Highland Lowlife
On the first of December I returned my focus toward the guitar.
After watching those tutorials on bending I had a better feel for it.
I worked quickly getting the ribs very close to the edges of the soundboard and backplate.
I was about ready to get the ribs fitted the next day when the soundboard once again came off the neck.
This was really my fault as far as the fit for the A-braces.
Doing all that work by hand leaves only a minimal margin of error.
I tried a patch job filling the gaps for the A-braces with sawdust and then putting the hide glue on it.
But yet again the soundboard came off the neck.
Dave suggested getting new tops and I'd like to because there is a good chance the luon would split from the string tension anyway.
It also would not sound nearly as good as say a spanish cedar, alaskan cedar, or even a redwood top.
The thing is now that I'm basically rebuilding the guitar around new materials.
I feel like it won't be my guitar, it will be built around materials I didn't necessarily cut or buy directly.
Along with that if I were going to build new tops I'd most likely need new braces to fit it.
Which is all more work.
I found a luthier's site where that had a competition going.
I really felt out classed, here were these guys with really beautiful guitars, great sound and they too were first or second time builders.
For some of them the inlays alone looked like they were a couple of hundred dollars.
I can imagine based on the wood selection they listed they probably spent into the thousands.
Which isn't practical for me, I'm already over budget with the whole project as it is.
Still it gave me an idea of what I should look for and try to aspire for.
After my last attempt with the soundboard I decided to leave it to next year.
Instead I wanted to keep a promise to my grandmother and that was to get all the crap we had in boxes, sold, donated or thrown out.
It took me about 5 hours to get all the boxes cluttered in the garage into the living room.
It was overwhelming and to have to ebay all of it simultaneously would take way too much time.
I selectively went through a couple of the boxes and posted a few things I thought would sell on ebay.
Nothing sold at all.
The next day all of the boxes went to Goodwill and that as far as I'm concerned is my act of giving in the Christmas spirit.
I'm sure all that stuff was good to sell or wear and somebody knows how to sell it just not me.
After dropping all that stuff off I didn't feel so good.
I got that I'm gonna puke feeling.
I was thinking, I'm exhausted, spiritually exhausted.
With all the failures this year I was trying to reason it out.
What was with all this bad luck that showed up at my front door?
I decided on the 10th I was going to hike 30 miles south and 30 miles back up.
I'd wanted to do this since September if I had the guitar finished.
At this point I knew that wasn't going to happen but at least I could fit in one long hike for the end of the year.
I bought enough supplies to get there, stocking up energy bars, two bottled waters and three sandwiches.
I weighed in the pack with everything in it at 20 pounds.
I knew I'd feel the pack weight on my shoulders by mile 30 but there wasn't anything I didn't need.
Before I embarked on the hike I heard from a friend who I haven't seen in years but have kept in touch with every so often.
I was surprised by her reply and didn't really expect what she had to say.
I could only be honest with everything and this garnered no follow up reply.
I won't go through the perilous effort of lying about something I don't have or someone I'm not.
So if that honesty is enough to keep her away then it just wouldn't work.
Granted its not cut through your heart honesty, but only the casual type, (this is where I am, this is what I'm doing, this is what I got from what you told me)
Besides I'm far too self involved for anything considered a normal relationship.
Normal is what everyone else is...And you are not.
Now tell me everything you know about...Trilithium.
In advance of the hike I booked a hotel at my destination so I could rest at the end of the hike and have enough energy to hike back.
I also booked a massage at this spa post-hike.
I was surprised to get a call from another friend saying he was in town.
We probably could have arranged to go together but I didn't want to rely on a maybe anyway.
On December 10th I left the house at 7 am it was a good start the sun just rose and it was warm enough.
I went off trail a bit but mostly stuck to the road.
I took a few photos where I could.
By 11 am I was maybe a mile short of the quarter mark.
Putting me at 8 miles into the hike.
I found this horse ranch right off the road and there was this cow girl brushing the horse.
