San O 6/23/06

So,

This was going on down the beach from us. We hit San Onofre on Saturday and this happened sometime that weekend.

http://www.wetsand.com/article.asp?locationid=7&resourceid=9293&ProdId=0&CatId=2327&TabID=2327&SubTabID=0

Yeah, it was good. We had a few 9+ footers and a whole day of really fun cruisers. Really, we surfed until we were physically exhausted and sun baked. Great day with no video or photographic proof. Grrr. We are going back in July and can only hope for similar conditions.

The surf crew minus Mr Baule doing our best Joshua Tree cover shot at the self realization center overlooking Swamis.

Our host for the weekend Scott. Scott self realized that if this was Halo he could have killed everyone at the center by now.

6/26/08 Surf Chum

Just a quick note. When doing any sort of outdoor activity one must always take in to consideration X-factors. Minimizing X-factors usually increases safety. So, when their is a recent wave of fatal and near fatal shark attacks up and down the west coast and the spot that you have designated to surf has a seal carcass rolling around in the shallows... Best to either move, way north or way south or go get a cup of coffee and get on with your day.

A side note, I think it was a seal carcass. About the right size but, man, yick. Coffee called.

Brother Jon

Jonny Miller is a fellow White Teamer and a freaking madman. Being part of the Navy Reserve he was called to go to Iraq and dropped everything and went. Jon is a team player and is pretty renouned for diving in front of pucks to keep games close. He also keeps track of everybody's birthdays and even brings in a birthday card for the team to sign. It really adds to the family feeling that we've got on the team and the Navy is lucky to have him.

Jon even likes camels. He is our eyes and ears in the desert so we always look forward to his emails.

A quick and funny, exerpt from one of Jon's emails:

I'm telling you, the Arabian Peninsula is NOT like the drive from LA to Vegas, with mountains and craggy peaks and panoramic bluffs. It's just a shithole that feels like a hairdryer the size of a building is following you everywhere you go.

Refreshingly un-CNN.

Honestly, if you put Jon Miller next to Dennis Miller their would be so little difference it would be uncanny. Sports fan, stats geek, political commentator, and really dry humor. Jon may be the only guy on the planet that has (and uses) a Houston Texans Hockey Jersey. If Dennis called in sick for a radio show Jon could sit in and really no one would notice or care.


Keep up the good work Jonny we look forward to hearing your stories over a beer at Joxter's soon.

Santa Monica Mountains

The Santa Monica Mountains are really pretty stunning, as all natural places seem to be if you look closely enough. I have had the privilege of growing up near these mountains so it's been a fun project to try and extract some of their beauty and share it through photography. After rain storms or in the morning fog have been my most successful outings. Bella loves these outings and requests them frequently. It's hard to say no.
From leaving the apartment to the beginning of the trail heads is generally under a 10 minute drive. I can squeeze in a pretty good workout in to about an hour and it's a pretty Zen way to start the day. Overlooking the city from a perch that is devoid of city rumble or walking through a canyon that has a river flowing through it really puts you in to a proper frame of mind.

Foggy Coast

Five points to anyone who can name the fine dining establishment that I had just walked out of when I took this photo.

Here is a shot of the glued sides with front and back tail block and kerfing installed (with clothes pins as clamps!) Pretty cool no?



Now it’s time to work on the back and front of the guitar. For the front, gluing, clamping and scalloping the braces is the fun part. Other luthier web sites show really complicated ways to glue down all the braces at once. I just used a series of scrap 2x2's and the four clamps that I started off with. I glued them one at a time but really, why rush?
With the scalloping: (shaving off the sides of the braces to adjust the sound of the guitar) my instructional books talk about "tap tuning" the top of your guitar to adjust the sound. It probably takes a lot of guitar building to get something like scalloping down to where you can thunk the top of your guitar and get a feeling of what the finished product may sound like. I just made it look pretty and called it day.
This is my clamping pattern for gluing the back. The small whiteish strips of wood that are by the rear clamps will go under the rose wood and under the those clamps to help maintain the curve on the guitar back.

Building a kit guitar

Building a kit guitar was an idea that was introduced to me by a college buddy JJ Phair (check out his brewery and ale house at http://www.ejphair.com/alehouse/index.php ). We go fly fishing two or three times a year (more on that later) but anyways when this guy gets in to a hobby he really gets in to it. By the time I heard that he was building his own guitar I think he was starting on his third.

So, after talking about it for a little while I bought a rosewood OOO kit from Martin. Check their website and dig around a little bit to find it. Building a guitar is intimidating for sure but it's been a really Zenney experience.

My first step was to build a work bench.

Then I just followed the instructions. I am trying to use a bare minimum of tools. Partially for budgetary reasons and partially because I liked the idea of building a guitar with only basic hand tools.

I won't go in to too much detail but I'll post some pictures and highlight some of the things that I did along the way.

First Blog

So,

This blog is the result of a week long dream that culminated with needing something to do during the Lakers Celtics 3rd game. The Lakers are ahead and really at the end of the day basketball is not hockey.

Nor is it:
Surfing
Luthiery
Guitar
Hiking
Bella d Dog
Photography
Rock Climbing
Half Baked Politics
Philosophy
or
Strategic Boozing.

So, Why blog.

I have been telling people that I am going to post my guitar building picks and damn it, at the end of the day I have some pretty good pictures and video from the weekend and weekday adventures that my schedule allows.

Why Olaf.

I gave an art show at the Durango Bagel when I was living in Colorado. My roommate was pretty artistic and I decided that with all of my time in the mountains, painting them shouldn't be that tough. I used the pen name Olaf Danielson and fabricate a bio that I thought was pretty amusing. The staff were the only ones who were in on the joke and tourists and locals both bit. It went like this:

The Artist:

Born in a small fishing village in Finland I began to appreciate the outdoors at an early age. My fathers business was processing the refuse from others fishing vessels. He worked hard but, he would make time to teach me his love of painting.

When it became no longer politically or socially acceptable to process and distribute native seal and dolphin species, the family business went in to bankruptcy. I am now here in the US working towards a better way of life.

These painting were mainly inspired by local mountains and my homeland. You can see a marked progression from one to the next as these are my earliest works.

I hope you enjoy them,

Olaf Danielson
Age 15

The oos and aahhs and "Honey, you have to read this" were the gift that kept on giving according to the staff. The paintings (are pastels really paintings?) were either of the Colorado Rockies (mountain range not baseball team) or of Mediterranean scenes that I pulled out of magazines. Not very Finnish.

Here are some of the paintings from my first and last art show.





Anyways, the name served me well and to be quite honest I run my own business's and I don't really need business partners seeing my published mirth online. If they want to know about me surfing during the week I'll tell them about it... Yeah.

So that was my first post. I need to figure out how to post my guitar pic's, surf videos etc...

Peace