…but haven’t had the time. Been flat-out working hard. I just wanted to post this as more a reminder to myself than anything else:

How hard would it be, really, for someone who’s done some electrician pre-apprenticeship work and is pretty good at picking things up anyway, to rig up turn signals and brake lights for a bike? Ones that actually make sense, where the signal lights are about 18″ apart rather than right next to each other, so cars can tell pretty easily which signal is on? Sure, it’s been seventeen years since that pre-apprenticeship, but some poking around on teh intarwebs and a trip to home depot—I could do this.

Right after I finish the other long list of things I need to do with the sekrit projekt bike.

The only real bar to it is that I’m not so handy. Very much not so handy. But I’m doing all the work on the sekrit projekt bike, and so far, so good. I haven’t killed myself with badly adjusted brakes or by trapping the tube under the bead of the tire while installing it, etc., etc.

So far, I have (and this is another reminder to myself, because the longer this goes on, the more I’m going to forget I did):

• Assembled it out of the box (was mostly assembled in the box, though, so no biggie)
• Assembled the front brake because I stupidly disassembled it when I was assembling the bike…don’t ask
• Trued the front wheel (I’m still dancing around a little about this, and it was over a week ago)
• Replaced misnamed ‘Slickasaurus’ tires with actual slicks
• Replaced Tektro brake pads with Kool Stops
• Changed out stock saddle for used Brooks B-17 from ebay
• Threw on cheap ‘touring’ platform pedals
• Fashioned a Chap Stick holder for the handle bars (a girl’s got her priorities)
• Installed front and rear lights—whoop-de-do, watch me turn a screwdriver
• Installed rear rack
• Rigged up bukkits for rear rack…had a bukkit failure while testing them in Lexington…back to drawing board (note: order more bukkits)

Tomorrow after work I’m changing out the stem, from 60 mm at a 30˚ angle to a 90 mm angle-adjustable stem that I’m starting out at 10˚. See, the next frame size up on the sekrit projekt bike, the standover height was too much; I’d have been riding the top tube with my crotch when I straddled it. Especially given that I’m usually wearing fairly thin-soled Converses. But the size I did get feels cramped in the cockpit—I keep pushing my butt back onto the rear edge of the saddle, and the saddle itself is as far back on the rails as it can go. I have this constant feeling of needing. more. space. Changing out the stem—longer, lower—will increase the reach. What’s strange is that the sekrit projekt bike is bigger in many ways than my road bike, so it makes no sense (to me) that it’s cramped. Look:

I don’t have a top tube length or stem length/angle for the road bike; I’ll have to dig out the measuring tape at some point and see how they match up. I think extending the reach with the new stem is going to make an appreciable difference. I’ve just been dragging my feet on it because it will likely involve replacing some, if not all, of the cables.

Anyway, I just wanted to remind myself to work on a turn signal/brake light system sometime next year.

And. I’m 37 today. That’s not a bad number. Has more of a ring to it than ‘36′. And Mark, as usual, made sure it wasn’t at all painful making the transition from one number to the next. He rules. But now I am so full. Yet wanting MOAR ice cream pie.

So. not. fair.

Mark snapped a pic while we were out having dinner:

And this was apparently the “good” one of the pics he snapped. *sigh*

Or, more importanly, look at BRMC, but we’re there, too!

Video: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club doing “Spread Your Love” at V Fest 2008

Could they have caught me looking any more unenthused?

(Sorry—couldn’t resist.)

We were coming up our road this evening, and what did we see sitting at the bottom of our driveway making a meal out of our garbage can but another black bear. The car scared it off some, maybe forty feet, and it stood watching from the woods as Mark righted the can and shoved everything back into it. I don’t know if it was the mama bear from before or maybe a male. I didn’t see any cubs. He or she sure looked like she couldn’t wait for us to leave so she could get back to her dinner.

I’ve been using Priceline pretty extensively to get hotels this year. I kind of go through periods of using it, and then forgetting it exists. I think I first used it in…1999? Our best deal so far, this time around, has been the Hilton in Charlotte’s University area last weekend. $99 off what we’d have paid if we’d gone through the hotel’s reservation system.

This morning, I  got us two nights at the Crowne Plaza in Lexington for next weekend—for the same price we paid to stay at the kinda scuzzy Quality Inn & Suites there earlier this year (which was before I re-remembered Priceline). I love Crowne Plazas. (We stayed two nights in the one in Knoxville, and last year for a Godsmack concert concert we Pricelined the one in downtown Charlotte.)

