08/08/08 at 08:08:08

Now that’s Mathemagic!

A bunch of us have also gotten bikes to provide an escape from the craziness for an afternoon or evening. Hoopes has been gracious enough to let me ride his spare cruiser now that he’s got a fixed-gear for which he’s already gotten flack. Apparently you can’t become a mild-mannered fixie enthusiast; it’s either go big or go home. One of this sort happened to walk by Hoopes on his bike and berated him for having a front brake. That, my friends, is an unforgivable, fixed-gear transgression.

The first week of tour we spent in California, a few days of which we had off in San Clemente. Ethan recommended it to us as the town was his old stomping grounds. It was great! A bunch of us got to go surfing (it was my first time), and I think the ocean was thrilled to toss our sorry butts about mercilessly. It was awesome, but man is it hard work the first time! Here’s a picture of me before I became the sea’s ragdoll:

Gnar! What with the sun I’m not used to and the inevitable board rash, my skin took a beating that day and ended up feeling very… reptilian. But all’s back to normal.

Other highlights so far this tour have been hanging out in Durango for my birthday, seeing my wife and all my friends in Denver, playing Wii Fit with the Dunhams, watching the bats and fireworks in Austin (we’ll have a podcast up soon!), hanging out with the Douglas’s, riding in the Montreal rain trying to find a good cup of coffee with the boys, and of course playing our set each day. The best is yet to come, though, since wifey gets into town today!

As an added bonus my friend Alec from Nashville also happened to be there. He’s teching for DH, and boy, let me tell you, when he’s on stage checking those instruments and there are haunting metal melodies playing over the PA, he looks like about the toughest dude you’d never want to come across in a dark alley. But I get ahead of myself.

Reese came down and we hung out for a bit. Since 3/5 of Guerilla Rodeo was there we thought we’d go ahead and take a trip down Memory Lane by listening to that three-song demo we did all those years ago. Mandy came a little later, and then it was time to enter the cavern of metal. We missed the first three bands, having really only come to see Living Sacrifice and Demon Hunter.

Living Sac was awesome! Ethan had told me that even though they hadn’t toured in six years, on this tour they didn’t miss a beat. And right he was. My old band Ace Troubleshooter toured with LS back in the day (you tell me how that makes any sense!), and each night I was consistently blown away by them. So getting to watch them play a lot of the same songs eight years later was like a stroll down Memory Blvd.  They were incredible.

After a short break Ethan and the boys descended on the stage in metal majesty and scared everybody witless. They were fantastic. Ethan prepped me for the times he’d do a little shredding. Apparently it is the custom when said riffing occurs for metal fans to throw their right hands up in the air and wiggle their fingers as if to attract catfish from the banks of a hot, muddy Louisiana river. DH were tough, but they showed their softer sides as well with some heartfelt ballads about the wonders of love, I think. All in all, a fun night.

Let’s see… lately my buddy Justin has been teaching me how to ride his crotch-rocket. I think he prefers calling it a “performance bike” or some other equally brochure-type term, but we both know what it really is. Man is that thing quick! The only other time I had been on a motorcycle was when my friend Legs let me try out his old Yamaha. No kidding, in two seconds flat I had it on the ground. Needless to say I was a bit apprehensive about learning to ride on this pricey “gentleman’s sport bike” with much, much more power. But Justin is a great teacher, however foolish he may be to let me on the thing. In a few short lessons I was riding the streets around my place, terrorizing the geriatrics and hassling shopkeepers. Here’s a shot of me riding the thing:

Ok so really that’s my face PhotoShopped onto Justin’s body, but I’m sure I look just as awesome going 30 all shakily in my old t-shirt and shorts. For reals.

Other than that I really haven’t been too busy. I recently finished designing a website for my dad’s ministry that will soon be up at wellrefreshed.com. Right now it just redirects to his old site which looks like Windows 95 got sick and threw up onto the internet (sorry Dad!). Also I made a wallpaper for our upcoming album “The Bird And The Bee Sides”. I followed a great tutorial from PSDTuts.

In a few days I’ll be leaving town for Nashville where we’ll meet up to rehearse for Warped Tour. It’s been three years since Relient K has graced those stages, so taking in the sights, the sounds, and especially the smells will be like taking a trip down Memory Terrace.

Go Mandy!

So this is old news by now, but as I mentioned in an earlier post, Ethan Luck will now be the drummer for Relient K. It is with extreme pleasure that I type that. I’ve been an Ethan fan for a number of years now, ever since Ace played a show with The Supertones in Moorhead, MN. He came up to Josh and me, introducing and ensconcing himself in the tenderer places in our hearts. I was immediately struck with how unaffectedly friendly he was. Just a good dude.

A few years later I got a chance to play in a band with him. It was my first time playing bass in a band; Ethan played the guitar. Those few days that the band lasted confirmed to me the awesomeness of Mr. Luck. He brought his wife Kalle along and I remember wishing that I could hang out with that couple a lot more often. They are such an encouragement to be around.

Then a year ago or so Ethan started coming out on the road with Relient K as a tech. It was great having him around all the time. A position on the back of the stage eventually opened up, and Ethan kindly offered his services. We accepted. Woohoo!

Next week we’re hitting the road for a few shows, and I’m excited to see how we do with Ethan holding down the fort. If you’re in the area come see us and make sure to welcome our new heavily tattooed gentle giant.

