Sweating it Out at R3: And why Vengeance Creek rules the local metal scene

Posted inNews

Sweating it Out at R3: And why Vengeance Creek rules the local metal scene

Mike Bookey

 
Sound Check drove the dreaded 32 miles down to LaPine Friday night for
the R3 Festival and learned three very important things; Vengeance
Creek are Central Oregon's metal royalty, clever beat-boxing can steal
the show and you can three-person sandwich grind to metal.

As the
sun set on a triple-digit August night, band after band played to a
half-interested crowd switching between the two trailer truck stages.
The crowd grew as the sun descended and the local rap group Povciti
took the stage giving the crowd its promised dose of local rap and
properly woke them up. Sound Check learned from this set that you can
apparently find Povciti's Epic and H@ze in the Old Mill District and
that they're established local celebrities. Well, if they weren't local
celebrities before then they are now. The duo laid their underground
hip-hop routine on thick and brought the crowd to its feet with their
finale - a freestyle rap accompanied by master beat boxer Dain
Strothoff. The kid can beat-box like nobody's business to every kind of
beat imaginable and stole the show from right under the duo. Whoever
this kid is, Sound Check contemplated that he could give Person People
(keyword "could") a run for their money if accompanied by the right
freestyle artist. Maybe it was the possible heat stoke, but our thirty
bucks entrance fee was justified right then and there.

Posted inCulture

Cruise Yourself: Seeing Bend by bike

Intern

Big wheels keep on turning. Imagine yourself as a 20-year-old college student without a care in the world, save maybe Nike's working conditions in Indonesia. You've got three months of free time before fall term and only one problem, no money.

In the post sub-prime and post-post dot.com world, what's a student to do? Pumping gas is always an option (this is Oregon after all) but there are some Karma issues and even good old unleaded is feeling the pinch as folks move to carpooling, biking, and, gasp, even walking. Restaurants have been hit hard, too. Rising food price and a downturn in customers have put the pinch on what was once a go-to industry for students.

Long time friends Peter Daucsavage and Spencer Hill started thinking early about how to turn a buck while home from school and came up with a novel idea. Brainstorming over Christmas the pair decided that they would try to cash in on Bend's summer tourism economy by offering cruiser bike tours of downtown Bend and the Old Mill. Operating with a shoestring budget the two, and a third partner Lucas Zettle, launched Bend Bike Tours. For $30 the pair offer a guided tour of the heart of Bend from Drake Park to the Bill Healy Bridge that includes fun "Did You Know" nuggets like Clark Gable once worked at the Brooks-Scanlon Mill and former Bulletin publisher George Palmer Putnam was married to Amelia Earhart.

Posted inOutside

Fight the Bite!: Take sensible precautions against mosquitos

Jim Anderson

Female mosquito doing her thing… Well, we might as well go right to the Bad News first: Mosquitoes are Bad News for Homo sapiens; they carry and spread all kinds of nasty diseases that make life very difficult for us. The first documented case of a mosquito carrying West Nile Virus for this year was over in Baker City on August 2.

The Good News? Just about every small bird loves to eat them, along with zillions of bats and fish.

The lifecycle of these tiny, pestiferous insects is linked to water – any kind of water – from snow melt to clean flowing creeks or dirty sewage water. Water is so important to mosquitoes they are usually identified by the water they come from.

The life expectancy of a mosquito depends on a lot of things: gender, and environmental temperature, time of year, and humidity. Generally speaking, an adult male mosquito will live for about a week, whereas a female mosquito can live up to a month.

There is one other element in the life cycle of the mosquito that is paramount for survival of the species; the female must have a blood meal in order to generate eggs. The males, bless their little pointy snouts, feed on flowers, as do their partners from time to time.

Posted inOutside

Carbon Fiber versus Carbon Neutral: The meaning of our stuff, action shooting, and hot chicken

Pam Stevenson

Aisles and aisles of stuff at Outdoor RetailerOn Stuff

As outdoor lovers, most of us try to tread lightly on our planet. We Leave No Trace, we join Blue Sky, we ride to work, we recycle. But we also love our gear: our full-suspension mountain bikes with disc brakes, our biomechanically designed running shoes, our lightweight carbon fiber paddles. Cool stuff.

George Carlin, the satirical comedian who passed away in June, had a famous routine on stuff (Google him to find the YouTube video of his five-minute sketch). He made fun of how attached we are to, and possibly bogged down we are by, our possessions.

The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard at storyofstuff.com takes a harder line on manufacturing and the evils of Stuff in our consumption-based socioeconomy.

So, how do we align our environmental ethos with our desire for techy new gear?

Manufacturers in the outdoor industry are faced with an especially ironic challenge. They are in business to build products that enable people to get out and enjoy the great outdoors, but the manufacturing of those products ultimately consumes finite resources.

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