Done and Done.

So, I finished the ride last week in four hours(my personal goal) and I wore spandex…head to toe.  The ride went really well.  I was overly reserved in the beginning, not knowing how much energy I should save for the end.  Looking back I could of been a bit more aggressive overall, but its better to be safe than sorry.  I look forward to another one soon and I’m currently planning my ride from Columbia to Charleston for sometime in early November.

Kristin and I just booked our flights to visit the amazing couple that is Jen and Jeremiah in Aspen…yep Aspen.  We can’t wait.  I get two whole days of west coast snowboarding which is something I’ve longed for since the 10th grade.  I never thought it would happen, much less happen with friends who are locals.  I don’t think December can come soon enough.

Music Note: Becks new song Orphans is amazing.  Paper Route blows my mind.

Book Note: Great Expectations is an enthralling yet uneasy read.  I got a hard back copy of my favorite novel “East of Eden” for 5 bucks at an outlet store.

Movie Note: “East of Eden” the movie with James Dean was a massive buzz-kill.  Do not watch.  How can you leave out Lee?

Life Note: My wife rules.

Just a Little…

Today is the eve of my first race/ride.  So if everything goes well I will be hang tight(tuff) on the turns and passing people left and right sort of like these guys…I really am nervous.  Its a 63 mile ride and its a very relaxed atmosphere I just can’t help but be a bit nervous.  I’ve been training pretty regularly for it, so it should be fine…we will see.

As you know I love riding my bike, but you can imagine the riding itself puts pressure on certain areas that no one would want excessive pressure.  This is where my dilemma comes in ….

Bike Shorts.  These guys provide much needed protection, but in turn your wearing spandex.  Here’s how it breaks down…Say I’m going to be clever and wear these underneath my normal shorts, well all the bikers that see me would laugh at my immaturity and insecurity towards my cycling life.  ”He’s not man enough to wear spandex yet….newbie.”  Thats probably along the lines of what they would be thinking.  OK, so say I do “man-up” and just rock the spandex.  Well then everyone thinks, “Man that guy has no self respect to go around in spandex.”  Or something like that.  So here I sit…screwed if I do and screwed if I don’t.

Other than the ride and my “Spandex Dilemma”, things are great.  My SAT scores that I thought would take 5 to 9 weeks actually got here within a week and in turn I got to send of all my school stuff.  Kristin and I finally got our new computer, a brand new i-mac.  I feel like we’ve stepped into a whole new realm of technology with all the goodness that is Apple before us.  Here’s the obligatory “I got a new mac with a camera on it” picture.

Baumer has officially announced our break-up and we gave our van and tailor back to the label.  Its strange but good to see things ending in a tangible way.  We are just excited to see what He has next for us.

Falling.

Its a beautiful day outside.  Fall is just around the corner and maybe this year, instead of summer just freezing straight into winter, we can enjoy it a bit.  Kristin and I have always been fond of autumn.  The season seemed to always be the time when we would end up connecting again, no matter how long it had been.  This year we won’t have to worry about reconnecting, but it tends to remind us of when

 we met and that mushy stuff…so its a good time of year for sure.  Its also much more pleasant to ride your bike.

I’m also realizing that the hardest part about going back to school is rounding up all the necessary information.  Such as: Please list all the dates on which you took the SAT.  Um…uh….I have no clue.  That was ten years ago.  Sweet.  Because of this my test information has been “archived” which means good luck finding them and we are going to charge you a lot of money to do so.  Also since I didn’

t complete 30 credit hours my lone semester in college, I have to send in all my high school information and transcripts as well.  You would think that if someone who is in their mid-twenties wanted to attend your school and the one semester they went to college they did really well you would just let them in….but no…oh no.  Anyway.  I guess its not that big of a deal.  I’m just ready to get in there and start getting it all done.

Transitions…

It has been quite sometime since I’ve written here.  Things have changed a lot since I last visited you all.  The band I’ve played in and worked hard for over the past three years has dissolved.  Luckily this had nothing to do with band dynamics or relationships, rather a lack of progression.  A lack of success that would enable us to have our monetary and security needs fulfilled in a way that is fitting at this point in our lives.  It was a combination of squandered promotions, lack of management, too much touring with little to no reward, and a hope lost.  We could’ve kept going and recorded another record and toured more and hoped, but none of had it in us to try it all over again.

