North Pole Narnia

There’s something about the combination of snow, mountains, log cabins, playing the guitar, and hot tubbing at midnight under the stars that gives me the jibblies.  Now, jibblies is a sort of feeling that makes you so happy that your smile almost turns into a laugh and you don’t want to stop whatever it is.  I was at Crooked Creek Ranch this weekend for a high school retreat.  This Ranch, which was really a resort, was in Winter Park.  After I saw the sun rising over the mountains, a fog in a distant valley, and a hot air balloon floating in what seemed like an enchanted mist, I was bummed because I forgot my camera.  My responsibility was to play tasty licks on the electric guitar…yes you read correctly: electric guitar.  Now you may be saying, “Mike, I thought you only played acoustic guitar and mandolin?” and you are half correct.  I do play those beautiful acoustic instruments, but I can also shred a little on the electric.  I had to learn a couple of songs including Kelly Clarkson’s song “My Life Would Suck Without You,” and Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.”  Actually when we played the Journey song, I wore a nice, tight, pink jumpsuit with a wig that actually matched the jumpsuit.  It was a sight to behold.

Part of my experience felt like I was in either the north pole or Narnia because of the light posts, snow, and buildings.  Every time I would walk out of the sessions at night the light posts would be on and I thought an elf would pop out of the snow and yell, “Have to make toys for the children!!!!”  I also was always trying to look for Santa, however I never found him.  It was a great weekend, and I am actually playing at the Jr. High camp in February.  We won’t be at the same camp, but I heard that it is really nice as well.

As for Churchill stuff…we are going on a mini, week-long tour in a week.  We are going to be going to Cornerstone University on the 11th and then head down to Scioto Hills Camp to lead the music for their camp, and then we’re heading to Taylor University on the 16th.  So if you are around any of those places, you need to come and see us.

Some Days Have Their Faults

Have you ever had those days when you look back and don’t really understand how you actually lived?  I had one of those days this past weekend.  Now, it wasn’t like I did something that threatened my life, but it was just a day, well actually two days, full of a lot of living, caffeine, and not sleeping. It all started with working on Saturday during the day.  I had to work at the bucks for 5 hours and then get home as quick as possible because I had a show.  It was actually our, Churchill’s, first sold out show that we have played!! We didn’t get on the stage until 10:30 and played one of our best shows yet!  Then I made my rounds to talk to people and relaxed in the green room afterwords talking with other band mates about the show.  1:30 a.m. came too fast because I found myself still at the venue when I should have been home sleeping because I had to open at Starbucks at 4:30….Let me just tell you that I only got about 30 min of sleep. I actually don’t even know if you could call that sleep because it is too short.  After I woke up from my grand slumber, I made my way to Starbucks to open.  I worked 7.5 hours and then went straight from there to practice for a retreat that I am help leading this weekend.  I found that shots of espresso can give you energy that you didn’t even know you could have. We practiced for 4 hours.  I then made my 45 min drive back home.  I was surprised that I didn’t crash when I got home.  I couldn’t wind down from all the caffeine and stayed up to watch the rest of the football games on Sunday.  It was a really long day.  I then fell asleep like a log and found myself sleeping in longer than anticipated.  Well, the best comment I got from someone about my sleep deprivation came from an older gentleman after he saw the stamp that I got on my hand from the show; he said, “At least you can do it cause you’re young.”  I don’t know how many times I’ll do that again, but it is cool that I can do some stuff like that once in a while.

Memorable Moments

I finally finished my book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, and came to like it more towards the end.  Miller had a lot of insight on life rather than just stories for story sake.  It is kind of like being lost in a movie until you get to the end and everything makes sense.  One cool thought that he had was, “When we look back on our lives, what we will remember are the crazy things we did, the times we worked harder to make a day stand out.”  I thought that was a really good point because a lot of times I settle for a mediocre day, but when I think about memories, the ones that jump into my mind first are the fun, enjoyable, crazy times that I have had.

I went hiking the other day with a friend and I had a morning that was a memory that will stand out.  One part of the story that stands out was when I fell down.  Part of the trail never saw the sun so it had been trampled on leaving it really icy.  There was a slight incline and minimal to no traction on my shoes.  I was fighting to walk up this and I totally biffed it and actually couldn’t get up because I had no traction.  I then proceeded to claw my way, on all fours, to the top. I exclaimed, in a way smeagol would do from the Lord of the Rings, “I am going to crawl to the top!!”  It was quite humorous.  Then we decided to climb rocks off of the path that led to us trudging through snow up to our knees, but we made it to the top to enjoy sunshine, tossing orange peels at nearby hikers, and talking about food we disliked.  It was very memorable.  I like those kinds of things and hopefully I’ll be able to live more of those memories.

