"Hard times ain't gonna rule my mind . . ."
Gillian Welch
Tuesday, nutty day. Grinding all day and spill out onto the sidewalk at 5:40, could so easily skip. But head north and west instead of north and east for gym time. It's packed and I don't want to miss 7:20 boat so this'll be short:
Double clean & press
5x20
4x24
3x28
1x32x2
20+20 step back lunges, bodyweight
10 20kg figure 8 to hold, to 10 24kg figure 8 to hold.
10 front squats, twin 20.
3x through, that's all. Heavy presses not very good.
Wednesday
More nutty but bail for noon Pradeep. Weighing in at four pounds heavier than usual but don't really feel it, who knows. Smoking class.
Joy gets sucked out of that very fast back in office and it's back to grinding well into the evening. The to do list is growing longer and longer while accounts shrink smaller and smaller and feel like a rat on a wheel. Cooking dinner and returning emails while the dog looks on longingly.
Thursday
Long long day
In late for:
10+10 x 3 16kg single arm swing warm up.
Burpees to 3 pushups to twin 32 suitcase deads x 5
10 double snatches, 16kg
5+5 slsx2, 16kgbu second round
20 renegade rows, 24kg
X3
Double snatches fun and 16 light so bump to 20 last set;
10 double 20 swing/snatch to 28kg tgu
X5
Fun.
Friday
Streaming Gillian and Dave on way in; feels like fall.
Long unproductive day; I do not do lunch well, particularly when gotta drive to walnut creek for it. Back just long enough to screw around, then to 5:00 Pradeep.
Toughest yoga class I've ever done. Boat load of plank variations and core work as well as one foot work, yes my favorite. He knows and gives me the big fist bump in hte locker room, smiling broadly.
Saturday
Planned rest day; walk with Ian in the Marsh, dinner at Anne's and watch him smile.
Sunday
Up at 6:30 to get Amy into sf. Drop her at ucsf and spend an hour before 9:30 class with feet up the wall. It's Alley and she is pretty good and its a fairly tough class for her which is fine; full blown sweatfest, then back up, another dog walk with Ian. That's all and was enough, iron tomorrow.
“Bizarre travel plans are dancing lessons from God.”
Kurt Vonnegut
No more Interrupted, back to this
Saturday:
10+10 x 5 16kg single arm swing warm-up
short cycle 24kg press 1-5+1-5 press ladder
suitcase deads, 10 32/36
figure 8 to hold, 10 20kg to 10 24kg
clean and hold five count, 5+5 36kg
x5
Buckley training,
40+40 16kg snatch
15+15 swing/snatch drill, 24kg
2 16kg insertion drill
Sunday:
Dog walk. 10/9, her seventh birthday. We both are at least middle aged. Good. Brigid threw the old ball she'd found way out and it sank, leading to one very confused labrador.
Monday
3+3 x 10 16kg single arm swing
20 28kg swings to 1 28 kg TGU x 10
GS snatch, 50 + 50 16kg in five minutes. Pretty shaky. Supposed to do 22 insertion drill with the 24, but sapped due to the TGU's. Later.
Excellent texts from IST on safari seeing ostrich, lions, and elephants. Oh my. Really nice guy running the trip. Super responsive and IST is clearly having a ball.
Tuesday
Brutal day, followed by 60 min mh stiff guy. Run in late and kill it. Good class, all hips.
Wednesday
In late for not much
8+8 28kg floor press to 10 push-ups
10 double 20 kg front squats
10+10 28kg rows
10 steps ups on to low box, 24 in rack
3x. No time for more.
Thursday, EH class, good.
Friday, LPS retreat, nothing
Saturday
Run around planning for IST return. Rebuild his bed. Shop. No exercise.
We are late to airport but not very and he looks like himself except fitter and darker. Hair is longer and more of it, which I would have thought impossible. Fun to listen to him talk and go off on baboons. Brigid does an awesome job on dinner which is ready to go when we get home and he sits down and starts slamming ham.
Sunday
Up to watch football and reconnect. We go on a long dog walk and I toss up softballs and he spits it out. He has a very good eye and describes the intersection of wildlife, tourism, and poverty. He is funny and shy and worried about his future. He has made many friends and learned how to handle himself in foreign places. He is missed. I listen and am struck by how little I can do at this point. He needs to figure out what he wants to do and do it.
It's late, go out for:
10+10 x 3 16kg swing warmup
20 push-ups, one foot up, switch at 10.
