Stand Up Paddleboard vs. Folding Kayak

I almost got an Oru folding kayak but didn't. I got an inflatable stand up paddleboard (iSUP) instead. Next year I might still get an Oru, but for this summer I decided on an inflatable stand up paddleboard that could double as a kayak. Specifically, I chose the Tahe Beach 10'6" SUP-YAK over the Oru Lake/Lake+. Here are some things I thought about when making this decision.

Portability: tie

Folding kayaks and iSUPs will each fit in the trunk or backseat of your car, making packability, portability and storage essentially a tie. 

Set Up Time: advantage Oru Lake

Here's a category where the Oru stands out, especially the Lake model. Once you get good at it, it's said that you can easily fold/unfold the Lake in under three minutes. It takes me almost ten minutes to pump up the iSUP to 15psi and then three or four additional minutes to attach the seat or chair and footrest. You're in the water ten minutes quicker with the Oru. (So far, I don't mind manually pumping the iSUP for 8 to 10 minutes. It's kind of like a pre-kayak warmup workout. You can always get an electric pump...for an additional cost.)

Weight: tie

The Oru Lake weighs approx. 18lbs. The Tahe Beach SUP-YAK weighs 23 to 24 lbs. That's a nominal difference and since you're not lifting anything up onto the top of a vehicle and all you're doing is carrying it to the water, I consider this a tie. It wasn't significant enough of a difference for me to make note of it. Both are easy to carry.

Versatility: advantage Tahe SUP-YAK

Simply put, it's super easy to go from sitting (kayaking) to standing (paddle boarding) very easy with the SUP-YAK. That's exactly what it's designed to do. Pretty much anything you can do on a folding kayak you can do with the SUP-YAK, plus you can also stand up to paddle. That's a win-win.

Speed and Tracking in the Water: advantage Oru Lake

The Oru Lake will get you from point A to point B faster than kayaking on a paddleboard. It more than likely tracks better as well due to the way it cuts through the water. That said, the SUP-YAK is a pretty smooth ride. Which leads me to...

Stability and Confidence in the Water: advantage Tahe SUP-YAK

By the time you've pumped the Tahe Beach SUP-YAK up to 15psi, you've got a rigid board that is going to be very stable in the water. It's 34 inches wide and you can stand up on it, so of course it's stable! You can also feel pretty confident in rougher conditions. There's no need for drain holes or being worried about it taking on water because with the flat design water just rolls off. If I had an Oru Lake I would only want to be out in calm, flat conditions and although it's unlikely that either are going to fail, I'd be a little less confident in the folding kayak.

Comfort - advantage Tahe SUP-YAK

The seat that comes as part of the SUP-YAK package is quite comfortable and substantial. You can also upgrade to a low frame camp chair type seat, sold separately. I like the one sold by Airkayaks. Either way, you'll be sitting up higher off the water in the SUP-YAK than in the Oru, and that may also make it more comfortable.

Dry Off - slight advantage to Oru Lake

One of the knocks on inflatable kayaks is that they are tricky to dry off entirely and failure to do so can lead to mold. This is not as much of a problem with inflatable stand up paddleboards. A SUP's flat design means that there aren't any nooks and crannies for water to hide. Still, after initially drying it off when coming out of the water, I like to unroll the SUP again once home so that it can air dry. I wouldn't want it to be put away while still damp. I can only assume that the drying process for the Oru Lake is slightly easier, but the advantage isn't as distinct as when compared to inflatable kayaks.

Oru Lake kayak

Tahe Beach "SUP-YAK"

For me the thing that mattered the most was versatility. I love having the option to sit or stand while paddling. Sometimes I'll paddle up the river and SUP all the way back down. If I never wanted to stand and only wanted to kayak, then the Oru Lake would probably have been my first choice since as a kayak it's going to perform more like a hardshell.

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Goose - My (and Your) New Favorite Band

At any point over the last 30 years, if someone had asked me who my two favorite bands were the answer would have been The Grateful Dead and Phish, or Phish and The Grateful Dead. The same answer either way. When Jerry Garcia died in 1995 that pretty much made The Grateful Dead a "past tense" band for me, leaving Phish as the unrivaled top-favorite "present-tense" group. 

