So in our travels, Scott and I had wandered across the street to a local micro brewery for dinner and a beer. Much to our delight we had the pleasure of meeting and befriending the bartenders Bobbi and Josh. Well, one thing led to another soon we found ourselves to the experimental recipients of various concoctions and mysterious creations. Typically, Scott and I are not much at straying into the minefield of mixed drinks. After a bit of initial hesitation though we knew clearly that we would have no time holding our composure so we acquiesced. The first one was called bongwater and it resembled gray green juice

All I remember about #2 was that is was yellow

This brown stuff was sort of a choco banana flavor

Ahhh, red and everything from here on out was just some form of wonderful tasting

And who know what the heck happened from this point on

The odd thing was that typically one would think that all those drinks would have some sort of effect on us but clearly at least Scott was just business as usual

It has been a while so, back by popular demand and request and in order not to loose track of the foundation behind the adventures at hand, I have some cool band pictures for you of the rock band that brings us all together

With Marcel joining in on percussion

and a few other shots

And finally for no particular reason, another picture I took of the hotel pool.

Bye bye Cincinnati, off to Raleigh nigh night!

Dave Rat

Good Morning Sunshine's! For the last two days I have been deeply involved in doing whole bunch of not much at all. Decided to turn the TV on got bombarded with puzzling stories of people losing kids and finding them again, the racially polarizing quagmire of Lacrosse players and strippers and our bumblefuck of a president stumbling though his job much the same way he does with his words. I did enjoy the unexpected news that oil consumption by the industrialized world has dropped a smidge and is the first decrease in 20 years. High prices being the most likely cause. The bad news is that now the price will drop again and the natural human trait of self serving recklessness will most likely once again take over the decision process of the bulk masses and oil demand will rise again. Though all is not for naught as the price spike has triggered an irreversible trend of awareness and for the first time, low emission vehicle are hip and cool rather than tree hugger extremist. I want an electric car that is super quite, smooth and does not make a poison gas that will kill me if I leave my car running while parked in the garage.

**** Ponderings ****

While I am on the subject of tree hugging extremists, I am not one but I do try to be a human that makes an effort to minimize negative ecological impact. One of my quirky projects that I have been following for many years is that I do not purchase anything that utilizes non-rechargeable batteries. I make very few exceptions with smoke detectors and things that keep time and require a battery once every several years. I hate throw away batteries, poisonous chemical cylinders that sometimes last just a few days in the item intended combined with no organized global or national strategy whatsoever to recycle or minimize use. For the few legacy items I own that do take regular batteries, I use rechargeable's and there are a few things that I just have to make the concession. I had an interesting realization as well and that was that most things that I really use and depend on like my cell phone, laptop and camera, all come with rechargeable's and stuff that utilizes throw away batteries is usually the junk that ends up in the trash not long after the first 5 packs of batteries anyway. With toys and stuff for the kids it is a bit tougher but I explained it to them and they get it and they see the parallel between the items that are short lived and dependence on throw away batteries.

**** End Ponderings ****

Wandering around the hotel I heard voices. Not an unusual thing to hear except these were coming from inside the elevator shaft. Being the investigative and curious person I am I followed them pressing buttons to various floors until,way at the top, look what I found

There were humans putting metal wire ropes inside the elevator shaft. Plus the elevator was hanging from a big hook. Yikes! I ride them 'vators but it is a lot lees comforting seeing the guts. I just hope they put all them wires in the right spots. I actually was once in an elevator that 'fell' once. Luckily it was only a 6 foot drop before it slammed into the ground and stopped but it scared the shit out me as I was truly expecting it to go upwards slowly rather than downwards super fast. It was quite a while ago and we had loaded what I now believe to be "too much sound equipment" into it. Pressed the button, doors close and blam, this big spring comes down though the roof my body aches from smashing into a speaker box. I climbed on top of the elevator roof, opened the doors and we actually unloaded all the gear through the elevator roof. I do not recall if the elevator started working or if we just carried everything up the stairs after that.

Indian food with Scott, a trip to the pool

Some wanderings earlier

It is still a bit rough and need some clarifying but here is a draft

**** Sound Nerd Speak ****

Line Arrays - Fad or Future

I get asked a lot of sound questions. Some are aimed at unraveling an understanding of a particular function, feature or concept while others are directed toward distilling my opinion on certain pieces of gear, methods or industry trends. The difference between the two query types is that there are relatively 'correct' answers to the former and the answers to the latter are just opinions that tend to be un provable. The answer to the question I was recently asked "Are line arrays truly better and here to stay or just the latest fad?" lays somewhere in between the two. Just in case you have been sleeping for a decade or are not a sound industry human, line arrays have taken the pro-touring industry over by storm. Nearly every manufacturer offers several line array choices and of the two manufacturers that I know of that do not offer them in their product line, both have been forced to take defensive vocal positions justifying why they do not. So, what is it about line arrays anyway that has positioned them to so completely dominate our industry? Stepping back and taking look, I see that there are several aspects that are quite clear and a one in particular that is not so apparent but the most important of all.

The method or design implemented by the various modern large scale sound systems can be subdivided into two primary approaches. First and quite common are systems that I will call cellular or zonal in the way they cover the audience. Zonal coverage refers to forming a cluster of directional speakers and dividing the audience area into many smaller zones or cells and then dedicating a speaker to providing sound for each particular cell. Each speaker box then can be EQ' ed and volume adjusted to provide proper sound for the humans in it's coverage pattern. With this type of system setup, the overlaps between the box to box coverage patterns is crucial and of much concern. The goal and challenge of the system designer and tech setting up the system is to achieve seamless sonic transitions between the cells, which is no easy task. Another challenge with a cellular coverage sound systems is attempting to adequately cover areas at extended distances.

The second concept of coverage I will refer to as summed or combined. Summed coverage is the attempt to get multiple speakers to add together and act as a single larger speaker. The coverage pattern of this giant speaker would then be adjusted to cover the room by varying the angles between the boxes much the same way as the cellular approach. The big challenge with the summed approach is getting perfect cooperation between the various speakers, typically by getting them the speakers close enough together in order to minimize them acting as separate sources. Sub woofer arrays are almost always implemented in a summed array.

The key difference between the two methods is that cellular approach is based on minimizing the overlap between the coverage patterns and the summed approach relies on overlapping so well that they act as single large source. Well designed versions of both approaches try to avoid having a listener hear two acoustically separate sources that are in close proximity to each other that are also not equidistant from the listener. Why, you ask? Well, mainly because non-equidistant sound sources tend to sound bad and creates comb-filtering that reduces output levels and screws up the frequency response.

Sound, like everything else in life, is never black and white and exists only in varying levels of gray and the reality is that all real world concert sound systems exhibit varying degrees of both approaches. High frequencies are naturally beamy and lean toward zonal coverage and the low frequencies inherently tend toward combined coverage. The techniques that sound system designers implement to push the various sound systems toward zonal or or summed coverage patterns is quite interesting and ultimately a key factor in the clarity and sonic consistency of the system created. Just for good measure, I will give a few examples of common systems and my perception of the design approach behind their creation. Nexo's Alpha system, ElectroVoice's X-Array and Turbosound's Flashlight and Aspect systems are all excellent examples of zonal systems. Much effort was put into those designs in order to achieve distinct and consistent vertical and horizontal coverage projected from each individual box. The building block for these zonal systems is usually a relatively few speakers in each box that are mounted on some sort of horn to assist with pattern control. The boxes are then aimed to optimizes covering the acoustic space while minimizing sonic overlaps.