I asked if I could get a ride south, but she said the horses don't leave the ranch except for a few trails.
Beautiful horses, and it would have been pretty cool to ride all the way down the rest of the hike.
In hindsight it wouldn't have been practical how would the horse get back?
After that I found another off trail path and this got me into a lot of trouble.
The brush was thick, and there were even bamboo grooves that looked like they'd been there forever.
I was starting to get nervous because the brush was so thick that I wasn't paying attention to where I was stepping.
I stepped into a tar pit that ate my shoe.
I tried pulling it out but if I tried any harder it would have took me with the shoe into the tarpit.
At this point I was walking with one shoe on trying to work my way out of the brush.
I dropped my sunglasses at some point and just figured it wasn't worth it to go back to look for them.
After another half hour I finally found my way out of there near the road.
I ended up taking the other shoe off and just leaving it there.
I tried using my climbing shoes but they aren't really good for hiking because they are a tight fit.
A little after 12 pm I made it to the quarter mark, and sat down for lunch near the road.
After that I never went off trail again on that hike.
By about 3 pm I was starting to feel sore everywhere.
But more than anything else my hips.
My ankles were a bit sore because at this point I'm walking barefoot, on gravel.
By 5 pm it was starting to get dark and I was stopping more and more often to rest.
I'd made it to halfway mark and new if I didn't find a bus or a kind soul willing to let me hitch a ride I wasn't going to make it the full thirty.
I had another 3 miles to go to get to a small town that one wouldn't even know existed otherwise.
It took more than an hour for me to get there and at this point I'm angry, demoralized, and just in pain.
As I'm walking people are passing me up fast in their cars not even bothering to ask if I'm okay.
It was either me or people are just assholes.
I'm more inclined to believe the latter.
I was about a mile away and darkness had long covered the sky.
It seemed as if every step I took towards the lights of the town, they got further away.
When I finally I got to this little dink town, all I found was a warehouse.
You've gotta be shitting me!
In panic I called 411 three times to try to figure out if there was a bus.
They couldn't even find the town in the directory.
Finally I called 911 for a non-emergency call and this woman walked me through.
Though still confused and in pain I tried to go where she was telling me.
I could see over the fence of this warehouse there was a little convenience store on the other side.
I thought I could skip through the warehouse to the other side.
I had to go all the way back around the entrance and the cops stopped me near the highway off ramp.
This was actually the first time cops actually helped me with anything.
They went through my pack but at the least I got to sit down for 5 minutes.
After checking me over they said, "Well be on your way then."
I made it to the market and bought another bottled water and asked about the bus.
My timing had to be perfect the bus showed up just as I exited the convenience store and I used whatever stored energy I'd had left to run to the bus.
I was relieved, warmth, rest, and soon a shower.
The hotel was pretty bad, it looked nice but nothing worked right. The AC shot out cold air, the shower water was luke warm, I took two showers anyway that night and went straight to bed after eating the last sandwich I had left.
The next morning I hopped a bus and was back home an hour or so later.
My grandmother picked me up at the bus terminal and that was the end of the hike.
I could barely walk straight when I came in the front door.
All in all it wasn't a bad hike meticulously planned but poorly executed.
If I hadn't gone off trail just before the quarter mark, I wouldn't have lost my shoes or my sunglasses and good chance I would have been able to just make the full 30 miles by 9 pm the same day.
Still I took some pretty good photos of the horses and the sunsets.
I would have taken more but I knew if I stopped too long I wouldn't have made it as far as I did.
It took me about 3 days to recover from the hike by day 4 I felt almost back to normal.
The massage did wonders and I spent two hours in and out of the sauna.
Releasing all the tension and stress from this strange year.
I made three last ditch efforts to get my mouse replaced but to no avail.
I also sent out the cpu from the desktop to see if the problem was there and not the motherboard.
The last thing I wanted to do was print up that sketch book.
