seriously in 2006 (and I'm guessing it would also be my 3rd fastest). I'm still not in the run shape I was in during 2007, but the IT band injury appears healed - I get twinges now and then but I don't need to have acupuncture to keep the hip loose anymore. In retrospect, I think I babied the injury perhaps too much - I didn't need to lose 2 1/2 years to running because of the injury, I should have sensibly and judiciously run through it.

I figured it would be far easier to do 2:10 also because Urban Cow added pace group leaders this year. I walked into the park, checked out the starting area stuff and vendors, hit the porta potty (well, not literally, because that tends to make them fall over), and moving into the starting scrum, as the race director kept announcing that "we have a record number of entries this year (something like 5,400)". I was craning my neck waiting to see where the 2:10 pace group leader sign was... Dianne hopped into the crush about five minutes before the start, the horn went off (after a local high school student sang the national anthem), and we began the shuffle...

The streets inside the park are nice and wide, and we did roughly the first (and last) miles inside the park, but this was the first race I've been in where elbow banging was an issue for more than the first mile or so (it was still a problem even 8 miles in). Like Shamrock'n', I made a point to stick to Dianne like I did Will - like glue. My experience in the 40+ races I've done since 2006 - regardless of whether they've been run, try or du - is that I get far better times chasing or hanging with someone. The minute that I start to let someone pull away, I lose them. So I didn't stop to grab water at the aid stations unless Dianne did, whether I was thirsty or not.

As usual, I felt kind of icky the first 3-4 miles. It takes me a long time to warm up in races (5Ks are just a suffer fest - you run like hell, hang on, run like hell some more, and then hurl at the finish line), but its always amazing to me that somewhere between 4 and 5 I start to feel halfway decent. I was kind of tired the entire race. I had made a point to get plenty of sleep during the week, but didn't follow through on Friday night knowing that I was going to see Wayne Shorter on Saturday night (although I was home shortly after 10:00 - Wayne's quartet only played about an hour and a half). If I'd gotten a better night's sleep on Friday I don't think the short night on Saturday would have made any difference.

Dianne kept an extremely consistent pace looking at my Garmin logs, we were always 5 seconds +/- 9:55/mi - even weaving through the pack the first mile. I was running a good race - I never felt winded, just tired - slurped down Gu at 4 and 8, but my body felt tired all the same (shrug) and I mentally struggled wondering if I was going to be able to hold the pace.

Around about mile 7-8, a guy was standing outside of Old Sacramento on side wearing a bright red Wisconsin hoodie. Of course, since Bucky had smacked Nebraska in Nebraska's first football game as a member of the B1G the day before, and as an Iowa fan (and GRAD BABY) that dislikes Nebraska far more than Wisconsin, I yelled "Way to GO Bucky! Nebraska SUCKS!" The guy yelled "Hell yah!" and gave me a thumbs up.

For some reason, because so much of this race uses parts of other courses (and they changed the route again this year), a lot of it just blurred together in my mind after 8... the small group of us that had been sticking together exchanged small talk, and I was suffering some - but not nearly as much as I did in March, so I'm definitely in better race shape (so much of racing is mental)... the miles crawled by... 9... 10 (and I start a countdown in my mind to the finish "Oh, now its only 3 miles! I can do that! Only 2 miles!")... we got to 11 and I started to feel better, probably because it wasn't that far. Dianne told us we could "take off if we felt good" but I hung with her until about 11 and a half, and then I just started to... pull away. Maybe I went a little early, because I did slow down a little too much from 12 to 13.1, but as I rounded the last curve around the back of the golf course in Land Park (this is the curve that's in nearly every race that starts/ends there) I heard a guy say "we've got a minute to beat 2:10", I looked at my Garmin, I looked at the finish, and knew I was going to make it < 2:10 without sprinting... and I did, by 11 seconds according to the official time - 2:09:49. I finished roughly MOP (Middle of the Pack), set my 3rd best half marathon time ever, and I'm set up nicely for California International Marathon, if I can get enough long runs in the next 6 weeks.

Stopped by the merchandise tent and bought an Urban Cow champion brand sweatshirt... I don't usually buy race gear, but I made an exception this time. All in all, a very good race!