Me my mo methan.

Ethan.

In completely unrelated news, we have a new official drummer :)

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of — throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.

Beautiful.

This was Sarah’s and my first trip overseas. I’m a little ashamed to admit that until this trip the one solitary stamp in my passport has been for Canada, and it’s been taunting me as if to say, “That’s right, I’m the best you can do!” Well no longer, intolerable canuck stamp. My passport now has the stamp of the queen under whose thumb you abide.

When we got to our hotel in London our room wasn’t ready so we decided to do a little exploring in the rain. We realized instantly that English architecture is beautiful, that the streets in London are all kinds of crazy, and that it pays to get decent umbrellas.

It was a good thing that at nearly every crosswalk it tells you to either LOOK RIGHT or LOOK LEFT since the labyrinthine street-maze could have gotten us killed. At the end of our little excursion we came upon St. Paul’s Cathedral and felt like it’d be a good idea to come in from the London rain.

Now if you’ve never been to a cathedral of that size no amount of pictures will impress upon you the scale and lavish decorations you will meet. I’ve not been to many, so I was wowed not only by the dimensions and imagery but also by the amount of history that St. Paul’s contains. Everywhere you look there are statues of famous lords and military personages, plaques on countless walls detailing the contributions such-and-such has made to Great Britain’s people. It was dizzying. In spite of all this I felt like the place had been built and adorned not for God but for the glory of man. As impressive as all the tapestries and frescoes were, they seemed to point more to the achievements of the English than to the story of Christ. That was just how it felt to me. No doubt many come there as to a house of God: to me it felt more like a museum.

We went downstairs and entered the crypt keep. I had no idea that such as Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington were interred there, so from a historical standpoint I was delighted. There are as well many other famous people buried beneath St. Pauls. It was with a quiet reverence and knowledge of this that I entered a little chapel down there to read some of the plaques on the wall. Among these was one with an except from a famous William Blake poem:

To see the world in a grain of sand
And to see heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hands
And eternity in an hour

As I was contemplating the import of these words I took a step back to let some meaning sink in. What I didn’t know was that directly behind me, at an elevation of only a few inches or so, was a row of kneelers surrounded by chairs and worn masonry under which were buried many fine English persons. Stepping back I lost my balance on these kneelers, and what followed was one of the slowest, loudest, and most awkward falls of my life. It was one of those stumbles that takes you about 7-8 seconds to really hit the ground because you’re scrambling the whole time to keep your balance and to not look like an idiot. Not only did I fail in that but I also proceeded to test the acoustic reverb of the surrounding chambers. I guesstimated about a twelve second uncomfortable space where the echoes of my fall alerted every reverent person nearby to my blundering American ways.

Later that night I was again made painfully aware of my American-ness as I tried to order some English fare at a restaurant. A of all, the most appealing thing on the menu to me was a hamburger and fries, so I decided to go with that. Second-of-ly, when I tried to order and not sound like a tool, I asked for the Hamburger and Chips. The guy looked at me and said, “Ok, hamburger and fries,” and I know he wanted to add, “Don’t even try it, bloke.” Man! I wanted to order all English proper.

The next few days we spent walking around trying to see all the sights we could. We decided that the London Eye looked like it would be cool to take a ride in, but that on the whole it was more of an eyesore on the London skyline. Also the quintessential British phone booth is very red.

Big Ben and Parliament looked absolutely beautiful and intricate.

We walked by Westminster Abbey without going in, so that would be one of the things I’d like to explore on our next trip. The parks we walked through were all Englishy and great. Buckingham Palace looked just as it does on t.v., but I was most impressed with the guards. We didn’t get to see the ones with the red coats and tall poofy black hats that you can oogle and they’ll only stare straight ahead, but we did see some pretty impressive methodical, high-legged walking back and forth from the guards within the gates.

Trafalgar Square was amazing. As we were walking along and looking at Nelson’s Column, the lions, the fountains, and the National Gallery I had a bit of deja vu as I suddenly realized that I had done a puzzle of this scene when I was about ten or so. We went into the National Gallery and spent time looking at some Da Vinci’s, Raphael’s, and Michaelangelo’s, but sadly we didn’t find any Donatello’s. Three outta four ain’t bad.

We took a tube at one point to Piccadilly Circus to see what all the hubbub was about but decided that, in spite of the amazing English architecture, it was too much like Times Square for us to want to stay longer than fifteen seconds. We then got back on the tube (after minding the gap!) to go see the very touristy Sherlock Holmes Museum on Baker Street. Unfortunately we met with some trouble when we got there.

We stayed very near the Tower of London and Tower Bridge. Here’s a shot of the Tower Bridge at night.

Our last full day in England we spent in Oxford. The ride there was wonderful because it was our first chance to see some English countryside. It was just as I had imagined; very rolling and peaceful, but a lot more sheep than I had anticipated. Awesome. One of the first things we did upon reaching Oxford was to seek out the Eagle and Child, the pub at which C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, and their friends used to meet to discuss literature. After a while the room where they met opened up so I ordered a pint of bitter (a scene from a Lewis book) and sat down. I totally geeked out there.

It was funny, as soon as we left the bar and started walking toward the heart of the city I totally saw Thom Yorke from Radiohead as he walked by. I had heard they were from Oxford, so maybe I was subconsciously on the lookout for a short fellow with a lazy eye.

