Riding the wave of the kindness of others.

Riding the wave of the kindness of others. 

Thanks to the folks from far away who still put into our "virtual jar of sustainability" oliveanddingo.com Today I'm thanking The Vasquez family (April and Johnny Vasquez) from my hometown Corpus Christi Texas. Out of the blue they dropped us $50. That bought us a mess of strings and things today. Thank you very much! These are the four necks I use for my clownistry. They all needed new strings and now we can keep rockin' the casaba. After our gig we dropped into our favorite music shop Trade Up Music and got squared away. We love them. Every stick of gear we have came from there so we get amazing deals but anyone can get a good deal at Trade up. Thanks again Vasquez family!!!!!! WooHoo! http://www.tradeupmusic.com/Home.aspx

Street performing is a tough job

Street performing is a tough job but a good thing for a city to have. 

We see lots of buskers every day. 

The weather is turning and not all of them know how to do it well . 

Most get discouraged and thus the public lose a good thing.

It would be really interesting to get a fund together and have someone in say..a duck suit casually walk by a busker and drop $50 in dimes in the guitar case' then quietly

waddle off. 

I would love to do that.

Do that 10 times and at some point they would all gather on the street and wonder "Did a duck just change your day?" 

It would be good for them, good for the morale of the city and of course VERY entertaining!

Took in a ball game in Sandy OR. last Friday.

Two bus rides or a car trip away is the city of Sandy OR. Olive and I went to see her little bro play against the Pirates!
I adore Olive's family and I try and go see them when ever I can...and am invited.
His team is the "A"s...and they beat the Pirates in the last game of the season.
Lots of people came out to see the game and at least one school field was full of parked cars.
I enjoyed visiting the simple life and finding out from the folks what they feel is important in life.
I'm not calling them simpletons in fact I'm pretty sure that all the kids playing ball are better educated than I ever was. It's just simple looking from my perspective because after all they are still screaming, running, posturing and waving sticks around like apes. And well they should, they looked like they were having an awesome time.
There are 4 teams total in that small town so the kids are all really good friends with each other. I bet I would have made some friends if we had stayed longer.
Getting along and sportsmanship are great and all but part of why I went to the game was to see at least one "dad fight" always an embarrassing crowd favorite..
None of the DAds were blistering drunk like ALL the Dads were when I was in little league W.T.F.?
I wish I had known it was that fun I would have gone before...and brought my kids!.

I got great photos from behind the umpire...till the kid said "Get behind the fence or I'm gonna bat ya one mister!"...I left but still called him "Empire" all day.

Someday Olive may look like one of these fine ladies...I can't tell which one.

WINNING!!!!we are beating the Pirates!!

"I'm warning you mister...I'm gonna bat ya!"

Way out in B.F.E, this photo was taken less than 20 yards from home plate!

SEE YA NEXT SEASON!...and at school Monday.

Heck yeah!Now the ranting lunatic portion of the post!
When I see a stadium full of PRO sports fans it usually brings me down...I don't like it.
What a pointless struggle with no result other than mindless escape.
I always wish those folks would be as excited about running their world or at least protecting it. I wish all that money and effort went to Science we need science.
If that many people got together to work on the worlds problems theirs no telling what we could do.
We could even use the game to evolve our species!
Here is and experiment for ya, You know those big Super Churches that hold thousands of people? Well my guess is that if you invite the whole congregation of such a church to a stadium, and then invite the congregation of another huge church and have them sit on the opposite side of the stadium.
If each side picks a team and prays for it hard...I mean really concentrated focus it would be a spectacular game that everyone is involved with.
Too bad the dogma employed by such places deny the participants that kind of power, they are really invested in blaming it all on God.
I'm not Christian bashing friends, I picked them because it's close to home and everyone is used to praying with each other many times for years, that's POWERFUL!
In meditating on single teams, we could evolve telepathy, telekinesis, and transmogrification...who knows?!.
Still I like celebrating the super creature that is "human" and not so much appreciating our monkey skills...unless it's kids doing it...that's what they are supposed to be doing and the "A"s and "Pirates" did a great job!
I like watching the kid games, it's fun!

My friend Bil is making motor bikes

That's lovely C.J. his partner, they are good people, I been friends with them a long time.
They live in a motor home that gets hassled a lot by home owners. I used to be amazed when they would get woken by cops and asked to leave when I'm in my house bike, off the street not 5' away and I'm left alone.
It was like I am invisible if I'm off the street and have no complaints from anyone.
So we go way back and I like them a lot I just don't like motor bicycles at all.
I detest them and think that's an abomination of a great idea.
But I must admit they are sweet looking and it's a great way to make some dough.
It's all a petrol nightmare actually...with the money from selling bikes, they are able to feed themselves and keep enough gas in the motor home to keep moving it during the twice a day police visits.
Last year they couldn't keep up and had to move away from town to work all winter in a canning factory.
Bil makes a good bike mechanic, he fixes my bikes and other equipment.
He orders the bikes from Hawaii and the motors from the Midwest.
Bil sells them for around 4 or 5 hundie, you can see them parked around SE Portland.
The man knows I have a strong disdain for all gas motors...he also knows I own a 750cc motorcycle.
He asked about it and I told him that my bike never moves and doesn't have any gas in it.
It bugs me when people suggest I put a motor on my tall bike, it happens every time some one likes the bike but can't relate to car free life.
To some folks everything has to have a motor, to me that's an outdated culture.
"When ya gonna let me put a motor on that thing?"
"Um never."
"Why, what would happen if your bike had a motor?"
"Well, for starters, I would be really loud, super stinky, I would have to feed it fuel that comes from the devil...plus everywhere around Portland I go people would be wanting to throw rocks at me."
"Anything else?"
"Yeah look at my body...right now I can kick a hole in the skin of a steel mailbox if I wanted to, I doubt I would be this fit if I was motoring around all the time."
See? I talk like that and end up looking like an A-hole...sorry y'all i know your just trying to relate.
Tell me if you are interested in one, I'll hook you up with Bil...just don't drive it around me or I'll throw rocks at you.