On and On

No phone calls, no email message dings, no TwitterBook posts....

no hours in front of the computer...

Getting away from it all makes it all seem worth it. I haven't been able to totally disconnect, but I am putting a good effort in. The shop seems to be running smoothly without us.... well, with a little direction from the man in the woods.

This week has been filled with: campfires, hiking, cooking and eating, eating and eating.... playground trips, horseshoes, gathering wood, fishing, Terry Farrel Jim Beam, Bass Ale in the woods, pie-iron cooking, marshmallows, trees, grass, waterfalls, star-filled sky and rainbows. Well, I just threw that last one in, it sounded good....

We'll see you kids back in the city soon!

DMSR

I am able to hobble along remotely, working a 1/2 hour or so siting in my car across from the algae covered pond (yeck). New owners at the camp site need to spruce things up a bit. Clean air, campfires, lots of hiking and internet access available (somewhat), what more can I ask for...?

Looks like some nice weather for a few more days of camping. The kids love the outdoors and, like I said the other day, it is good to get out of the city for a bit.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, fresh air... and I hardly hear any cars zooming by. And the sky full of stars, priceless! If I can keep all the customers happy from here, this could be the life, eh? Gotta go, laptop battery dying out..... . . . . . .

Innoculated City

Once you get there it is great!

What it is-- the planning, the packing, the truck loading up and the eventual traveling-- is the hard part. As we approach the eve of another camping trip to beautiful Angelica New York (the town where history lives), I have come to realize the love, some have, for luxury hotels. Just bring your clothes, everything else is already there...

But of course the adventure is lost in possibly forgetting the condiments, or your boots and (possible) rain gear, or misjudging the temperature (while I am mentioning Mother Nature's hand in all this), or even forgetting the super-cool marshmallow sticks that manually spin. But you would think after doing this for 10-15 years, hell in fact my whole life going back to when I was a kid, I would have this planning/packing part down pat. We have developed a master list (see link below) that has everything we bring (and then some) to use as a guide. Just check it off the list when it gets gathered and moved to the 'to pack' area of the house... the problem lies and maybe forgetting in the transition from the house to the car after it has already been checked of the list.

Then there is the leaving the office thing. Now I know the employees can take care of everything and I will have phone and (hopefully again) email access to keep tabs on things... you didn't think I was going to go camping without my computer did you (remember last time)?

It is always nice to get out of the city, shower less, drink a lot of beer, make campfires, play cards, BBQ all the time (except breakfast), hike, hike and hike, pie iron pies and pizzas, marshmallows and smores, hike some more...See you in the wilds of Angelica!

The Master Camping List (PDF 32k) - you may need this some day!

The Seeker

Paint brush graffiti.


When I was a kid, I spent a few years growing up on the East Side of Buffalo on Kuchuska (sp?) Street living with my folks in my Dad's Dad's house prior to packing up (at the age of 3) and moving to Tonawanda. We still went to my Mom's parents home on Beck Street every Sunday afternoon, until we took up the family camping trend in the mid Seventies and we split town every weekend for such faraway lands as Darien and Niagara Falls.

My grandparents home was across the street from the back parking lot of some department stores. The back wall of the store had this awesome paint-brush rendered graffiti that was there until the knocked the building down to build a (big K) K-mart. Not out-of-a-can sprayed, but authored with a brush. I could always picture this rockin' long haired East Side Pole-- a braver, more vandal-happy version of myself-- with a bucket of white paint and a fat 'ol brush scrawling this Who-based sentiment: Keith Moon Lives.

In the world of Krylon-applied tags, this brush scrawl stood out in my mind. Hey, I was a teenager and I loved the Who! You could tell the artist started to speed things up when they got to the end, the 'es' in 'lives'... maybe the cops were coming! It is harder to run with a gallon of house paint than a can of spray-paint! But the artist did take the time to add the 'eyes' or 'boobs' or whatever is in the O's in 'MOON.' What a skilled craftsman!

I found this picture in the flat-file cleaning mentioned earlier. I had used this as an submission to a college photography class where we were all given 5-6 phrases and were instructed to go out and photograph images that we felt represented the words. This one was for "scholarly communication."

Eric B For President

So I am planning on making a cool mix tape, actually a CD, for the holidays. I made 2 good ones in the beginning of the year- a rock and a disco one. I took them on vacation and passed them out to my Florida friends, and then did the same in Buffalo when I got back. They seemed to like them.

So far I have 2 songs titles scratched out on a yellow post-it notes. The birth of the last mix tape of 2007 is underway! The song list has begun.

There are 2 ways that the mix tape is given birth.

The first is the live mix- where you starts pulling stuff off the shelves and out of the bins and mix it live- DJ style.

The second is this one, the slow deliberate plan of a mix tape. In this modern age of computers and the webinernet, I will keep loading tracks on this here laptop, until I have enough that go good together in some sort of musical lump. Then I will take them and start arranging them, mixing up the order until there is born some sort of flow.

I will usually burn a few test versions, make a few edits to the song order and then BAM the mix is finished! Then I will spend some time coming up with some groovy artwork and a catchy title. The music and the graphics must go together. As you saw from an earlier camping post, I come from a long line of mix tape titlers: some are funny, poignant, some are inside jokes and pop culture references and all attempt to sum up the feeling of that batch of songs contained within.

So far as I have 2 songs- we'll see how it goes....

BONUS BEATS: It looks like the Sabs are a few minutes from actually winning a game!

Monkey Gone To Heaven

At first it seems kinda strange to be typing on my computer in the middle of a cabin, in the middle of the woods in the middle of a steady rain (while listening a live Pixies cassette). Then I just have to think of Bill Murray portraying Hunter Thompson in Where the Buffalo Roam and it seems alright. I haven't see a giant bat, though I am in the woods, so you never know.

When you own your small-medium business, it is hard to truly get away. We have a few clients, and some new prospects on the horizon, than need constant attention. Good thing the campground's 'entrance/store/owner's home' offers a free wi-fi hotspot. Although I cannot get internet access at The Longhouse, our cabin, I can get it up top of the hill. So I will do a few things- drive up tomorrow AM and afternoon and answer some emails, etc. I can make some calls on the cellular (another camping intrusion I would have never believed) from the cabin which is nice as well.

And although there has been a steady rain since this morning, it has not dampened our camping spirits. We have had a fire cooking in the cabin stove for the last 9 hours, which we cooked dinner in, and I got a beat-up suitcase (labeled the 'Vacationeer') full of old cassette tapes. A lot of them are mix tapes from our first road trip to Graceland some 15 years or so- they are good-fun-travel mixes circa early '90s....

.. so I gotta go back and stoke the fire a bit, the only reason I am writing this is everyone else is sleeping and I gotta charge the laptop. Happy trails to ya!


Top 10 Cassette Titles (I have in the suitcase)
Which, Over The Years, Have Become Some Of Our Campin' FAVs:

10. Hillbilly Music

09. NIGHT: Four Songs

08. July 18, 1994ISM's

07. tim, let it be & more mats

06. The Journey Continues VOL. 48

05 Rare Hip b/w DJ Brac vs. Space Ghost

04. SwelterFest '98 b/w Turn Up Dat Heat- FL, USA

03. Let's Pretend We're Married; the Prince collection vol. 1

02. ROAD TRIPPIN' 1993 + BEYOND b/w The Tape that actually has ELVIS Songs

01. MORE ROAD SEX 93'