Augmented Fourth

Mountain Men and Yellowstone

2009-07-24T16:39:00.009-04:00

Sulphur Beds!

Geysers!

This is YELLOWSTONE!

It is the height of tourist season. We had noticed this in Glacier, but were now headed to the oldest National Park in the nation and by far the most popular. Keaton later described it as a Disneyland flavored national park. While there are "day-hikes," Yellowstone gets its name from the massive amounts of sulphur deposits created by the systems of geysers, mudpots, springs, etc. But we had a church to see before we arrived in Yellowstone.

Following the 90 and a few state highways down the Continental Divide, we ended up in the town of Seeley Lake. Nathan's grandpa had been a backwoods pastor in the real sense. One could almost say a backwoods missionary. Three of the churches in Eastern Montana, Al Pullmann had built with his own hands. One was out of the way in Eureka, one we had passed in a town in Condon, and the last we were stopping at in Seeley Lake. In a fortuitous turn of events, the cleaning lady was just finishing up, so we got to see the church inside and out. Nathan's grandfather was a master carpenter who used wood in almost every facet of the three churches that he built. Unfortunately, the pastor was not there. Nathan signed the guest-book and listed his family history so that everyone would know the descendants of the first pastor had tread here again. That sounded overly dramatic, but we were hoping it was as cool as something like that.

So, we ended up in Yellowstone late afternoon to discover that every campground inside the park was full (surprise). We also discovered shortly that every campground outside of the park in a 20 mile radius was ALSO full (less cool, but ok). The ranger reminded us that in any National Forest in America (including the one surrounding the entrance to Yellowstone) we could camp anywhere as long as we were 100 feet from water and 500 feet from the road. The only problem now became finding a flat spot in which we could camp. After all, we were in the Rockies. These weren't even foothills, they were the ROCKIES. After driving several miles deep into the African rainforest...err, American National Forest, we came across a turn-out. We decided we'd find something here or bust. The "happy" medium we found was somewhere in between. We climbed up a deceptively large foothill (it seemed smaller from down below) only to find false crests, more sagebrush, and a notable lack of anything truly flat. But, we had dragged our stuff up this mountain, so we were going to make a comfrotable night of it. At least, we were going to make a night of it. The good side entailed watching a beautiful and long sunset at high elevation. I don't think pollution makes the beautiful colors of the sunset; I think they've always been there. At any rate, Wyoming (technically DEEP southern Montana, but whose keeping track) had them just as good as Orange County or LA had. The down side had us eaten alive by mosquitoes. Retiring into our sleeping bags simply for protection, we wondered why there had to be so many mosquitoes. Why not just enough to feed the bat and bird population, and no more? Maybe they reproduce more after the Fall.

We woke up the next morning still pretty tired and rather sore (sagebrush does not provide a very comfortable sleeping surface). Heading down the mountain, we jumped in the car and car-toured Yellowstone. Almost immediately we saw a couple bison; I'm convinced the rangers teach them to pose. The ones near the road always seem so picturesque. It also felt like a theme park; we didn't even have to leave the car to snap a picture of the buffalo. We then meandered through the park mostly in the car, getting out to walk past the sulfuric fun along the boardwalks provided. After admiring Old Faithful and the rustic lodge built almost entirely of lodgepole pine, we headed down and out of the gigantic park and into Grand Teton. Yellowstone is an awesome park, but there were far too many people there to make us want to camp the night there. We saw almost everything they had to offer from the road, which involved quite a lot of getting out. We also covered both Eastern and Western roads, since after we did Grand Teton we came back up through Yellowstone to get back to Nathan's house. Here we'll share some of our favorite picture-postcards from the land of sulphur and hot-springs.

The first night, we almost stayed in this abandoned pump-house (it's interesting to notice how much National Forest used to be private land). This pond actually fed an irrigation ditch that had been out of service for more than a generation. We saw the farmhouse to which is belonged down in the valley, but couldn't find a way to get to it. The pump-house ended up not really being structurally sound enough (nor big enough) for four men...

so we opted for the MOUNTAINSIDE (it looks a lot tamer than it is):

hopefully these pictures provide some scale as to the size of the thing.

