it's the newwwws!

Bike guitar frame

Bike guitar frame rev 2 (with ubber cool bike!)... A bit different from sally though...

A great friend of mine (Ollie) warned me about the aluminium (aluminum for americanos) weld process. After getting in touch with the metalmonger (??) he told me he didn't have the facility to do it... I looked around the hardware store for a solution and have decided to go for a stainless steel L shape bar which will allow me to build the thing a bit like a meccano set. I'm yet to see if the structure will slip but in worst case at least I can get it welded...

Portugal Bike Tour!

So this is something I've been promising myself ever since I got back to Portugal... But since winter was fast approaching I thought I'd wait until the first signs of spring to come for me to blossom this idea.

Pretty simple really, cycling my way down from Porto to the algarve (should be 7 days at most), first along the coast, then avoiding lisbon and going through the heart of Alentejo, then back up... Can't really call this a tour since I completely miss out on the furthest region to north (minho)... but it's good enough!

I'll definetely see Portugal through a different pair of eyes. Something I'm particularly keen on doing... As my opinion of the country/people has been somewhat beaten down by the recent months of city life, and gradual discoveries of the symptoms affecting the otherwise good progress the country could make...

I got in contact with an organic farm in the coimbra area who have agreed to take me in as a voluntary worker... The work is done in the mornings and is a bit of everything: tending olive trees, working on the vegetable garden, a bit of construction work and so on... then we get the afternoons off! I'm yet to settle the date with them but I'm really excited about the prospect, I'll probably stay for 2 weeks or so.

Music

I've been really bad with getting more songs done, mainly due to the fact that Thursday and today I played in a local bar... The experience has been interesting, because of the licensing issue I don't have any amplification. This limits my repertoire (pretty much cancels out all my own songs)... Since the bar is usually full of people talking, even though it's fairly small, I have to play songs where I project my voice more... I can't say the reception has been great, but at least it's helping me build some confidence and character. And the bar owner gives me beer so hey, who's complaining?

But really, I ought to get some songs out... need to find some oozing inspiration!

And that's that...

Apart from a failed attempt at building a penny stove (warning: mcgyver theme tune soundtrack!!!!)... Which I've now abandoned and decided to go for a more caveman-type wood (more like twig) burning stove.

Ciao!

p.s. next post might suffer LONGER delay if my house gets burned down.