Spectacular New Folk Trio - Bonny Light Horseman 31Aug21

I came upon the spectacular trio Bonny Light Horseman by crossing the streams: Paste gets the best breakthrough artists in their studios and I audit them and Anais Mitchell is the music behind Broadway's great Hadestown show!. This is stellar breakthrough folk stuff - the lead voices and all the guitar playing and arranging are next level, including the open D tuning. Click through to Paste vid.

Plus there's much more... NPR Tiny Desk From Home has been a serious release from travel and boundaries. Part of that is listening to The Staves from their childhood hold... wow.

And, back @ Paste in NorCal...

How To Replace Stuck Patagonia-Danner Foot Tractor Aluminum 29Aug21

Often the aluminum bars on the bottom of Patagonia and Patagonia-Danner Foot Tractor wading boots are worn down and not readily removable with the 3mm allen wrenches supplied - or even other heavier duty ones. First try to clean out the allen holes in the screws with a pick before attempting using the allen wrench. I then go to WD40 applied underneath the bars and dripped onto the screws - I lift the bars with a pick and then squirt some oil. Tools you will need all up often include: a small pick, a 3mm allen tool (I like my Park bike tool for leverage here), WD40, a Dremmel tool with metal cutting disk, and medium sized vice grips.

If a two-screw bar is stuck you might need to Dremmel it into two pieces and then remove each piece separately. Even then, the 3mm allen may not work and you'll need to grab it and spin it using vice grips. I typically remove half of the bars using the vice grip spin method... it doesn't seem to impact the Vibram rubber at all.

Clean the bottom surfaces and use a pick to clean out the embedded receiver nuts in the boots before reinstalling the new bar kit (~$45). All done!

Back To Raleigh Then Back To Colo Spgs 27Aug21-28Aug21

It was 4.5hrs from WNC back to Raleigh; Kevin's Outback crushes it on mileage. We arrived in plenty of time to meet up with Kyle for a great meal from Karla & Kevin and then a musical at the Raleigh Little Theater (outside). We saw & heard Beehive The 60's which included a raft of songs from that era. Many of the songs were from the writers in the Brill Bldg in NYC. The cast of locals were decent with some much better than others. Of course it was fabulous to see and visit with Kyle for a day.

Saturday was departure day but we still wrangled a stop at an unusual spot called CowFish which featured sushi and burgers - I had the excellent sashimi while most of the others had bento boxes with both the featured items.I enjoyed the sake sampler too.

There was time to purchase some Burial cans from their Raleigh taproom, The Exhibit, before we left. My plan was to check some of their fine IPAs back to CO to share (maybe). My packaging job was awesome with a cobra weave handle, and it was successful.

Asheville 25Aug21-26Aug21

Wednesday we took in some tasty NC BBQ @ Bear's Smokehouse and then the Pinball Museum. We played for a couple hours on a variety of machines from the late '60s to modern. Very fun.

We hit some more good brewereies: Thirsty Monk, DSSLVR (the latest one to open), and Asheville Brewing Company (one of the earliest to open). Beers at these were good but again didn't compare to Burial. Kala & I found some very cool chairs we are considering in artsy Asheville.

For dinner we went to the excellent Curate - a high end Spanish place in downtown Asheville. We've been mostly walking everywhere and I noticed the good LTE speeds.

Thursday we hit the very cool NC Arboretum for a hike and walks through the gardens. Lunch was a "treasure of tastes" in Hendersonville ~ uh, we had salads. We dined at the very good Limones, a Mexico City fine dining. And we stopped at Wicked Weed (my fav from our last visit to Asheville, but unseated).

Toxaway Fall < Blue Ridge Parkway < Bumcombe County 24Aug21

The call of the falls ~ we hiked to midway @ Toxaway Falls before departing our cool condo for phase two, Asheville food & brew.

We drove up the Davidson River valley from Brevard to the Blue Ridge Parkway for our "long cut" to Asheville. Tons of damage from Fred up the Davidson but there were still plenty of fly fishermen on the river - I fished here on our last visit but not this time. We acquired the ridge line at ~5Kft elevation on the Blue Ridge Parkway - cool road which a team of road bikers was using - when I met them at the Pisgah Natl Forest lodge they were 35mi and 4800ft into the ride; it was downhill from there to Asheville.

After descending to Asheville we hit the very good White Duck Taco spot we'd learned of from our foodie tour here previously. Awesome again.