Number two behind Phish was always a distant but still fervent second, occupied at various times by bands such as Leftover Salmon, .moe, String Cheese Incident, Dark Star Orchestra, Yonder Mountain String Band, Sound Tribe Sector Nine, My Morning Jacket, Dr. Dog, and Ween. None of those ever came close to knocking Phish off its perch. Now, out of nowhere, there is a band rising higher than any of those contenders that came before it, and that band is Goose. 

I believe my first exposure to Goose was while watching their debut at the 2019 Peach Music Festival where they struck me as a talented yet generic jamband. Another in a long line of generic sounding 2nd or 3rd tier jambands not worth my time. Fast forward to spring of 2022 and that general impression remained about the same. I actually hadn't thought much about Goose at all. That changed when I again found myself watching a live festival performance, this one being the April 2022 Sweetwater 420 Festival. No question Goose had gotten better, but I was also now more receptive to what they had to offer. I soon watched that Sweetwater 420 set a 2nd time and liked it even more. After that it's been non-stop Goose.

I was wrong to write off Goose as a generic jamband at some minor-league level. Yes they are most definitely a jamband and in fact that is their number one attribute. They jam. They jam at a level that rises above all the criticisms and comparisons to some new territory that is both familiar and unique. You can get into it. You can get lost in it. It is not going to let you down. I love how Goose goes straight to the epicenter of the genre (if I may), then works its way back out from there. They scratch that itch, whether you currently have poison ivy or got rid of that rash years ago. They scratch it.

Jamming is one thing that sets Goose apart but it is not the only thing. More important than the jams themselves are the foundations on which those jams are set and for Goose those are very stable blueprints. They flat out have some awesome songs. I feel like I am just getting to know these songs and there are probably some I am still unfamiliar with. And at this point instant classics are constantly being introduced to the repertoire. Was Animal really just played for the first time on 6/11/22? I guess I'm not that late to the party.

You have to love the song first before you can really love the jam. To use Phish as an example, a 20+ minute Soul Planet or Set Your Soul Free is never going to feel as good as a 20+ minute Ghost or Tweezer. With Goose I don't know if we are on hallowed "Tahoe-Tweezer" style ground, but they seem to at least get to "Ruby Waves" level on a regular basis, if you know what I mean.

Another thing that sets Goose apart from, well...everyone else, is that they have a really good singer. Guitarist Rick Mitarotonda can actually sing in a way that would appeal to the casual pop music listener, and that is a rarity in the jam-dominated live music world. I put him in the same league as Jim James or maybe even Thom Yorke when it comes to that. I'm surprised that I don't hate Rick's use of the autotune/vocoder thing but in contrast I have even come to like it in a weird way. I see it as a vocal tool he uses to his advantage similar to how Jim James would use reverb when My Morning Jacket first came out.

The overall sound of Goose is appealing, regardless of the song or the jam they are in. It's not all rock or jam all the time. For example, there are hints of bossa nova and calypso, hints of middle eastern scales, Paul Simony grooves, hummable hooks and melodies, and way, way more to it than that. And of course there seem to be passing references to all your favorite other bands. Yeti could totally be a .moe song. Hungersite would make for a killer My Morning Jacket number. There's some song I don't know the name of yet that reminds me of 46 Days. And so on. I've come to view these as good things.

Rick is a good, might I say, great guitar player. I don't yet know where he falls in that tradition or whether it's just within the jam world or the larger world of guitar, but I can say that he really shines during the acoustic Radio City Music Hall sets from June 2022. He also puts off an aura of being someone that you can put a lot of faith in and that is a characteristic he shares with Jerry and Trey. 

The piano sounds in Goose, when the guy Peter plays them, are extremely tasteful. I cannot believe that he didn't start playing piano until he joined Goose in late 2017. Unfathomable and quite impressive. (Referring to him as "the Peter guy" is one step up from his former title of "mustache dude". He's growing on me and I'm sure at some point soon his goofiness will become endearing).

The twin drumming of Goose - drum kit plus percussion - is something I find myself focusing on. It's easy to draw comparisons to Widespread Panic there. Goose seems to have cut and pasted that drum+percussion vibe and planted it in the middle of what they are doing and it works very, very well for them. 

However, the thing I probably find myself listening to the most in Goose is the bass. I don't know why this is. The bassist's name is Trevor Weeks or Weekz. Anyway, it's not like his playing is real flashy and it's certainly not a reproduction of Phil Lesh or Mike Gordon. If anything it's like a better Rob Derhak but I admit that's a lazy and unfair comparison. 