As you can imagine this was not a decision that reached a conclusion easily or quickly.  I can say that I really feel this is supposed to happen.  Its been an amazing journey and now its time to move on.  This change has been brewing in my heart for a few months now, but the finality of it all has been a bit overwhelming.  I’ve been going back and forth between excitement for the future and mourning a dream lost.  The pursuit of music as a vocation has been my only drive for about 9 years.  Now that I’ve found myself on the other side of the dream, I can’t help but question things.  Did I chase the wrong thing?  Is this what the “dream” looked like?  Why didn’t it pan out like I’d thought it would?  

I’m still processing all of this, but I do know one thing: I’ve been led to this point for a reason and in that I sit.  I come back to Sovereignty.  The beautiful reality that my story, my life and its is many different, sometimes confusing, parts masterfully woven together.  This is what I cling to as I move forward eagerly anticipating what He has next for Kristin and I.  I’m now realizing what the sense of preparation was for a few months ago. 

The next step for me is school.  I’m beginning the whole application process for USC and moving forward with that.  I’m really excited to get started.  I really hated high school, but I really enjoyed the one semester I was in college…so I’m ready to get on it.  I will keep you updated and will try to blog more consistently, I just needed sometime to process all of these changes.

One Year Ago…

 

One year ago last Monday my wife and I became one.  This has been the sweetest most fulling year I could of imagined.  I couldn’t ask for a more amazing companion in this life.  She never ceases to amaze me with her selfless love and support.  I don’t feel worthy to call her Wife.  I long only to make her feel like a queen.  Her elegance and beauty touch something deep inside.  I know her better than ever before and I can’t wait until 30 years from now when I will look back at how little I actually do.  I’m thankful that persistence does pay off and that some guys are lucky enough to win

charleston

 their dream girls.

And then…

I’ve been waiting for some amazing event to transpire in my life in which to write about, but sadly life has been pretty mundane for me the past week or so.  I have been really consistent, actually somewhat obsessive, about riding my bike.  I’m up to 145ish miles in 14 days of riding.  I feel really good and I’m thankful to have an “exercise” that I enjoy and actually look forward to.  I can’t wait to keep it up and hopefully someday do a race of some sort.

I did get the new Paper Route ep which I’ve been waiting for for a very long time.  Paper Routes first ep, “Paper Route”, changed me.  It was as if someone stepped into my dreams, took a good long listen and then jumped out ran as quickly as possible to a studio and recorded what they just heard.  In other words, it was the music I always wished I could make. But sadly, I can’t sing or write songs, so that makes it a bit tricky and thats where Paper Route came in.  This newest recording is a bit of a departure from the things that endeared them to me originally, but I think it will grow on me…I hope.  More on this later.

I feel like many of the people I know and even people I come in contact with are in major transitional phases of life.  I see this proven true with family members, close friends and even the band(more on this later).  I don’t think Kristin and I are yet, but I do think we are in a sort of “calm before the storm” moment.  I’m overwhelmed by the Fathers goodness to my precious wife and I over the past year.  Columbia has been a surprisingly wonderful place for us to start our marriage.  Even when I don’t feel we deserve it and do nothing to earn it, He has shown His favor to us.  We try to share this amazing Love with others the best we know how.  I do feel we are being prepared for a change, we just don’t know what it will look like.  So we are now beginning to seek wisdom and guidance as we look to the horizon, waiting as patiently as we can to see what God wants of us.

Mountains…

 

My lovely wife and I spent the weekend in Arizona attending our dear friends Jen and Jeremiahs wedding.  We flew into Phoenix, rented a car and then drove and hour and a half through the beautiful mountains to a quaint little town called Payson located in the heart of the Tonto National Forest.  I wasn’t supposed to go, but due to some minor changes in my summer plans I got to go.  I found tickets last week and Kristin and I actually ended up on the same return flight…sweet.

We posted up and made a temporary home at the always classy Best Western in the thriving metropolis of Payson.  It was surprisingly a pleasant stay.  All of the wedding events took place at a gorgeous cabin in the mountains among the pines.  It was a wonderful time even though there was a bit of inclement weather.  We were all there to celebrate with J and J, so everyone jumped in and did what that could to help out be it drying the chairs, hanging the lights back up, or frantically running things inside to keep them dry.  

Its hard not to think of your own wedding when your at a wedding…I suppose that might be a bit selfish, but inevitable.  Does that then mean that I’m inevitably selfish…i think that’s a whole different blog.  So anyway, being there with all the emotions and pomp, sitting beside your own lovely bride can’t help but invoke sentimental feelings.  I think of how breath-takingly amazing she looked, all the friends and family, how I felt the moment I saw her and how perfect the day was.  I also can’t help but remember how miserably hot the day was.  It was literally the hottest week of the year and our day the hottest of the week mixed with 1000% humidity, you can imagine what it felt like.  No matter how hot the day, it did not effect our feelings toward the day, yeah we would’ve love for it to be a bit cooler, but our wedding was perfect.

