Scott's Shoebox

Living on the road

I'm currently on an extended road trip to New England, living and working on the road! I'm posting pictures and updates here. (I tried this experiment before, traveling into southern Ohio for 10 days.)

I also just took a three-week plane trip to visit my sister in Salt Lake City, and friends in Colorado and Seattle (and a short trip to Vancouver). This involved a lot of mountain climbing in Colorado and hill climbing in Seattle. Photos here.

Boston

Colorado

Juggling in the Circleville Pumpkin Festival, 2010 Edition

Each October, the Jest Jugglers head down to Circleville, south of Columbus, Ohio, and show off their skillz in front of the crowds during the Thursday Pumpkin Festival parade.

Most of us aren't entertainers, so you'll see a lot of dropped balls/clubs as we try to do the fun tricks that don't always come out right!

Ten videos from this year

Last year's videos

(Last year's blog entry here.)

Joined a band

I've been playing piano in a band since last spring! We're called Vox Voronet. (We got the name "Voronet" from an ancient monastery in Romania.) Our singer and guitarist, Andy, I've known since we were in elementary school and he was so far ahead in reading he was in a reading group by himself. Chris plays bass and synth and Matt plays drums, and both are excellent musicians from Youngstown.

We play all original music and each make up our own parts. On the weekends we converge on Andy's living room outside Garrettsville and generally make an organized ruckus. In between there's a lot of practicing and composing and recording to do, and working on promotional materials, and emailing and networking to get in the door and play shows across northeast Ohio, Pittsburgh, and soon, Columbus. Being in a band is amazing but a lot of work!

We're really rockin' if you can make it to one of our shows! Our online recordings don't do it justice. There's nothing like live music (and even better when you get to play it!!)

Vox Voronet:

To join our mailing list to find out about upcoming shows, go to our MySpace page and scroll down on the right.

New recording: Groove 3

I sat down at the keyboard and this was the third of some piano grooves I came up with. I worked on it for a few weekends. My first new song in years!

(Link to MP3 file)

Last year I bought a Yamaha YPG-635 digital piano, with pretty nicely weighted keys and a great piano sound. It's plugged into my MacBook which runs GarageBand. I used to use a Fostex 4-track tape deck, and then a version of ProTools on my Power Mac 8600 (bought in 1998). Andy and I worked on a few recordings with these setups, but they were hard to use, and we weren't even doing anything that complicated. Now multi-track recording is so much easier.

This instrumental is mostly piano and bell sounds but has some organ for the exciting parts and even a little saxophone. I also had a hi-hat cymbal in the basement that's fun to play. I don't know anything about drumming but it sounded better than something canned for the drum track. Hope you can enjoy it even though it's a little rough. I'd make a lot of changes if I had more time, inspiration, and experience.

Inspiration came from my friends and from music I've listened to over the years like MMW (Medeski, Martin, and Wood), the Doors, Led Zeppelin, Van Morrison, and even some Japanese music. Early Beck albums opened my eyes to the potential of badly played percussion.

For my recordings from years ago, see my old Music page.

Here's a screenshot of most of the song:

Juggling in the Circleville Pumpkin Festival

Every year the Jest Jugglers (MySpace, Meetup.com) head down to Circleville south of Columbus to join the parade for the Pumpkin Festival. My skills probably barely register as entertainment-level, but it's lots of fun to be there with the rest of the folks.

Above: crowds gather in amazement at my three-ball cascade.

The Columbus Jest Jugglers warming up before the parade. Featuring: Evan, Jesse, Wes, Lamar, Tony, Nick, Liz, Owen, Ginny, Lynn, and Tom (above, or YouTube link).

Barely controlled chaos of jugglers in the parade (YouTube link).

Lynn's-eye view of parade, Wes doing three-club tricks, Jesse getting up on the six-foot unicycle, Lamar juggling five balls, Owen orbiting on his unicycle, Evan passing out balloons (YouTube link).

The jugglers pass by as we near the end of the parade (YouTube link).

The crew, back row: Tom, Lynn, Tony, Liz, Nick, Lamar, Evan, Jesse. Front row: me, Wes, Owen, and Ginny.

Chillicothe and Athens, Ohio

Continuing with my Ohio road trip...

Each day I've been pretty good at making work the first priority so there's daylight left when I'm done. On Thursday and Friday after work, I took evening drives into surrounding Chillicothe farmland, where cows graze over rolling hills. The cow pictures didn't come out, but here's three others I like.

When we were traveling to the juggling festival last month and took an inadvertent detour, we drove through this countryside so I had to go back!

My 500mm zoom captures a "hot road mirage." The hot air on the road surface and the cooler air just above it create a prism effect that redirects light from nearby objects:

At night I'm tired and don't care too much where I park and sleep, as long as it's safe. Travelers line themselves into rows in a corner of the Wal-Mart parking lot in Chillicothe. I'm last so I go to the back of the line.

