What hobbies do you have outside of firearms/self-defense?

[DBrogue]

Anyone can ride a unicycle. The trik is being able to ride it for more than 10 seconds!

[Nathan]

Outside of firearms, I like to tinker with various vehicles and engines. Last year, I rebuilt the engine in my 1940 Farmall H tractor. I also have a 4 year old boy who keeps me busy haha!

[James]

My family has a couple old farmall tractors, including one my grandma helped buy during the depression. They’ve been rebuilt and one is on my cousin’s manure spreader. Yours looks nice!

[Dawn]

What kind of cigars do you like, @ChrisH? I’ve had a few - and enjoy one once in a blue moon,

[Zee]

@dawn, first vodka, now cigars… I’m getting a whole new picture here
BTW did you see the vet-made bourbon I posted a link to?

[Dawn]

I’m an angel…

Bourbon isn’t one of my go to drinks, but it would make a great gift for a few people I know!

[Nathan]

@James - Thanks. I’ll be cranking her up this weekend, first time since last fall. I have a flat rear tire to repair, but the engine should run fine after I put some fresh gas into her.

[James]

Have you ever seen those tractors that start off of blank shotgun shells?

[Zee]

@James

tractors that start off of .22 shells?

Wait… they what?

[James]

I messed up and edited my statement they weren’t .22 shells but shotgun blanks. Field Marshall tractors and some others. Fast forward to 3:12 to see the guy hit the shell with a hammer.

[James]

It’s called a Coffman Engine Starter.

[Zee]

Ok that was awesome
They sound like “Fargo”
Glad my tractor just needs a key and an occasional shot of starter spray

[James]

If you think they sound like Fargo, come to WI.

[Nathan]

Those Field Marshalls are very cool, but also rather rare here in the US (they are British in origin). Those “hot bulb” one-lungers are a throwback to when engineers were still trying to figure out how to get small diesel engines to easily crank over. 6 volt and early 12 volt systems just did not have the amps to turn over such high compression engines. Shotgun shells seemed as good an idea as any then.

[James]

They also used them on snow cat engines as a secondary starter or emergency cold weather starter for a while.

[KenM]

@AAlan you say a few years back. How long have you been playing?

I mostly play guitar, I started in the 80s, went from the bedroom to the garage, clubs and studios back to the garage and bedroom.
Here’s a pic when I had my set up in the bedroom.

Here’s my set up I used in the clubs in in the 2000s up until I stopped playing in bands.

Here’s my last show about 13 years ago.

Here are my two current favorite guitars, the rest are packed away until I redo the garage. The last pic is a tone editor I use to save my amp modeling settings. I use the Peavey 5150 amp model, nowhere near the 1st gen 5150s that I used in tone but close enough and nowhere near the hefty lbs to have to lug around.

I remember my good friend picked up a peavey bass and it was pretty nice. I played a little bass on my scratch demos I would record song ideas and take to my band to work on and got into bass a bit more.

I still have a Fernandes Tremor bass it has a jazz neck pickup with an MM4 bridge pickup. I used to have both an Ibanez SR400 and Squire 5 string Pbass. I picked up a great deal on an Ampeg BA500 210 combo, thing is a beast it’s so heavy.

I used to play direct with a line6 pod pro liveXT with a gallien krueger or ampeg svt modeled amp setting with a touch of chorus and modeled 4x10 cab.

By no means a soulful bass player, can only play rock and metal styles grooves both pick and finger style playing. Tried drums and I’m not able to walk and chew bubble gum, I did pick up the keyboard a bit but make no mistake I like different styles of music but when it comes to playing I’m like a one trick pony with Rock/Metal.

[AAlan]

Four years. “A few years back” was literal. I worked soundboards for churches since I was 20. 8 years ago, I scored the lead role in our production of “The Gospel According to Scrooge”, rediscovered my love for the spotlight. Got tired of sitting behind the scenes. My son was playing bass, wanted to learn lead electric. So I said gimme a year to learn to learn bass, and we’ll switch. I bought a bass, and literally, this is A, this is D, is is… uh… G… Not a year. Two weeks after buying the bass, my son was in a motorcycle accident and royally messed up his left arm. (He’s fine now.) So three weeks after buying the bass, I found myself on stage on Sunday morning. Took me a few months to even feel comfortable playing. Between working two jobs and all my other hobbies (unicycling, gardening, fitness, to name a few), I had little time to practice, but knew bass was my thing. Just last year I changed jobs, and can’t make rehearsals anymore, so I’m out. I miss it terribly.

My music of choice is funk. If I had learned bass at a young age, I would be a funkmaster.

Love your whole setup. I’m always jealous of those who put many years into music, and have a lot of regrets for not going there much sooner. Would love to hear if you have anything online.

[KenM]

Thanks for sharing @AAlan , music literally kept me out of trouble I grew up with awesome family to guide and encourage me.

Later in life I found performing and writing music a huge outlet and emotional purge. This is my take away, God gifted both of us with music to connect with ourselves and give something for others to connect with at a time when it was needed most.

Glad to hear everyone’s doing well. I feel it is only appropriate you pursue taking the time to getting funky and changing your call sign to funkmaster

I lost my sound files on my PC hard drive, I used to be able to keep them in the cloud and now that’s gone as the software provider took those servers offline. I might be able to get a sound file off an old iPod I have, darn iTunes purged my recordings with an update and I lost that as well.

My goal is to set up recording again. In the meanwhile I see what I can do to share.

[AAlan]

I like the sound of Funkmaster, but I’d be more like Funknoob for a while. Besides, AAlan speaks more to my 2A purpose of being here.

Thats really a shame about losing all of your music. Can’t trust anyone. We couldn’t record our playing due to copyright infringements. Like most churches, we’re licensed to play, but no recordings.

And you’re right about time and place. I suspect another outlet for groovin’ may surface at some point. I gotta be ready to ride that wave.

Good luck with the writing. Takes a special person to write good music.

[Zee]

Oh, I forgot… breeding rare livestock.
And pickling.