Priceline is my new BFF.

I wish I’d remembered it back in January for the Marilyn Manson show. Instead we stayed at a place across the street from a homeless shelter. It wasn’t much of a step up from the homeless shelter. I’ve stayed at plenty of dives, but this was the first time I was leery of lying on the hotel’s sheets. Also, despite being drenched in my own and other people’s sweat, I was not getting in that shower.

I dragged Mark to the venue early so we could get a good spot in line for tonight’s show. I don’t get it, though. When we got there, there were a few people sitting at the entrances to some of the lines, but other lines were completely empty and people were just hanging out and sitting around in the general area. Why get there an hour early only to hang out in the vicinity of the line? Not that I’m complaining, ’cause I just walked up to a completely empty line and plopped my butt down.

And how did this work out for me?

VERY WELL, THANK YOU. Mark and I were on the rail, just a few feet to the left (if you’re facing the stage) of center, for the whole damn show.

Tab the Band was the first opener, playing a handful of songs. They weren’t too bad. I’d see ‘em if they came to Asheville, I guess. I’ll at least check them out online.

Then BRMC came on. MmmmBRMC. Ten shows now, and not a single disappointment. They played nine songs–666 Conducer, Berlin, Took Out a Loan, In Like the Rose, Ain’t No Easy Way, Steal a Ride, Shuffle Your Feet, Six Barrel Shotgun and Spread Your Love–and rocked. My only wish is that they’d been a little louder. I left their set at V Fest with my ears feeling like they were stuffed with cotton (and probably they should have been; I have a really great set of earplugs…and I always forget to bring them). Tonight, though, wasn’t quite there. I guess they save the volume for STP. :)

God, I love BRMC. And they played “Steal a Ride!” And I’ll tell ya, “Ain’t No Easy Way” never gets old live. Never. It kicks you in the ass every time.

Robert Levon Been, BRMC:

Robert Levon Been with his hat for the final song:

Peter Hayes, BRMC:

After them, we had a looooooooooong wait for Stone Temple Pilots. More than an hour and twenty minutes! But Ho. Ly. Shit. What a fantastic fucking show. It was loud and intense and they were totally “on.”

Scott Weiland, STP:

Scott Weiland, STP:

Robert DeLeo:

STP:

STP:

No more shows till Saturday, when we catch BRMC/STP again, this time with Jake and his girlfriend. (Tonight we had Mark’s son Neil and his girlfriend with us. Sort of. They were a couple rows behind us.)

Wow. I’m looking forward to Saturday.

(Oh, one final note: wow. Another really, unexpectedly tame audience. What’s going on, people?!)

Photos care of Mark, who took pictures, so I didn’t have to.

NIN just announced more North America tour dates for 2008. They’ll be coming to Greenville, SC, November 1st—to the Bi-Lo Center, which Mark has always told me has great acoustics (but no one I want to see ever goes there. Till now.) I was going to go to the Deerhunter show here in Asheville that night, but…never mind!

(Hahaha. Mark just came up the stairs: “When do they play Nashville? Is that November, too?”

“Halloween.”

“What day is that?”

“Friday. They’re going from Nashville to Greenville. We could go from Nashville to Greenville, too, if we were feeling froggy….but we’ll have just driven 12 hours on the 28th (up from New Orleans). Not that that’s stopped us from getting back in a car. I should just take that whole week off.”

“I wouldn’t have any vacation left for Christmas.”

“I don’t usually take vacation then.”

“I’d be giving my Christmas vacation to NIN.”)

I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had a chance to report on the Duluth, GA, show. We had floor tickets, and even though by the time we got there and got our wristbands the regular ticketholders were being let in, we started the show just one row back from the rail in front of Justin Meldal-Johnsen. (Sorry, Mark, for being so, um, testy up till then.) We had a good time meeting and talking with people around us, and then Deerhunter came on. I enjoy Deerhunter—I’m developing an appreciation for droning bands with unintelligble vocals. (In fact, I prefer the newer album from Black Angels over their older one mainly because the lyrics on the early one are too easy to make out. Not that I want all of the music I listen to to be like that, but there are times and places when I do want that sort of thing.) I also like how Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox deals with pissy NIN fans, from the plastered on rictus grin to the “You guys are awesome, Thank you!!! Especially you in the middle flicking me off! You rule!” Mark was disappointed that Bradford wasn’t wearing the cheerleader uniform like he had the night before. This time Whitney Petty, one of the guitarists, was wearing it. A few songs in, Mark said, “Was there a girl in the band last night?” Haha—he hadn’t noticed, even though she was closest to us from where we were sitting.