The summed-output system approach, until recently was considerably less wide spread with the Clair Bros S-4 system, the Rat Trap 5 and to some degree perhaps the Showco Prism systems being recognizable examples* . These systems tended to rely on boxes with quite a few speakers in each box that are in relatively close proximity to each other allowing them to unify their outputs and allow multiple boxes to begin to act as a single giant speaker. These systems inherently by design have overlapping coverage from multiple drivers even within each individual box. An issue with these systems is created by the physical spaces between the speakers themselves that cause the components to act like multiple sources creating box to box overlaps and comb filtering and inconsistencies in coverage patterns.

Then in the mid 90's along comes the V-Dosc line array, a fully summed-output approach sound system that for the first time on a major scale, incorporated the high frequency component in the summing. Line arrays are not new, the old Shure Vocal master with a stack of 10" speakers inside is a old example. Take a close look at a Clair S-4 and you can see that the 18"s and 10"s form vertical line arrays when stacked and check out the Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound which had vertical line arrays for nearly every instrument.

So getting back to the original question of "Are line arrays truly better and here to stay or just the latest fad?" Let's take a look at couple of things that make line arrays an interesting and useful implementation of the summed approach. Though I have heard it described different ways and even read various manufactures' press releases arguing about 'who describes it correctly,' for all practical purposes they are all saying that a well designed line array system offers improved volume level consistency vs distance when compared to a zonal type coverage system. Now whether you prefer to envision it in the 'cylindrical waveform' description offered by the folks at L'Acoustics or you just think of it of "as you get farther away the sound naturally gets quieter but since there are a higher quantity of equidistant speakers pointed at you so the volume drop with distance is somewhat counteracted." The fact that a line array system can be set up to project sound over short or long distances merely by altering the angles between the boxes is quite useful.

Another feature that the slender line array systems offer is their narrow profile is quite easily intermingled with the exceedingly growing stage sets. People want to see what people want to see and it tends not to be the sound system, except for a few of us, and having the ability to slide a large scale system into the small gap between a few video walls or set pieces is a strong asset. Plus, the relatively simple two dimensional rigging that only deals with vertical adjustments not only allows for a high degree of predictability, it also is fairly easy to get motor points for hanging in most venues. The fact that line arrays are simple, practical and predictable gives them a real world implementation advantage over systems the require multiple precisely spaced motor points to provide proper venue coverage.

But you know what, even with all those useful and apparent assets, none of them truly give line arrays a hands down advantage. Zonal systems can deal with volume consistency over distance by implementing long throw boxes and utilizing volume shading to compensate and project louder sound to the far away areas. Compact high volume zonal systems can be incorporated into well thought out set designs and even be flown behind new modern video walls that allow sound to pass through. Well designed rigging systems that allow zonal PA's to be flown and rotated and adjusted are and perhaps someday even by remote control, either in existence or not far off. Finally, sonic prediction software is not unique to line arrays and the realty is that the playing field is fairly even from a technical standpoint, except for one thing and it has nothing to do with the sound system or it the cleverness of its designer.

That thing is us. We are humans and like many critters that run around this planet here we have ears and also like many critters, our ears are on the sides of head. The physical and biological placement of our hearing devices allows us an extremely astute and accurate ability to discern the precise horizontal positioning of sound sources and the approximate vertical positioning of sound sources. Does it not make sense that a two legged walker of a human would require an increased sensitivity in auditory perception in the horizontal plane where most of the food to hunt for and predators hunting us would exist? Even our necks are designed with a limited vertical range of motion and a much wider horizontal rotation and at any given moment we are turing our heads or bodies sweeping the horizontal auditory plane. We enjoy things in stereo, we place the stereo speakers spaced apart horizontally to maximize the effect, have you ever seen heard or wondered why stereo speakers are not placed vertically? In some apartments and houses it would sure make sense logistically. Have you ever tried to stack a line array on it's side? It is quite interesting as it typically does not sound very good. For those of you pondering in your mind about L'Acoustics ARC's, Kudo's and other manufacturers horizontally arrayable products, take a close look and you will find that there are strict angles between boxes when horizontally arrayed that minimizes overlaps in HF coverage and they are set to merge the coverage patterns. Hey, wait a minute, isn't that a zonal system? Exactly, and for many applications zonal systems are optimum but when you need to focus a tremendous amount of sonic energy in a particular direction, there are distinct advantages to forming a giant and controllable unified sound source vs a cluster of tiny separate and directional sound sources.

So here is the deal as I see it. With current loud speaker technology it is necessary to utilize multiple speakers in order to cover a large venues, as no one makes a single loud speaker that is loud enough, sounds great and is versatile enough to cover 10's of thousands of people in a wide range of venues. These multiple speakers need to be arranged in some sort of configuration vertically, horizontally, both or maybe someday one behind the other. Currently, we can get speakers to sum together quite well but not perfectly. Our ears are very sensitive to those imperfections in the horizontal domain and our ears are considerably less sensitive to those same imperfections in the vertical domain. Therefore, the true design advantage that line array's posses is that they take advantage of the human deficiencies in vertical hearing by keeping the currently unavoidable imperfections in the plane where we are least likely to perceive them and provide little or no component to component imperfections where our hearing is most sensitive. In other words, it is all about offering the human listening ear a single source in the horizontal domain which a line array does by design and a horizontally splayed zonal system struggles to achieve. Combine that with the fact that they hang nicely like a string of beads and I will venture to say that line arrays may just be a bit more than the latest fad and more likely a structural building block to the sonic future of large scale sound systems.

* The actual components and configuration of Showco's Prism system is kept 'secret,' so it is my opinion based on mixing on the system and it's sonic characteristics that lead me to believe that it is based on a summed-output type design.

**** End Sound Nerd Speak ****

The done being nerdy for a bit,

Dave Rat

Well, show three is in the can we have two full days off in Cincinnati Ohio. Since we last hung out I have had few adventures. The most traumatizing of which was back in Nashville when I grabbed my bags off the bus on the last day off, I thought I would be slick and cruise to the room with just my big yellow suitcase and leave the other two in the bus. Well, that actually was an excellent idea except for the fact that I packed every single sock that I own in the other suitcases and had worn my shoes sockless out of the bus. Really, it seems to be not that big of deal and I do a few sockless short walks in my boots for food and coffee and figure I can get to the gig the next day grab socks and all will be fine. Well it was until the last minute dinner invitation came to join some industry friends at Morton's (great restaurant) for nice meal. Oooh, did you say we will be walking there, yikes, I can already feel the blisters already just thinking about it, plus it is stupid cold out there.. The busses? Of course they are miles away getting serviced. So I am in the lobby now, gathering humans, ready to roll. Oh nooooo! This requires drastic measures, I had no choice, so humbled I mumbled my sockless predicament much to the glorious amusement of my peers. When the chuckles subsided, much to my relief, Bill Rahmy offered to dash to his room and grab me a pair of the biggest socks I have ever seen.

Good thing I got the socks too, because we ended up checking out a few local Nashville bars and walking all over the place. Here you can see the preferred dancing spot at Tootsies is atop the bar.

**** Highlight of the Day ****

New Tiki Swag! Donovan shows up at the gig with two super cool additions to our tiki setup, check out the lighted sign

And the Lava Lamp

As it turns out, Donovan is also roadie and is quite well versed in the finer points of tour absurdities and instantly took a liking to our adventure.

**** End Highlight of the Day ****

I know I have been a bit sluggish in blog posts, partially due to dedicating some time to writing an article for a sound magazine on about line arrays vs other sound system types. I should be able to post a draft up here soon.

Hey look what I found!

I don't know if this is the first show we did with the Peppers but it is the earliest one we have a record of. Oh and whale we are digging around in the past, check this out

'What is This' was a band that Flea and former Peppers guitarist Hillel and Jack were in. As you can we did not charge a whole lot of money for the show. Hmmm, how about free? It is really cool that those seemingly fleeting past connections can re emerge into life long friendships and interactions.