We then stopped for a tour of Christ Church, one of the oldest colleges at Oxford. It was stunning. After walking around for a bit we got to the dining hall where they film the dinner scenes for Harry Potter. Here is Sarah wishing she could cast some spells.

The next day we left our new home in London to come back to the States. Traveling with us on the flight was a band of gypsies who regaled us with both boisterous song and lengthy tale, allowing not the smallest bit of sleep. In spite of this, our trip to England definitely left us wanting more. In fact a few days ago Sarah started pricing flights for our next trip there. We’re planning on knocking down Stonehenge.

I’m sad to see you go, Dave, but I’m excited for what’s in store for you.

Love you, dude.

- Hot apple cider with cinnamon and cloves
- Cheery fires in the fireplace
- Big, fat, falling snowflakes
- Snowboarding (finally!)
- Slippers
- Christmas lights (especially the blue and white ones)
- Family and friends

Ok so I think I just made myself puke a little with my excessive schmaltz, but really I am a sucker for the holidays. On Sunday we had a Christmas party at our clubhouse. We had a metric ton of our friends there, and since it was a Thanksgiving/Christmas thing, we had turkey and stuffing and everything like that. Scrumptious. At the end of the evening we did a White Elephant gift exchange, and I have to say, Sarah and I really outdid ourselves. We brought a singing Santa, a horrendous ceramic Strawberry-Shortcake-esque monstrosity, a book containing everything you ever wanted to know about the band Hanson, a second-hand Awesome Blossom™ maker, and a Windows 95 for Dummies book. How happy we made some of our friends!

Then last night our church had an event at a nursing home where everyone gave some gifts to a resident or two. We brought a blanket for a woman and some sweatpants and socks for an old guy. How sad that that’s what he asked for! I hope they keep him warm. We picked him because his name was Tex Payne. I wish I had an infamous comic book name like that! The night ended with some of our friends leading everyone in some Christmas songs. Good times.

Well I hope you all get a chance to get close to your near and dear ones in the next few weeks. And don’t let the hustle and bustle crowd out Christ who is born into our hearts!

I always get this sinking, end-of-summer-camp feeling on the last day of tour. It’s when I start to realize that hey, maybe I should have hung out with this guy more, or man, I should have gotten to know that guy better; I’ll miss seeing his smiling face pass me by on my way to coffee. But so it goes.

The Appetite for Construction tour has really been amazing. First of all, it’s the first tour we’ve done in a while where some of the proceeds go to charity. And a great charity at that. After being on some of the builds and getting to know a little more about Habitat, I feel honored to have been at least a small part of something so meaningful.

Getting acquainted with Switchfoot a little was wonderful as well. We’re not separated by many years, but I felt like a youngster next to them, looking up to older brothers you’d like to emulate. With Switchfoot, what you see on stage with them is what you get. They are a bunch of humble, funny, engaging guys that are an encouragement to be around, and they led Bible studies on Sundays that were a source of nourishment and camaraderie. I think God is pleased with them.

Ruth are a bunch of frank, hard-working fellows whose affections are genuine and whose affectations are none. They definitely fall under the should-have-gotten-to-know-them-better category. Once or twice one of them would say something so endearing in conversation it took me totally off-guard.

High points of the tour:
1) Habitat builds that made me feel like a normal person keeping normal hours
2) Bocce ball
3) DANCE PARTIES on Switchfoot’s bus
4) Copious amounts of Guitar Hero
5) Watching our bus driver Eddie’s miniature wiener dog perform miniature tricks

Low points of the tour:
1) 12 people is too much for one bus
2) Embarrassingly and painfully hitting my thumb with a hammer on a build
3) “Tour Olympics” that didn’t quite turn out
4) Being weepy watching Dave leave the stage of his last tour show

(taken with my iPhone)

Then we met up with a guy who’s an RK/Switchfoot fan and works for Apple. It was too late to get a tour of the campus, but at least he took us to the Company Store. There they basically have a bunch of crap that they stick the Apple logo on, mark it up about 200%, then sell to you willingly. Like my new watch?

We talked all this over the next day and came to the conclusion that it was all down to us failing to properly observe our pre-show ritual. Jon Schneck always gives us a pound on the fist before we go on, saying, “Have a good show, man!”, but that night he got everyone but Dave. We were like a superstitious football player who forgets to kiss his lucky cleats before the game and then trips on a blade of astroturf and sprains his ankle and is out for the whole season and his teammates roll their eyes and think, man, I wish he would have just kissed his lucky cleats and then we could have gone all the way to the Superbowl and gotten some bling for our ringless hands. Yeah, it was like that.

Ok, so boo hoo for us. The next morning in Houston Hoopes and I got up early to do a build with Habitat for Humanity. We’re partnering with them on this tour, and part of that includes us doing a few builds. It was a lot of fun! Aside from the fact that we had to get up by 7am (which is like 3am for a normal person) we were happy with how it went. I had never been on a build before and was a little nervous that I have very little construction-type know-how. But I think the guys running the show expect that and are just happy to have willing though unexperienced helpers. The first thing we helped with was putting trusses on a frame. They were freaking heavy and took many of us to get up there. The other thing we did was to tack down the tarpaper that goes beneath the shingles on another house. You really want to try to be careful with that because if you leave a hole they might end up with a leaky roof. Nobody wants that. Anyway, it was really a good time and I’d highly recommend it to anyone looking to help out.