They finished up and we all went back to standing around waiting for NIN. The ladies we’d met got enormous plastic cups of Coke, which I was sure I’d end up wearing. And then the lights went down.

I was expecting the crowd to surge forward and squish us all together when “999,999″ started. Or “1,000,000″ even. But nope—we had a disconcerting plentitude of personal space for most of the show. It got kinda rowdy during “March of the Pigs,” “Gave Up” and “Terrible Lie,” but the rowdiness was fleeting. I would have preferred a rougher pit.

(Mark did, though, nearly get in a fight he didn’t set out to start. He was prepared to finish it, too, but fortunately didn’t have to.)

Trent surprised us with a few songs: “The Frail” led into “The Wretched” instead of “Closer” (yay!). He threw in “Down In It,” which was all right—I’m kind of worn out on that one, but it’s still neat to have a surprise in the setlist. But then “Reptile!” “REPTILE!” 31 songs altogether, and I spent the whole thing (when I wasn’t annoyed at the two women near us who kept talking to each other and playing with their cameras/cell phones) wishing the band wouldn’t ever get around to the final song and leave. It was fantastic.

Afterward, we went to the Loafing Leprechaun, which is now going to be a tradition for any show I go to Gwinett Arena for.

Oh, and when I saw the new list of NIN tour dates this morning, I went, “Omg! They’re going to be in New Orleans October 25th! WE’RE going to be in New Orleans October 25!” It’s early and I have a headache, that’s my excuse….

Wes Borland, according to his latest post on Black Light Burns’ MySpace blog, is joining Marilyn Manson “for the time being” (but Black Light Burns is still “full on and everything is great”—and they have a second album coming out before too much longer. (The recently released covers & instruments album doesn’t count as a second album, according to Borland.)

Joining MM.

That is sick.

I hope he’s with them long enough for me to catch a show.

Him and Twiggy. Just… yeah.

I’m not gonna grow up to be a concert photographer, but since we went with reserved seats for this show, I figured I’d give it a try. Apologies in advance!

Here’s the stage.

Before the show started, they lowered a rack of lights and…

Oh look at our shitty view! A lot of us at our end of section F (for “fail”) scrambled to find places where we might actually see something besides legs. Thank god they raised the rack a couple songs in; otherwise I would have been really pissy by the end of the show. These were presale tickets! They were supposed to be great seats!

That’s what I get for getting seats, though, huh? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I looked longingly at the people on the floor…

…and decided that despite the road rash and bruises and my inappropriate footwear (canvas slip-on/slip-off sneakers that will surely get lost in the pit if I don’t wrap tape around them to hold them to my feet) I will not hang back by the soundboard tomorrow night in Duluth after all. I want to be smushed up with a bunch of sweaty, screaming, jumping, danging, singing, losing-their-minds people. With seats you just feel so…isolated. I do, at least. If I’m not smushed in with people, I am annoying cognizant of my individualness. I’m a unit. A single, detached entity.

In the crowd, that awareness slips away (usually to the floor, where it gets stomped on and requires a few days recovery afterward).

…um.

So anyway…like I said, after they raised the light rack, we had a good view:

And I was excited to be facing the side of the stage. I’d already seen the full effect of the show on Sunday, so tonight I got the super-cool “behind the scenes” view—just how do they pull off some of their coolest effects? It turns out it’s a three-screen thing, with a normalish screen at the far back and two curved screens (more like metal meshes) that can come down around the band. Here’s how they pull off making it look like there’s a torrential downpour coming down on the band:

Because the front two screens are meshes, wherever “video”—or whatever you’d call it—isn’t projected, you can see right through to whatever’s behind it, like the band, and more rain, and finally the backmost screen, with yet more rain. From a front-on view, it’s amazing.

This is the set for the Ghosts-mix version of “Piggy,” which is fantastic. From the front you see some very cool pulsing effects. When I saw them in Baltimore, I’d had no idea they were layered like this.

Below is a shot from “Only” —layers of white noise. The song opens with “I’m becoming less defined, as days go by, fading away, and well you could say I’m losing focus…,” and the white noise works for it very well.

Also, the screen is heat-sensing, so Trent is able to clear away white noise with his body movements. Very cool. (Earlier in the show, at the end of “The Greater Good,” a stage hand came out with a stage light and “washed” the mess on the screen off by shining it up and down the screen like it was a big paint brush. Sorry—no pics of that.)

