more camp fun

here's some more things that make camp fun.

sometimes when the chairs aren't comfortable you get inner tubes to sit on... and then sometimes the campers put somebody in the inner tubes.... and then we dare him to do a belly flop.....

and then other times... somebody falls asleep first... and the counselor tells somebody to get some toothpaste and some dental floss.... and then you put the toothpaste on passed out mcgee's fingers and tickle his nose with the dental floss.... and then the guy in the yellow shirt gets scared and runs as fast as he can...

camp is fun.

laughing til urination

so i'm at camp, and the youth haven't quite showed up yet. the staff showed up a few days early to do some training and some playing. you never quite know how much fun you can have taking pictures until you spend some time with "photobooth" and some people that work with youth... here's some examples.a big hug!


i could have been in kid 'n play

i sure am curious

brandon is so curious that it's making my jaw droop

brandon is.....

bandy has fantastic hair

remember harry and the hendersons..... i find inspiration there

regardless how scary we look, we can still make true art

i'm sure there will be more of these to come -- when the campers find out we have this, there will be no more sleep

crushers!

this past weekend i was back out on the road. carter, snooch, and i flew in to sacramento where we met the band and got on the bus. now, to get the bus to california, two drivers rotated between driving and sleeping so that the bus was always moving -- they said it took about 48 hours of straight driving to get from atlanta to sacramento. well in addition to those two, there were 7 band members and 7 crew people for a total of 16 people on a bus that has 12 bunks. even with the fact that the drivers didn't sleep on the bus, that left 14 bodies and 12 beds. luckily, i ended up not being stuck on a couch (thanks melanie and ed!).

after a fun weekend with that crew, we all piled off the bus at the phoenix airport at stupid early o'clock. right after we checked in, i ran into a band that i used to work for, and love. really... these girls rock! turns out they were also flying home to nashville, and we ended up sitting at the gate for about an hour chatting about old times and the fun we had. it reminded me that i probably still had a video from a show we did in japan.

check out the guy dancing in front of me during "miss difficult".

miss you ladies!

hard beginner to intermediate

i went hiking a couple of weeks ago and when i tried to find a map so i could give directions to a friend who was coming to meet me, i found out that the park i was at had just added a new mountain bike trail. that reminded me that i used to love mountain biking. so i decided to get back into it. after several weeks of bike shopping and a few test rides, i bought a new bike. later that day i went and rode the trail that i had just learned about. this trail was rated as beginner to hard beginner, and i rode straight through it with just a couple of problems. well that gave me a false sense of confidence and i decided to go to another trail i had learned of that was rated hard beginner to intermediate. it was also billed as one of the most technical trails in nashville. i know... i should have known better.

but i tried anyway. i got started fairly well, hardly having any trouble with the creek crossings or slight climbs. well, a little ways in, i came to what i think they called the "rock garden". when i first came up to it, i realized it was more than i should take on, and i stopped. i spent some time looking at it, and found a good line, and decided to try it. i backed up the trail a little so i could get settled on my bike before i hit the hard stuff. as i got close, i realized i was on a slightly different line than the one that i picked out, but thought i could still make it...


i was wrong. i got about half way down the rocks, and then my front wheel stopped. since i was on about a 40 degree downhill, the rest of the bike didn't stop, and i ended up vertical over top of my front wheel before falling over sideways. honestly... it was a pretty good wreck. all that really happened was a bit of blood, and a few scrapes and bruises... and a bit of scrapped paint from where the chain came off.

the best part was that as i was coming up and realized i was off course i thought, "maybe i shouldn't be trying this". then, as i started to wreck, i started to giggle and, when i hit the ground, i laughed out loud. it was really funny to me that i knew i shouldn't have tried but did anyway.

no worries, we do it all the time

so it was my first real gig as production manager. because i paid attention to the farns, i knew i needed to be sure that our hazer (like a smoke machine, but better) wouldn't set off the church's fire alarms. one of the first things i said to the church people was, "is there a fire alarm system that we need to disable while we run our hazer?" their answer was, "no worries, we run a smoke machine all the time"..... i'm sure you can guess what happened.


yep, the fire alarm went off, and the fire department showed up. but it didn't happen early in the day while we were setting up, or during soundcheck.... it went off 10 minutes after we opened doors so that everyone was already in the building and we had to explain what was happening to the audience... and delay the show. but anthony got to meet the firemen.

we called the alarm company to try and get them to turn the alarm off and they put us on hold... we called about our fire alarm going off and they put us on hold............... really?!?! so while we were on hold, we started brainstorming other options. here's the church's first idea.


well, after about 30 minutes of the alarm going off, we finally got it to turn off. as soon as they assured me that there was no way the alarm would go off again, we turned the hazer back on got the show started - only 18 minutes late.


thanks to travis honeycutt for making this church look great with very little gear. unfortunately, there was a guy in the audience who didn't agree. for the first time ever... the lighting guy got a complaint and not the sound guy. that's right - some old man came to front of house and whined about the light being in his eyes and no one came to the sound board to complain. some people even complimented me on the mix. it's really just cause i couldn't mix very loud. apparently people like it when the volume doesn't ever get louder than 95dB. i'll keep that in mind.