Since I got up so early that day I fell asleep right after I got back and Rip-van-Winkle’d it till close to showtime. And boy was it ever showtime! We played for a packed arena, the biggest show of the tour. We got everyone dancing at one point, and when everyone brought out their cell phones it was amazing to see all the tiny little points of light swaying in time with the music. Magical.

A few days later in Baton Rouge we had the whole band come out to do another Habitat build. This one was great because with the band it felt like one of those team-building exercises where you have to figure out how to work as a group to accomplish your shared goals. That day we put up this weird concrete siding onto a house, and I’ve never seen more bungling musicians trying to figure out how to do a simple task in my life. It was great. By the time we had to leave we looked at out meager half-finished wall and were surprised that we’d even accomplished that much. At least the lines we had done were fairly level.

We’re back on the road now after having spent a few days off in Nashville. A few of us have been rocking out to the new Wii Guitar Hero III. Sadly none of us dressed up last night for Halloween (though Jon did dress his dogs up), but my friend James sent me some pictures of his son Octavian going as ME trying to get some candy. Crazy.

I’ve already gotten to meet a lot of nice people on the road so far. I’ve meant to put up this picture (it was taken on our spring tour with Sherwood and Mae), but until now I hadn’t gotten around to it. Thanks Fabiola for sending it in!

I look forward to seeing more smiling faces :) See you soon!

So on Tuesday morning we showed up at the Denver Halls of Justice and Penal Servitude, official summons in hand, to await our juroristic fate. This is the process as I understand it:

Upon signing in Ms. Umbridge starts by prepping you with a bleak video outlining reasons you might not want to be there. That’s like giving a cannonball-wound patient a pamphlet on how he or she might feel on sustaining a serious cannonball wound (little nod to Brian Regan there). Then they play a little Shirley Jackson-esque round of mini-heart-attack with you as you wait, fingers and toes crossed, listening to them monotonously calling out numbers. You hope yours will not be called but know, undoubtedly, it will. As you bow your head and accept your fate you are ushered into a courtroom where a paternal but slightly dour judge attempts to garner your civic sympathies by yet again humorously outlining reasons you might not to be there. This does nothing to break the gloomy atmosphere of ill-will nor your slight apprehension that perhaps it is you who is on trial here. This fear grows as the lawyers begin their drawn-out volley of needling questions in their attempt to glean the essence of your psyche and the meaning from your very soul.

Here is where I depart from the fate of thirteen people in that room. I was not chosen. In fact I was never even asked any questions because the second “black spot” didn’t come my way. I got lucky, I guess.

Okay so I’m painting a pretty dark picture of this process, but in reality I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get to serve. I was fascinated the whole time I was there by the overwhelming “legality” of it all. I wanted to be picked and to exercise cool reason based on the credibility of the witnesses and the evidence brought forth. I became increasingly annoyed with a few potential jurors’ inability to understand the process and the fuzzy, illogical answers they responded with. I also had to roll my eyes at the guy who got out of serving with his puerile responses obviously crafted to be excused. But when it was all said and done it had only taken up my morning.

Sarah was not so lucky. She didn’t get picked to sit on the jury, but the selection process took up her morning and most of her afternoon. Since we had driven together that meant my afternoon as well. I took use of that time down to walk along 16th Street Mall listening to podcasts and watching crazies, of which Denver has a fair few. We met up a little while later, swapped war stories, then made our way to our merciful home and non-judging cats.

So last week Sarah and I went on a cruise with some of the guys in my band. We were very fortunate to be able to get away into the warmer climes of the Caribbean, and extremely fortunate not to get overrun by the pirates that lurk said waters.

This was the first time that either of us have gotten to go somewhere “tropical”. In fact my passport has only been stamped once, and that was for entering Canada for crying out loud. So after shoving off from the port in Miami we set our faces to the south and the adventures that awaited us.

After a long and somewhat uneventful day on the ship spent “laying out” and playing shuffleboard (Hoopes and I swept Schneck and Scott) we got to disembark onto Grand Cayman Island. Though we saw no actual offshore holding companies our morning was pleasantly spent in search of a private beach with Scott and Leah. We meandered for quite a while through residential areas until we came upon a hidden little gem of a beach. There were only a few other people that had found this area, so we felt quite fortunate. This is me on some of the sharp, sharp rock outcroppings that flanked our beach.

Next up was Isla Roatan off the coast of Honduras. We were tempted onto shore by wild tales of monkeys and chickens roaming freely. Sadly we saw no monkeys, but Sarah did get a few items of handmade jewelry. Now Roatan has been described as a “developing” area for tourist attractions. We definitely found that to be the case. In fact I was struck with how similar it felt to the slums of Merida, Mexico I had been to a few times on mission trips. Vendors hawking their wares, kids playing in garbage, roaming mutts rooting around in alleys; these were things I didn’t expect from a stop on a cruise vacation. Yet I am incredibly glad we stopped there. We fat, lazy, assuming Americans need to get out of our comfort zones once in a while to see the needs of less fortunate cultures. It makes me sick to hear some people here complaining of being poor: the “have-nots” in this country with their cars, roofs over their heads, and cable television. There are only the “haves” and the “have-more’s” here. After Sarah and I got back onto our luxurious boat we went to dinner where we couldn’t even eat half the food they put on our plate. The rest of the day was rather depressing.

