Wouldn’t it be nice, to finally arrive, to have everything all worked out, to have life just how you want it: the ageless spicy yet passive and attentive companion, polite and proper kids, your ideal employment, your neat little house, that perfect yard, a government that never impeded... to have a music system that didn’t need a bit of fuss, didn’t need your attention, didn’t need effort. Forget about perfection, and yes, please add emphases on PERFECTION, that’s a separate battle, best faced once we discover journey, clutter, stress, chance, unknown, wonder... the intricacies and beauty of chaos, the opening of mind, the final realization that it’s path, the right now, this very moment and the Has Been that represents our destination. But with that awareness—REVELATION ///////perfection has lost its blinding lure, evaporated nearly from our radar, no longer part of the search, no longer a ’60s seeker.
Neat, matching, unblemished, perfect; these types of playback systems, just like there human analogs, are never the kind of a thing you really want to date, let alone live with. Great sounding playback rigs, just like musical instruments, musics, musicians, friends, lovers... are a hash of experience, gears, rituals, relations, needs, history... none of it matching, none of it arriving without scar, and little of it makes any sense—until you take it all in, looking at it from present, with presence, understanding and with relationship. It’s your life, it’s your music, it’s your choice—and you should enjoy every possible moment.
There is plenty of there there, at least for me, a lot in the white space the black frames. And if you find something here, something that resonants in this borderline prose, cool. And for those that find it empty, or misspelled, please don’t bother me with it, I got sounds to hear, music to dance, gear to swap, trails and spaces to explore, and kids!
Anne Sharlene Casey on her dad's nice clean bike. Day before we hit the road.
This summer has been busy, the website, phono cartridges that are selling like crazy (and I’m the production lead on these things), not to mention getting busted up with back-to-back injuries. So with the launch of the site, three of us at Zu were all set to get out of town, hit the roads and make some adventure. Goal was the top of the world, Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, 7,000 miles round trip. We tried this Ogden to Prodhoe Bay trip back in 2006, but came up about 250 miles short of the Ocean, giving us an excuse to hit it again. Randy messed up his wrist when he high-sided his bike at the road track, full cast prevented his attempt. So we signed up buddy Jake Hirschi and headed out. Jake's adventurous for sure, learning the whole bike thing just weeks before we headed out. He might have left a novice, but he came back a solid rider—he had to, it's a keep up or turn around thing with Adam and I. Okay, so that wasn't totally accurate, Jake has taken care off us on other adventures and it was our turn to return the favor. Yeah, he was off the pace through the twisties of Idaho, but was dialed by the time we were North of Banff and Jasper National Parks.
We had setbacks each day and only made it to Skagway, but it was a great adventure. And you know it really must have been when Jake tells you it was the coolest, or nearly the coolest adventure he’s had. I mean Jake has lived pretty large, climbing and hiking all over the world and generally taking every opportunity to live. But yeah, we had problems. Water in the fuel the first day, which set us back several hours. Getting the shotgun through Canadian Customs another few. Then the next day Adam busted his kickstand and we spent some time trying to fix it. Then on the third day I busted my drive belt in the Yukon and Adam had to tow me along the Alaska highway to a patch of land that we could work on the thing. Shoulders are pretty small that far north, and having truckers wiz past right next to you is scary, and it’s not like you can just push off the road a bit, that tundra like stuff is weird, all spongy and gooey, makes it impossible to work on a bike. So at Whitehorse we decided to visit Jake’s sister Jenny in Skagway—there was no way we were going to make it the additional 1,500 miles to Prodhoe without getting snowed on or stuck. We had a perfect day dropping into Skagway, no problems, great weather, you cannot believe how amazing the scenery is between these two little towns. Amazing, awesome, spectacular.... It was fun seeing Jenny too, hadn’t seen her for a long time, she hooked us up with a warm shower, bed, and a ride in a helicopter. She runs the ground grew at the heliport and seeing the mountains, wildlife, and glaciers from a Eurostar helicopter was too cool for words. The flight might have been routine for pilot John, Jennie's boyfriend, but delivering gear to a dogsled camp and picking up their mail, and flying a weather check was something I'd lay down good money to do again. I have to take the family and do this road trip with them, my kids have to see this stuff.
Things were going good on the way home, nice weather, no crazy low temps, no pounding rain, and bikes were running well. But then Adam’s drive belt broke in Fort Nelson and we only had one spare between us. We ended up being held up in this one bar, two gas pump town for two days waiting for a belt. Could have been worse, we could have been north of the Arctic Circle, in which case we would have been totally screwed.
Our route was Ogden, then Arco, up 93 through Salmon, Whitefish, into Canada, through Radium Hot Springs, Banff and Jasper National Parks, Grande Prairie, then unto the Alaska Highway through Fort Nelson, Muncho Lake, Liard (and be sure to stop and soak in the Liard hot springs!), Teslin, Whitehorse, Skagway.
Sign me up for a third attempted next year!
Adam and Jake, day one, still pretty clean.
Adam and Jake in Banff National Park. Kinda like the Tetons, just hundreds of miles of 'em.
Sean in Teslin, replacing a drive belt.
Adam on the road between Whitehorse and Skagway.
More fixin'—the only garage in Skagway. Good thing we had Jake with us so his sister working at the helipad could work a bit of local magic.
Adam takin it in. Skagway, Alaska.
Jake, going up with pilot John for a weather check and gear run. Skagway.
Skagway from the air.
White Pass rail. Photo by Jake.
Blog is a comfortable form of communication for me (a mostly atyou-notatme medium) allows me to at least feel that posted thoughts and objects live outside myself. Retarded? Probably. But know I’m mentally damaged, with large tracks of my brain patched in the oddest of ways—sledding off monster cliffs at any age will mess you up. Helmets? We didn’t think about helmets, we were just wee kids going huge on toboggans (you really wouldn’t believe the stories, but damn we went big). And in the summer I would drink right out of the creeks and ponds, a real life and time saver when you’re a kid with stuff to see and things to burn. This is a kind of warning I guess, with this being my personal Zu space, untempered by the logic and focus of Adam, you are going to get my often whacked and short shifted comments straight up, and close to the bone, sometimes about music or audio gear, sometimes about anything else....
(Warning and disclaimer down. Next on the list, Hermit Declaration.) Really, the pond water did something, or it could have been all those times I got shocked playing with the house wiring, or maybe all the.... Sure I can function well enough in society and I have decent manners, and when the music is magic I can even bring life to a party, but in my world of working with my hands and mind, headspace and limited human interaction are essential—craved. So, if I don’t call you back, don’t worry about it. Besides, the Zu guys in customer service are the ones you want to talk with, they all have way better followthrough.