The looking forward to an adventure that melts my heart heart,

Dave Rat

Yesterday saw the successfully completion of show number two. So what's new? Well, Marcel, the percussion player from Mars Volta is out with us and playing perc on 5 or six songs each night which adds a delightful variation to the live show and a cool person to have around. Add in John singing a Bee Gees cover of Shadow Dancing and the song "Hey" added to the set and the show was stood out as quite enjoyable and now that I have replaced my lost camera, I will snap some pics with Marcel up there. Speaking of camera. Scott and I grabbed a runner and headed out to Best Buy to replace my lost little friend. I opted for the same again but this time I got it in red rather than black. It is a Lumix DMC-FX07 for anyone curious and after owning 6 Canon digital Elphs, 4 Sony Cyber-Shot's, 1 Kodak, a Casio and a digital SLR Nikon D70, I can say that the little Lumix fighter is easily my favorite by far. I do still have and tour with the Nikon D70 and a giant lens and it would be my all around favorite if I had really huge pockets, the problem though is that 99% of the importance of of having a camera is found in actually carrying it with you. As far as the fate of all those other digi cameras, I am proud to say that I lost only about a third of them, a few were stolen, I sold one, gave a few away and the rest are in the electronics graveyard in my closet at home.

So once again, a bit late, I have implemented the Cam-Lam

method to increase the probability of retaining the the two items for an extended period of time in my possession. Speaking of retaining things, and since I have been on a bit of a blast from the past binge lately, here is another old Rat calendar that we mysteriously called the Amex Calendar

and since it is quite full of many pages, here is my January a 22 years back,

Minutemen and Meat Puppets at Fenders Ballroom and Oh Boy! we raked in the big cash at $350 but it appears we got shorted $50.

Who are these Violent Femms anyway, never heard of them, at least not back then and the show gets postponed.

St. Vidas $30 and owe $30. Hmmm looks like a sound engineer gig for me that I didn't get paid for. Oh and then on to do Black Flag, Flipper and Saccharin Trust, most likely at Fenders again as you can see we did not get paid again and added the $50 from the Meat Puppets show onto their "owed" account. If my memory serves me, I believe that we were quite skilled at not getting paid while living on little or no money. If we do the math, it looks like we earned a grand total of $730 for the month of January, receiving a whopping $350 to feed, fuel and pay rent for Brian Rat and I. But there just was not a lot of opportunities for a couple of punkers and their home made PA so we did what we could to stay alive. You know when people talk about the "good old days?" Well, Though those days are old and some of them were good, and I would not trade them out of my past, no way!, I will say that looking back upon them makes me truly appreciate my world now.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you left some truck drivers alone with a case full of Tiki items?

And since our Pirate days have passed, we make occasional donations to random and inspired fans

Take care till soon, the acclimating to tour,

Dave Rat

Safe and sound we are. Our first show in Dallas went on without a hitch and it looks like everything is running smooth after our longest break yet. Gnarls Barkley is our new support act and some cool familiar faces on the tour. Normally I would have some photos to show you but guess what. You will never believe this but it appears that somehow my camera has made a break for it and escaped. Ya know, I spaced on attaching it to the my new laminate and it appears I have not fully re-acclimated to tour mode yet as battling the scattering of personal items escaping is still pretty much a full time job. Give me a few days and a few more donations to the world of elsewhere and I will get my deal dialed in. In the mean time, well, I guess I need to go camera shopping. Arrrgh! I had some good pics on there too and the best one was three little girls maybe 6 to 8 years old that I gave pink flamingo glasses to and a case to stand on. So cute! Oh well, at least I don't have to be worried about being overly attached to material things. Plus, that little camera served me well and I did have a fun and wonderful night so a silly camera is just a small price to pay for adventures I love to remember, in the big picture of it all.