I didn't think sleeping in a car would be that comfortable at first! I have a Toyota Corolla station wagon and the back seats are folded down so there's a big flat surface. It's just big enough for me to stretch out diagonally. There's also room for a duffle bag and a tent and an as-yet unused sleeping bag and big jug of water. (Snacks, maps, cooler, and electronics are on the front seat.) The bed is made of stacks of foam pads, and on top is a thin sleeping pad like hikers use, and a sheet. That works about as good as I need. Probably the worst thing is you can't sit up, and it has windows! I can hang stuff in the windows if it gets too bright. On the plus side, it never leaks rain.

Here's a view looking back from the driver's seat.

I can do work in the car on the laptop (using cellular internet and cigarette lighter). I try to find interesting parts of town to park in. I'm also on the lookout for free wi-fi and an outlet. One time my laptop saw a network near a donut shop. "We don't have internet cafes in Chillicothe" the lady almost proudly informed me when I strolled into her place with the laptop. Visions of gooey donuts faded. Then came an acute awareness of a collective gaze of rebuff from the customers. On my last day in town I eventually found free wi-fi at a local bar, which was strange because I couldn't imagine any of the customers bringing a laptop.

Friday I said goodbye to Chillicothe and got a tinge of excitement as I hit the road. It seemed like kind of a depressed town, though not without its slight southern charm. I also was in dire need of a shower and was starting to feel homeless. Surprisingly I couldn't locate any truck stops without driving back to the Columbus area! I washed up in a men's room. You can get a sense for places with good restrooms, and sometimes you want to get something to drink or snack on there too.

I drove on to Athens with plans to get a nice hotel room. But I didn't need a whole room and bed, just a shower. So I opted for a $26 camp site. It was a lot better than a Wal-Mart parking lot. The bathroom was grungy as expected but they had hot water and the next morning I got cleaned up! And it was nice to be outdoors.

More farm pictures:

Hello, Athens!

On the road

A question keeps coming up... since I can work anywhere from my laptop, why not get out of Columbus and travel the country? Good question! So figured out some of the practical matters:

* Motel bills can add up to a lot, so maybe I can avoid them most nights. Besides, they're kind of dismal places when you're traveling alone. I can try camping, staying in hostels, sleeping in the car (I can fold the seats down), or connecting up with people through couchsurfing.org. Sleeping in the car may be about as comfortable as the tent, and without having to set anything up late at night or worry about rain (my tent leaks in heavy rain), so I might do that even in campgrounds.

* I can maybe save on food by going to grocery stores and using a cooler.

* I have a stack of road maps of just about every state, accumulated from AAA over the years.

* With an AC adapter for my cigarette lighter and "internet tethering" through my cell phone, I can work from my car practically anywhere.

* Besides comfort, and getting work done, my biggest concern is getting lonely. I'm a little shy to just strike up conversations with strangers.

I finally had a week and a half free, so yesterday I got clothes together, packed up the car, and headed south! That seemed to be a good direction. The land isn't so boring and flat, and everything looks a little different which is helpful for feeling like you're on a real trip. Also the people are maybe friendlier, and it won't get too cold at night.

Can I actually fit in there? Just barely.

I'll be back in Columbus to help my friend Ray with the Bike the C-Bus event Labor Day weekend and go to a family get-together. If nothing else comes up, maybe in October I could take a longer trip. This is sort of a trial to see how painful it is to live like this!

I decided to go to Chillicothe since I'd never been to Ohio's original capital city. I stopped at Samuel's on the way out of Columbus. He happened to have a free evening so he followed me down separately, and we had a great time exploring the town. We stopped at a bar with a country band and a few people dancing but needed to get food faster so we just went to Applebee's. I saved some leftovers for lunch the next day.

After Samuel left I went to a convenience store and asked to put some ice in ziploc bags for my small cooler. The cashier helped me and we talked about my plans. She said I could probably sleep at Tar Hollow state park overnight and told me how to get there. Good info!

However, that was almost an hour away in the middle of nowhere, and it was already getting late. So, as much as I hate Wal-Mart's labor practices and how its sweatshop-made merchandise has contributed to the decline of small towns, I decided the easiest thing to do would be to stay overnight in their parking lot. I won't be living very sustainably on this trip! I'd heard you could sleep there, but I was still surprised to find a couple semis and motorhomes way in the back of the lot. I parked alongside and was excited and wondered how I'd get to sleep. But once I did, I slept like a rock. I think trains even went by about 100 feet away and didn't wake me.

The sun got really bright at 8 a.m., and then it became more and more difficult to sleep as the car started getting ever gradually hotter. I finally got up at 10:00 and rolled the windows down and checked e-mail.

I ended up spending the afternoon at an overlook above downtown Chillicothe and worked from the car.

This old house was at the top of the overlook:

In the evening I discovered the Glatfelter wood chip factory. There were some serious three-story piles of wood chips:

I got some different perspectives on it. Here's the WWII battle zone and internment camp section:

I think it's a paper mill. It smelled really strongly like boiled cabbage, slightly on the sauerkraut side. I wondered how you could breathe that in every day and what kind of pollution it generates.