Phil Lesh, and to some extent Mike Gordon, are always "soloing"... adding bass counterpoint to the lead line. This particular style of playing has heavily (and perhaps negatively) influenced many that are trying to follow in those footsteps. Trevor doesn't really do this. He is mostly supportive, adding nuance in a more standard bassist function, and yet is still very prominent in the mix making it very easy to hear what he is doing. Very tasty.

OK I've rambled enough. I was originally only going to write the first two paragraphs above but kept adding more thoughts that weren't really very well fleshed out. At this point I'm only like three months in to really listening to Goose so these impressions could definitely change with time.

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The Ten Best Albums of 2021

I did an okay job keeping up with new releases this year.  Okay enough that I didn't feel compelled to do any end of year cramming or searching. I simply looked back at the list I'd been maintaining all year long and picked my overall favorites, which gave me a list of 18 choices. From there I narrowed it down to these 10.

Highway Butterfly: The Songs of Neal Casal

I knew of Neal Casal primarily through his instrumental band Circles Around the Sun. However, when he passed away in 2019 at the age of 50 I had no idea that he was also an expert lyricist and songwriter. Thankfully, Neal's friends and admirers got together to record over 40 of his songs as a tribute. I wouldn't normally include a various artists compilation like this on an end of the year list, but it's too good to leave off.

Lost Futures by Marisa Anderson and William Tyler

Both primitive and sophisticated is this meeting between two guitar greats: Marisa Anderson and William Tyler. I listened to it while driving along the Oregon Coast and it was the perfect soundtrack to that road trip and landscape.

Heaven and Holy by Painted Shrines

This is perhaps the most pop-oriented selection of the ten on this list. Jangle-pop that is. The guy from Reds Pinks and Purples teamed up with the guy from Woods to create this little gem of an album. Deceptively psychedelic.

New Love by Charnett Moffett

Charnett Moffett is not a name I had heard of before and bassist-led jazz releases are not usually something I am seeking out, yet I knew this was a best of year candidate from the moment I clicked play. Moffett has an understanding of Harmolodics, as taught by Ornette Coleman. Few people can even explain what Harmolodics is, much less utilize it in an effective way, but the way Moffett conducts the instruments and positions the role of the bass within this ensemble may provide some clues.

First Flight REDUX by Dave Harrington

I don't know what this is! I just like the sound of it. Especially the drumming. It quickly became my go-to exercise music for the year.

Searching for the Disappeared Hour by Sylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson

Despite being a long-time fan of guitarist Mary Halvorson, this is the first time I've gotten to hear her play with pianist Sylvie Courvoisier, or any piano player. The piano adds a richness which I find soothing. While still being very abstract and difficult to comprehend, it may be ever so slightly more conventional than what we are used to.

Sunshine Radio by Tommy Guerrero

Tommy Guerrero is someone I admire: a DIYer who can be counted on to put out catchy, melodic, instrumental albums time and time again. Don't mistake this pro skater for being an amateur musician. This is pretty much the sound. The epicenter. Exactly what I am looking for in music. 

Children In Space by Guess What

I detect some major Sun Ra vibes from this album. Big, spacey tones for a keys and drums duo.

Confabulations by Duck Baker

Years ago I saw Duck Baker play a solo show in Richmond, VA but I don't recall him being this out. We're talking Derek Bailey level out. Could this be easy listening in disguise? Something keeps me coming back to it.

Yol by Altin Gün

I was watching a Phish webcast this summer and during the setbreak you could just make out the house music that Phish's sound person was playing at the venue. It sounded really good to me at the time but I had no idea what it was. After a while I thought to try the Shazam app and it was able to tell me it was a song by Altin Gün. I checked again a few minutes later and it was another song from the same Altin Gün album called Yol. This would be good music to put on the jukebox in the Star Wars Cantina.

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A Phish Inspired Cardio Workout

If you've ever seen Phish perform You Enjoy Myself then you've likely noticed that there's a section where guitarist Trey Anastasio and bassist Mike Gordon do a choreographed bounce routine on little trampolines. They did this as recently as last Sunday, August 15, 2021 in front of a crowd of 30,000+ (COVID...what COVID?) on the beach in Atlantic City. Long-time fans may recall that Phish would also jump on the mini trampolines during Mike's Song.

