Harmonica Holder review

Posted by on July 28th, 2019  •  0 Comments  •  Full Article

HarpArm EZ-Rack Pro Magnetic Harmonica Holder – Review

I play guitar and harmonica together, Bob Dylan style. I’ve had harp holders since 1972. Up until yesterday my best one was a $50 Hohner harp holder, but the screws kept falling out of it, rendering it useless.

I did a search online discovered the new magnetic harp holders. But it was $50. I went to Guitar Center and decided it was so close to my broken Hohner holder that I could do some modifications and save money. Because it was only $24, I bought the Harp Arm Magnetic Mic Stand Harmonica Holder.

I removed the broken missing screw parts from my Hohner, cobbled together some wood and aluminum and built a Frankenstein holder that seems quite good.

MacGyver’d Magnetic cell phone mount

I have wizgear cell phone mounts on my dashboard, but they depend on a plastic ball joint on a plastic neck. My recent vacation driving bumpy dirt roads broke the plastic neck. My solution? Remake the ball joint and neck from 9/16″ aluminum rod.

tuba buba

Posted by on July 27th, 2019  •  0 Comments  •  Full Article

I finished my second tuba sketch. As usual it has a problem. I couldn’t seem to get the pipe coils wide enough. When I drew them as wide as they were, it made the valves too narrow. I could have drawn the valves oversize, but that looked off. Something is wrong in my drafting, but I can’t fix it and decided to move on. Perfection is overated.

In other news we had sort of a guitarbcue at a friends house. It’s right on Puget Sound. Imagine a full size wood stove on a wooden deck and a glass window in the floor looking down at the tide water.

Thursday I tried to paint the mountain but couldn’t make it pretty. I couldn’t seem to find the color scheme. I started with a purple underpainting instead of blue, and the whole thing looks far too red. Might be able to save it. It’s odd how my sense of color can get so miss-guided.  Probly need to paint outside more often. Duh.

Friday Lisa and I climbed at 38. She didn’t have time for Index due to an early shift the next day. I was dragging on Friday from the Thursday 50 pound backpack on Rainier. Now it’s Saturday and I’m enjoying some couch time. May do the gym later if I get a second wind. Without further adieu here are the photos

Ultimate climbing phone case

Posted by on July 18th, 2019  •  0 Comments  •  Full Article

Here is version 3 of my climbing phone case. My goals in a DIY phone case were:

  • prevent dropping phone
  • make phone photography quick, easy and safe
  • protect phone both at belays, mid-pitch shooting, and in offwidths
  • Be durable and light
  • protect phone in a fall
  • Not sound like a noisy cowbell

During lead climbing, I clip a locker thru the top, so it’s sealed like a grigri.

When shooting, I move the locker from the top aluminum tabs to the nylon cord.

If I stop shooting, I drop the phone in the case. If I need more security, I can snap on the bungy cord closure. This is also how I carry it in my backpack.

If it rains, I can carry the phone case upside down in my pocket or pack, it’s waterproof.

This was a full day of work, plus 3 hours of welding. My buddy C is a nuclear qualified welder…he works on submarines. I can’t afford his rates so I agreed to give him one of my 3 hour plein air paintings in trade.

I need to find a way to make them from ultra durable, crush proof plastic.

City of Rocks 2019

Posted by on July 17th, 2019  •  0 Comments  •  Full Article

Alex, Kristi, Chris J. and Pam all spent some time at the City of Rocks with me over the last two weeks. I got there early and sketched for a couple days.

I did three pen sketches and two oils. We did a lot of the usual stuff on Elephant rock and the Breadloaves. My four days with Pam were the best as we are both hard core climbers, dawn to dusk.

Alex did do a hard lead on Crack of Doom 11c. I couldn’t get past the boulder move. I also got up Mystery Bolter with one hang. That thing is so intimidating. Those run outs are terrifying, yet the climbing is fine and quite sticky. You just have to stick to the main line, even left a little, as you pass the second to last bolt. Past the last bolt it’s dead easy right up to the anchor. We were surprised to find we could rap off with a 60 meter.

My hardest lead was Aspen Leaf 10a at the upper west breadloaves. I hung all over it, blew all the delicate stem moves. What’s weird is I think I led it clean with Julia ten years ago. Because of my constantly changing partners I never got on some of the harder trad lines like bloody fingers and private idaho. Still, two weeks of climbing in the city may have given me a good start on the rest of the summer at index.