Sigur Ros at Red Rocks

Two weekends ago Justin Mast, one of my closest friends, came out to Colorado for a visit. The highlight of the weekend was a Sigur Ros concert at the Red Rocks Amphitheater. For those of you who are unaware, Red Rocks is the greatest place in the country to see a live show, and if you enjoy live shows then you must add seeing a show there to your list of things to do before...it's too late. This was my fourth Red Rocks show with the previous three being Incubus, DMB, and John Mayer. I hope there will be many more in the future.


Sigur Ros has been one of my favorite bands since college. Their music is incredible, as long as you don't mind that the lyrics are in Icelandic, except for the one CD they did where all the lyrics are gibberish (they call it Hopelandic). On this tour Sigur Ros was without the Icelandic string quartet Amiina who they usually tour with. Usually at any given time during a Sigur Ros show there are 12+ musicians on stage. They still produced a very polished and powerful sound but a few of the songs seemed to be missing a little something without the additional instrumentation that usually accompanies them.

We had a great time and it was a beautiful night. Below is a picture of Sigur Ros on stage with the lights of Denver in the background.


Below is one of two large rock formations which outline the sides of the venue.


An interesting side note (to me anyway) is that since college I have had a list of three bands that I really wanted to see before...you know, it's too late. Those bands were Silverchair, Radiohead, and Sigur Ros. I had the incredible opportunity to see live performances by all three in the past 11 months. (Radiohead was the best show of the three).

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Before and After

My beautiful wife got a lot of hair chopped off this past week. She cut enough off that she was able to donate about a foot of hair to a non-for-profit organization that will use the hair to make wigs for cancer patients...I think that's really cool.

And without further adieu, here are the before and after pictures (please note: 1. Becky likes having her picture taken with our dog, and 2. our dog is still recovering from her torn carpal pad previously mentioned on this blog).

Before:

After:


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Go Buffs!

It has been awhile since we've posted to the blog so we're playing a bit of catch up...

...a couple of weekends ago we experienced our first University of Colorado Football game ever. It seemed that since it is the 6th football season for which I've been a student at CU (I know it should be U of C, but everyone says "CU".....I don't like it either) it was time we took in a game.

Upon walking into the stadium Becky said to me, "This is it?" She was referring to how small the stadium is. The CU football stadium holds about 55,000 fans, but the only college football game she had ever been to was at the Big House, so in comparison this place looked like kind of a joke. Our football stadium isn't the biggest, but I'm guessing it has one of the best views of any stadium in the country.

At the beginning of both halves they run Ralphie the buffalo around the stadium. This is quite intense and is amazing to see live. The runners have been seriously injured in the past when everything did not go exactly as planned.

It was a beautiful day for a game and CU had a come-from-behind 34-27 win. Perhaps we should officially become CU Buffalo fans since my team (Syracuse) and Becky's team (Michigan) probably won't do much of interest this season.


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A 5-Star Weekend

This past Sunday Becky and I had the amazing opportunity to spend a night at the Broadmoor, a 5-Star resort in Colorado Springs. We would normally not be able to afford such luxurious accommodations but our good friends PJ and Kersta invited us to join them for a drastically reduced rate. It was the first time we had been there and it was very impressive.

Some of you may have seen this AP photo from a few weeks ago when the US Senior Open was held at the Broadmoor. We did not encounter any bears while we were there.


Becky and I posing in front of the lake. Becky is wearing what I called her "rich lady" hat ($5 at Old Navy).

The view from our room.

We spent much of our time on Sunday and Monday at the pool.

We had a great time hanging out with all of the 5-year-olds at the pool taking turns going down one of two very cool slides.

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NYC and Radiohead

This past week I (Bryant) had the incredible opportunity to visit New York City and then head up to Boston for my first-ever Radiohead show. I did all of this with my good friend Tim, who I've known since I was in fourth grade.

I flew in on Tuesday and that evening we ate at a very cool Italian restaurant a few blocks off of the main strip of Times Square. I hadn't been to the city since I was about eight so it was just awesome to be there again.

The next day we drove up to Boston for the show. I've been a big Radiohead fan since I first heard OK Computer (which is considered by many to be one of the greatest rock albums of all time) when I was a junior in high school. More than 10 years and 4 Radiohead albums later I finally got my chance to see them live. The show definitely lived up to my high expectations and was one of the best performances I've ever seen.

Tim and I at the show.

Radiohead.

And for those Radiohead fans who are reading this I've uploaded a few short video clips of the show...

The National Anthem.

House of Cards.

Paranoid Android.

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Zoe: "Being a mountain dog is harder than it looks."

Hi, my name is Zoe, and I'm a dog. I just want to make one thing clear for any of you who might be jealous of my life in Colorado: being a mountain dog is harder than it looks. Sure, I get to chase rabbits every morning on my walk, and I get to swim in lakes and streams all the time. I get to explore the Flatirons of Boulder and the Rocky Mountains off-leash almost every weekend. But this life is not for everyone. For example, I am currently on the 5-day Disabled List with a torn carpal pad, which I received during a hike this past Saturday up to the Royal Arch in Boulder...and my dad (Bryant) didn't even give me any beef jerky like he usually does when we go hiking. And did you know that sometimes he makes me wear a pack to carry stuff? (please refer to earlier posts for photographic evidence). Well, I would like to write more but I can only type with one paw right now as the other is bandaged. Have a nice day.

Heart,

Zoe

P.S. People in Boulder actually converse with their dogs as if they are people.

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UCYC: Part 1

I spent all of last week at UCYC (United Christian Youth Camp) in Prescott, AZ with about 80 middle school students from our church. Unfortunately, Becky was not able to go due to limitations in vacation time, but she was very cool about me leaving her for a week to hang out with our students.

It was an incredible week...except for the whole 16-hour bus-ride part. But we made the best of that by making one of our students lie down in the aisle so we would have a table for Euchre ( shown in the first picture below).


While at camp we got to do all of the classic camp activities: rock climbing, mountain biking, kayaking, paint ball, leap of faith, swimming, and tons of silly games (bumper soccer was my favorite). The best part of the week was the time we as leaders got to spend with our students building relationships and discussing the teachings for each day. It was a very meaningful week in which we got to be a part of our students growing in their faith and choosing to take God's calling to bring justice to the world more seriously. Becky and I are very excited to build on the momentum of this past week as the next school year starts for our students.


In addition to God doing some very cool things in the lives of our students, it was also one of the funniest weeks of my life. I have not laughed as much as I did this past week since college. Middle school students can be quite brilliant and hilarious and they kept all of us leaders laughing so much that several of us lost our voices.

We had one 8th grade student join us for camp who we had never met before. His name is Hal Boelts, which I decided sounded very similar to Steve Holt! from Arrested Development. I got all of our guys saying Hal Boelts! in the same manner as Steve Holt! from the show. You can see all of us in our Hal Boelts! pose in the pictures below. If you have no idea what I am talking about watch this.


Me with chest hair (real) and one of my students Chris with chest hair (fake/drawn on with marker).


One of the leaders Ryan, some of the 8th graders, and myself on feux-hawk Thursday.


The pictures below show some of the 200 middle school students at UCYC during one of the worship services.


Becky and I are so blessed to get to hang out with the students from our church and just be a part of their lives.

Stay tuned for Part 2 which should feature some hilarious videos which likely only I will be amused by.

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