This is going to be a tuff one....
I did lots of bike riding in August. I had one mishap where I blew a tire going over an edge of a road but other than that, lots of success! I love the bike and have really taken a liking to on-road biking. I'd generally ride about 15 miles most days and a few longer (25 or so) rides on the weekends. We spent some time packing and making the final arrangements for our trip to Africa as well. At work, we orchestrated a re-organization that gave me a more focused set of responsibilities, I welcome the change whole heatedly! One weekend we visited Omaha. I attended an Avenged Sevenfold concert there. Mike Portnoy killed it and made the rest of AX7 look like little boys!
One weekend in August we were able to take a canoe trip with my parents, my sister wasn't able to make it. Great fun...even when we almost hit a cow. The weather held too and this year, no one fell in! Another weekend, my sister flew in and we hit the Zoo in Chicago with the rest of my family. Good thing we saw those animals before our Safari...not quite the same experience.
September started with a day of working on a Habitat for Humanity house with a group from work. It was a great day, great team building, and a great way to kick off our African vacation! Overall, the trip to Africa was awesome. We had very few issues and feel very fortunate to be able to experience something like that and to have had such a successful trip. Vacation is good. It was relaxing, it was entertaining, educational, and restorative. It gave me and Jodi a time to really focus on us and gave me time to focus on my relationship with God.
A few highlights include:
- Seriously Delta, could you get seats with less padding? This was a 14 hour flight and I felt like I was sitting on a piece of plywood with about a half inch of foam on it. My rear end hurt for days after each flight. I'll probably have some sort of medical condition when I get older from the poor seat.
- In Zimbabwe we went on a private canoe trip. At one point we were standing on an island (in Zambia) and were surrounded by two elephants, a hippo, and a croc that was about 3.5 meters long....you realized very quickly that we were the visitors! Totally re-defined wild for me.
- We had an incredibly awesome day on Table mountain and Robin island...perfect weather
- We had an awesome evening in Camps Bay
- Hermanus had spectacular scenery and shark diving was incredible...actually very peaceful and relaxing...staring a great white in the eye and knowing that he was looking right back at you was awesome
- Got a great upgrade to a private cabin in Plectenberg Bay
- Safari was amazing...we saw all sorts of animal right up close, our room was awesome, the service was impeccable, and it was an experience like none other
- I found out that Mike Portnoy left Dream Theater...quite disappointing
Once we got back, my focus was again on bike riding, putting the new organization into place at work, and getting Park Lane tracks recorded. A few weeks back in the country and Jodi took off for New Zealand. While I missed her, the week she was gone was a retreat of sorts for me. It was again an awesome experience and very restorative. I'm planning on taking regular retreats moving forward! I got to see Skillet again when Jodi was gone. Again, concerts in Waterloo are a very different experience!
Another incredible life experience occured at the end of October. We traveled to Kansas City (I like that place) and saw Roger Waters perform The Wall live. It was a life long dream to see this show and it was worth it. Simply amazing. The pinacle of rock n' roll. We had a great time shopping in KC as well.
We've had a few great Park Lane rehearsals. We discovered that doing a day and a half sort of event is much better. We played what will likely be our second and final show of the year at Refuge Rock in November. I used the Yamaha kit. I've got it tweaked and have been building it up to be a full time second kit. It's got a different sound and feel from the Tama kit.
In small group, we wrapped up our world religion study and moved on to one about marriage. It's good, give Jodi and I something work on together to take our relationship to the next level.
Finally, we recently had Thanksgiving. Headed down to the in-laws. On Friday we headed out for a long day of shopping.
Hopefully I get around to updating this thing prior to the grass greening up again! BTW my grass was quite awesome....much greener and healthier this year. I'll chock it up as a W for Brian.
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