Monday, January 14, 2008

First Blog Post!

Been wanting to do this for awhile now. I'll start with a recent trip home in December 2007, the exact place/house, etc. that I was raised in. We used to do this as a family by hand, and if mom wasn't helping she would be inside baking something yummy, but ~ 10 years ago dad bought this tractor from a neighbor up the canyon, and it's still going strong. Nothing runs like a Deere.....




Then there was the "typically Alaskan" atypical backcountry ski day last Saturday. Met Pete at Carrs Huffman per the usual routine, and to my surprise none of the other regulars from our normal group showed up, but Jeff Conaway, Cody, and their friend Andy were there, and Cody tipped us off that they had a skin trail all the way in to the top of Pyramid Peak, AND out from the bottom of Seattle Creek after skiing its west side, and we were welcome to join them. Obviously, Pete and I were in. The day was epic by all accounts, with a huge first climb, temperatures about 5F, wind so strong it was blowing CHUNKS of snow over the ridge, and a huge cornice-evading entry onto the west face, which featured 3200' of 35-40 degrees of THE dryest, deep, whisper-quiet powder you'll ever find. I'll be talking about this day when I'm an old man for sure.

Then, for a true fox-tail diversion, I helped Ned build a set of speakers. He ordered the drivers and crossover from http://www.madisound.com/ (Cygnet MKII) and we built the boxes from maple plywood and MDF I had left over from other projects. The details on how to build the box were sketchy at best, but starting at 9:15am we got the boxes designed, cut, glued, and fully assembled by 9:45pm, and had them upstairs for sound check at 10pm. It challenged my woodworking skills so I got to learn some new tricks on the way. They sound GREAT! I'm totally impressed - you can hear the tonality of an upright bass and saxes/horns, etc. are crystal clear. More pix of the finished boxes when we get to it.


Nice tight glue-joints:
Madman's lair! I built the other speakers with primitive tools ~ 12 years ago and they're still going strong...







2 comments:

Mom or Dad said...

Wow! Great pics of your Dad plowing the snow on the driveway. Sure beats the heck out of shoveling. He was a bit curious as to why you were snapping away that day. :-) Mom

Kelly Boccia said...

Hey Dan, looks great keep us posted I am expecting wild tails not red or fox tails...