Sweet view we had

Tales as tall as cliffs…

I am currently writing this blog at the same time my roommate, Kevin, is writing his.  I am trying to think of more clever things to say and funnier jokes…and hopefully I can succeed (just eliminate this sentence from the blog if I didn’t).  Presently, my life is filled with ideas about stories.  I am reading this book by Donald Miller and it is all about living an interesting/productive story.  I am watching a tv series called Dexter that is all about a story and endings that you would never conceive.  I am listening to Margot and the Necular So and So’s, and they have a song called “As tall as Cliffs” which is about how he tells tales as tall as cliffs.  A lot of my life, because of tv, movies, and books, seems like I am living in a huge story where I am not the author.  I can think for myself, make decisions, make stupid decisions, play guitar, go to concerts, work out, swim, but it all seems like it is part of an intricate story that I don’t know the ending to.  I may have a glimpse of what it is going to be, however, I think it will be so much better than I could ever think.  I am interested in seeing where this story is going to progress and how it will progress.  I like is so far.

On to the clever comments and funny jokes…How did the boy fall off the swing?  He was hit by a piano!!!! That was a joke that my best friend would always tell people.  It doesn’t really make sense but it always makes me laugh because when he gets to the punch line, he has a huge grin on his face and says it so loud.  This makes the people’s faces, whom he’s telling it to, look like they were just hit by a piano because they don’t really get it.  What do you get when you cross a 145 pound, bald, twenty-something with a lion?  You get a joke with no answer because I made it up!!!!  That is what you need to answer for me.  Let me know what you think it should be.  Hope you are having a great day!

The Gym

I like to work out, but the gym is intimidating.  There are so many people who have bigger muscles than me and actually know what they are doing on all of the machines.  I had another incident that wasn’t too bad, but it made me feel a little challenged.  I am training for a triathlon, and this requires me to bike, run, and swim on a constant rotation.  It was my day to run and I went to the treadmill (the only one that was open) and stood on it.  There were so many buttons on the machine that it looked like I was at Chucky Cheese playing wac-a-mole.  I just pressed like five buttons at the same time to try and start because the last time I tried to get on a machine it turned into a pride bomb that landed on me and blew me to bits.  This time I was going to stay on until I could figure this stupid thing out.  It started going…going…going too fast and I had to hit the huge, red, stop button. After fidgeting around with all the buttons, I finally got to where I could increase and decrease the speed at my own leisure.  I had a really good run after that.

The second part of my work out that day was to swim.  Now I dove when I was in high school, but that doesn’t mean that I swam.  I remember one swim meet when my coach put me in the “Diver Relay.”  We each had to swim a 100 meter freestyle (that is 4 lengths of the pool).  It doesn’t sound hard until you are in the water and realize that you can’t breath in the water.  That race ended with me doggy paddling the last 50 meters in defeat….So, for me to start swimming is a challenge.  I know that I am going to have to take it slow and work my way up.  The only thing that bothers me is when there are people in the pool who know what they are doing because they will easily realize that I am like a fish out of water when in the water.  I stopped. A lot.  I was able to do about a 500 meter swim, but it wasn’t easy at all.  If I’m going to do this triathlon, I am going to have to train a lot in swimming.

I am going to keep training and hopefully get over this pride issue.  To all of you who can swim really well…I envy you. Teach me your ways.

Police men should not predict the future…

There are some days that you never want to relive because they weren’t very fun.  Nothing goes the way you want it to.  Every little thing puts you on edge.  People seem to make stupid decisions that don’t even make sense…That was my day on Wednesday.  I got up early to go to the gym, and I felt good.  I was trying to make it look like I knew what I was doing with all of the weight stuff.  The part that kind of hurt my pride was when I got on the bike machine and couldn’t turn the thing on, and so I walked away; defeated.  After my wonderful time at the gym I went home. I always have to go through this four-way stop and have gotten a small habit of looking both ways and sort of rolling through it.  Well…I got caught by a cop and received a ticket.  He told me that he hoped I would have a better rest of my day.  I looked for a brighter future, however a brighter future did not shine back at me.  I recorded some music when I got home and then made plans to visit a friend about a half hour away.  I got directions and was all ready to conquer whatever lied ahead.  The directions took me two exits past where I was supposed to be and then swung me back up on all of these country roads.  I finally found the Starbucks as I was passing the entrance and had to swing around.  We had a great long chat and then I headed back home.  It turned out that it had been snowing really hard about five miles north and in Denver.  A thirty minute drive turned into a two-hour pitter patter of a drive where I averaged about ten mph.  I got home just in time because I would have started tossing things out of my window to hit the “stupid” drivers on the road.  I did, however, make a mean piece of chicken that satisfied my hunger because all I had for lunch was a Carmel Brulle Latte from Starbucks.  The end of the day wasn’t too bad because I was able to plan our tour dates for February with the band.  That made me really excited and turned the day back to the sunny side of life.

