Falling Bells
Type your cut contents here.This weekend was our tower’s first ringing weekend: “Bells fell on Alabama”. When the weekend was announced to our band T. was quick to give the “credit” to Lyn. from Atlanta who came up with the name. We didn’t have as good a turn out as we were hoping, but I think it worked out for the best that way anyway; the tower was crowed as it was. The president of the NAGCC (Porter) and Scott from Little Rock, AK several of the usual Atlanta ringers and a few new ones, Mike and his fiancée made appearances. Mike was pretty much in charge of the weekend as none of us have any real experience in these matters. It started on Friday with open ringing. The bells were rung up in peal and I was once again impressed at the wonderful sound our bells make on eight when rung correctly. We did minor things mostly. Ted, Bobby, and I had a go at plain hunt on 6. Ted (having worked at various towers including at Kalamazoo with Mike on it) did well enough that Mike felt it necessary to call a few call changes before to make it harder on Ted. Me and Bobby mostly muddled though it clashing on top of every bell coming down to the back.
Jenne arrived about 6:30, just in time to jump in on a quick touch of Bob doubles before the welcome dinner (more of a snack really but good ribs).
Saturday started early at 9 doing some call changes and giving those who are learning rounds a change to ring in. Several different methods of St. Simons, Pain Bob, Stedman’s being rung on doubles, triples, and major. I got a few chances to cover. J. had mentioned earlier in the morning that the tenor didn’t feel right and may be up wrong. It wasn’t and they said they would look at it when they went up to put the muffles on for the 5 o’clock service ringing that night. Yet, when I go a change to cover I noted that the rope seemed to “slip” for an inch or so before catching. I did okay at covering I finally realized that if I paid attention to the other bells I could find the last bell before me to judge pull off of allowing me to stay pretty much in the right place.
Also had a go at calling called changes on 8 from the tenor. Took the bells to queens then kings and back again. (Many thanks go our to Jenne who stood behind me and kept track of the bell order and told me when I was ringing on top of the 7th place bell. It seems I have a tendency to speed up when I am calling. Thanks also go to Hilary who helped a great deal with the speed of the calls and order. Last my thanks to the visitors who translated my muddled calls to what I wanted them to do and kept the less experienced ringers strait.) I even managed to call down successfully a few times. Never mind I was not trying to call down at the time!
We broke for lunch and J. and I got back a little early and found Ted there as well. I asked him to let me go up and look at the tenor to make sure it was nothing obviously wrong. Ted mentioned that some people wanted to go look at the bells later anyway but I persisted. So J. and I went up and I had a look. When I pulled on the rope from the bell chamber (gently mind you!) as if I was pulling from the ringing chamber everything seemed fine. I was afraid that it may not be obvious unless the tenor was set on the hand stroke, where it was showing the issue. This, of course, could not be done so I looked around the wheel trying to see if there was something that the wheel was catching on. It was not until I pushed on the wheel that I noticed that it had some play in it. I tried the same on the wheel of the closest bell which did not move. I looked closer and noticed that where the headstock was bolted to the wheel there was one bolt/nut very loose, one bolt, no nut, half way out, and two bolts had fallen out completely! I was very happy that I had pressed Ted to let me look at it. Neil had (I can be sure) checked all of the bolts when he was last down but that was 6 months ago. It turns out that the bolts in the tower need to be checked every few months for new bells and Neil had told Ted the bolts needed to be check after wet weather. So the bolts were put back in with some help from D. from Atlanta who is an old hand at Steeple keeping. We went around to the rest of the bells and tightened all of the loose bolts we found on the wheels. T. and me still need to go up on day and check all of the rest of the bolts.
So finally, tour and safety check over, we continued the ringing weekend. Mike played around with several methods trying to figure out what he was going to do that night. In between we did more work with out young band.
Mostly the afternoon was like the morning except that Mike was persuaded to let calls be down. Porter and Scott both call down and Jenne and Hilary both said that would be great. Mike asked me if I mined calls down and I told him I had to learn before I went to England this summer and so was out voted. I did great. Unfortunately I was concentrating so much on the calls down that I forgot to figure out who the bell in front of me was following and so when the 3 was called out from under me I was lost until Ported (on the bell next to me) grinned and told me I was after him.
Saturday night the decision was made for a half peal of half muffled Bob triples. J. asked and was granted treble on the attempt. Everyone was shooed out of the tower and the tower locked and the peal began. I went home, let the dogs out, and came back and had a very nice conversation with Lyn Porter and Ted. (Porter opted out of the half peal because, as the puts it, “I’ve been there and done that several times over”. Lyn opted out to let Tommy who had not done something like this yet ring in.) Jenne and I were invited to come to the tower in Little Rock. Lyn mentioned getting together a group to go up there so we may try and tag along…
Because the bells were half muffled they opted for no hand stroke gap and the half peal took 89 min. I did not find out until just after that this was Jenne’s first half peal and the longest she had done yet. This I did not know. I suppose I took it for granted that she had a peal under her belt…. Mike as agreed to work on arranging a peal of Grandsire Triples on our bells. Finally one of our ringers gets to do a peal on our bells!
This morning service ringing was a touch of Bob triples with Jenne ringing on the inside this time at Mike urging. Most of our remaining visitors took off just after this and so the remaining were left to help us with called changes then plain hunt. I did horrible the first time around. My second go was not so bad. I honestly think that half my problem was having someone behind me whispering to me the whole time. (We didn’t have enough good ringers to hunt on 6 and have someone stand behind.) Mike (on the tenor) took me though a few time then cut me down to hunt on 4 to try and get my lead right. I was messing late on my lead and never caught up. I went though on 4 several times and found out that my idea of “steady” on lead was far too long. I never really got it spot on, but I got so much closer that I was content. It was a very real step in the right direction.
Mike introduced a new exercise with dodging. The easily way to explain it is that it is a called change dodge. For example: From rounds, “2-3 dodge” means that the 2 and three will do a dodge so that the end result is 1324…. It looks pretty easy from the side lines. When I was on the 5 of 6 Mike worked with the 2-3. I was not ready when he decided (probably because I was getting a glassy eye) that play dodging with me. I did one right with them telling me on every stroke what I was supposed to be doing… Still, it’s nice to have a challenge. Now we jus need to get people to call it as well as he can….
I was a great time and I think that we all made a good deal of progress and all have new challenges. This is exactly what this tower needed!
Oh, and we finally have a spider! It was installed Thursday night.