Afronauts debut

Picking up where we left off, two Sundays ago the Turtle Dove Trio had our first gig at the Dickens Opera House in Longmont. We played well and had fun doing it, but the audience consisted mostly of the other band on the bill and a handful of close friends. It is a fun room to play, though. The week after that I was working heads-down on my new product, trying to get a working prototype before MicroConf. I also went on a fun mountain bike ride on the newly-opened Benjamin Loop up at Betasso Preserve with Erin and Lynette. It was a good ride and we ended up doing about 10 miles. That Sunday I headed to Las Vegas for MicroConf.

So MicroConf in Las Vegas was fun and worthwhile. Most of the talks were fun and informative, with the exception of Noah Kagan's, which was incoherent and bizarre. By coincidence HP was having their big combined hardware and software summit simultaneously, and again by chance I happened upon my old Opsware coworker John Yi at the Wynn casino. It's fun to bump into people in far away places. We arranged to meet for sushi the following night and catch up, which was fun. I also enjoyed swimming in the Riviera hotel's pool since it sits between three high towers and is shaded all morning, which means I can splash around without dousing myself in sunscreen.

I do really dislike Las Vegas though. Completely not for me. I felt like I was in a struggle to prevent money leaving my pocket right down to the final cab to the airport, where the hotel bellhop said as long as they don't take the highway, it should cost under $20, and the taxi driver argued that taking the local road "at this hour" (3pm on a Tuesday?) would hit traffic and take much longer. I paid him the $30 and then paid Frontier Airlines another $50 to get me the hell out of there early so I could be back in time for Afronauts rehearsal.

Speaking of which, my 9-piece powerhouse afrobeat band The Afronauts had our first gig last night at Cervantes' Other Side in Denver. It was part of their 2-day celebration with bands on 2 stages all night, so there was a decent crowd of several hundred folks altogether there. We had a blast playing and the audience was definitely digging it. There were probably about 100 or so folks in the room. We were very well received and the playing overall was solid. It had a lot of fun up there. We hung around afterward drinking our free beers, munching pizza, and listening to Pink Floyd covers by the headlining act Dead Floyd. Loading up 2 big vans and driving out there and back was also fun.

Prior to the gig yesterday I did some climbing up at Solaris in Boulder Canyon. It was a group of four of us and we paired off into two pairs, myself and Ben sticking to easy sport routes while Julius and Paul tackled harder stuff. I got some good practice leading and cleaning. It seems the first outdoor climb I do, I'm convinced that this sport is not for me and I should switch to bouldering, but by the end I'm feeling better and not so tentative. I led a 5.9 on sight, which I still find pretty nerve racking whenever I'm above my protection.

Anyway, yesterday was an all around good Colorado day. Up early and driving up the canyon to rock climb by 9am, a nice long disco nap in the afternoon, then playing a fun gig at night, finally getting home around 2am or so. This week it's back to work on my new product, details TBA.