I have a fever and the only perscription is writing…

So I have slacked a lot with continuing this blog and being true to harnessing my writing skills.  I have decided that I am going to be writing a lot more this year as part of my new years resolution.  I have also noticed that when I read a Donald Miller book–A Million Miles and a Thousand Years being the one that I am reading currently–I usually get inspired to write more.  While I was thinking about what I was going to write, I came to the conclusion that I had some great stuff happen last year and some bad stuff happen, however there were some things that happened that were bad but were funny when I look back at it.  So…I am going to give a couple of events that happened to me that were not necessarily good or bad, but were weird.

My friends and I (yes I have friends) always go to Wing Stop on Tuesday nights to hang out and talk.  Well after we were done conversing, I decided to go home; which is the logical thing to do when everyone else leaves.  While I was heading to my car, this guy came up to me and proceed to show me that he was a nice guy who wasn’t in a gang by showing me that he didn’t have any tattoos, and he asked me for a ride because his wife was pregnant.  It is hard for me to say no, and so I found the words, “Sure! I’ll give you a ride.”  So him and his wife, who didn’t look like she was pregnant at all got in the car.  He lead me about seven or eight miles south to a neighborhood and told me to wait in the car.  After waiting about ten minutes in the car with his wife and having an awkward conversation, he came back to the car and then asked me if I could take him to this hotel.  I took them to this hotel that looked like one from the movies where everyone dies.  I dropped them off and then sped home.  I didn’t realize till I told my class about this, that I probably helped with a drug deal.  Don’t ever pick up a guy with a pregnant wife outside of wing stop in Denver.

This next situation happened at Starbucks.  There was this guy who always came into the store who worked for a radio station in the mountains.  He had asked for some music for his show and so I gave him a Churchill CD.  We exchanged information (like phone numbers–don’t ever do that), and he called me after the day he had played it to see if I had listened to the show.  I told him that I had not because I went to Church and then went straight to work.  Then he called me a couple of times and I didn’t really feel like picking up….so he came into the store.  He sat at a table and proceeded to talk on his phone and role his eyes when I said hi to him.  When he was done, he called me over and told me that he has a phone so that he can communicate with other people. I apologized and then tried to have a civil conversation, but that turned to him swearing at me and calling me racist and other choice words.  I said I couldn’t continue this conversation, so I went back to work.  Then he came up to the counter and said that if this were ten years ago, he would (explitive) kill me.  At that, I went into the back and called the cops.  He left and then tried to call a bunch of times, and I have never heard back from him.  First time that I have ever had to call the cops on someone.

Those were a couple of situations in the last year that were pretty crazy.  I would tell you more, but it would probably turn into an entire book, so I will interject a past story here and there.  Peace. Love. Happy New Year.

Time has passed and a new Blog is finally written

Hello everyone out there in the internet world! I haven’t posted in a while due to laziness and business.  When I wanted to write a post, I didn’t have time; when I had time, I didn’t feel like posting.  However, this is me posting because I have time and I want to!!  A lot has gone on in the past couple of weeks.  There have been shows, work, visitations from family, american idol craziness, and seeing a lot of live music.

I will start out with a couple of weeks back and work to the present.  I had one of my friends come all the way from Pennsylvania to try out for American Idol.  They were having tryouts at the Bronco’s Stadium.  That week was crazy because he didn’t have a car and there isn’t that great of public transportation outside of the city: I live outside of the city.  So, I was able to drive him back and forth to the tryouts. The only thing that I can say is that I waited in line and played my guitar in the American Idol line.  There were some crazies there though.  I don’t think that I would ever try out for that for a couple of reasons: 1. I don’t have a great voice, 2. runs with my voice don’t sound very good 3. too many crazy people.  I’ll just stick to laughing at all of the terrible acts during the season.

During the past couple of weeks I have had the opportunity to go to the mountains and camp, hike, and fish.  My dad came out to visit me for a week and we were able to hang out.  It was awesome.  We stayed in Rocky Mountain National Park and fished. I was able to learn how to fly fish. I was the only one who “caught” a fish during our fishing expedition (I put that in quotes because I really didn’t catch a fish because I went back to cast and I had a 4 inch rainbow trout on the end and flung him right out of the water…it was pretty funny to see).  Not only did I get to hang out with my dad in the wilderness, I was able to hang out with him at two of our concerts.  He was able to see us play a show at the High Dive two Saturdays ago and then at the Underground Music Showcase this past Saturday.  He was the first family member to hear Churchill live.  I wish all of my family and friends could be out hear so we could hang out and listen to music together.  We got a video on the Denver Post website which got us pumped. here is a link.