At least there was a spectacular view:

The next day we stopped in Belize and went snorkeling for the first time. Whenever I see a commercial or pictures of people snorkeling it look so touristy and lame, but actually doing it was a lot more fun that I had imagined. My favorite was diving far down to see the coral and the tiny life down there, then coming up and blowing the water out of the snorkel with that funny sound. I spent half my time doing this and the other half dodging the local that was trying to sell me nose-candy.

I think it was around this day that we started playing Mafia. Mafia is kind of a card game you play with a bunch of people where the object is to root out an element… you kick off certain… you… oh just click the link and it will explain it better than I could. We played a variant where you have a Sheriff and a Nurse. I highly recommend this game to anyone who likes to sniff out a ruse :)

We were supposed to go to Costa Maya, Mexico the next day, but the threat of hurricanes was too much for our ship, ironically named the “Valor”. So we went to Cozumel, Mexico instead. This ended up being our favorite stop, and man oh man would Sarah just not stop talking about how she wants to move there. Our time in Cozumel was basically spent at the beach (or playa… hey!) with its crystal clear waters and colorful marine life. Lounging around on the beach was really how we wanted to spend this vacation (see the soapbox a few paragraphs above), and Cozumel offered this in spades. We might just have to go back there sometime.

By the next day, spent at sea, we were ready to go home. I think all we really did was play a little Mafia and watch the blinking red dot which was our ship move slowly back to Florida on the monitor. As we neared Miami we kept getting more and more excited about going back to autumn and the mountains. Vacation is always wonderful, but getting back home is even better.

And that’s no bull…seye.

Take that, Peter Griffin.

I was sitting there whiling away my time by playing a game of internet poker (a game I won, booyah!) and I looked over to my left to see the sight I saw that you can see above, see. “Whoa…” I muttered, “Laptop Lane.” Everyone then started to notice and we all thought it was funny, so Ethan took a picture.

It is funny, but also a little sad. All of us sitting there, joking together, sure, but each in our own little world. I remember touring without computers, even with just one band phone. There was a definite sense of camaraderie in all of us watching a movie together in the lounge, or having a big Tekken tournament in the back. Now I’ll just download some tv shows and seclude myself in my bunk. It’s very convenient, but pretty lame, too. Maybe I’m just on the computer too much in general.

A day after my last post Sarah asked if I wanted to go to a beer-tasting church function. The idea was to go to Breckenridge Brewery in downtown Denver to meet up with some people from our church on one of their outings. Sounds great! Well Sarah said we needed to pick up our friend Mandy at her house, so we swung by. I hadn’t been inside yet so I invited myself in to have a look around. I was struck immediately with how clean everything was (after being told that generally Mandy is a free spirit and wastes no time in keeping things either “neat” or “tidy”). She asked if I’d like to see her backyard and the bonfire ring she had put in. Being a bonfire ring enthusiast and aficionado naturally I could not turn down the opportunity. She opened the door and a loud “Surprise!” assaulted my ears. Being caught off guard I wasn’t exactly sure who the surprise party was for. My natural instinct was to shout “Surprise!” as well, but thankfully I didn’t make a fool of myself in that way. Turns out the party was obviously for me and came a few days before my birthday. Mandy had cleaned because she wanted her place to be presentable for this gala event. I really do have a wonderful wife and circle of friends. At one point I excused myself from the party and went out thanking God for the people He put in my life. To be surrounded by a group of such caring and uplifting friends is a blessing that I can’t thank Him for enough.

A few days later (on my actual birthday) I took an early flight out to Pennsylvania to meet up with the band at Creation Festival. The day started out auspiciously enough. Dave and I got picked up by Scott (our tour manager and sound guy) early in the morning and drove to the festival. Shortly after arriving the band sound-checked, and everything went swimmingly. As it was my birthday Thiessen gave me an RC Helicopter to replace the one I had lost a week before, and like a kid in a store that sells candy as well as RC helicopters I was busting with excitement to fly it. Thanks Matt! And Scott’s wife baked me a cake. Thanks Leah! The show that night was rife with technical difficulties, but we plowed on through. The highlight for me was when Matt asked the crowd to wish me well on my 28th birthday. Having 75,000 people singing Happy Birthday to me was one experience I’ll never forget. Good times.

Sometimes things go from real good to real bad in no time fast. This day proved to be one such day. After packing up and showering at the festival, we headed off to our next destination: Cornerstone, our favorite festival. This was to be Dave’s and my 12th year there. A few hours into our trip (around 3 am) most of us were in our bunks either sleeping or preparing to go to sleep. I was of the latter crew and so felt the bus slowing down at one point to pull over rather quickly to the side of the road. A few moments later our bus driver came hurtling into the bunk area sternly demanding us to “Get off the bus NOW! Don’t grab anything! This is not a joke!” in a voice that you don’t question. Actually I partially disobeyed because I ran into the back lounge amidst general confusion to hastily put on my pants. Come hell or high water my scrawny white legs will not be seen off the bus. As I put my pants on I noticed a strange mistiness in the air. No time for shoes, I legged it out of the bus and turned around. What I saw made my jaw drop to the turnpike asphalt; huge flames were leaping from the rear of the bus in the engine area, right beneath the lounge where I had lately been foolishly concerned with my vanity. I met up with the rest of the guys about ten yards from the front of the bus.

