Nate Houge

See New Site

nate — Tue, 18 May 2010 18:29:02 +0000

The new site is up at natehouge.com. Update your stuff that needs to be updated and enjoy the new digs!

Elsa Armstrong

nate — Mon, 10 May 2010 20:45:37 +0000

Elsa (recently turned three) learned to pedal a little bike like this about 10 days ago. It has an 8 inch wheel and the crank is connected directly to it. You could call it a fixed gear, but it doesn’t have any gears. It’s just fixed.

We most often bike to church and when we do my eldest rides her bike and Elsa rides in the trailer. Elsa’s recent ability to pedal her own bike coupled with her recent coming of 3 years of age has given her a new found sense of power and determination. So yesterday she told me she wanted to ride her bike to church too. Why not? Worse case scenario she hops in the trailer. So Lydia rode her scooter, Elsa rode her fixie, and I walked behind with my bike and trailer.

Turns out I didn’t need the trailer.

Elsa biked the entire way to and from church, for a grand total of one mile on her wee little bike powered by wee little legs and a great big determination.

I know it was mother’s day, but still I couldn’t be more proud as a father.

Welaware Live(s)

nate — Fri, 07 May 2010 18:04:14 +0000

We may not be Knight Crawler, but darn tootin’ Welaware will be crankin’ out the hits on May 27th at the Star Bar. Mark your calendars now! We’ll be playing with Crazy Chester, the cover band that mysteriously started getting gigs when they replaced their bass player… that’s right, I was replaced. (per my request). Also playing that night will be Erik Ritland, a man with quite possibly the Twin Cities most handsome backing band. That would be Jake Brown and myself. Also playing will be the super fun and speedily rockin’ Gravity Always Wins.

Seeing as Welaware plays out once a year, you’ll probably want to be there. And if you have any song requests let me know asap and chances are we’ll do them. If there one of ours at least…

blest be the bikes

nate — Mon, 03 May 2010 16:30:23 +0000

Check out my thurible I’m proud of my thurible.
Jodi will probably blog about the blessing in the next few days at humblewalkchurch.org.
Micah Taylor takes nice photos, eh?
Thanks to Joe Autumn and Scott for all the mechanic skills.
And thanks to Express Bike Shop for the old freewheels.

back to the music

nate — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 17:00:41 +0000

The Houge family is at a very happy place when it comes to productivity. After more than a little bit of work our basement is finished which brings the move we started back in October (after buying our house in July and working on it up the move in date) to a close. Jodi and I both work from home and now we both have desks to call our own. It’s been a few years. Actually with the exception of our year out on Jodi’s internship, it’s been about 5 years. I finally got my little studio rig set up and tried it out recording and doing overdubs on yet another Erik Ritland EP. I can’t tell you how great it is to be able to leave all these guitars in the stand at the end of a session and not worry about how to stack the cases in the corner of the bedroom so that I can still get to my side of the bed, which is where my instruments have been for the last couple of years. There are more exciting music things coming up in the next few months, from playing in Jonathan Rundman’s band to leading some of my own music at the St. Paul Synod Assembly. I’ll keep you posted from the comfort of my own desk.

Walhalla ND The Other Windy City

nate — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 21:50:19 +0000

On Thursday I biked from Grafton ND to Walhalla ND. It was a more demanding ride than expected but I averaged about 15 mph which surprised and pleased me. It was a little windy but for the most part the wind was in my favor. The downside was that the wind kept me dry and I totally underestimated how dehydrated I was. I drank half a gallon of orange juice and water before going to bed and still barely had to pee the next morning… (Too much info?)So I took a day off the bike and drank a lot of fluids and went out for what was supposed to be a short 7 mile loop. But I missed my turn. Not a big deal ’cause I was cruising! I felt great, my legs felt great my butt felt great (Yes, Nate, too much info.) After a while I thought I’d try and find a new way back to Walhalla and made a right on a gravel road. Instantly I realized why up to this point I had felt so great. I had 20 miles an hour of wind pushing me along. Not anymore. Now it was pushing me off the road. Eventually I hit Highway 1 and made a second right turn. Directly into the wind and 3 miles of climbing in my future. I was in my lowest gear, pedaling hard and though I have no speedometer on my bike I’m guessing I was barely going 3mph. Some of the big gusts pushed me off the road. It became a very long ride. My legs hurt, my butt hurt and I think I spent the last hour never once riding perpendicular to the road. But hey, I got to ride my bike so no complaints.

brotherhood of the banjo

nate — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 22:00:07 +0000

I’m guessing nobody is reading this because a) I already posted once today so you needn’t check back for a month or b)upon reading my earlier post you said, “shucks! it’s nate’s birthday! forget work i’m going to ride my bike and play my banjo!” Which is exactly what I did. I guess it is important to read my blog. So with a fat wad of birthday cash and a heck of a wind I went out for a 20 miler with a stop at one of my all time favorite bike shops, the Hiawatha Cyclery. http://hiawathacyclery.com I love this shop and I love their blog http://hiawathacyclery.blogspot.com/2010/03/my-trip-to-nahbs-or-hobo-life.html but I rarely get over there because it’s not so fun to look at nice frames while wondering where your 2 year old has wandered off to. But today I took the afternoon off from my usual plague of shoulds and hit the bike paths and roads. Hiawatha has a wonderful approach to biking – similar to the folks at rivendell rivbike.com but with more humility and minnesota nice.
I took the long way which involves
oh – blog over – Jason just showed up!
to sum up – i got a banjo brothers bag and I love it and it easily fits a vine park brewery growler. happy birthday me!

33 On 330

nate — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:39:19 +0000

Happy Birthday Nate

why’s this bread all up in my grill?

nate — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 12:15:39 +0000

Humble Walk had it’s very first bake sale on Sunday. Four loaves of bread turned into $80. Not bad. Now the kids can go on an urban immersion retreat. Rock on.
As one of the contributing bakers I had planned on bringing a loaf of sourdough but since sourdough takes a bit of time and can be a little unpredictable with how it uses that time I also made some simple sandwich bread and a garlic baguette. Those are the ones that made it to the bake sale. I stuck the sour dough in the fridge to slow it down for the night and returned to it on Monday.
Here’s what I came up with.
Step 1. Make dough.

Step 2. Grill Steaks. This step is optional, but why would you fire up the grill just to bake bread? Why’ll we’re at it, why would stand next to those fine slabs of beef at the end of a long day without a beverage in hand? Again, you don’t have to, but why wouldn’t you? Oh and you’ll note there’s an iron griddle preheating on the top rack – that’s where the bread will be living in a bit.

Step 3. Set down your optional beverage and remove the steaks from the grill. At this point I slid the coals over to the left and placed my griddle on the main rack to the right. I thought this might give a more indirect heat and lower the risk of scorching the bottom of the bread.

Step 4. Go eat your steak. Check back in a bit. I actually forgot this step. I meant to check it at 45 minutes but got distracted with some basement remodeling details. Luck for me an hour and 15 minutes worked just fine.

Step 5. Cut it. Adorn it. Eat it.

I think as spring progresses I’ll try this a few more times – it’s always nice to keep the head outside and I hate wasting all that heat after you’re done grilling.
Go buy some steaks, go bake some bread.

3 things to be happy about

nate — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 03:35:41 +0000

1. banjo lessons
2. good beer with good friend
3. biking home through downtown st. paul as the wild game cars turn the streets into parking lots. best comment from drunk woman as i passed, “what the (bleep) has he got on his back?” Drunk woman (that totally narrows my readership by half), that would be my banjo.