AZ Arizona Lou Kiteboarder: Blog Archive 2014 Aug

Blog Archive 2014 Aug

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Fri Aug 1 = This morning I left Hatteras Island and drove north to Kill Devil Hills for my first feature-length show. I ran out of time before I ran out of material! - a good thing. Here's the poster and a video of the show:
poster

Sat Aug 2 = While driving I had a visual anomaly for the first time in about a year. I have concluded they are an ocular migraine without the headache. I pulled onto a side road in the shade and slept it off in about an hour.
- COMEDY tonight was 3 minutes of fun at Fishmongers in Durham, NC where I appeared almost three months ago on my way out to OBX. The fun was that I didn't try to cram a lot into the three minutes, but just practiced my new Yoga routine.
- Spent the night in at a Walmart on my way toward Lexington.

Sun Aug 3 = I am having technology problems: 1) My

Vaio: new Sony Vaio Duo 11 computer with 11.6" touch screen, Windows 8, 8gb memory and 256gb SSD

will not print to any device, including the Bull-Zip PDF printer I use to update my past comedy appearances. 2) My C-Crane Witness MP3 player sometimes does not save files after it has recorded them, so I end up with nothing. If I remember, I make a backup recording with my cheap monaural digital voice recorder.
No comedy: I visited with my son and his wife.

Mon Aug 4 = This morning I cut my hairs cuz they were getting pretty long.
- I would have gotten my van brakes fixed before leaving this morning, but had to get to Lexington for a comedy show. The last couple of days I thought the brake noise was due to the rain. Now the grinding is really obnoxious - maybe damaging the rotors, but not a safety issue.
- COMEDY tonight was in Lexington at the Common Grounds Cofee House. A neat place and a rare chance to perform in a non-alcoholic setting.
- Spent the night in the Ashley's Wheel & Brake Service, Inc. parking lot.

Tue Aug 5 = Up early this morning to get my brakes fixed before leaving Lexington. I had Ashley's Wheel & Brake Service, Inc. (they got very good reviews online) replace the rotors since it only cost a little more and the old rotors were barely in specs... and badly scored.

Family Dollar
Louisville Free Public Library branch
Valu Market grocery store
Nearly New thrift store
USPS mailbox
Laughing Derby Comedy Club

- COMEDY tonight was at the Laughing Derby.
- Spent the night in the Mid-City Mall parking lot

Wed Aug 6 = I spent most of the morning at a small locally-owned gym near the Mid-City Mall. Jane, the owner, let me use the gym and their Wifi in exchange for mentioning them at a comedy show.
- COMEDY tonight was at Mulligans Bar & Grill. Doug Reilly, who introduced me, and I were the only comics with the musicians. After the show in the parking lot, one of the young men told me, "You did better than I thought you would, considering it was a music crowd." That made me feel better - especially since the old white-haired man in the black T shirt insisted in talking during my entire set.
- Spent the night in the Mulligan's parking lot, Thank you!

Thu Aug 7 = Hung out in the Mulligan's parking lot until a little after noon in my van - mostly trying to make my

Vaio: new Sony Vaio Duo 11 computer with 11.6" touch screen, Windows 8, 8gb memory and 256gb SSD

print to my HP printer. Then I spent a couple hours over in the corner of Mulligan's updating my website. About 2pm I went to the beautiful W. L. Lyons Brown Library at Bellarmine University for the rest of the afternoon, catching up on this blog and reading instructions for the FLIR i5 Thermographic Camera, which I am considering.
- My last COMEDY appearance in Louisville was tonight at The Bard's Town with a relatively small but fun audience of eleven.
- Spent the night in southeastern Louisville.

Fri Aug 8 = I made it back to my son's toward evening. We watched Ender's Game, which was on my to-watch list of movies. I enjoyed it as it was pretty true to the book.

Sat Aug 9 = I spent quite a bit of time this evening purging the GPS waypoints in my Garmin Nuvi 885T, reducing them from 626 to 457. The hope is that the unit will respond better if I do not have the memory so full.
- Also it appears I fixed my C Crane Witness MP3 player's file problems by reformatting the SD card in the unit itself.

Sun Aug 10 = My third grandchild was born today!
- My GPS still has the same low memory problems of spontaneous reboots, inability to plan cross-country trips and taking half a minute to input a character with the keyboard.

Mon Aug 11 = I visited with my son and his wife and worked on my website, comedy and technology.
- I spent about 45 minutes on the phone with HP (guy from India) to get my battery powered HP OfficeJet printer to work with its bluetooth connection - after about a month of doing without the printer.
- Then with Garmin from Olathe, KS, about the same amount of time to get my Nuvi 885T to not hang up and stuff due to low memory. We were somewhat successful.