In the mean time, since I am picture less, I guess I will share another blast from the past. This the following is a calendar that a guy named Joe Cole made. Joe friend of Henry Rollins that Rat Sound hired to tour as a sound tech on the final Black Flag tour. Joe ended up being murdered in a robbery at the house that Joe and Henry shared in Venice. Joe went to down town LA and took pictures of homeless people, printed the calendar and then gave them out in exchange for donations which he then donated a portion of to a homeless shelter in LA. Whether you feel it shocking, altruistic or creative, I thought it unique and interesting enough to share and share a memory of someone no longer hanging out.

The dedicated to not losing the next camera,

Dave Rat

Never ever forget that you never ever truly know what will happen next. "Highly probable' is as good as you can get with future predictions. I must admit that I was over prepared thermally for yesterdays southern California weather in Oklahoma. Who would have knew? After reading about thousands of stranded freezing cows, I figured I was gonna freeze too heading out to middle America. Funny thing was that there was all this silly talk of a cold front coming in. Who would have knew? Definitely not I, said the sound guy. Anyway, last night at the hotel bar I was hanging with rigger Fletch and he is drinking wine and has a porcelain plate with a picture of a deer on it with him, of course. Don't we all carry them. Actually we don't so asked and was quite pleased to be let in on a bit of roadie antics. Turns out that the tour riggers have this deer plate that is bestowed upon whomever amongst them screws up, comes in late or forgets something. Fletch earned it by being late for working out in the hotel gym, or maybe he forgot. Either way, I love the roadie games.

So what was warm and wonderful weather last night has taken a bit of turn.

They call the stuff "freezing rain." It is not snow, it is not hail and it may have been rain but it aint no more. Little round ice balls.

And wow! Are they slippery! Fun to watch my friends get caught off guard. It is like walking on mini ball bearings. And what could be a more perfect compliment to the freezing rain than the implementation of our tiki theme! Thank you Ratketeers, this is all good! Here we can see roadie Scott proudly showing off his decorating accomplishments.

Of course, I head straight for the grass skirt

It is customary for the major vendors on a tour put together some sort of swag for the roadies and band. At Rat Sound we try and do something as unique as we can, so my big project for the day is to give out the big delivery of our newest Rat Swag, shoes! I wonder when the last time a sound company made shoes was?

The roadies seemed quite pleased all in all and quite a bit more pleased that the roadies seemed to be when they heard that we are now in holding pattern. We are all good, show is all set, it's cold outside but warm in here and all is good except for one little problem. The good news is we can play the gig, the bad news is that the audience will be unable to attend the show due to transportation issues. It turns out that the little ice balls and sheets of slippery ice underneath are fine for cars that are moving but not so fine for cars that are attempting to accelerate or stop.

Pack it up roadies,

The show is cancelled, we are gonna try to drive to Dallas. Hmmmm, no one can drive, too slippery here so we are gonna drive elsewhere. Hmmmm, something is fishy.

The putting my life in the hands of the bus driver on icy night roads,

Dave Rat

So here we go again. Some days you just got to get up in the morning go to work. Pretty normal stuff for a human being to do, it's just that my "work" is in Oklahoma and my work day just happens to be three weeks long this time. Airports don't suck, they don't deserve that much credit, they are merely annoying. I know the routine, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure it out.

Show up and

• hope they have your ticket right,
• hope your bags are not overweight,
• hope the line is not so long that you miss your flight,
• hope you do not end up behind someone that causes a stink or tries to bring "bad' things through security,
• hope the security line is not so long that you miss your flight,
• hope the hike to the gate is not so far that you miss your flight,
• hope your plane is running on time or at least close,
• hope they have not sold your seat to someone else,
• hope they do not take away your carry-on-bag because the overhead compartments are too full,
• hope you do not sit on the runway forever,
• hope the food, if any, is remotely edible,
• hope that you are not seated next to someone that endlessly farts, snores or has to go to he bathroom 10 times when you have an isle seat,
• hope that no one does anything stupid like die or yell at a flight attendant that causes the plane to be diverted and land at the wrong airport,
• hope the plane stays in the air while trying to fly,
• hope you don't leave anything on the plane,
• hope that your bags show up on the belt and finally,
• hope that everything you put in your bags is still in there.

