(no subject)

On Wednesday I am going to leave for a little motorcycle trip. I'm going to a house party north of everywhere, up in Maine, for the holiday weekend, and I will spend the week after Labor Day at my office near Boston. I am dreading the traffic coming back to Boston from Maine on that Monday, but oh well.

Anyone in that area wanna get dinner some night that week?

So in support of this trip I needed to put a new rear tire on my bike. This turned out to be a bit of an ordeal! Between the integrated luggage, the design of the rear brake, and the shaft drive, the wheel was darned fiddly to get out, and even fiddlier to put back in. I guess it should be easier next time, now that I know how to do it. But it took me about two hours to remove the wheel, on Friday night, and maybe three hours this afternoon to put it back on. The plastic sure does add to the time that every little task takes.

While I had the bike apart, I did some farkle improvements. Last winter when I put the hyperlites on, I glued them to the fender and then fished the wires up into the tail of the bike without removing the plastic. There are three wires on each hyperlite. Up in the tail of the bike, these six wires go to four different spots. I attached them each directly to their spot. This meant that when I pulled the fender off so I could remove the wheel and change the tire, I had to detach the wires from all four spots, and pull them all out of their careful routing. And every time I change a tire that fender will have to come off. So, I made a little wiring harness for them, complete with a plastic plug that holds four spade connectors. I put the four wires on the bike side of the connector, into a shrink tube and routed them together. Now it's all super neat and next time I have to have this fender off I can just disconnect the wiring plug. Also, one of the hyperlites had come loose from its glue, so I took the opportunity to fix that.

In other news I have sold my VFR. The buyer is coming to pick it up while I am gone. So I spent some time this afternoon de-farkling it. I removed the Autocom, and the amplifier with its wiring run to the velcro pad on my clutch master cylinder. And I removed the chain oiler because the buyer doesn't want it. The underseat compartment looks pretty empty, with all that stuff gone! I still need to go through the garage and find all the bits and pieces that go with the VFR, and gather them together. I don't think I'll get to the gym this week at all.

Vienna Teng

Last night M and I went to the Ark to see Vienna Teng. It was a good show, and a farewell of sorts. She is starting grad school this fall at the University of Michigan in a program that combines an MBA with some kind of natural resources thing, and she has hardly any tour dates for the foreseeable future. Though I suspect she might play occasionally around this local area.

The show was sold out and the ushers were having to wander around trying to discern which of the empty seats were unclaimed, to seat the last few audience members to arrive.

Vienna came on stage in a UofM cheerleader uniform. Her fellow musician Alex Wong came onstage in a Zingermans t-shirt. In the course of the stage banter we learned that he is not moving to Ann Arbor; this was a farewell for them. Though he made jokes about how it could happen if only Zingermans would offer him a job. :)

They opened with Augustine, and most of the other songs they did were also from Inland Territory, though they did do one of my favorites from the earlier albums, Homecoming (Walter's Song). They only played one song that wasn't on one of her albums, and that one was Alex leading on something from Alex's album. It was definitely not the kind of show where the artist plays new stuff in support of some future effort. And with the school thing taking her focus, I'm guessing we won't see another Vienna Teng album for some years, if ever.

I had been wondering if she would be recognized while going to UofM, and if it would be a distraction for her. She actually addressed that as part of her stage banter. She said she only gets recognized at the worst possible moments. She told a tale of being recognized when she had just discovered how much vodka didn't agree with her, and another tale of being recognized after a karaoke incident that went horribly wrong. IMHO, Ann Arbor can be a really small town and anyone who can sell out the Ark is likely to be recognized now and then. She may be surprised. Hopefully the surprise will be pleasant.

She closed with Grandmother Song. She introduced it by saying that this song was pretty much a straight translation from the Mandarin, and that her grandmother was thrilled that she was going back to school.

For an encore they did Soon Love Soon as a singalong. I don't think that went as well as it could have, though it wasn't terrible. The audience tried to get them for a second encore, and they came out and took another bow, and embraced, but did not sing again.

There was one thing I never saw before. They had American Sign Language interpreters on stage for the entire show. Two of them, trading off every second or third song. M thinks they were signing for one particular person or section in the audience.

Anyway, it was fun to go and I'll have to keep an eye out and see if she plays around town over the next few years.