As we sat on damp seats listening to the thunder in the distance, I realized that no wedding is as perfect as you imagined it to be, but in that imperfection is the uniqueness of that day.  The smells and the colors and the feelings, no matter how intended, are what make that day special, they give the day the textures that bring it from a day dreamed of into reality.  

The weekend was a blast yet exhausting.  We flew home through the night which always messes your system up.  I was ready to get home and ride my bike.  I’m going on 50 miles in 4 days of riding.  I feel like a little kid who just got a skate board.

Like Riding a Bike…

 

I’m now officially a bike commuter.  This is something I’ve been processing seriously for the past few months.  I used to ride my trusty mountain bike to work a few summers ago, but that was only about a mile or so.  My commute is now closer to 4 miles with some fairly challenging inclines.  So in-order to do this seriously I needed to invest in a road-bike.  After some long talks with my lovely and amazing wife, we finally decided it was time to invest. 

I have a dear friend who is an amazing cyclist.  He rode his bike clear across America, CT to WA, as well as competing in triathlons…need I say more?  He and I have been mulling this over for quite awhile, he was even kind enough to let me borrow his road bike for a week, just to see how I liked it.  He works at a bike shop and helped me pick out this beauty…

Biking for me is as much for my personal health and obscene gas prices as it is for the environment.  Trek is heading up a campaign called 1 World 2 Wheels to raise awareness and involvement.  Here are some interesting facts…

-The U.S. could save 462 million gallons of gasoline a year by increasing cycling from 1% to 1.5% of all trips.

-Each U.S. rush-hour auto commuter spends on average of 50 hours a year stuck in traffic.

-In 2003, cars stalled in traffic wasted 5 billions gallons of fuel.

-25% of all trips are made within one mile of the home.  40% of all trips are made within two miles of home, and 50% of the working population commutes five miles or less to work.

The challenge is to change our mind-set when it comes to trips made within 2 miles of our homes.  Instead of hopping in the car, hop on a bike.  It could change the world as well as your overall health.

-The average person loses 13 lbs. their first year of commuting by bike.

-Just three hours of cycling per week can reduce your risk of heart disease and stroke by 50%.

-A 140-pound cyclist burns 508 calories while pedaling 14 miles in an hour.

Last night I wanted to see some friends play across town and instead of getting in the car I took the bike, setting in motion my bike commuting status.  I travelled 11.7 miles round trip and I was surprised at how quickly I got to my destination.  It was rough going on a few of the hills, but if I keep at it I’m sure they will get easier and easier.  I will keep you guys up to speed as I begin the process of switching over to the “green” side.

America…

 

In honor of the holiday, I’ve purchased quite possibly the most “American” beer I’ve ever come across to enjoy on this fine day.  Happy 4th of July to all….

 

Summer Changes…

As many of you know, I play in a band.  Music is something I love and have been pursuing for many years.  We’ve been traveling pretty heavily over the past two years and have had some small successes, enough to keep hope alive and us working hard.  A funny thing about being in a band is that maybe 10% of your time is spent on writing and playing music, the other 90% of your time is spent calling, talking, meeting, and generally just getting told “no.”  No you can’t play here, no we can’t play you on the radio, no you can’t go on tour with us, no you can’t have a interview in the magazine, no that date isn’t available, no blah blah blah…you get the point.  I would venture to say that for every yes, no matter what its about, there are roughly 23 no’s and as you can imagine it all becomes desperately draining emotionally. 

Had things gone as planned, which if your in a band you learn they rarely do, we would be on tour right now until August, getting to see the whole country.  Things happened that were out of our control and the whole tour fell through.  You would think I would be bummed right now, but I can truly say I am not.  Usually I am bothered and usually I care too much and usually I worry far too much in a very unhealthy way.  But my amazing wife has helped me put perspective on everything over the past few months and realize that whatever goes bad for the band is just that…for the band.  Not for us as a family and not for me as a husband.  Sovereignty.  Sweet sovereignty.  I feel it deep within and I rest in it.  We’ve worked hard and for some reason it didn’t work out and I’m ok with that.

I will enjoy this summer.  I will spend the maximum amount of time possible with my wife.  I will read more.  I will get to know friends better.  I will try to serve more.  I will try to give grace freely.  I will search for what it is that God wants of me.  I will surf.  I will ride my bike.  I will camp.  I will dig deep.  I will learn to love better.  I will search for beauty in all things.