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My Bass Journey

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A little while back, I joined a Hawaiian band as their bassist—a role I accepted despite having no prior experience with the instrument. It all started when a friend of mine asked me to play bass guitar for his band. I’d never played bass before. After a couple more asks, I borrowed his bass to check it out and gave it a try. I fell in love with the bass and bought my own instrument a few days later. But with a major gig at the Grand Ritz in Escondido just two months away, the pressure was on. The learning curve was intense. I had to quickly master techniques like finger-style plucking and two-handed muting, while also grappling with bass lines and chord progressions. Learning Hawaiian songs as a complete beginner added another layer of complexity. Not only were the melodies and chord progressions unfamiliar, but the non-English lyrics made it incredibly challenging to recover if I stumbled. Despite these hurdles, the performance was a success, igniting a passion for the bass tha...
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Cleaning and Sticker Bombing a "Used" Bass Guitar

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At a band jam, I ran into a guy who offered to sell me a "used" bass. He explained that he'd bought it for his son right before he joined the military and left. Since then it had just been sitting unused. He even threw in a really nice 25-watt Fender amp, all for only $100! The bass was practically untouched, showing very little sign of use. It even had most of the protective plastic coverings still on it—the kind you usually only get to peel off a brand new instrument. Even the tuning pegs still had their protective plastic on them! (I later discovered the little round string retainer was broken, but more on that later.) This is a shot before I started working on it. I set up a folding table and began a careful inspection. While the bass was clearly barely used, it had definitely been in storage for quite a while. Based on the serial number, I'd guess it was manufactured around 2018 (6 years old?). It was probably tucked away in a garage or closet all this time, bec...
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Going Caching 2024 - Geocaching Event

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  Going Caching XIV 2024 - A Geocaching Event: Each year, for the last 14 years, there was a Mega-GeoCaching event that happened in Rome, Georgia. The event is called “Going Caching” and this year was the final year. From its humble beginning it has grown to be a world-class, globally-known event drawing thousands of geocachers from numerous countries and all walks of life.  We first heard of Going Caching in 2014 when Jim and Andi, the founders, approached us at another geocaching event and invited us to come out to experience what they have created. They wanted us to experience and promote the event on our podcast (https://www.podcacher.com/) After also hearing about Going Caching from other geocachers who raved about what they had seen and done, we had to go. Our first time out to Rome, Georgia was 2015 and what an experience it was! The theme that year (every year the theme changes) was a Renaissance faire style “kingdoms”. There were 5 kingdoms that both competed and coop...
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