I was also grocery shopping last night and figured that the world would be a lot more happier if we acted a little more like children.  I looked at everyone who was shopping and the only one’s who were smiling or happy were the children.  This may be due to long lines and million people who shop at walmart at 9:00pm, but I just wondered if we were a little more layed back and happier like children, people would like living more. Just a thought.

I am reading Mere Christianity again.  C.S. Lewis is a very good writer.  He knows how to say the most interesting and thought provoking statments with elegance.  He doesn’t need a million words to get his point across.  I wish I could write like him, however blogging probably won’t get me to his level.  Alright…I am going to post some pictures from the last couple of weeks.  have a great day!!!!! Listen to our new song here.

Me at the Wilco Concert at Red Rocks...awesome show

At the Top of Pikes Peak

At the Garden of the gods! It was beautiful!

Jim, Greg, and I jumping for Joy!

At Red Rocks for Death Cab and Andrew Bird.

Catching up on some stuff…

Have you ever had an experience that you felt like you were in some sort of movie…I know this may sound wierd, but the other day I started a jog in the middle of the day and it felt as though I was in an awesome movie. The colors were brilliant, the air was warm, I loved running, it was sweet!  In fact, it was one of the first nice days that we have had in the last three weeks. I am thinking that I live in Seatle because it rains every day and then gets really sunny and then rains again.  I have never seen this many consecutive thunder storms. I also saw a rainbow and then a lightning bolt flashed right underneath it and it was the first time I have ever seen that.  Here is a picture (also there is a picture of the hail we got the other day too)

The rainbow from inside a "Good Times"

What the Hail? By my starbucks drive thru

Well, I had a busy week last week with a couple shows and a bunch of work.  We played at the Laughing Goat in Boulder on Thursday and had a bunch of people come out for it.  The venue was a small coffee shop with an organic/earthy feel to it, and the workers danced to our music.  Then on Saturday we played at a festival in the wee hours of the morning (10 oclock).  I started off the festival with my instrumental set and that seemed to go over pretty well.  Then our band took the stage to provide a simple, unique atmosphere that made moms dance, kids dance, and dads nod thier heads.  We had a really great crowd and they came and went as they pleased, however a lot of them stopped until our performance was over.  I was bummed  because I had to go to work right after the performane and couldn’t hang around the fair…and that is when something big happened…a dog happend…yes you heard me, a dog.  Meet the newest member of Churchill: Winston!!!!

Little Winston

He is a lab/great dane mix which means he is going to be a monstrous dog!  He is full of energy and loves to play all of the time.  Even as I am typing this he is playing with my feet making it hard to type because the licks tickle and make me giggle.  Oh, and he is already 40 lbs at 5 months old.  I’ll keep you up to date on how big he is getting.

On other news, I am going to be an uncle for the third time in a couple of weeks.  This is going to be different because this time it is going to be my first niece: Bella Morter.  I am super excited to become one of those protective uncles who spoil their niece and won’t let anyone date her and make threats to the boy who asks…it is going to be awesome!  Well, I hope you are having the most sweetypieness day.

Chipotle Drive Thru??

I was really hungry the other day, so because of my craving for a good burrito I decided to go to Chipotle with Tyler (he plays bass in Churchill).  We had to get some gas for “The Scrambler” (that’s my awesome blazer) so we stopped to fill it up.  Then we headed towards Chipotle.  As we got out of our The Scrambler, we saw some employees and some people coming out of the restaurant and looking at a car and a small crowd of people.  I didn’t know what happened but I saw that one of the windows was shattered everywhere and there was a car up on the curb with a smashed front end.  It was definitely obvious that the lady who was driving this car had ran right into the window and smashed it.  We went inside and got in line and then this father and son came in right behind us and told us that they were going to pull into that parking spot but let the lady have it, and she must have thought that it was a drive thru parking space because the guy said that she never stopped and just cruised right into the window.  It was pretty crazy because all of the cops, firefighters, and an ambulance came and it turned out that a little boy was sitting at the stools right behind the window that was smashed.  Nothing happened to him, but he saw the crash literally right in front of his eyes.  This is what we would call a “crazy situation that doesn’t happen every day.”  Here is the picture that I took after it had been cleaned up a little by the firefighters.

Chipotle Madness