Anyway, these little trampolines are called rebounders and they are great exercise! You definitely break a sweat and get your heart rate up. I don't know what brand of rebounders Phish uses on stage, but I've tried both JumpSport and bellicon and can recommend both.

My bellicon rebounder

I started last year with a 39" JumpSport rebounder and these are awesome trampolines. There's even a rebounder-focused gym in NYC called The Ness that uses JumpSport rebounders. Eventually I got a 44" fully-customized bellicon and I'm glad that I did! It has folding legs so storage is a breeze, and the jumping experience is unparalleled. Rebounding is now a regular part of my home gym workout routine. If you're worried that you'll get going too fast and accidentally jump off I haven't found that to be the case. I don't think you need a handle to hold onto.

My other favorite home gym cardio choice is a slide board, which you may or may not have heard of. Phish briefly used these as stage props around 1993. Trey and Mike would slide on them while performing the songs It's Ice or Glide. Both songs were new and pretty common back then so for a short while Phish did this quite often. I don't know why they stopped using the slide boards. 

To slide on a slide board you wear special booties over your sneakers. This helps make the surface extra slick, and basically you just slide back and forth. There's a lot more advanced stuff you can do as you gain confidence. You work out different lower body muscles than a trampoline but the slide board can be just as intense. That's why I love toggling back and forth between the two. If you're worried that you'll slip and fall, don't be. Just be a little careful as you step on or off the board. Once you're moving, balance is no problem.

If you're going to invest in a slide board you probably want one that has a solid sliding surface as opposed to the flimsy cheapo ones that a lot of places have for sale. The two best slide board brands by far are Brrrn and Ultraslide, and good news I believe these are made by or at least designed by the same team of people. The solid, high-quality material makes them very durable and a pleasure to slide on.

Brrrn started off a few years ago as a cold temperature slide board gym in NYC and now sells their Brrrn Boards direct to the consumer. You can buy Brrrn Boards on Amazon Prime (5-star rating!) or from Brrrn website. Whereas, Ultraslide is the grandaddy of slide boards - sustainably made in the USA for over 35 years. Ultraslide seems geared towards selling to NBA and NHL teams or college and youth athletic programs, but Ultraslide will also make a slide board for you! Ultraslide partnered with Brrrn to help make their slide boards, so either way you're getting the best you can get. I started with a 5 foot Brrrn Board (I'm short and my house is small) but I'm probably going to move up to a 6 foot board soon to intensify the challenge. Storage is easier than I thought it would be.

I'm just glad Phish never used a NordicTrack, Peloton or treadmill on stage! Seriously. Rebounders and slide boards are like acoustic instruments. There's no buttons to push or cords to plug in. It's all on you!

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Adding a Bass-Line to a Melody

I've got some monophonic melodies that I like to play. Monophonic meaning that these tunes are just single melody lines, without accompaniment. I've either written or stolen these. Usually a little bit of both. Now I'd like to make them "polyphonic" by adding a counterpoint harmony line, like a bass-line. 

I guess these tunes are what some would call "cantus firmus", meaning: an existing melody used as the basis for a polyphonic composition. I certainly wasn't thinking of harmony or counterpoint when I originally came up with them. Adding a bass-line would be like adding a second tune pitched below the original to create two concurrent yet perceptually distinct lines (integrated yet segregated).

I wouldn't be playing these all at once on the same instrument the way a pianist or some guitarists might do. I'd overdub one part with the next or alternate back and forth. It's actually more of a composition exercise or study, more than anything else. Either way, I don't currently know how to come up with something like this that sounds good with the melody.

From what I understand, Renaissance period composers did not think about harmony in terms of chords. The melodic lines they created using counterpoint were focused on how the melodies interacted. I like that approach because I have always been blissfully unaware of what chords a pianist might choose if playing along with these melodies.

I'm aware that there are a few suggestions or best practices: 3rds and 6ths intervals sound good (produce clear harmonies); avoid parallel fifths (two fifths in a row), octaves are sometimes OK, 2nds and 7ths are dissonant. Use contrary motion - so if one line moves up, the other moves down (creates a sense of melodic independence). If you do move in similar motion try varying up the intervals. More actual hands-on research needs to be done to see if my ears agree with these guideposts.