The publisher's cover editor gave me trouble with every resubmission, and it almost feels like its some sort of polarized magnetic publishing system that will only publish if its a completely blank cover or something.
With all the frustration its likely I'm going to have to find yet another publisher for this particular project.
Christmas was a quieter occasion, with my grandmother, my uncle and myself together.
It was a good Christmas and I finally found a bit of logic behind why all the bad luck.
In previous years thing always seem to go pretty good but at the cost of something else.
In hindsight there were no family tragedies this year.
So yeah, my computer broke, my car broke, my mouse broke, the keyboard broke, and the guitar needs to be rebuilt but if thats the trade off for no personal tragedies I can live with that.
All that stuff can be replaced with time but I can't replace my 84 year old grandmother, my dad or anybody else for that matter.
It wasn't really a productive year either, yeah I took time to write, I payed off the credit card, but all the mishaps with the car, the guitar and the cost of the tooth makes it seem like most of this year was counter-productive. Two steps back, one step forward hopefully.
But for a change it was a stable year, I set limitations knowing that if I didn't work inside the box I'd get carried away with everything.
All in all its a reality check as my dad said, "When it rains it pours."
What was the highlight for the year? Nothing really stands out but I think that hike just seeing the sun come down with purple and turquoise skies against the mountain range will always be burned in memory.
Just after Christmas I had a collage of dreams that seemed in no way related to each other except for one that seemed to make some sense.
Its been mostly quiet in Astral Plane this year but I can remember before and after buying the car having nightmares for some time.
I'd say even up to July there were some curious dreams that felt important enough to write down.
I made maybe one friend and probably lost plenty of others through ignorance.
Besides there is nothing I can do to help anyone else right now.
If I had to find a word that would define the year, I'd call it, "Torqued" and thats kinda what it was emotionally.
I felt like my arm was being twisted inside my brain like a vice.
The year ends on a similar note.
With my grandmother at her TV, and myself at my computer.
Chatting about what comes next.
As Always
Keepin' it ▢
After watching those tutorials on bending I had a better feel for it.
I worked quickly getting the ribs very close to the edges of the soundboard and backplate.
I was about ready to get the ribs fitted the next day when the soundboard once again came off the neck.
This was really my fault as far as the fit for the A-braces.
Doing all that work by hand leaves only a minimal margin of error.
I tried a patch job filling the gaps for the A-braces with sawdust and then putting the hide glue on it.
But yet again the soundboard came off the neck.
Dave suggested getting new tops and I'd like to because there is a good chance the luon would split from the string tension anyway.
It also would not sound nearly as good as say a spanish cedar, alaskan cedar, or even a redwood top.
The thing is now that I'm basically rebuilding the guitar around new materials.
I feel like it won't be my guitar, it will be built around materials I didn't necessarily cut or buy directly.
Along with that if I were going to build new tops I'd most likely need new braces to fit it.
Which is all more work.
I found a luthier's site where that had a competition going.
I really felt out classed, here were these guys with really beautiful guitars, great sound and they too were first or second time builders.
For some of them the inlays alone looked like they were a couple of hundred dollars.
I can imagine based on the wood selection they listed they probably spent into the thousands.
Which isn't practical for me, I'm already over budget with the whole project as it is.
Still it gave me an idea of what I should look for and try to aspire for.
After my last attempt with the soundboard I decided to leave it to next year.
Instead I wanted to keep a promise to my grandmother and that was to get all the crap we had in boxes, sold, donated or thrown out.
It took me about 5 hours to get all the boxes cluttered in the garage into the living room.
It was overwhelming and to have to ebay all of it simultaneously would take way too much time.
I selectively went through a couple of the boxes and posted a few things I thought would sell on ebay.
Nothing sold at all.
The next day all of the boxes went to Goodwill and that as far as I'm concerned is my act of giving in the Christmas spirit.
I'm sure all that stuff was good to sell or wear and somebody knows how to sell it just not me.
