Louis Self
To Kiteboarding
Lou's Kiteboarding home page
To Comedy
Lou's Comedy home page
        YouTube

Arizona Lou

Blog Archive 2014 Feb

Previous <-- Archived Blogs --> Next                   Latest Update

Sat Feb 1 = Big trip of almost 100 miles, including driving over a mountain courtesy of my Garmin GPS. The trip was to Surprise, AZ in the west valley for a meeting of the well owners for my two vacant lots on 151st Avenue. Because I was the only non-resident owner and because I have had presidential experience running organizations, I offered to chair the meeting, which the other owners appreciated. Following the meeting, I was told that, compared to the previous meeting, which I did not attend, this meeting was more efficient, went much smother and everyone was happy with what we were able to accomplish. It was a good feeling to be able to have a small positive impact.
- While I was out that direction I checked out two other parcels of raw desert land I own. I found the people out there to be friendly and neighborly.
- Stopping by LA Fitness on 91st Ave in Peoria, the
RC Park
Coyote Basin Park where guys fly electric RC airplanes and an occasional helicopter - east of the 101 Pima Freeway and Cave Creek Rd in Phoenix
to fly my
Nano
fourth type of RC micro helicopter: Blade Nano CPx that has a tail rotor, no flybar and true collective positive and negative pitch
, taking down my Christmas lights and spraying the weeds in my yard rounded out the day.

Sun Feb 2 = Now, standard with each
Nano
fourth type of RC micro helicopter: Blade Nano CPx that has a tail rotor, no flybar and true collective positive and negative pitch
 flight I am doing flips, reversing flips, inverted and rolls. Sometimes that means more crashes and walking to retrieve the little tyke. Today I broke three of the four canopy posts. Not good news since they are part of the main frame.
- At noon I went to the Comedy Spot for a class with Sean. Good class and good group of budding comedians.

Fri Feb 14 = Blogging: I have decided to blog less frequently - especially when I am not on my kiteboarding trips. I am NOT a writer and find that blogging has become a burden (sorry), taking time and emotional energy away from my other activities. Just think, you won't have to spend so much time reading this blog. Hopefully, I'll still be able to keep you updated. I WILL, as much as possible, be updating something on my website every day. This will help keep it up-to-date and at the top of the Google ranks. Lots has happened since my last blogging.
-
Nano
fourth type of RC micro helicopter: Blade Nano CPx that has a tail rotor, no flybar and true collective positive and negative pitch
 flying at the
RC Park
Coyote Basin Park where guys fly electric RC airplanes and an occasional helicopter - east of the 101 Pima Freeway and Cave Creek Rd in Phoenix
has kept me busy in the mornings. Yesterday I established a new record by flying inverted for 33 seconds. In the process I have gotten real good at crashing breaking things. Targets of these efforts have been tail booms, canopy posts, landing gears and a swashplate. Just today I retired batteries N P Q after performance analyses and a final test of each. Now flight-battery line-up is M R S T, but the heli is still unbinding so it might be time for a new main circuit board, of which I have two spares.
- Stand-up Comedy has taken lots of time, writing, re-writing and printing out my routines and trigger notes. Performances have included Stand-up Scottsdale. It can be a tough crowd there - mostly other comedians. With various routines I have gotten them laughing between 1% and 23% of the time. Keeps me humble and trying new ideas.
- The comedy classes I have been taking have proved interesting with an unexpected twist. First of all, I must say that I really respect our teacher, Sean, the owner of the Scottsdale Comedy Spot. I like his style and have learned a lot from him. Last class there was no class after all of us students drove (23 miles for me) to get there. The twist: Sean's people were instructed to tell me that I was not welcome at any further classes. Evidently, going to a certain other comedy club is a no-no with Sean. And here I was ready to plunk down another $100 for more lessons. Ah, well...
- I went to see some pretty good headliner comedians: Andrew Norelli at Stand-up Scottsdale and K-Von at the Scottsdale, Comedy Spott. I expect my next comedy appearance to be in Maui at Stella Blues. I try to keep my future comedy appearances updated on my Home Page.
- Planning Maui: I've got my airline tickets, lodging confirmed, rental car reserved, have taken out my kite travel bags and have started laying out the stuff to take. Fortunately I wrote down my packing scheme on my Travel Tips web page. That, along with my Vacation Countdown Checklist should make the trip relatively easy. It would bee cool to see you there!
- Gym: I have been going regularly, although not as often as I would like, due to the above activities. My goal has been to do three days heavy and slow, then three days light and fast, followed by one day off - hitting all muscles in the process.
- Home Fires have been kept burning with vacuumng, van washing, trying to straighten up the place etc.

Fri Feb 21 = Yesterday I flew here to Maui. The flight from Phoenix was pretty good. The nice gal at the Hawaiian Air Lines check-in counter accepted my somewhat over-sized, but under-weight bags with no over-sized fee, which I appreciated. Yea, Hawaiian Airlines agent! During the 6+-hour flight I purged about 35 voice notes from my digital voice recorder - mostly about comedy ideas and things to do.
- When I arrived here, I spent an extra hour with Enterprise Rent-a-Car. They helped me find an off-airport location what will allow me to save about $340 for the 18 days, and drive a minivan (new Chrysler Town N Country) to boot.
- Since there was some wind earlier in the day, I drove out to Kanaha Beach - not a good experience, considering the wind was decreasing and not too many people were out kiteboarding, and after I had laid everything out to ride my Naish Custom Fish 5'2" x 17.5" surfboard with no footstraps, my 12m Epic Screamer's main strut was not holding air. That kite has had repeated leaks on the valve flanges - likely a manufacturing defect.

Sat Feb 22 = I feel a little bit better today after KITEBOARDING on my Naish Custom Fish 5'2" x 17.5" surfboard with no footstraps with my 15.7m Epic Renegade Infinity kite. This late afternoon there were only three of us out and a maximum of two at a time. There was not enough wind to stay upwind so we all ended up downwind, walking our kites back upwind. I was out fourty minutes with a maximum speed of 15.3 mph and traveled 1.07 miles, including the walk back up the beach from near the third jetty. The bad news: I got my kite down in the water one time. The good news, I made my one and only jibe so did not get wet above the waist and came back with a dry hat.
- Before the kiteboarding I met, or saw again, a lot of nice people while visiting some of the kiteboard/SUP shops. Both before and after I did some shopping at Kmart, Savers Thrift Store, Walmart and a frozen yogurt shop that sells whatever conglomeration you come up in the way of yogurt and toppings.
- I'm getting a little behind on some things because the hotel's Internet is down: both wired and wireless.

Sun Feb 23 = This morning I revised my "Introducing Lou" stand-up comedy routine for Maui and this evening adjusted the associated trigger notes.
- With my 12m Epic Screamer I removed the center strut and found what I suspected: The valve flange leaked. Trying t seal it with a rubber and plastic repair kit adhesive did not work at all. Later, at the Second Wind Shop, Dana showed me an Airtime Valve Capture repair system. All it took is $10 and a little time to repair the pesky valve flange - and 24 hours to cure before I can find out if it really worked. It did!
- Since there has been no wind my
SUP
Stand-Up Paddleboarding
career took off. I rented a SUP board and paddle for a week from Second Wind and, around supper time, spent 35 minutes plying the waters off Kanaha beach, going out .6 miles (a little short of the breaking waves), paddled a distance of 1.06 miles with a maximum speed of 8 mph. I caught one little wave for a little while and never fell off, although I did drop to my knees a few times when losing my balance.
- This evening I selected the photo from my Feb 19th photo shoot to use as Comedian Arizona Lou and headed to bed early, being pretty tired after a busy day.

Mon Feb 24 = This morning I reduced the screen resolution on my
Vaio
new Sony Vaio Duo 11 computer with 11.6" touch screen, Windows 8, 8gb memory and 256gb SSD
from the native 1920 x 1080 to 1280 x 720. This makes the Windows pull-down menus etc. larger and easier to read, with the single 11" screen. The rest of the things I can adjust larger or smaller to suit.
- Water sports activity today involved
SUP
Stand-Up Paddleboarding
and kiteboarding. A little before noon there was a north (onshore) wind of about 8-10 mph - not enough to kite, but enough to make getting out with the SUP somewhat of a challenge. I fell in once (first time SUP this trip), went out only .3 miles (half as far as last time)), had a maximum speed of 7.5 mph, all in 36 minutes. For KITEBOARDING, about 1pm, I went out with my 15.7m Epic Renegade Infinity on my Naish Custom Fish 5'2" x 17.5" surfboard with no footstraps for about 40 minutes, travelling 3.51 miles with a top speed of 16.8mph. It took me three tries to get out past the jetties, with the on-shore wind.

Tues Feb 25 = For the second day I attempted to phone the Clark Howard Show - no answer and no busy signal, which probably means they are out of the studio.
- No water activities today. There was too much on-shore wind for
SUP
Stand-Up Paddleboarding
and not enough for kiteboarding. I spent my time revising my comedy routing. Teresita at the hotel was kind enough to print out the routine and my trigger outline. Also I found the best free Wi-Fi so far for the Internet at Whole Foods. What a neat store. I downloaded and installed the free GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), which rivlas Adobe Photoshop. I immediately used its crop and clone features on my comedy photo.
- My first appearance in the Hawaiian Islands for Stand-up Comedy was this evening at Stella Blues in Kehei, about 15 miles south of my hotel, which is in Wailuku. It went pretty well. I wanted to not miss anything so referred to my notes too much, and didn't hold the mic close enough and some couldn't hear me. I did not exacter bomb, but almost. I got a couple of decent laughs but no really good ones. I did get 18 chuckles for a total of 20 during my 4:55-minute set. that's an average of only four per minute. The audience was laughing only 7% of the time. My highest so far is 23% and my goal is 30+%. This surely is a learning experience. Next week I'll do better. I'll plan on doing the second half of my Introducing Arizona Lou routine, which I did not get around to tonight. Since the show started at 9:15, I didn't get to bed until about 12:50.

Wed Feb 26 = The first KITEBOARDING session today wasn't really one. I spent about 20 minutes trying to get out past the small surf with the on-shore wind, my 12m Epic Screamer and Naish Custom Fish 5'2" x 17.5" surfboard with no footstraps, crashing my kite two or three times in the process. Then I got out on my 130 cm Lite Wave Stealth twin-tip board on the first try, went out to the reef and had fun playing in some breaking and non-breaking waves. I travelled, mostly parallel to the shore, 6.09 miles in about 47 minutes.
- Then, with my Liquid Peace neoprene jacket on since I was getting a little chilly, I decided to try the Naish surfboard with no footstraps again. I got out on the first try, made most of my jibes but didn't make it out quite as far as the surf. I came in after about 40 minutes after the wind decreased.

Thu Feb 27 = KITEBOARDING today did not include my
GPS
Garmin Foretrex 201
 because the old strap-securing Velcro I devised had lost its grip (I have since replaced it with new from Home Depot). Both sessions today were on my Naish Custom Fish 5'2" x 17.5" surfboard with no footstraps. My first session I had lots of power with my 15.7m Epic Renegade Infinity kite. Actually caught a wave - my board did without me. Also I experienced the Bone Yard, an area out from the west part of Kanaha Beach where the water is shallow over the reef. I thought I had avoided any damage when blowing a jibe by keeping myself shallow, but this evening I noticed a tiny abrasion where I evidently hit something. To be safe, I came in at the first beach west (downwind) from where I had put in.
- The second session was with my 12m Epic Screamer, which seems to be holding air OK now. The wind just about died at last so I returned to shore at the third beach to the west. If you're into wildlife, so far I have seen about five large sea turtles, maybe 24" across.

Fri Feb 28 = This morning I got out on the water a little east of the lifesaving station at Kanaha Beach (east of my usual kiteboarding location) with the
SUP
Stand-Up Paddleboarding
board. I met SUPer Bill and walked out to the water with him. He immediately left me in the mist and headed out to the big-man waves. I finally paddled out, almost to the waves, falling into the water numerous times in the process. I never did catch, even a small wave, but, with the side-off-shore wind did succeed in being blown down the beach .2 miles. I thought I'd never find my van. Next time, I'll put the van in as a GPS waypoint before I leave it. The GPS with the newly-repaired band told me I was out on the water 33 minutes, travelled .96 miles and had a top speed of 6.1 mph.
- This afternoon we had a misty rain and poor winds for either kiteboarding or SUP so I stayed in and added some comedy stuff to my About Lou web page (also seen below). Before leaving Phoenix I had joined the National Association of Comedians and took a photo for Comedian, Arizona Lou. Here is an excellent Stand-Up Glossary from CJ Alexander and 10 Tips for Beginner Comedians by Patrick Bromley.
Comedian, Arizona Lou

- I rounded out the day with a little minor shopping, a heavy full-body workout (one exercise per muscle) at 24-Hour Fitness, an ice cream sandwich since Friday is my treat night, soaking my foot and applying an occlusive bandage where I stepped on something sharp while walking around looking for my van after today's SUP excursion (no blood). Also this evening I finally got my comedy set from Tuesday analysed. The result is up on Tuesday's comedy report.

Previous <-- Archived Blogs --> Next                   Latest Update

(back to TOP of page)