What I'm thinking of doing could be something as "simple" as what the band Khruangbin does. Their guitarist Mark Speer plays the lead melody and bassist Laura Lee plays a bass-line that supports it, while drummer DJ Johnson provides the beat. Seems pretty straightforward.

Phil Lesh, the bassist for The Grateful Dead, took a unique approach as if he invented the instrument and nobody else played it before him. In Phil's case it was kind of like "Lead Bass", responding to and having a conversation with the lead treble sound of Jerry Garcia's melodic guitar lines. Phil could play it differently every time, partly because he was a gifted improviser and partly because he probably couldn't remember how he played it last time.

Moondog employed a lot of strict counterpoint in his compositions. Listening to his Moondog's music might show the way. Guitarist Jimmy Wyble was an expert at playing two simultaneous melodies on guitar. Maybe I could analyze his arrangements. Stevie Wonder played keyboard bass on some of his recordings.

There's also brass/horn harmony parts to learn from, how an arranger might write for a horn section where a lower pitched horn has one part while a higher pitched instrument like a trumpet plays something else. Studying how these interact might help. 

Hopefully it's easier than I'm making it seem. There's a book called Study of Counterpoint by Johann Joseph Fux that looks pretty cool. It was written in 1725.

What Comes First - Cardio or Strength Training?

My at home gym is now pretty much complete. I have lots of choices when it comes to free weights and strength training equipment: Ybells, steel maces, kettlebells, medicine/slam balls, heavy wooden mudgar/karlakattai clubs, Equalizer bars, chin-up doorframe grips, resistance bands, and more. Even a bowling ball! 

For cardio my primary tools are a rebounder trampoline and a slide board. I also have a jump rope and an aerobic stepper, and I take regular walks of 2 to 4 miles in length. These walks are dog walks averaging about 25 minutes per mile, so I don't know how "cardio" they are but they are something.

Anyway, I like to do slide board before strength training. On the days I do slide board, I do it first thing in the morning, after a few minutes of stretching out and loosening up. I start out with an upright slide at a moderate pace and then gradually increase the intensity/speed in more of a hinged position. After 20 minutes on the slide board I do find that my energy when I switch to strength training is slightly more depleted than if I hadn't done the cardio beforehand. But that's no biggie.

Conversely, on other days I like to bounce on my rebounder mini-trampoline after doing strength training. The main reason for this is because after 20+ minutes of weights my body is very loose and limber and following that accomplishment with some trampoline fun is a good way to end a workout session. Also, early on when I first started rebounding the jumping would sometimes lead to a slight pain at the base of my neck, almost like a mild headache. This hasn't happened recently and does not occur when I do the trampoline after having already done some type of strength training workout.

You won't really find an answer to the question posed in the post title and that's because I don't know the answer. Each method has its pros and cons. By alternating cardio + weights one day followed by weights + cardio the next day I feel like I have the bases covered.

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Going Keto vs Counting Calories

If you are exercising regularly and being mindful of what you eat, either approach will work. What I did initially was try to eat a low-carb, keto style diet. That, along with exercise, allowed me to lose almost 40 lbs and I never once thought about how many calories I was eating. 

I think keto may be best if you have a lot of weight you are trying to lose fast. Your body will eventually tell you whether or not keto is sustainable for you.

I felt great during keto. I reached a weight plateau about 40 pounds lighter than I was before and I stayed there for over a year. One month ago I started to think about calories, not carbs. I began to introduce things like fruit, oatmeal and sweet potatoes to my diet - things that would have been taboo on keto - with a daily calorie intake goal of about 1,600 calories. The result? I quickly lost an additional 6 or 7 pounds and seem to have reached a new, lower plateau. 

Now I am aware of low-carb and low-calorie and try to incorporate both into my choices. It's healthier and more balanced that way. Another thing I've done recently is amp up my cardio exercise by getting both a new rebounder trampoline and a slide board. Along with the 20 minutes a day of strength training I do, I now try and add 20 minutes of cardio.

Exercise and healthy eating go hand in hand. When you are exercising regularly you are less likely to want to make bad food choices, or when you do you do so deliberately knowing that your body has the metabolism to withstand the occasional indulgence. And when you are regularly making good food choices, it can lead to a better sense of well being which can give your exercise a boost or the motivation you need to stay active.