surprise at home

As I was riding home last night, I heard some unfamiliar sound as I was rolling into the driveway: it was the sound of drums and cymbals. From the direction of the sound, my neighbours over on that side have no young kids, and the drum sound was from a beginner.

So as I opened the door, the drum side was coming from within! My 12 year old son and his two buddies was having a jam session! Their school has a talent show in about 2 weeks and they were getting together to practice. Being first timers the singer brought the lyrics, about 2 bars of music for one hand and the drummer brought his (rental) drum set. My son was struggling to play the few notes the singer brought along. So my music and superhero instincts kick in, sort them out. Reverse engineer the song for the basic chords, give my son a basic pattern to play, settle them in a practice tempo, and about 2 hours later they got the basic pattern going. They will be going into an audition today so let's see what happens.

Several interesting observations:
- figuring out what chords to use is way easier than it was when I was in highschool. An mp3 and the slider in the computer makes life soooo easy.
- the band is a bunch of piano players venturing out to different instruments. Just like when I was in my band.
- 12 year old kids these days know what they want to do. I would say they are way smarter than when I was 12.

I had fun and saw them had fun too.

Road Race

I have taken a full Cycling BC race license this year. So I thought it might be a good idea to do some races that require a full license. This being the closest to home and the timing is favourable so I signed up and went for it yesterday.

Here are the positives:
I had fun.
I finished the race.
I contributed - I was telling people how to ride paceline to go faster.

I need to work on these...
Climb faster.
Turns
Positioning myself in the pack.

I was extremely tired after the race but felt much better towards the end of the day. I was going through flickr trying to find photos of myself but couldn't find anything...

Anyways more training. Onwards and Upwards.