After dropping all that stuff off I didn't feel so good.
I got that I'm gonna puke feeling.
I was thinking, I'm exhausted, spiritually exhausted.
With all the failures this year I was trying to reason it out.
What was with all this bad luck that showed up at my front door?
I decided on the 10th I was going to hike 30 miles south and 30 miles back up.
I'd wanted to do this since September if I had the guitar finished.
At this point I knew that wasn't going to happen but at least I could fit in one long hike for the end of the year.
I bought enough supplies to get there, stocking up energy bars, two bottled waters and three sandwiches.
I weighed in the pack with everything in it at 20 pounds.
I knew I'd feel the pack weight on my shoulders by mile 30 but there wasn't anything I didn't need.
Before I embarked on the hike I heard from a friend who I haven't seen in years but have kept in touch with every so often.
I was surprised by her reply and didn't really expect what she had to say.
I could only be honest with everything and this garnered no follow up reply.
I won't go through the perilous effort of lying about something I don't have or someone I'm not.
So if that honesty is enough to keep her away then it just wouldn't work.
Granted its not cut through your heart honesty, but only the casual type, (this is where I am, this is what I'm doing, this is what I got from what you told me)
Besides I'm far too self involved for anything considered a normal relationship.
Normal is what everyone else is...And you are not.
Now tell me everything you know about...Trilithium.
In advance of the hike I booked a hotel at my destination so I could rest at the end of the hike and have enough energy to hike back.
I also booked a massage at this spa post-hike.
I was surprised to get a call from another friend saying he was in town.
We probably could have arranged to go together but I didn't want to rely on a maybe anyway.
On December 10th I left the house at 7 am it was a good start the sun just rose and it was warm enough.
I went off trail a bit but mostly stuck to the road.
I took a few photos where I could.
By 11 am I was maybe a mile short of the quarter mark.
Putting me at 8 miles into the hike.
I found this horse ranch right off the road and there was this cow girl brushing the horse.
I asked if I could get a ride south, but she said the horses don't leave the ranch except for a few trails.
Beautiful horses, and it would have been pretty cool to ride all the way down the rest of the hike.
In hindsight it wouldn't have been practical how would the horse get back?
After that I found another off trail path and this got me into a lot of trouble.
The brush was thick, and there were even bamboo grooves that looked like they'd been there forever.
I was starting to get nervous because the brush was so thick that I wasn't paying attention to where I was stepping.
I stepped into a tar pit that ate my shoe.
I tried pulling it out but if I tried any harder it would have took me with the shoe into the tarpit.
At this point I was walking with one shoe on trying to work my way out of the brush.
I dropped my sunglasses at some point and just figured it wasn't worth it to go back to look for them.
After another half hour I finally found my way out of there near the road.
I ended up taking the other shoe off and just leaving it there.
I tried using my climbing shoes but they aren't really good for hiking because they are a tight fit.
A little after 12 pm I made it to the quarter mark, and sat down for lunch near the road.
After that I never went off trail again on that hike.
By about 3 pm I was starting to feel sore everywhere.
But more than anything else my hips.
My ankles were a bit sore because at this point I'm walking barefoot, on gravel.
By 5 pm it was starting to get dark and I was stopping more and more often to rest.
I'd made it to halfway mark and new if I didn't find a bus or a kind soul willing to let me hitch a ride I wasn't going to make it the full thirty.
I had another 3 miles to go to get to a small town that one wouldn't even know existed otherwise.
It took more than an hour for me to get there and at this point I'm angry, demoralized, and just in pain.
As I'm walking people are passing me up fast in their cars not even bothering to ask if I'm okay.
It was either me or people are just assholes.
I'm more inclined to believe the latter.
I was about a mile away and darkness had long covered the sky.
It seemed as if every step I took towards the lights of the town, they got further away.
When I finally I got to this little dink town, all I found was a warehouse.
You've gotta be shitting me!