A benefit of any visit to western NC, especially Asheville, is the chance to visit the great breweries. And so we did ~ on our first afternoon we walked to the "South Slope" area and hit the spectacular Burial Brewery. This is my favorite thus far in NC ~ great American IPAs with great names. I've had three 1/2 pint pours so far (The Wretched Pit Of Identity, Precipice Of Self-Immolation & To Wear Their Bones Across My Shoulder) and there are 4 more to perhaps try, all were excellent and served in their funky multipurpose property. There are no tastes offered here in Asheville, a blue dot in rural NC. We moved on to Green Man where I tried the hazy IPA, which was good. Kevin appreciated the more refined nature of the spot with great merch, nice indoor seating, cool wall art, etc.. Finally we ate and tasted again at Bhramari, a kitchy cool quasi-Indian brewery and eatery. Kala and I split the two hazy IPAs ~ both of which were good. My take on day one is that there is Burial and then "others," unfortunately distribution is just to GA, NC and NY thus far. We have 30+ from among to sample (we won't do them all but we'll try several more). When passing Green Man again at night it was jam night (the lady in white on fiddle was stellar).

 

We learned "Ticket To Ride" from Norsworthys and I was fortunate to post the largest score they'd ever seen in my 2nd sitting. Really fun game at which being lucky, but recognizing your good fortune as a strategy, is needed.

Dupont State Recreational Forest 23Aug21

We are in Transylvania Co of NC; this county has more waterfalls per sq mi than any spot in the US. And with the recent storm Fred we are assured they are all running hot. Today we let out for DuPont St Forest (pretentious name but whatever). The plan featured the most filmed and viewed falls in the country perhaps, Triple Falls, and it was awesome. The day was super hot and super muggy, as down-mountain NC can surely be in summer, but the mtns were usually less so, not today. We hiked to High Falls, Triple Falls, and Hooker Falls on very solid trails and among quite a few other patrons. The deadfall was obvious along the rivers but the trails were not wet or sketchy in anyway. I did get the honor of driving the Subie from the upper to lower parking lot when I offered the team a chance to have me pick them up at the lower lot... NP. The plan and hike and falls and family were awesome.

 

When in NC... we hit a great cafe I found on the way down to the local country club for an hour of pickleball in 100° and 100% water. Food was gr8 then Norsworthys thumped our mountain asses but we were still standing and they had some issues... another 8 games and we'd have had them where we want them. Post debacle, I encouraged the team to take a brewery tour in Brevard (yeah, the place with the killer music school, after Julliard and Berklee) while here. We hit Brevard Brewing for lagers and the new eastern hub for Oskar Blues! OB was not the opulence of SN yesterday but huge and a great vibe ~ reppin' CO like it should be. Awesome.

The day is not over but the team is down for naps.

North Carolina Haps With Norsworthy's 21Aug21-22Aug21

We boarded the Southwest C19 pod donning masks for a 3 hour flight east to Raleigh-Durham. Karla & Kevin both stayed up late to pick us up @ RDU @ 1am... then stayed awake to debrief for a bit; good friends, err family.

 

We arose to do some day drinking at Bottle Mix and pick up some local IPAs (for Kala & me). Nice place with mixed can 6 pack deals AND taps for a dozen brews... I chose a tasty Burial hazy with some long name. We did Mexican at Driftwood for lunch. We had evening plans beginning with the very good Italian spot Mother & Sons near DPAC (Durham Performing Arts Center) where we enjoyed great pasta dishes and a fine Sangiovese. We then saw the awesome show from Brit Floyd, an excellent Pink Floyd tribute band, with lasers and video and a 9 piece band. I'd never heard of them but the show was really good and the sound was decent at DPAC.

After returning to the estate in N Raleigh I cracked open some of the DDH IPAs purchased: a Benchtop Robot Squirrel and an Anchorage Beached.

Sunday we headed for Lake Toxaway (yep - real name) in the western mountains of NC. On the way @ Black Mtn we dined at Ole Guadalupe on a nice stream; I began to think these guys were fixated on Mexican, but Kala had asked for some so all's fair. We also stopped at Sierra Nevada's eastern brewery in Fletcher, NC. OMG the place was gorgeous and huge and packed and playing live music in a fabulous back yard. Hazy Little Thing was OK, but the spot was over the top.

We arrived in the mountains and immediately sought waterfalls. Kevin is a waterfall aficionado and mapped out a couple of days of waterfall hikes. In fact the first falls, Toxaway, were immediately adjacent to and visible & heard from our condo! This afternoon's hike yielded a very cool set of falls near the top of the mountains. Storm Fred had very recently laid waste to the area with flooding and downed trees so we hiked on a sketchy AF trail abutting the Broad French river to a great set of waterfalls called French Broad and Mill Shoals and then Rooster Tail and Bird. The French Broad was raging ~ the storm had even brought down a van!