Tue Aug 12 = I left for St Louis a little later, having had spent the morning taking care of some finance online, updating my website, packing the van and taking a bath.
- It was a really fun and responsive group for my first St Louis COMEDY appearance; a four-minutes set at the Funny Bone.
- I drove down to O'Fallon, IL for the night to be near Fairview Heights for tomorrow's VFW show.

Wed Aug 13 = What a long, but cool, COMEDY day! I spent until 3pm in the Walmart parking lot organizing all my bits in pencil for the VFW this evening then typing and printing out my trigger outline for the show. I drove down to the VFW Post, and there, practiced and recorded my routine in my van, updated my website in the Post and took a nap back in my van before the show. It appears, by the way the show went, that I hit a good balance between planning, practicing and resting up. It was a good show (my longest yet at 29 minutes) and a good crowd, except for one heckler who tried to carry on a conversation with me and even argued some. I wish I had her loud voice! That part was a good experience for me. Next time I'll deal with the person more decisively. I am not putting the video up on my Comedy web page because of that, there was some loud talking near the microphones I had on the camera and the video is underexposed. If you're curious, though, you can watch it here.
- I met my friend Rich Hehmann for the first time. He came to the show. He has been following me on my website for about four years. It was neat to finally get acquainted with him in person.
- After that show I drove a few blocks to the Hey Guys Comedy Club and got in on the tail end of their show. There I saw several comedians that I had met at The Funny Bone. Arlo and Tracy told me about a wild card comedy show at the Blind Tiger, about 20 miles to the west, across the river, so I followed them to it.
- At the Blind Tiger COMEDY Club I saw a bunch more local comics that already knew me. It was cool. For the open mic, the comedians had an option to draw a giant playing card and do something special for their set, depending on the card. I drew the card for starting my set with some new material that I am working on. It was an excellent bunch - very supportive of me and a lot of fun. After the show, several of the comedians told me that I did well!
- I got to bed later than ever before (2:00am) spending the night in back of the Maplewood Sam's club in a parking place near an east fence where the morning sun would not be too intense, since there were no trees to shade my van in the morning.

Thu Aug 14 = Of course, after last night, I slept in as long as I could. I spent most of the afternoon and into the evening at the University City Public Library in a comfy chair working on my website (uploaded Wednesday's video to YouTube), tonight's routine and reading online about Robin Williams.
- With tonight's COMEDY performance my audience total topped 2,000. It was at Fitz's Root Beer at 10pm. Good group (you really couldn't call it a crowd) included around a half dozen of my local comedian friends. I started out with a short tribute to Robin Williams, then went into a routine that St Louis had not heard before.
- I got to bed about 1:30am in the public parking lot to the north of Fitz's - shady in the morning until about 9:30.

Fri Aug 15 = I slept in then went to Fitz's Root Beer and had the biggest root beer float ever. Also the most expensive, tipping the till at $6.57.

The biggest root beer float!

Fitz's bottling their orange soda. Photos by Louis Self

- I was the only COMEDIAN at the Hartford Coffee Company's open mic. About a five dozen others offered some good music and poetry. I did 9:28 with a tribute to Robin Williams and some new material about technology. All us performers had a second round since there was time left. I did 6 minutes of my Old Man Routine, which was a hit.
- During the night my left lower back started to give me lots of pain.

Sat Aug 16 = My big project today was to print out 22 poster post cards and getting them in the mail in time to go out today. I spent most of the rest of the afternoon in the Granite City Library and then in their parking lot. Got bored in the process, went to bed early at the Granite City Walmart.

Sun Aug 17 = Today I did a medium-weight full body workout at the Edwardsville, IL YMCA. This afternoon I met my friend, Rich Hehmann, at the STL Soaring field. Unfortunately there was rain and clouds so we could not fly, but Rich DID give me a cook's tour of their hangers, facilities and grass airstrip. I also got to meet a lot of cool dudes who fly - mostly gliders. I saw some state-of-the-art gliders that would have knocked my sox off, had I been wearing some. Around 4pm Rich and I flew our RC helicopters one battery each - him, his Blade mCP X BL and me, 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

.
- Spent the night in Wentzville, MO.

Mon Aug 18 = My van got too hot for comfort, so I added 12oz of freon to the AC - $10 worth from Walmart. It got cooler, and then cold over the next three or so days.
- The thing that impressed me most about my drive was seeing the huge Federal Reserve Bank in Kansas City. Yup, I drove right past it on Main Street.
- COMEDY this evening was at Kansas City, MO's Uptown Arts & Bar. It was a good group and they appreciated my Kiteboarding and Inventing Routine.
- I spent the night in Gardner, KS, on the way to Hutchinson.

Tue Aug 19 = About 2:30pm in Hutchinson, KS, I met

Stan: Stanley, my older brother who is a machinist for Eaton Corporation in Hutchinson

, at the mall. That kicked off two half days ofgood visiting.