So really, all and all it is pretty straight forward stuff and since most everything is beyond my control, there is no real reason to stress over it. So I just wander on through with the smile of mild annoyance.

So, here I am

rocking like a hurricane, or at the very least, riding in a cab towards the hotel in Oklahoma. An explorer, and adventurer, a gypsy navigating the uncharted territory of thrill and the stars align to deliver me to

the sheltering safety behind a door that a small plastic key card allows entry with its encrypted password stored on a magnetic stripe. But no journey can be accomplished without nourishment so off into the mysterious city I head

and amongst the plethora of opportunities

and two's and two's of blocks walked before I settle on a local cuisine called ribs, okra and slaw. And though my mind and eyes offer reluctance, my belly wins out in the short term

Only for belly to grumble later about the grease and though I feel shade less than exuberant, I bask in telling belly "I told you so!" Oh, for a fresh cucumber, tomato and feta salad with olive oil. Well, at least my problems are not outside of anything a few cold beers can't fix. So I am off to meet the clustering roadies at the hotel bar. I will see ya 'all tomorrow, when we .............

Oh, that's right, how about a rock show?

The feeling displaced,

Dave Rat

The time to board the plane approaches and as I always seem to experience in the not too distant memory, I am filled with this anxious feeling of remiss or more accurately pre-miss and it dawns on me to ponder the things I will miss. With that in my mind, today I add to my computer a new folder called 2007 where I will store month by upcoming month each batch of photos I accumulate in my travels and wanders that inspire the snapshots of time I grab paste into the physical memory banks.

**** The Things I will Miss ****

I First is the little people I love. My daughters, my niece and the little ones in my heart that I rarely see. And though far away and disconnected, I always I hold them in my heart. Some things hurt too much to think about more than in flashes so I let them slide out of my mind and find distraction.

Next would be sensation and familiarity of my bed. The place I go at the end point of each day when I have had enough and where I climb in to recharge to be for feeling of warm fresh start.

And when I wake I like to play a album as I start my new day, I will miss the scratchy sound of the needle upon the spinning black disc and how I never know exactly how long before the music will start.

I will miss the way the the dreary and hazy sleep fades away each day as I head to the ocean blue room of clean. The rubber ducks that sit on the shower head and the way my day comes into focus as I ponder my plans under falling water.

I will miss drinking that first morning coffee without having to get dressed and the way the espresso maching always scars me when it gets hot and starts spitting steam out the relief valve when it is ready.

I will miss searching the fridge for bits of food when I went too many days between shopping and being able to eat simple clean cool mangos, making shrimp tacos and salsa and my two favorite knives, the one that rusts if I don't wipe it off and the one that makes the cool shhwriiing sound like a mini "Kill Bill" sword.

I will miss my favorite pan made of cast iron that I cook nearly everything with and how I need to take care of it to keep the perfect layer of cooked in oil and how it never touches soap.

I will miss the enjoyment I feel to create new things or fix things that are broken with my pile of tools

I will miss the freedom that my motorcycle and car gives me to be able to travel on a whim to destinations without hindrance. I will miss not getting anything good in the mail and then after day after day passes to the point where I stop checking, actually getting something good. I will miss the two ladies next door that take a walk every morning and always smile and loaning tools to my neighbor across the street. I will miss going to the Rat Shop and especially everyone there that each day come to share a bit of their life together for a common goal and the challenges and successes that each day brings. I will miss the people I care about that that I hang out with at home.

So to all that I press the pause button and step away. But it never pauses, it just keeps rolling along without me. Bye bye home and soon all this will fade, I know it will, it always does, it is just so hard to see there from here.

The not sad and getting ready to leave,

Dave Rat