That's Mr. Honk To You

Haven’t posted in a while. Been busy. Really busy. I am of course a total slacker and would rather plotz (thanks Richie for the perfect word) in the Barcalounger and watch surreality TV (Fashion Show, I’m thinking of YOU) than actually do something useful. And the list of unfinished projects is getting longer…

So we took a last minute trip to the Oregon Coast for Memorial Day weekend. We were able to get into the Worldmark Depoe Bay at the last minute for a very attractive rate, and it is one of our favorite Worldmark locations. It’s right on the water just north of Depoe Bay (the world’s smallest harbor!). So we took Friday off and headed west, first on the Bremerton ferry (I love ferries!!) then through Shelton and Aberdeen, to Westport where Lisa wanted to go to a winery. The wine was pretty good, and we picked up a few bottles, one of which didn’t survive (more about that later).

After leaving the winery, we spent a little time exploring the town of Westport and the nearby lighthouse. It was a bit underwhelming, not only because it was privately owned, but because it was quite a ways inland for some reason. Still it is very picturesque and the tallest lighthouse on the Washington coast.

We eventually made our way down the coastline to Astoria, and through there to Cannon Beach, where we stopped for dinner at Mo’s in Tolovana. The chowder is exquisite, a fine balance of ingredients that no one else has surpassed. And believe me I’ve tried. We had a fine dinner, and the view

is awesome (of course).

After dinner we continued south through Tillamook and Lincoln City, finally arriving at Depoe Bay around 9 pm. Our suite was better than expected; it must have been 1000 sq feet, with two full bedroom suites, a big great room, and two balconies. We made a trip to the store for provisions (we had a full kitchen with utensils) and settled in. The weather was a bit windy but it settled down after the sun went down. Here is the view from the condo after dark – I took this by balancing the camera on a Rolling Rock box on top of a wine box.

In the morning we did some exploring in Depoe Bay, and picked up some “carmel corn” and more wine at the Depoe Bay Winery store. The guy in the winery store was very knowledgeable and funny and managed to convince Lisa to buy three bottles of wine and threw in one for free! We like free wine, it’s almost as good as free beer. In between we went through all the gifts shops in search of one thing – a brass desktop cannon. You would think with all the “pirate” stuff that a cannon would be fairly easy to come by. After all, you can’t BROADSIDE someone without a CANNON. We saw plenty of swords and flintlock pistols and telescopes and other assorted stuff, but no cannons. Hmph.

So then we went to Cape Foulweather to the gift shop there, thinking if anywhere they would have a cannon. But nooooo….. Still a cool place.

My mom showed up around 1 pm from Springfield, so we all decided to keep the economy moving by going to the Lincoln City outlet mall, where we picked up a few good items, including an Oregon Duck jacket with a big yellow stripe up the back! Then we went to Kyllo’s on the beach in Lincoln City and had a leisurely dinner. Very nice and, did I mention it was RIGHT on the beach?

On Sunday our goal was to get up into Tillamook. We got a late start after a large home cooked breakfast, and the cheese factory (is that a “cheesery”?) was totally packed with cars. And cheese. So we decided that the Tillamook Air Museum was more important than mere cheese, and off we went to the blimp hanger that houses the collection.

We have been to many vintage plane museums, including the Evergreen museum in McMinnville, the Palm Springs museum (where they have a B-17) and the Museum of Flight and the Heritage Collection (Paul Allen’s private stash) locally. But the Tillamook collection is better than all of them – because ALL of the planes fly and NONE of them are roped off. You can walk directly under any of them, looking for the right angle :) and there were just a few people in the hanger. I had some lighting challenges shooting the planes, especially some that were under a billowy canopy thing, but still got some good shots. They have an Corsair (pictured) as well as a Mustang, a PBY, a P-38 (awesome!!!!) a Tomcat, an Oscar, and a Stearman among others. Very cool stuff, and the history of the building is interesting too as it was used to house blimps for shore patrol during WW II.

After the museum we went to the Cape Meares lighthouse, which was a LOT busier but still cool. Then we were kind of tired (yeah, we’re all getting old) so we tried to go to Rosanna’s in Oceanside but couldn’t find a place to park, so we went to the Schooner in Netarts instead. We were prepared to be disappointed, but it was actually pretty good. We will go back again. There was still some daylight left so we decided to go into Depoe Bay and search for ice cream, but everything was closed. Wah.

Monday we made our way back home, stopping at Mo’s again in Cannon Beach for lunch. Then we thought that if anywhere would have a cannon, it would be in Cannon Beach. So we spent some time wandering around town, but still could not find a cannon. But we did find some ice cream!

A great weekend was had by all…

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Talking about YouTube - Brown Baggin' It
  

Saturday night I substituted for Beth in Route 66, a band I have substituted in several times, both on bari and tenor. It was a fun gig; lots of people were out dancing, so much so that it was hard for Lisa to get pictures of the band. It's a real pleasure to play with the folks in this band; they are all great musicians and great people. We played a lot of vocals and classic swing tunes, which went over well with the crowd. By the end of the night I was pretty tired; it's a fair amount of physical work, hanging 25 pounds of sax from your neck and blowing into it for almost three hours.  It took me back to my days in high school playing proms every weekend; I remember by the end of those gigs my lip was about gone and I could barely play. And *then* it would be a bus ride back home. Some nights I wouldn't get home till four A.M. But it was worth it. I learned a lot about responsibility, being a team player, and behaving like a professional. And here I am 35 years later, doing the same thing. But I made $15!

I posted some photos from our recent trip to Crater Lake on Facebook here. Here’s an example that Lisa took:

I am playing Jim’s contrabass clarinet again for this one. We are playing selections from West Side Story, various Disney movies, The Wizard of Oz (my personal favorite) as well as Wicked and Pirates of the Caribbean.

So I’ve been working on upgrading the stereo system in the Lincoln/Jaguar. When we bought the car last year, it had a “12-speaker audiophile sound system” with an in-cash 6 CD changer. Well, their definition of audiophile was clearly different than mine, and I wanted more source flexibility, so almost immediately swapped the head unit out for a Sony. Not only was the Sony half the size (giving me extra space to put random stuff) but played MP3/WMA CDs, had an aux input on the front, a USB port on the front, and supported external add-on components like Sirius satellite and an ipod interface. All of which I implemented. Crutchfield gave me their usual excellent support and a factory wiring harness connecter, and all was good.

But after a while… I got so I was craving higher fi and, well, MORE POWER. And the factory “subwoofers” were starting to make some really odd noises. So I took advantage of a sale at Crutchfield and picked up some great Kicker 6x9s for the back deck at half price. That got rid of the odd noises, but the wimpy little factory amp (it is every bit as big as a pack of cigarettes, including cooling fins) was still holding me back. So I then started picking up the other parts I needed. First I got a Profile 80x2w amp for the 6x9s, to be driven from the subwoofer output from the Sony. Then I managed to find two sets of Infinity component speakers for the doors; they are 6x9 woofers and dome tweeters with crossovers. They were out of stock and discontinued at Crutchfield, but I found them at carstereoonline.com for just over $100 a pair, which is around half price. Then to complete things I needed another amp, so I got a 65x4w Profile, just like the one we have in the Tribute, along with some bigass power cables (4 ga) and this thing called a “9 conductor wire” that allows you to run all four speakers outputs along with the amp power on signal in a single big 20 foot long wire. Saves a lot of effort.

So I went out a few weekends ago, and first did the door speakers. This was fairly straightforward; the hardest part was finding a place for the crossovers to live without colliding with the window, and finding a place to mount the tweeter on each door. Then the next day I tackled the amps; I mounted them both underneath the back deck, and then proceeded to run wiring for the rest of the day. Luckily the battery is in the back of the car, which made the power cables easy. I pulled up the passenger carpet and ran the 9 conductor wire (along with three twisted pair RCA cables) to the trunk from the head unit. Finally I got everything up and running, and it sounded REALLY GOOD.

Except… there was significant alternator whine. This was a problem in the Tribute as well. I did some research and came up with some little ten dollar noise suppression thingies from PAC Audio. You install them at the start of the signal path (basically right behind the receiver). Worked like a charm. THEN I figured out that PAC also had this cool thing that allows you to control certain aftermarket radios (like the Sony) from the stock steering wheel controls! Now THIS is cool! So I went out yesterday and installed it. The programming was a little challenging, and some of the buttons (track up and track down) don’t work quite as expected, but the main buttons (source, vol up, vol down, mute) all work fine. Yay!

Am still working on dialing in the sound and gain on the amps; sometimes there is actually too much bass. And those Infinity tweeters and definitely overachievers as well, so I’ve got to be careful or I’ll give myself a noise hangover on the way to work. But you know what they say – if it’s too loud, you’re too OLD.