Whirly: good to go

I’m in Seattle on my way to London. I wanted to check out some Martin Guitars while here. I found a Guitar Centers close to my hotel. I’ve never been to a Guitar Center before. I found the high end acoustic-guitar room, not as many guitars as I would have liked, no employees around. Eventually, I took off my coat and picked up a Martin D-35.

I wanted to look at a D-18, D-28 and a D-35. I suppose it’s strange, but I’ve been playing for nearly 45 years and never played a Martin. While I have a couple of inspiring electrics, My Gibson acoustic, while OK, isn’t doing it for me. I purchased a beautiful hand made Guitar in the 80’s that played terribly. I traded that heartbreakingly beautiful, crappy guitar for the Gibson. It’s time to try again.

The D-35 had the lowest action I’ve ever seen on a guitar, lower than my Les Paul. I’m not sure that low action is a good thing on a flattop. It had a ringing tone to die for. I fell in love with that guitar.

The D-28 was a bit of a disappointment. It’s was a great guitar, but not substantially better than my Gibson. They did had an Adirondack D-28 that had a low, smooth, sexy tone I could grow old (older) with. It had a wider neck than I’m used to, I could get used to that though. I have a thumb using technique that could use some changing. My Martin nylon backpacker has a wide neck and it’s become one of my favorites to play.

I found no D-18s. I could get lucky buying a guitar online. It’s certainly better to sit with a guitar and let it choose me. It costs me around $1000 to come to the big city. It might be better to gamble on an online purchase. I’m not sure what I’ll do. I’ll miss that d-35 forever, but I’m headed to London. I can’t be hauling around a guitar. Plus, I’m still paying for a recently purchased Epiphone Elitist Broadway.

I wasn’t expecting anything special from the Slave Pens. On our previous visit we barely got past the first room. I figured, once we hit the wall, we could head to Ramparts or BloodFurnace for the rest of the evening. The “wall” turned out to be the boss ‘ Rokmar the Crackler‘ a couple of hours later – well past our regular camping time. We’d taken the boss Mennu the Betrayer earlier, it was a long fight, but once we got in the groove he wasn’t too bad. He has a lot of hit points and uses Shaman healing totems.

Rokmar the Crackler didn’t actually kill us all. When Mike and Mark went down, I ran. Once around the corner, I realized I had no place to run to as we’d jumped down from above. Luckily, Rokmar turned around. I went back and rezzed the boys. It was a fun night. I picked up ‘Princely Reign Leggings’ from Mennu. They aren’t much of an upgrade, but they have that circus-clown look that we’ve grown to love.

Rokmar the Crackler song

Words and music – Mike and Charlie

Rokmar the Crackler, as big as he could be. Rokmar the Crackler he killed us 1 2 3.

It’s a short song. We didn’t have much time.