Below is the effect for the chorus of “Only.” When you’re looking at this straight-on, you more or less just see Trent singing and static along the bottom. The band is there on the stage, but the lighting—when you’re viewing this from the front—makes the band more or less disappear into the shadows. This is while Trent is singing, “There is no you, there is only me. There is no you, there is only me.”

I tried to get a picture of Josh setting the drum sequencer at the beginning of “Echoplex,” but it was just a white blob…so you’re stuck with my crappy description (and I’m working from memory, so if I get a detail wrong…whatever. I hit my head earlier today.). There’s a screen with three rows of white-outlined boxes (with a line snaking through, but that’s not important—looks cool, but not important). When Josh puts his hand out toward a box, it turns solid red—and it adds a beat to the drum sequence, so he’s essentially programming the drum sequencer via this giant screen on stage. It’s kind of like that piano Tom Hanks played with his feet in Big (if you saw Big when it first came out, not after you could buy those pianos and no one thought you were cool if you did) only…cooler. ‘Cause it’s NIN, and not Tom Hanks.

Anyway. One more shot, from “In This Twilight”:

As this song ends, each band member, one by one, is spotlighted. He stops playing, raises a hand in farewell, and leaves the stage. It’s brilliant. Really a powerful way to end the show.

I’m stoked that the setlists this tour are so heavily focused on the latest three albums: four songs from Ghosts, six from The Slip and seven from Year Zero. Seventeen songs altogether from material released over just the last year and a half. And omg it’s fantastic! I love my NIN CDs, but they don’t compare to how they do these things live.

Tomorrow…. Georgia!

I got Mark lost today, out riding our bikes over to the Coliseum to pick up our NIN pre-sale tickets. Mostly I got us lost ’cause I had it lodged in my head that NIN was playing…someplace entirely other than the Coliseum. So we wound up way far away from where we needed to be, and ended up asking a cop for directions (once I figured out that we actually needed to be going to the Coliseum).

Once we got heading the right direction, we were speeding along, enjoying a nice ride alongside the river, when we came across some killer railroad tracks. Killer. Railroad. Tracks. My tire dropped into the groove between one of the tracks and the road, and down I went. As I hit the ground, I had enough time to think, “Well at least I didn’t hit my—”clunk. Add a new helmet to the shopping list.

Mark, right behind me, had two options: run over me or fall to avoid running over me. Being a real gentleman, he fell. Then a motorcycle and three or four cars whizzed by his head…like a foot away. Scary stuff.

I’d like to thank everyone who stopped and asked if we were all right….

*eyeroll*

Anyhow, banged up and scraped up, we got back to our feet, shook our bikes off, and headed on our way.

Did I mention I hit my head?

So, we were riding along and came to this great, open road with fantastic, wide shoulders, and I was pedaling happily along….

And Mark said, “This looks like the fucking freeway.”

Ha. Whoops.

Eventually we did find the coliseum. Coming back was much quicker. We’re really not very far away at all.

And the same three buses from behind the hotel were parked at there.

Things learned from today:

• Do not rely on my brain.
• Do not rely on my brain.
• Mark should handle directions from now on.
• Do not rely on my brain.

The scraped knee. I also have eleven bruises and a sore wrist.

But I had a good time! :D

Mark got a scraped shoulder and arm out of it. Both bikes came out of it pretty well, too. Mark hasn’t found any scrapes on his, and on mine it’s just the left brake hood that’s scuffed. Not bad, not bad.

I <3 my bike.

We were headed out of Baltimore on our way back to Asheville when Mark said, “It’s kind of silly to drive all the way home today just to leave for Knoxville tomorrow.” So I called Hertz and the dog kennel to extend our car rental and Jack’s vacation, then we stopped at a wifi spot to Priceline a hotel…and here we are in Knoxville! (With three buses parked behind the hotel. Not bad, huh?)

We got here around 7:00pm, and I dragged Mark out for a bike ride (which is how we ran across the buses) (and it didn’t really take much dragging). It’s a lot hillier here than Baltimore, but either it’s not as hilly as Asheville or the new bike I got Friday (shhh–it’s part of a sekrit prodgekt) just kicks ass on hills. I guess we’ll see when I get a chance to ride it in Asheville.

(But: OMG I LOVE THIS BIKE.)

And now, several hours later, I’ve jury-rigged an Internet connection (Mark’s Macbook has no problems connecting here; mine throws up nothing but blank web pages) and caught up with my work email. And we’ve ordered bananas foster and coffee from room service (which sounds like a grand idea now, but wait till I have to sign the hotel bill when we check out–eeeesh).

Can’t wait to get my work out of the way tomorrow and go for another bike ride, BEFORE THE NIN SHOW.

(Did I mention I love this bike?)

OMG a NIN show.

..the only day we went. :)

Gates opened at 10; Mark and I were out of our hotel at 8:00. For some reason I didn’t picture there being parking at the subways station (what? I know. Go figure.) so we walked, and it turned out to be a longer walk than it had looked like on Google Maps. Took the subway to the bus to Pimlico and waited around for the gates to open. And of course we were at the south entrance, and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club were scheduled on the north stage (at noon, but IT’S NEVER TOO EARLY TO GET TO THE BARRIER), so I power-walked across the festival with Mark…somewhere behind me.

And we got on the barrier. But we didn’t just get on the barrier—we got there in time to catch 2/3rds of BRMC soundchecking. Nice. (Robert was missing. He appeared to be a little stunned by having to be awake so early in the day.)

BRMC had a very short set with just eight songs on their setlist and a ninth squeezed in before their time was up. They played: 666 Conducer, Weapon of Choice, Berlin, Shuffle Your Feet, Ain’t No Easy Way, Salvation, Six Barrel Shotgun, Spread Your Love and Whatever Happened To My Rock ‘N Roll (Punk Song). Leia’s great on drums. No disappointment there at all. Mark was happy to get to see Salvation live.

Robert Levon Been, BRMC

Peter Hayes, BRMC

Leia Shapiro and Peter Hayes, BRMC

BRMC finished at 12:45, and we didn’t have another band we were super interested in seeing till 6:20. We could have camped out at our barrier spot all day long, but we have pit tickets for Stone Temple Pilots and Nine Inch Nails later this month (twice each, plus some great reserved seats for a NIN show, too), so we felt like we didn’t have to be right up front for either band today. In fact, I was looking to get a further back spot for NIN, one that’d give me a view of the whole stage.

So we wandered off, caught some other bands (but not more than a few songs from each—nothing was really grabbing us…and we practically ran from the She & Him show after a song and a half), watched the aerial sculptures and the Bindlestiff Family Circus—

(a little lesson in safe sex, courtesy of the Bindlestiffs)

—ate bad festival food, drank horrid festival drinks ($10 for a margarita that tastes like gasoline. Oh fabulous!), and we saw an Xtracycle in real life!, which was actually one of the highlights of my day—

!!!!

—and then it was time for STP. Which conflicted with Bob Dylan’s show on the south stage, so Mark headed over that way for Bob, and I held our spot at the north stage and enjoyed STP. They came on twenty minutes late, but once they showed up, they were good. I’m stoked to see them next Sunday.

Stone Temple Pilots

Before and after STP, I ran into some trouble with the porta potties because by late afternoon they had completely run out of toilet paper. Now, it wouldn’t kill me to go without toilet paper once, but. Women before me had hovered, and hoverers splatter. Did you hear me? HOVERERS SPLATTER. All over the fucking seat. So: hot, stinky portajohn with piss all over the seat and no toilet paper to clean it up with and an empty hand sanitizer dispenser. I just held it till we got back to the hotel. Yuck.

Finally it started to get dark, and NIN, who had been given the longest set of any band scheduled over the two days of this year’s Virgin Mobile Fest, came on.

OMG NIN.

And all I have is this blurry picture. Sorry!

The stage/light show was…. There are no words. It was just unbelievable. They put on a fantastic show. And the only thing going through my head through all 1 hour and 55 minutes of it was “OMG NIN.” Cannot wait to see them closer up on Tuesday.

And that was our day in Baltimore. Back on the road tomorrow.

#1. WTF? I got another speeding ticket. Seventeen years without one, and now I can’t behind the wheel of a car without cops stepping all over each other to get at me.

#2. We’re in Baltimore. Drove up today, with our bikes in the back. Mark was a little unsure about bringing the bikes, but after we went for a nine-mile ride in Pikesville/Baltimore that was, as Mark described it, “effortless!,” he was actually pretty happy we brought them. We had a good time.

#3. Just over 13 hours till BRMC at Virgin Mobile Fest!!!!

!!!

(We’re not riding our bikes to the festival, although that’s actually the route we road tonight, to Pimlico Race Course and back to the hotel. Mark doesn’t feel comfortable leaving his bike out all day, though. Understandable—he only just got the bike. So we’re going to take the subway. It’s all good.)

(Oh man, it was a blast riding our bikes tonight.)

Also: this.