In panic I called 411 three times to try to figure out if there was a bus.
They couldn't even find the town in the directory.
Finally I called 911 for a non-emergency call and this woman walked me through.
Though still confused and in pain I tried to go where she was telling me.
I could see over the fence of this warehouse there was a little convenience store on the other side.
I thought I could skip through the warehouse to the other side.
I had to go all the way back around the entrance and the cops stopped me near the highway off ramp.
This was actually the first time cops actually helped me with anything.
They went through my pack but at the least I got to sit down for 5 minutes.
After checking me over they said, "Well be on your way then."
I made it to the market and bought another bottled water and asked about the bus.
My timing had to be perfect the bus showed up just as I exited the convenience store and I used whatever stored energy I'd had left to run to the bus.
I was relieved, warmth, rest, and soon a shower.
The hotel was pretty bad, it looked nice but nothing worked right. The AC shot out cold air, the shower water was luke warm, I took two showers anyway that night and went straight to bed after eating the last sandwich I had left.
The next morning I hopped a bus and was back home an hour or so later.
My grandmother picked me up at the bus terminal and that was the end of the hike.
I could barely walk straight when I came in the front door.
All in all it wasn't a bad hike meticulously planned but poorly executed.
If I hadn't gone off trail just before the quarter mark, I wouldn't have lost my shoes or my sunglasses and good chance I would have been able to just make the full 30 miles by 9 pm the same day.
Still I took some pretty good photos of the horses and the sunsets.
I would have taken more but I knew if I stopped too long I wouldn't have made it as far as I did.
It took me about 3 days to recover from the hike by day 4 I felt almost back to normal.
The massage did wonders and I spent two hours in and out of the sauna.
Releasing all the tension and stress from this strange year.
I made three last ditch efforts to get my mouse replaced but to no avail.
I also sent out the cpu from the desktop to see if the problem was there and not the motherboard.
The last thing I wanted to do was print up that sketch book.
The publisher's cover editor gave me trouble with every resubmission, and it almost feels like its some sort of polarized magnetic publishing system that will only publish if its a completely blank cover or something.
With all the frustration its likely I'm going to have to find yet another publisher for this particular project.
Christmas was a quieter occasion, with my grandmother, my uncle and myself together.
It was a good Christmas and I finally found a bit of logic behind why all the bad luck.
In previous years thing always seem to go pretty good but at the cost of something else.
In hindsight there were no family tragedies this year.
So yeah, my computer broke, my car broke, my mouse broke, the keyboard broke, and the guitar needs to be rebuilt but if thats the trade off for no personal tragedies I can live with that.
All that stuff can be replaced with time but I can't replace my 84 year old grandmother, my dad or anybody else for that matter.
It wasn't really a productive year either, yeah I took time to write, I payed off the credit card, but all the mishaps with the car, the guitar and the cost of the tooth makes it seem like most of this year was counter-productive. Two steps back, one step forward hopefully.
But for a change it was a stable year, I set limitations knowing that if I didn't work inside the box I'd get carried away with everything.
All in all its a reality check as my dad said, "When it rains it pours."
What was the highlight for the year? Nothing really stands out but I think that hike just seeing the sun come down with purple and turquoise skies against the mountain range will always be burned in memory.
Just after Christmas I had a collage of dreams that seemed in no way related to each other except for one that seemed to make some sense.
Its been mostly quiet in Astral Plane this year but I can remember before and after buying the car having nightmares for some time.
I'd say even up to July there were some curious dreams that felt important enough to write down.
I made maybe one friend and probably lost plenty of others through ignorance.
Besides there is nothing I can do to help anyone else right now.
If I had to find a word that would define the year, I'd call it, "Torqued" and thats kinda what it was emotionally.
I felt like my arm was being twisted inside my brain like a vice.
The year ends on a similar note.
With my grandmother at her TV, and myself at my computer.
Chatting about what comes next.
As Always
Keepin' it ▢
Comments
Post a Comment