10 suitcase deads, 32/36
Rows, 5+5 36 to 5+5 32. One way to make a 32kg feel light: pull a 36kg beforehand.
10 24kg Goblet Squats
3x
Want to do heavy swings but nasty tear at base of right hand little finger and cut on index figure screw up grip. It'd be ok on the 24 and probably the 32, but the 36 allows for no hinky grip stuff and I shut that down after 20.
50+50 16kg gs snatches, 4:45.
Do about half the insertion drills I'm supposed to with the 24, can't complete more than 12 on each side, though JWB wants 22
Monday
Pradeep class, really smoking. Have missed him and the drenching 60 minutes that ensues. Getting better, right hand firmly outside left foot in reverse triangle, other side better.
"Music can change the world because it can change people."
Bono
The best weekend of the year for the past decade has been the first weekend in October when Warren Hellman's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass takes over GGP, surrounding environs snd the aural narrative. We become gluttons, cannot get enough of the banquet though it's far too large to be consumed in its entirety.
This year it was full day Friday. Took day off, into SF at 4:14 a.m. Drop tarp at Banjo, looking forward to Seldom Scene et al. Parking spot at 26th and Fulton, curl up in van and sleep for three hours. Take the 5 Fulton downtown. Transfer to Civic Center underground. At Ferry Plaza by 8:40 to catch 9:10 boat back to Larkspur to pick up B.
Incoming text from IST 10,000 miles away needing cash. Cannot get on internet for 15 minutes for transfer cause Peets network is fucked up. Worried immediately, thoughts of middle manchild getting roughed up in an alley in Shimoni (which is all alleys) cause he can't pay his bar bill. This is silly, but not at the banquet yet.
Snarky useless telephone calls on way up. Collect B and head back. He is all smiles as he will be all weekend. This is his favorite thing ever, and his face is pressed up against glass, watching the bay slide by.
Back to FP and now had too much coffee. We are back by 10:15, but need to get Ian his dollars and deal with client needs. Spend the next two hours messing with a completely fucked up Bank website and protecting my staff from a mentally disturbed client. We miss Seldom Scene completely, but catch most of Bromberg.
In the Fall of 1977 I started what would devolve into a three year stint at Humboldt State University before transferring to the University of California at Berkeley, the finest public education institution in the country; superior to many many private institutions but particulalry the one in Palo Alto. I am pretty proud of the academic success that would eventually unfold, but in 1977 the ability to sneak into the scorekeeper's box in the HSU gym was the extent of my academic prowess. From there I saw what remains one of the best shows I have ever seen, the David Bromberg Band blowing it out. From rags to reels to pure art pieces like Lower Left Hand Corner of The Night, Bromberg blew it out that night like nothing I'd heard.
Lower Left Hand remains one of the best Telecaster ballads ever.
David was on stage when B and I arrived by 1 plus. David has lost chops over the years, he just has. But B went apeshit over Will Not Be Your Fool, and far be it from me to deny the young man the angry man influence or at least amusement.
From there it was John Prine which means an hour of bawling; he does not tug at the hearstings, he moves in slow from the side puts up a mirror sets up a narrative and pretty you feel it in your spine. Hello in there, ya'll look Pretty Good. There is no finer American songwriter and he killed it.
John gave way to Robert Plant and Band of Joy. Elder statesman rock gods are frequently not what they once were, Robert is better. Don't know if he can scream all night like he used to (he let loose a few, glancing over at Patty Griffin and rolling his eyes), but he doesn't need to. His material is superior and the re-worked zep tunes awesome. Darryl Scott can play anything with strings and they roll in to Ramble On with Darryl pounding out the acoustic rythym and it's just nuts.
Saturday Anne and Brigid are coming and it's blue placard section. Only way can talk Anne into it; we set up for an all day stint at Rooster. Wronglers are great and then its british cult guy Robyn Hitchcock. The only very slight downer this day is that we gotta choose between Gillian Welch and Punch Brothers. We'd already decided on Punch after not missing Gillian ever. So Robyn calls out Abigail Washburn to play on his second tune and Gillian and Dave saunter in from stage left and hang out the rest of the set as the band. It's great.
From there its Guy Clark who cant remember the words to maybe a quarter of his tunes, which is amusing, but . . .
Patty Griffin comes out with Buddy Miller. They slam into her material and Lorraine just kills. I see Robert hanging out back stage and he sidles out and stands right in back of us. I collar B and approach, at first he shakes his head; sees B, kneels down and shakes his hand. His assistant offers to take a picture and we get it. Very nice of him, considering he must be beseiged.
