Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Spring Forward Out Of Hibernation

The winter is gone!  Well...  ok, that may be overstating it.  It's technically spring now, since we passed the vernal equinox on March 20th.  However, Minnesota has remained cold and snowy.  The snow pack we accumulated over the winter remained frozen in large slabs of occasionally melting ice across the frigid tundral climate.  Not only that, the weather remained cold enough for the snow to continue flying unabated by the longer length of the spring days.  This winter has been tiresome for the spirits of the hardened souls living here.  Compounded with the intensity of the overbearing winter, this season has been particularly tumultuous in my own personal life.  After getting hit by a car while biking in december, my life was tossed akimbo as the questionable safety of winter biking was confirmed.  Biking had been my primary mode of transportation.  The snowbanks, which encroached far enough into the streets of Minneapolis for officials to limit parking to one side of the street so emergency vehicles could traverse the narrowing lanes, made the margin of space for bikers disappear.  After my parent's bought a new car and generously gave me their old car to drive, I was relieved of the wearisome burden of winter biking unsafety.  But, with a car came new financial obligations that stymied my ability to attend the shows I love.  That being said, this winter has been somewhat of a dark period for my writing as a result.  However, that is not to say there was nothing to speak of.

Music aside for a moment, another one of my favorite activities was much more affordable to me this winter.  Despite being a sport that many other people have to pay significant money to enjoy, I worked at Hyland Ski and Snowboard area this winter as a chairlift operator so I was able to snowboard for free all year.   This year I progressed quite a bit in my snowboarding skills.  I only once recorded a day of riding with a friend, but I put it to music by the local band the Moving Parts.  I used the song Noel as the background music for the video I uploaded to my YouTube channel.


At the end of the winter, just before the end of the snowboarding season at Hyland, my life was changed dramatically again when I was invited to live with some of my musician friends in the house near the University of Minnesota known as The Monastery.  I had decided to move out of my lonely efficiency apartment at the beginning of January 2014 because I realized the expenses of car insurance and gas for the used car my parents gave me gobbled up all the disposable income I had enjoyed while biking.  I had originally made plans to live with friends of mine from the band Thee Evil Creatures.  However, I needed to wait till the rental agency found someone to rent my apartment, or till the end of March, because I gave my two month notice a day past the January 5th deadline for an end of February move out.  Then, during one fateful week in February, everything came into place.  I casually mentioned to my friends at the monastery that I was in transition from my current place to a tentative place with some friends of mine.  It came up that they had a room opening up, and they offered it to me.  Within a couple days I found out from the rental agency that someone wanted to move into my old place.  Additionally, the person wanted to move in the very next week.  As a result, the rental agency asked me to vacate as soon as I could to allow them time to prepare the apartment before the lease signing.  Therefore, I quickly packed all my things into boxes and prepared for the move.  That started a whirlwind of change blowing through my life.  Within a week all my life plans had shifted dramatically.  Now I am living in a house with 13 people that hosts house parties once a month where half a dozen local bands perform to a bustling crowd of interesting people.

With the matters of my own life out of the way, It's time to finally highlight one of the winter event's I haven't covered yet.  On February 21st, 2014 the music video for the song "The Free People" by Moving Parts off the album "Music from the Monestary" was released.  I got a chance last fall  to be a part of this music video, along with quite a few other friends of the band, .  The shooting was done at the Monastery house wher I now live months before I moved in.


That will be all for now, but I assure you there has been quite a few event's, releases, and other happenings I intend to relay eventually.  Thanks again for reading.  This spring and summer promise to be abundantly full of energy and creativity.  Look forward to more soon.

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