Wed Aug 20 = This morning I researched and phoned Tom Docking who was a student in my first class - a fifth grade at Pershing Elementary School in Arkansas City. Having just turned 60, he has been in politics and is now a successful attorney, specializing in fun stuff like taxes.
- My last COMEDY appearance for the trip was tonight at the Loony Bin Comedy Club in Wichita, KS. What a finish! The crowd of about 28 enjoyed my Old Guys Get Lost, Pee & Voice Surgery Routine, abbreviated to fit in the five minutes I was allowed.
- I spent the night at a Walmart in Wichita on West Kellog.

Thu Aug 21 = Long driving day, 700 miles, spending the night in Gallup, NM.

Fri Aug 22 = Arrived home about supper time, but on the way stopped by Christopher creek for a delicious broccoli/chicken lunch with

Rose Anne: my X

. We caught up on the deck, the kids, comedy and everything else under the sun. Also on the way home I stopped by the Mazatzal and Ft. McDowell casinos to see about possibly doing comedy there.
- Home at last. Walking in, it seemed strangely familiar.

had 61 comedy appearances from Wichita to Washington, DC
brought my total audience count to 2,109
was gone 123 days or 4 months and 2 days
added 10,771 miles to my van, which is now over 290,000
pumped 595.35 gallons of gasoline into the van
costing an average of $3.54/gal.
for a total gas expense of $1,941.06
arrived home to 18.8 lb of mail (Thanks for collecting it, Greg & Brenda)

- I logged all the temperatures and other monitors I had set around my house while I was gone. The most significant things were that there was a power outage in May and I accidentally left the thermostat on 82° F rather than 88. Also a neighbor informed me that he shut off my drip water due to a leak in the main feed line a few days ago but there had been enough rain to keep my myoporums from dying.

Sat Aug 23 = I'm starting 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

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

most mornings now - starting conservatively and building up.
- Speaking of building up, I am getting back into the gym. I'll plan on working up to doing six workouts a day: three heavy and three light. I started it off today at 24-Hour Fitness on my way to tonight's hamfeast. It was god to see my ham friends again.

Sun Aug 24 = Flew Nano; 30-minute workout at Fitness 1; put things away from the trip; ordered 2, 1-lb bags of psyllium husks. This evening I repaired the big leak in the front yard drip feed line which revealed a smaller leak about a foot downstream.

Mon Aug 25 = Today I did an initial sort of my 18.8 pounds of mail. It resulted in ten pieces of mail to open immediately and about 20 pieces of mail to open within the week.
- My two printers are not working: Canon iP4800 & HP OfficeJet 100 bluetooth/battery. I tried lots of things that did not work.
- This evening I repaired the second leak in my front yard drip main feed line. Now there are three repairs within about four feet of line.

Tue Aug 26 = Doctor appointments today included my PCP and optometrist. No significant changes

Wed Aug 27 = This afternoon I had my semiannual dermatologist appointment (nothing found) and made six of my delicious Protein Frosties. This evening I used my van refrigerator as a freezer for ice cream sandwiches by turning it as cold as it would go with a bunch of plastic grocery bags in the bottom to reduce the cooled volume - got eight degrees - not bad considering how hot the weather and van were. I stopped by the 20th St & Camelback LA Fitness for a workout on the way down to appear at StandUp Scottsdale

Thu Aug 28 = This afternoon I emailed Last Comic Standing. I'm sure I'm not good enough to be selected for the show, but I'll let them decide.

Fri Aug 29 = My cell phone batteries are lasting all day, now that I am using the external wall charger that I forgot to take with me on my road trip. I expect the batteries to last much longer since it charges the batteries more slowly, and does not heat them up in the process - apparently much better than using a USB cord with the phone.

Sat Aug 30 = I'm now tracking the voltages of 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

's flight batteries - particularly after the flights. It seems this is the best way to determine when a battery needs to be replaced. Occasionally I'll get only a short flight out of a battery that is still good, so tracking the post-flight voltages seems to be a good solution. As a result, I retired battery S, not using it today and got out the new battery U from cold storage to use tomorrow.
- On my way to this evening's hamfeast I stopped by the Northsight Walmart Vision Center and learned that they could not solder my broken titanium prescription glasses temple. No one showed up at the ham feast but Drew and me and he was leaving when I got there, so I went home and fixed my own nutritious and inexpensive meal. Seventy miles of wasted driving.

Sun Aug 31 = Herman came over to take care of all the weeds in my front yard - big and pleantiful.
- I replaced the battery in my Timex watch. It is the first time I had the battery in a watch die suddenly with no warning.
- I cried this afternoon, writing a tribute to Robin Williams that I plan to use at StandUp Scottsdale on Wednesday.

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