They give way to Punch Brothers and it's all young men and pyrotechnics. There is no more progressive string ensemble in the folk/americana/bluegrass universe. Asked Anne what she thought: "a group of extraordinarily talented well-educated young men who have found their way in the world." Works.
We hang for half of Robert Earl Keen, Barry getting up and getting down to Dreadful Selfish Crime.
Sunday
That's two days with no exercise so B and I get in for 60 min youga with Alley Ramon at 9:30 to kick it off; good to sweat. Head back up for half of Laurie Lewis, then to Bela Fleck, Zakir Hussein and Edger Meyer. We are in the blue placard section in from of Banjo, eight feet from the stage. Bela et al are great but subtle and B's guys are gently dancing.
Subtle goes out the window with the Blind Boys of Alabama. Tight tight set:
Norman Greenbaum never sounded like this.
Have not hung at Banjo on a Sunday in four years. In recent times it's been Gandalf Murphy, OCMS, and the Avett's at either Rooster or Arrow, Arrow in particular has been great. But Emmylou's current band The Red Dirt Boy's is full of young and not quite so young gunslingers and their set from Newport has been streaming on NPR and it is something else. Was not going to miss it. So Ralph Stanley was before. Straight up bluegrass, had to get some in over the weekend. Not into the evangelical elvis grandson, but the band was good and it got B going.
Emmylou comes on. She'd be beautiful standing on a sidewalk in the pouring rain. She sings Kern River, she talks about stray dogs, writes loves songs to them and leads her band with a look; yeah, guys can't hang with her. So we listen in rapt adoration eight feet away while she sings those sad songs and makes skin crawl.
Big final number with the world on stage: Jim Lauderdale, Gillian and Dave, Steve Earle, Buddy, and the Band, et al. Warren Hellman in the middle where he belongs.
This is the best weekend of the year. We keep it with us, as with the blowouts on the mat, the walks with the dog, the iron in the hand. It makes us better all year just knowing it'll come around, and if it stopped tomorrow, we'd still be better for it forever. It's what art does.
Oh yeah, got two yoga classes and two good kettlebell workouts. Four days: training interrupted.
Monday. Glow gone immediately upon arising and see that client has once again in hospital with more bad bad stuff. Gotta build a buffer here, I know walking away from her would be devastating to her but this is becoming unhealthy. Get in Monday late for this:
short cycle clean and press:
5+5 20kg
4+4 24
3+3 28
1+1 x 2 32
10+10 step back lunge, 24kg in rack.
5+3 assisted pullups, 16lbs
5+5 sls x 2m 16kg in rack second through
x3
Nothing at end, no time.
Tuesday Wednesday. Brutal, difficult stuff. Training interrupted.
Thursday:
In late:
5 manmakers, three pushups, twin 32 on suitcase deads
10 + 10 stepback lunges, 60lb dumbells
10+10 rows, no bench, 65lb dumbbell
5+5 single leg dead GTG practice, 24kg
x3
GS Buckley training
5+5 16kg insertion drill
3 min snatches, 10+10 no breaks, 16
10+1- swing/snatch combo, 24 kg, no breaks
Insertion drill repeat.
I need to do some get ups.
Friday:
Text comes in from Ian at 5:46 am. Announcing he is making his way from city center in Mombasa to hostel. Another text at 8:30, he still has not gotten there, they have been lost for three hours. Ok, its four miles from City Center to the hostel. Immediately convinced he is about to be sold into white slavery. At 9:10, he announces he has arrived and Backpackers Nirvana Hostel. Pheww. He posts on facebook how awesome the place is great.
At noon receive an email from Backpackers Nirvana; he has not shown up. Shit. He is at some hostel, but quick google search reveals wide range of safety, one we are pretty sure is in has good reviews but multiple reports of robberies at knife point in from of it. Really bad for the head. I send him text and he gets on Facebook at 3 am his time. He still thinks he is where he is supposed to be. He figures it out and we figure it out, and by midday following he is where he should be after 20 hours: "enjoying it tremendously." That not resolved until really late and that plus full day of bad bad client drama has cortisol levels off the charts. Two kbell workouts and ONE yoga class, worst week for yoga in probably a year.
But over all that, hangs this:
He was an artist. Art can changes the world because it can change people. He made the world an better place not by spreading money around but by empowering people. So make art.