It’s times like these that you instantly know what’s important. Everyone was screaming “Get a head count! Get a head count!” to make sure everyone was accounted for. It seemed a while, though, before anyone stopped yelling this important advice to actually check how many of us were there. We all made it. I was just thankful that the band tradition of leaving me in tight situations had been broken.

Looking at the flames and huge billows of smoke we were incredulous. We had never seen anything like this. Shortly after the head count craziness someone shouted, “It’s gonna blow! RUN!!” So run we did, and even my shoeless sprinting on a very pebbly road would have outdone any of Carl Lewis’ speedy legwork. I had a sneaking suspicion as I ran that a diesel bus would not, in fact, explode in a Hollywood-esque fashion, but better safe than sorry, eh? My prediction came to be true, so to general relief and disappointment our bus remained unexploded. After what seemed a dark and uncomfortable eternity the fire department showed up to put out the fire that was rapidly consuming our professional lives (literally not metaphorically). One image I will always have etched into my brain is that of a firefighter standing on the roof of the bus hacking away with his axe amidst huge flames licking around him and jet black smoke threatening to choke him. Hats off to firefighters around the world.

[quicktime]http://sarah-and-john.com/john/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/bus-fire.mov[/quicktime]

Another eternity later a school bus of sorts came to pick us up and drive us to the closest hotel. There we got a few hours of sleep after swapping jokes and reflections of the preposterousness that had just transpired. Later that morning we went to the lot where our bus had been towed to try to assess our damages and to see if we could salvage anything. Here are a few pictures from that morning:

It turns out we were able to save a few personal things from the aftermath of the fire though mostly everything was either burnt or smoke-damaged. Luckily the majority of our gear survived the fire and subsequent dousing, but our voluminous merchandise did not fare so well.

Our attitudes at the time are somewhat hard to describe. We were all incredibly thankful that everyone was unharmed, thankful that we were in a position as a band where this would be a relatively minor setback. But the loss of our stuff weighed on us and, compounded by the eeriness of the scene of our half-charred bus, made us feel a little burnt out ourselves.

And that’s ok. I think God allows each of us to go through things like this to shake us up and hopefully make us realize what’s concrete and what (pardon the expression) will be spiritually consumed. It happens all the time and is ultimately a Godsend; however for us this instance proved a very obvious parallel to the spiritual, and so it was easier for me to see it for what it was. I thank God (grudgingly at times) for this experience because I’m now a little less attached to “stuff” and a little more to His providence. It’s a small step, but one in the right direction towards Him.

The Fourth of July brought Sarah’s sister to Denver for a few days of Rocky Mountain goodness. For the fireworks show we went to a park near downtown to see the Coors Field display. We got there a few hours early for a picnic and some bocce ball. (I don’t know if you, reader, have ever had the pleasure of a good round of bocce ball, but I’d suggest either way that you go today out to a park and bocc it up.) As it neared the time for the fireworks display the weather started getting a little ominous. The wind picked up and it started raining a little (very cold, stinging raindrops), but it soon subsided into quiet overhead lightning. From our vantage point the storm clouds then moved behind the ballpark, making the light show from the clouds backdrop the now starting fireworks display. For my part I’d have to say the natural display was a great deal better than the mad-made one. It was as if God were saying, “Is that all you’ve got? Look what I can do!” Awesome.

While Diane was in town we happened to drive past a 7-11 that had been transformed into a Kwik-E-Mart in anticipation of the Simpsons movie. Here are a few shots from that fantastic wonderland of cartoon doughnuts and three-for-the-price-of-three deals:

A few days later Sarah and I, along with a bunch of friends, went to see The Big Lebowski shown at Red Rocks amphitheater. Though we probably won’t do it again it was a good time, made especially so by a few guys dressed up as The Dude, their costumes complete with bathrobe and jelly shoes. Josh Blue (from “Last Comic Standing”) also made an appearance and was funny though his jokes start to wear out their welcome after being repeated multiple times.

A few weeks later Mandy got the itch to host something again, so she invited us to hang out for a few days on her parents’ houseboat in Oklahoma. Thanks Mandy! Because I had to fly in after a show I needed someone to pick me up from the airport. Mandy’s friend Blake was kind enough to do it. Now Blake is the proprietor of a Tulsa-based pizza place called Joe Momma’s. Once before a show that the band played at Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa, Blake brought out a variety of pizzas for us. Did I mention Blake’s a nice guy? Some of the guys remarked that it was the best pizza they had ever had. I agreed with them. Stranger, if you are in the Tulsa area or plan to be soon, make a point to go to Joe Momma’s and order up a big ol’ Cheeseburger pizza. Then you can thank me anytime.

Back to the houseboat. Upon arriving at the place where it was docked I started guessing which boat it might be. We kept walking along the dock passing the smaller, more reasonably sized boats until we got to the ginormous (this word is now actually in the dictionary) boats at the end. The largest of these turned out to be Mandy’s boat. I walked in to discover that this was not a houseboat; it was a mansionboat! It even had a waterslide on the second level. We spent our days there mostly hanging out in the water and getting lost with the speedboat. I got to wakeboard for the first time. What a lousy, lousy wakeboarder I am. I afterwards slightly redeemed myself by being able to get up on a pair of waterskis and stay up for a few minutes. I say slightly because after-all, they’re still dorky waterskis. At the houseboat I also started and finished the last installment in the Harry Potter series. If you’re a fan, this book won’t disappoint. Okay, I go from waterskis to Harry Potter. What a geek.

