A Weekend of Rememberance and Snakin' the Drain (of my Minivan)

Saturday morning my good friend Adam Bale and I headed to a memorial for Edward McMichael, better know in Seattle as The Tuba Man. He was a street musician prolific in this town: from the Ballet to a Seahawks game he could be seen on the sidewalk blowing notes into his tarnished tuba. Adam and I had spent the past month, cameras in tow, tracking him down at one of his local stations and recording a bit of his performances, interviews with fans, and discussions with the man himself. I got a phone call from Adam last week that Ed had died; the result of a beating from three kids for the little money he collected in his old tin garbage can each night.

Link to Adam's story on Ed McMichael here (the story starts on 14:00)

The memorial was something Ed would've been proud of. It started of with a handful of brass players, and then a banjo showed up, a couple of fiddles, and soon there was a large group of musicians blowing Take Me Out to the Ball Game, Danny Boy, and When the Saints Go Marching In.

Link to Seattle Times story here

My highlight of the weekend was fixing the minivan. For over a year my car would leak water from Seattle's constant rain right onto the feet of whomever sat in the passenger seat. Sometimes I'd have a cooking pot sitting in the front, and I'd ask my uncomfortable passenger to collect some of the water from the gushing mystery leak as we drove down the street. Many first dates quickly became lasts on these drives in the minivan. This weekend I resolved to fix the problem by purchasing a tarp to drape over the general problem-area whenever it rained. Still, something deep inside me said it was an easy fix. Adam and I pulled off the windshield wipers and then some plastic panel attached by many screws with unfamiliar holes. Then we got a stick and jammed it into what appeared to be a drain for the water. We then flushed it out with hose water, reattached everything, and the car hasn't leaked since! With a screwdriver, a stick, and google, one man can accomplish so much.

I'm also very excited about the new glasses I bought over the weekend, after losing my old pair on a drunken pontoon ride in Wisconsin over Independence Day. I found a frame similar to the ones I had in college: sort of a mix between intellectual, nerd, and hipster: