Last big ride for the year

At the beginning of the year I set a goal for myself to ride to each of our parents' houses from Sioux Falls. Mitchell was easy as Sioux Falls/Mitchell was the first scheduled day of the Tour de Kota. Yankton finally happened in July and again in August since we just happened to be headed that way anyway.

That only left Prairie Hill Farm where my folks live, south of Hartley, IA. I anticipated it being the longest ride of the three and probably the most difficult to schedule because it would take the bulk of the day and a quick turnaround for home that night wouldn't give us any time to visit. It also usually is a route with the most amount of headwind. I decided to schedule a vacation day on Friday for the ride and stay through Saturday night with the fam.

Thankfully, the ride itself proved a bit more friendly than I'd hoped with temps in the 80's. Definitely more hills than any of the other rides, but they were mostly in the first twenty miles. The wind, which had been probably 10-30 mph out of the southeast on Thursday (which would have been a headwind the entire way) shifted and lost a little intensity so that I was probably riding in twenty mph winds out of the south/southwest. This meant I still had stretches where I had to fight it, but the headwind sections probably averaged out at about three or four miles with the longest being six miles.

I made stops in Rock Rapids, George, Sheldon (my hometown, for lunch) and Primghar, taking my time resting and refueling as much as I could without dragging the ride out too long. The only bad stretch I had was from about Archer to Primghar (about eight miles) where I just sort of hit the wall. I realized right before Primghar that I hadn't taken my Sport Legs supplements when I stopped for lunch like I had intended. Sport Legs are supposed to help stave off the production of lactic acid so that you feel fresher longer and I definitely think they help. I've said on a couple of occasions that if they are a placebo, then they're a placebo I'll continue to take.

I got my second wind and finished strong, rolling into the farm after 3:00 where the folks were sitting on the deck outside the studio waiting in the pleasant warmth and breeze of the afternoon. We sat on the deck until Dad had to go to an art show opening that he had a few pieces in, at which point I headed into the house and cleaned up. Amy and the kids arrived sometime after 5:00 and we had a good visit. We actually slept in on Saturday, had a lazy day with the family and gigantic buffalo steaks for dinner.

Schedules when school is in session make it almost impossible to do any real riding, so I'll be amazed if I can scrape together even a handful of 30-40 mile rides until next spring, but I was happy to have a good ride and achieve a goal that seemed doable with a little work at the beginning of the year.

A season for new music

I decided that I needed to dig into a little new music for use at church and received a few iTunes gift cards for my birthday last month to assist me in my endeavors. So far, I have to say I'm pretty disappointed in my options where corporate worship is concerned. It's not that there isn't some good music being made, it's just that so little of it seems to have application for where I'm at.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm going to have to set to work and write what I can't find. It's not a new revelation to me, it's just that finding time and energy between one full time job, two part time jobs, volunteer commitments with both kids' schools and simply trying to be husband, father and friend is proving to be a difficult endeavor. I'm only able to write anything today because Xander is home sick from school and Amy's recital is this week. Not a good week for her to be around sick kids.

But, I did find a few things worth commenting on...

The first is John Mark McMillan's "The Medicine." I have to thank Hal Swift for indirectly putting me in touch with this artist since Hal loaned me a CD from another artist that included McMillan's song "How He Loves" which has been working me over for the last few months. We decided to introduce it at church about a month ago and in the process of tracking down resources, I came across McMillan's site which includes a music player with songs from his new album. I waited patiently until the album became available on iTunes (again, the gift cards) and downloaded it. Easily my favorite of the latest round of acquisitions including offerings from Charlie Hall, Matt Maher and Coldplay (all of which have merit of their own).

The thing I love about McMillan is he has a great sense for poetic lyricism set to creative melodies. The production is at times, raw and visceral, at times eclectic and experimental and at times simple and straight forward. At times I'm reminded of Mason Jennings, at other times Waterdeep. Certain songs continue to roll around in my head either because they stuck melodically or because they ignited a thought in me that simply needs to be meditated on. There are even a few that I expect to see us incorporate into our worship settings at Mercy.

Today brought another great find. This one for free!!! Phil Whickham has become one of my favorite singer/songwriters in modern worship and he has released a free album of live acoustic settings of some of his best songs mixed with traditional hymn interludes that I'm listening to as I write. Singalong is free just for signing up to receive email updates from Phil and is a great, low risk introduction to his music. "Singalong" is a great showcase for the songs and is a good resource for anyone looking for songs for acoustic worship.

If you like what you hear or wonder what the songs would sound like in all of their envisioned, studio glory then definitely check out his self titled album and "Cannons" which I think are two of the better artistic efforts in the worship genre in recent years. "You're Beautiful" has become one of our favorite modern anthemic hymns and "True Love" is still the song that I wish I would have written. Absolutely stunning imagery.

If anyone has any other suggestions (other than Michael W. Smith or Chris Tomlin) for me to check out in pursuit of great new congregational songs, then please feel free to leave a comment.

A lot of catching up to do

August was a blur. I had a trip to Trek's Backstage event in Madison, WI, school started, we had our big Mercy Celebration at church, I made the jump from running youth cold weather at work to running men's cold weather and I'm sure a bunch of other stuff happened.

The highlight was probably the trip to Wisconsin. I got to go ride cool new stuff, meet some folks including Gary Fisher (one of the fathers of mountain biking) and get a first look at the stuff that we'll be selling next season. The demo day that we had in Waterloo at Trek's headquarters was definitely the most fun. We had a chance to ride some killer trails and I took the opportunity to ride a few bikes including Trek's Top Fuel 9.9 SL which is their best of the best, full suspension, race bike. It weighs about 20 pounds and just begs to be ridden faster and faster. We also got to demo road bikes, so I took a Trek Madone 6.9 Pro out for a spin with Bontrager Aeolus 5.5 wheels and Shimano's newest version of Dura Ace (so new the Shimano boys were actually installing it on the frames at the event). I absolutely loved this bike and only regret that I was so slagged from the mountain bike demo that I really couldn't throw too much into the road demo.

Another highlight was our Mercy Celebration at church. We moved the service outdoors, had free food, played about a 45 minute set in the afternoon and had inflatables and yard games. The turn out was pretty decent and the amount of advertising that we did has carried over in terms of first time visitors into September. We're loving things at Mercy and are excited to see what the next season will hold.

The move of cold weather departments at work was one that I had considered previously and when I heard that Kalie was leaving to take a youth ministry job in town I decided to put my hat in the ring. I really enjoyed running the youth section but it really begins to ramp up in late July into August which means that I lose a lot of focus when it comes to running the bike department as well. Men's cold weather really hasn't even hardly started, so in terms of seasonal flow, the switch to men's should compliment bikes quite well. We've had a great bike season although we were playing catch up pretty much all season. Bikes were in high demand between gas prices and stimulus checks so it will be interesting to see how next season plays out.

Xander started third grade and Amy and I are in the classroom again for our volunteer time. Xander's school requires one half day per week per student commitment so Amy and I alternate weeks. It will take a little time to adapt to a new teacher and new ways of doing things, but it should be a good year.

I also started teaching trumpet at the University of Sioux Falls this morning. I didn't have any students last year, so it's been a year and a half since I taught last. I really am looking forward to it as it will force me to practice more and stay connected to that part of my personality. It's easy for me to neglect the trumpet with everything else that I have going on, but it was my first passionate connection to music and it's nice to return home.

Hopefully September won't escape as quickly as August did, but here it is the 8th already and I'm just reconciling the end of August. Yikes!