The next week I went to Nashville to record the other half of our soon-to-be-released Christmas album. Boy howdy was it fun. My personal favorite is a Christmas carol that the five of us all stood around the mic to sing together. I’m sorry, but as part of my Non-Disclosure Agreement I cannot reveal the name of the song.

The next week Sarah and I spent our time rock climbing, riding bikes, and helping our friend Andy install flooring. I use the term “helping” loosely here as I mostly acted as a grunt both handing him the next piece and running to grab him a drink.

Later that week the band played a county fair in the center of the universe. By this, of course, I mean Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We opened for American Idol star Chris Daughtry. Now Chris is a nice guy and all, but I think he has a bit of an overactive hero fascination. Don’t believe me? Take a look at his tour pass:

Two weeks after the Daughtry silliness Sarah and I embarked on our 13-hour journey to Minnesota. Some friends of the family had offered their cabin on the shore of Lake Superior to our family, for which we were very appreciative. Thanks Page’s! For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Duluth/Two Harbors area, it’s this amazingly beautiful, heaven-on-earth, northernly type of place. We had all kinds of weather up there, and each type showed a facet of Superior’s beauty. The best part of this area had to be the name of a nearby town we drove through: Castle Danger. How is that not the most amazing name for a town possible? We visited a lighthouse, played a bunch of Wii, went hiking, and of course played much bocce ball and even croquet. A definite highlight for me was building a bonfire as a huge orange moon came up over the water while listening to my brother and his girlfriend playing guitar and singing together. The only downside to our stay in shorefront bliss was not having any hot water. I felt like Laura Ingalls Wilder, though that might have been in part due to my Dad incessantly calling me “Half-Pint”. Whatev, Charles.

The day after we got back to the Cities Sarah and I went with her family to the Minnesota State Fair. It was very much as expected. Long lines, crowded streets, and greasy, greasy food. It was awesome. I mentioned in a previous blog entry Sarah’s and my way of justifying the price of admission. Well this year I don’t believe I got my full ticket price, but a guy wearing a “There’s no place like 127.0.0.1″ t-shirt and another guy looking like a clown attempting to dress up as Superman went a long way in trying to stretch those dollars. I suppose the fried cheese curds made up the rest.

A bunch of video-games and a round of frisbee golf concluding the rest of our trip, Sarah and I made our long and arduous way back to Denver by listening to audiobooks and the monotone hum of Nebraska’s highways. Now everything’s back to normal; Sarah’s at home, I’m on the ol’ road with the band, and the guy dressed as Superman is hopefully now in decent attire.

Please pray for her.

So far we’ve met some nice people at our new place, and some not-so-nice. Also some characters. We happened to run into the president of the HOA by the pool and were talking about some of the people we had encountered. I expressed some amused concern over an old dude I had seen the day previous walking around the parking lot wearing a t-shirt, sandals, and nothing else (might I add that the t-shirt was nowhere near long enough). To which our worthy president grinningly replied, “Oh! That’s just Jerry,” with a look as if to say, “Yeah, that’s his way, nothing out of the ordinary for ol’ Jerry.” Well for my part I hope not to gaze upon those pastures again.

Our new place is mostly great with a few quirks. It’s almost 50% bigger than our last place which makes it feel quite roomy. So much so that we might need to get some more furniture to make it feel less empty. The only thing that really leaves me bewildered is the bathtub in the master bathroom. It’s ridiculously huge. I’m told that a bathtub that ginormous will be a great boon to me when I become geriatric, which is all well and good, but I feel like I have quite a few years left in me before my withered limbs and slowness require a tub of those colossal proportions. That space would have made a great billiards room.

Here’s a picture of said bathtub.

And, for scale, here’s a picture with me in the tub.

I feel like if it were filled with baked beans it would be straight out of Double Dare.

I’m at home now with my lovely wife, just chilling and swilling and packing. Today we got the go-ahead on a new place about 5 miles from where we currently live, so Monday will find us moving in, forgetting things, remembering them again, and generally being crazy. We’ve been looking for a better neighborhood for a while since our cars keep getting broken into (see this for reference). Now it’s nice to not have to look anymore :) Woohoo!

**Update** Two nights ago someone tried to break into one of our cars… again. Good freaking riddance to this place :/

Some of you may know this about me: I’ve always wanted to have entrance music. You know, like in movies where some bad dude walks in the room, it goes to slow-motion, and out of nowhere comes this awesome rocking song that makes you respect and fear said bad dude. Yeah, I’ve always wanted that. And the amazing song I’ve wanted to announce my entrance is the AutoZone theme song they play on the commercials. “Get in the Zone… AutoZone!” Something about that song always makes me smile, maybe because it seems like overkill for an auto parts store.

So last summer, to make this dream into a reality, I started searching the internet for the AutoZone song. My plan was to videotape myself walking into a room, put the footage into my computer, make it slow-mo, and add the song. To my dismay I couldn’t find it anywhere on the interwebs, try as hard as I might, so I deemed it necessary to record the song myself.

