Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
I am helping a certain production with some firearm training and supplies. One of the things I'm helping with is reloading the blanks once they've been fired (much cheaper, and considerably quieter than the full-power blanks). It's not hard, just pop out the old primers, and press in new primers.
I got a call a couple of days ago. It was the stage manager, asking for more blanks. No problem, says I, but I'm bicycle mounted today, so would you mind if we did it tomorrow? Oh, that's fine, replies he.
I got there last night (the "tomorrow" in question), to pick up the spent blanks. The stage looked suspiciously well made-up. At some point, I asked if they were expecting an audience tonight. He'd mentioned on the phone that they had enough for that night, which extrapolated out to mean that they didn't have enough for the next night. He replied in the affirmative to my question.
Ok, so there's a problem here. Let's go over the situation, from the viewpoint of, say, Monday. It's Monday, you have a rehearsal Monday and Tuesday, a preview Wednesday (with audience), and opening Thursday. You look into your bag of unfired blanks, and count out 5. You use 2 per rehearsal or performance.
You have a number of choices available to you. First, you could choose not to use blanks in the remaining rehearsals. This gives you five shots for the nights with audience, assuming your master-at-arms (me, in this case) has some schedule conflict which prevents him from getting you a fresh supply. Second, you could call the master-at-arms Monday afternoon, to give him a few days' lead, and warn him that there will be audience there on Wednesday. You could also combine these two choices into a kind of extra-safety option. Finally, you could call your master-at-arms late on Tuesday, and ask him for more blanks, with no mention of when opening happens. That's what just happened.
Of course, it's not as simple as all that. A stage manager has to be shockingly on-the-ball at all times, and it's easy to let some things slip. In particular, it's very easy to assume that everyone with the slightest involvement knows the schedule. Past performance on the part of the master-at-arms (ie, providing a one-day turnaround for fresh noisemakers) may lull you into a false sense of complacency as to his ability to deliver such speedy performance every time. In short, it's a mistake easily made.
That doesn't really make it any better when you have to perform in front of an audience with empty guns.
Posted at 11:33 permanent link category: /theater
I managed to pick up my first flat tire on a bicycle in a long time last night. Of course, it was as I was half-way to where I was going. Naturally, I had all the requisite components to fix the problem. At home. Sigh.
Fortunately, I had given myself a lot of time to get where I was going, so walking the rest of the way was a viable option. Fortunately again, I had already been planning a trip to REI, which has an extensive bicycle department, on the way home; the trip to REI on foot only took 15 minutes. I bought all the requisite stuff, ending up with a nicer collection of tools than I have at home, so it wasn't a total loss. I felt silly buying $70 worth of stuff I already owned, though.
The cause for the flat seems to have been old age. When I was wrestling with the front tire a few nights ago, I ended up using a tube I had lying around. It was a 700c tube (the size used on road bikes), which means it was at least 7 years old, and more likely 8-10 years old. The last road bike I had was sold early in 1999. Anyway, the leak was caused by a tiny nick in the tube, facing right into the rim. That means there was nothing on the road which could have caused it, and there was nothing on the rim. It must have split from old age.
Ah well. It was hardly a disaster. And now I'm equipped to deal with flats, so hooray for that.
Posted at 09:34 permanent link category: /bicycle
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater