What A Long Strange Trip It's Been

Note: This post has very little to do with audio and less to do with computer audio. If you're only looking for such information please skip this post. If you want to read an interesting story and find out about a good music related book, continue on. Much more information about MQA, after my lengthy discussion with Bob Stuart in Las Vegas, is forthcoming in another article.

CES 2017 started with a bang. Thursday morning Tidal dropped 30,000 MQA tracks and everyone could decode the tracks in software, starting immediately. Music lovers everywhere were listening to old albums again for the first time. Some loved it, some hated it, and some remained undecided. Nevertheless, everyone was talking music.

On Saturday morning I woke up to a phone call from American Express, asking if I tried to purchase something for $400 at Walmart. Walmart crushes a little piece of my soul every time I get in the vicinity of its brick and mortar stores, and I don't think I have ever shopped its online store. AmEx proceeded to cancel my credit card and issue a new one, to be delivered to my home in Minnesota on Monday. It's a first world problem, but still a pain in the neck.

On Sunday morning in Las Vegas I woke up to a phone call from my dad and several texts from others. The messages said my best friend's mother had slipped on ice, hit her head, and froze to death in the sub-zero Minnesota weather. My friend and I have known each other since we played hockey as kids and have remained close to this day. I wanted to be home to support him and ensure I could attend the memorial service. It was a no-brainer, CES 2017 was over for me. I left Las Vegas early. However, my long strange trip home had just began.

Prior to CES, I heard about a dog named Smokey who lived in southern California. Smokey's owner moved to Minnesota, but left him with friends until he could be brought to his new northern home. On Christmas eve his owner received a call from someone suggesting Smokey hadn't been fed for two weeks and that he was living outside without shelter from the elements. Due to unfortunate circumstances, Smokey's owner was unable to get him to Minnesota any time soon. I volunteered to get Smokey home one way or there other.

I researched bringing him home on my flight back to Minnesota from Las Vegas. I found out that when the temperature falls below 20° F, airlines refuse to transport a pet, even if the animal has a statement from a veterinarian certifying its cold weather acclimation. This meant that driving to Minnesota with Smokey was the only way ensure he made it to his new home.

My plan was to leave Las Vegas on Monday, the day after CES. After receiving the terrible news about my friend's mom, I left a day early. I figured that I could get home early Tuesday morning, if I consumed enough caffeinated beverages and slept just enough to safely drive the 2,000+ miles. I grabbed a quick bite to eat Sunday morning, then stepped into a Taxi for the 6 mile trip form the hotel to National Car Rental. My mind was on the seriousness of the events back home, and I didn't feel like getting an Uber as I had done the previous night. The taxi was literally right out the door of the hotel and required no additional thought processing on my part. What a way to begin the trip. The cab driver was a chatty cathy who couldn't stop talking. Not the end of the world, but he missed the exit because he was so engrossed in his story telling. By the time he got off the highway, circled the airport and delivered me to the car rental center, the cab ride cost me $50. Yes, $50 to go 6 miles. I was in no mood to discuss the fact that he was the cause of this outrageous fee. That's Vegas for you.

I picked up the rental car in Las Vegas and headed to east Los Angeles to pick up Smokey. I pressed play on a great audiobook. Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory by John Seabrook. Over the next 9.5 hours I listened to narrator Dion Graham explain why popular music is popular and how much a small group of Swedish white men influence the world of pop music. It's a festinating listen / read, especially is you like or care about popular music. The term "bliss point" is used in this book. The term originated in the food industry. It's the amount of ingredients such as fat, sugar and salt that it takes to make people want the food over and over again. To quote wikipedia, "The bliss point for salt, sugar, or fat is a range within which perception is that there is neither too much nor too little, but the "just right" amount of saltiness, sweetness, or richness. The human body has evolved to favor foods delivering these tastes: the brain responds with a "reward" in the form of a jolt of endorphins, remembers what we did to get that reward, and makes us want to do it again, an effect run by the neurotransmitter, dopamine. Combinations of sugar, fat, and salt act synergistically, and are more rewarding than any one alone. In food product optimization, the goal is to include two or three of these nutrients at their bliss point."

Music producers and writers such as Max Martin and Shellback have perfected this junk food approach to song creation. Hearing a track from these Swedes around three times is enough to get someone hooked (pardon the pun). Every piece of the song is created to hook people into wanting more. The hook, chorus, bridge, beat, etc... are all created with laboratory precision.

I have no problem admitting that I like some of the music produced and written by these guys. The new Taylor Swift album 1989, is pure junk food for me. I listened to the album twice after finishing this book. However, I can't listen to this music the same way as I did prior to ingesting the information about how it was created. It just doesn't sound the same anymore. Now that I've seen how the sausage is made, I don't really like the sausage anymore. Anyway, great book. I highly recommend it.

Back to the road trip - I picked up Smokey from a place in desert-like conditions, not a blade of grass in the yard, and he had a layer of dirt on him. I petted him quite a bit once I got him in the car and my hand was covered in dirt. I brought along a sheet for him to lay on in the back seat, so he wouldn't get the rental car too dirty. After about two miles in the car together the sheet was on the floor. The back seat was dirty. Oh well. The saying, "drive it like a rental" has some truth to it.

We stopped for gas back in Las Vegas and I took smokey out for a little walk. I purchased some water and cups for his dog food at the gas station, but not without some additional credit card trouble. Of course my card was declined! My AmEx was compromised and canceled, and now my Visa wouldn't work. This trip was going just swell. After a call to Visa the card was back in working order and we were back on the road.

Driving through Utah was great with a speed limit of 80 mph, but the winding and hilly roads were a bit difficult in the dark. We stopped in Salina, Utah for the night at some less than stellar hotel. I had no worries though. A large pit bull at my side was enough to make anyone think twice before trying something sketchy. Smokey had a menacing look, but he would have rather have licked people's faces than get in a scuffle. He licked my head from the back seat many times throughout the drive. When we entered the hotel room, Smokey jumped up on the bed and rolled around like a dog that had been sleeping outside in the dirt for a long time. He embraced this new "luxury" lifestyle by sleeping right next to me in bed and snoring very loud. I was happy to do anything that made him feel good, after being neglected for the previous several months. Huge pit bull sleeping in my bed? Sure, why not.

Back on the road at 7:00 AM Smokey and I headed for the Utah / Colorado border and beyond. This is where the trip started to get long, and scary. We made it 200 miles from Salinas, UT to Grand Junction, CO where we were forced to take the road less traveled. Due to extremely icy roads, Interstate 70 was closed by state police in Grand Junction, CO. I opened the Waze app, thinking it would quickly route me around the closure and I'd have outsmarted most of the driving public. Oh was I wrong. The fastest way from Grand Junction to the Denver area, and back on I-70, was through 70 extra miles of state highways and national parks (US 50 to US 285). It should have been a nice detour.

Smokey and I made it about one hour from Grand Junction, around Montrose , CO when the traffic came to a complete stop. I couldn't see around the winding road, to find out why were were stopped. After about 30 minutes, we both exited the car and walked around a bit for exercise. After about 1 hour total, two flatbed trucks emerged around the corner with a couple smashed cars on board. There was a bad accident causing the blockage of the road. I thought, oh well, we're moving once again and will eventually get back to I-70. We drove about 100 miles, near Monarch Mountain, when the weather took a turn for the worse. It sure was beautiful to see the snow coming down in the mountains, but it made driving pretty hard. Being from Minnesota, driving in snow isn't that big of a deal, it's more of an inconvenience than anything.

About two minutes later, the traffic came to a complete stop. I thought Smokey and I were in for another accident cleanup and we'd be back on the road. Not this time. There was an avalanche and it blocked the road. Of course I couldn't see the avalanche, I learned of it after taking Smokey for a walk for the third time and talking to a US Postal carrier who was also stopped on the road. He said this was pretty unusual, but he had enough gas in his tank to idle for about two days. After four hours of sitting on the road, without moving one inch, I started to wonder if I had enough gas left in the tank. To make matters worse, I had no mobile phone service in this area. I had called my wife to let her know about the snow storm right before I entered this area of no service. Now, I was unable to call her to let her know I hadn't rolled the car off the side of the mountain.

Then, after about 4.25 total hours of waiting, the road was cleared enough for a single lane of cars to drive through. I stopped at the first gas station I saw, just outside of Poncha Springs, to fill up the tank. I didn't want to run out of fuel if this happened again.

After a two road blockages and one avalanche, I thought I was in the clear. Smooth sailing until I got tired and found a hotel for the night. Of course not. About an hour later, I ran into a white-out snow storm. Many drivers had pulled their cars to the side of the road because they couldn't see. I was very close to doing the same, but kept moving at about 20 miles per hour, up and over mountains, around hairpin turns, and oh yeah, malfunctioning windshield wipers that had a mind of their own.

We made it to Fort Morgan in the early hours of Tuesday January 10, 2017. Another sketchy hotel. Another night with Smokey by my side. We awoke to clear skies and dry roads, for a smooth drive down the home stretch. Oh yeah, no good deed goes unpunished. BY the time we made it to northern Iowa / southern Minnesota, we ran into a major ice storm. The temperature had warmed up enough to melt the snow on the road, then cooled down to re-freeze as ice. The wind was blustery to say the least. As we drove about 20 miles per hour we passed several semi-trucks in the ditch and one smashed to pieces after hitting the middle part of a bridge over the road. There were a few scary moments as my rental car slid toward the shoulder, but I somehow steered it back to a less icy location on the road. As the temperature dropped, the tire pressure warning lights on the car illuminated and a sound started dinging to let me know of this issue. The windshield washer fluid had ceased squirting on the windshield, and the wipers made it extremely hard to see. Stopping every so-often to clean the windshield was necessary.

Hours later I pulled onto my street in Minneapolis, very tired, with a small clear spot on the windshield to see through, and a dog eager to get out of the car. We had made it home.