I started with some fake drums in this program called Reason. Once they were to my rocking specifications I put guitar to it by plugging straight into my computer and adding some horrible amp distortion sounds. Bass went the same way. For the vocals I decided to go a less-than-DIY route: since my band was in a recording studio at the time I took advantage of their nice vocal mic (and friendly engineer “Hatch”) to get some good sounds. Jon and Dave helped with some backup vocals, for which I am eternally indebted to them. Thanks guys! The mix-job I did on the song wasn’t exactly stellar, but you get the idea. The song being recorded, Jon put all the footage together into a podcast, and the result you can see below. My dream is realized.

Get in the Zone… AutoZone!

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[quicktime width="400" height="16"]http://sarah-and-john.com/john/rk/stuff/Autozone.mp3[/quicktime]

A: Let’s ride bikes!

On Monday Sarah and I got some mountain bikes from Target. Yes, we bought our high-performance machines from the same place you can get baby food and boxer shorts. I actually haven’t had a bike since about the year 1999 when I left my last one attached to a pole right next to a building that got demolished, so it’s great to now be able to either run messages around town or compete in the Tour de France, whichever my fancy chooses. But not whenever. Yesterday it was like 60 degrees here; today there’s a half foot of snow on our deck. Oh! Denver.

So now I’m that guy on tour. Ethan will walk by my bunk (where I hole up like a level 12 Rogue Gnome) and say, “Hey Warne, what are you playing? Nerd of Alert-craft?” then stomp away, roaring with laughter. Well the joke’s on him because I’ve got a 32-point Dragonslayer sword.

If you ever find yourself in Azeroth look me up. I’m a level 21 Night Elf Priest named Oohimscary, as in “Ooh, I’m scary!” We’ll duel.

I feel bad, though. It’s like the guy that you invite to poker that doesn’t know how to play. You spend half the time explaining the rules and the other half inexplicably losing almost every hand to him because he plays erratically. You just can’t play a guy like that. Which reminds me of playing catch with a toddler. They’re so little that they seemingly can’t hurt you or anything, but they’re so dang random that they’ll inevitably end up throwing the ball at your crotch, and FAST, like in America’s Funniest Home Videos. Yep, I’m like that.

We all piled out of our bus yesterday and inundated the office at a customs entry point. I needed to use the restroom (I read a book a few years ago that says that everyone needs to at some point) so I budged in line to more expeditiously check into our glorious country. I was processed promptly and pleasantly which left me some time to do some processing of my own at their facility and told a few people from our bus so, mostly as a precautionary measure.

After I was done with the necessary paperwork I walked outside to find everyone gone and the bus nowhere in sight. It was freezing outside and I just had a little track jacket. I looked all over the parking lot and between buildings but could not find our bus for the life of me. I suppose my aimless wanderings attracted the attention of a border guard because the next thing I heard was, “Stop! Turn around and get your hands out of your pockets!” (Remember the part about it being freezing?) I told him my situation and, after a few choice expletives, he directed me back into the same building to go through more processing. Inside I found the atmosphere to be a little more warm and friendly, and the personnel very helpful. I didn’t have my cell phone with me and therefore did not know any numbers to have them call to get the bus turned around.

One guy’s great idea was to look up our band website to try to find a phone number. I assured him there would be no help there, but try they did anyway. “Hey look, that’s him!” they cried, seeing my picture on the website. People that had been snickering when listening in on my predicament start outright laughing, hopefully good-naturedly. There was a group of Asians that had been caught smuggling produce into the US that would look at me, say something Asian amongst themselves, then laugh and look at me again. I was a true star. In the end I had the border patrol ring up my wife.

“Hello?”

“Is this Sarah Warne?”

“Uh, yes.”

“Wife of John Michael Warne?”

Pause.

“Uh, yes.”

They then proceeded to tell her the situation and assured her that I was okay and “under their protection”. For a while I guess she thought someone was pulling her leg, but eventually she thought better of it and decided to believe the guy. She then called Thiessen who told our bus driver to turn around.

Back at the detention center they apprised me of the conversation they had had with my wife and told me to meet the bus at the distant McDonalds in town, apparently the international rendezvous point for refugees. I thanked them and started off, in my mind on a slightly shorter version of the Ididerod (remember the part about it being freezing?). Lucky for me one of the people that overheard what was going on approached me, offering me a ride and an escape from my cold trek. He was on his way to a worship practice at his across-the-border church. Thanks Andy!

I arrived at McDonalds with a few minutes to spare, so I enjoyed a warm meal a la Morgan Spurloch that gave me the McGurgles. Moral of the story: Don’t sweat it if you get left at the border. You might just get a #7 value meal and a chance to get rid of some of your funny colored Canadian money.

Also I made some Dashboard widgets for my band. They are totally useless, but I find they spruce up the Dashboard in a nice, pleasant way. The first has a bunch of quotes taken from our tour journals. The second is a Valentine’s Day extra with a Necco candy heart. The third is a countdown timer for the release of our new record: “Five Score and Seven Years Ago”. Feel free to download them, but be warned: unless you are on God’s operating system (Mac OS X) they won’t work.

And because I am such a big nerd we named him Mac.

[quicktime]http://sarah-and-john.com/john/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/little-mac-1.mov[/quicktime]

[quicktime width="400" height="16"]http://sarah-and-john.com/john/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/joy-to-the-world.mp3[/quicktime]