Here we are on top attempting to record the sunset while ignoring the skeeters.

And finally, some favorites from inside the park:

Camping - Alpine Lakes and Glacier

2009-07-22T15:14:00.009-04:00

Now, if you've read more than two sentences of this rather loquacious blog, you have realized that we do everything on a budget. Our accountant, Allen, has done an amazing job at keeping track of the numbers and ensuring that our output does not exceed our input. We applied this same principle to camping. When preparing, our first stop was REI... then we realized we had just graduated from college and nearly everything in that store was far out of our monetary reach. So then I remembered a sporting goods chain in the state of California, Big 5. Other than monetary issues, our other hitch was space. What more could we fit into the trunk of a Toyota Camry? Four sleeping bags and a tent? Not likely. So, which to buy, the bags of the tent? We opted for bags and two tarps, which folded much flatter than any four man tent could have.

We did end up paying for this mistake, but more on that later. Before we even got to Glacier we had two camps to stop at and entertain. The first camp was Hans Zeiger's church camp. We had been in touch with the pastor there and showed up at his church camp just after lunch time. They gathered the teenagers and adults into the main room and we sang from all of our sets: sacred, pop, and barbershop. Afterwards, about 17 super-moms came to our rescue and decided that we needed to be fed. We did not disagree and after a delicious lunch of flank-steak, mashed potatoes, and corn, they asserted that we must take food with us. An entire cardboard box full of food later, we swam in their lake for a bit and went on our merry way...VERY well fed. :)

We weren't in the car long when we arrived at Nathan's old Lutheran camp. He had been there many years in a row with his dad for pastor's camp. The location was ideal on Flathead Lake (a large lake that will be on any map of Montana you see). The water was limpid and felt very glacier-fed. There was, however, a high dive! After a couple dips, however, we decided just to try our muscles on top of the water and not in it. Keaton, Nathan, and I grabbed a canoe (with permission) and canoed around the lake for a bit over an hour. Keaton got stuck with a gimpy paddle and a less-than-ideal seating location, but performed admirably. It was comforting to know that I still have some of my scout skills (steering a canoe). Nathan, as usual, was essentially our motor...pulling the canoe through and against the current on the way back. Now, the only stop left was Glacier for two nights!

The GPS eventually got us all the way to the Going to the Sun Highway (which I thought was ridiculous overstatement for a road). But, believe it or not, Glacier and its main highway lived up to its reputation of beauty. If I were to give it a review I would say that it exceeded expectations, but then again, I don't think God often cares about our reviews. So long as His created beauty turns us toward him. I wish I could just tell the story of Glacier with pictures, but it is a massive beauty so hard to catch with a single lens. The depths and heights of Glacier is half it's grandeur. We entered the valley floor at about 4,000 feet about sea level, with 10,000 foot mountains towering over us. No foothills between us and the cliffs. Straight up! Carved in a deep U-shape by a glacier. The first night we only did driving, and already had two bear-sightings! On the way into Glacier we had counted ten bald eagles. I had never seen so much wildlife so easily and it was only going to get better. I had a list of things I'd never seen and this week of camping shrunk my list of American species rapidly.

But, a true adventure is a mixture of suffering and joy. We had our suffering first to get it out of the way. Around nine o-clock we noticed that most of the park was full, no campgrounds. We were finally granted the handicapped spot near a beautiful lake over which a storm was blowing in. We had about 15 minutes to come up with a solution that didn't have all four of us sleeping in the car. The Eagle Scouts, Allen and myself, would sleep outside. We set up the picnic table near the lip of a retaining-wall and stretched a tarp across the tarp to shield us from the rain and drain it away from us. Placing our second tarp underneath, we tossed our bags in, crawled in, and hoped for the best. The best we did not, in fact receive. Allen, as it turned out, was at one of the lowest elevations of the campsite. Thus, he ended up with most of the water in his bag anyway. (We're not stupid, it was just a lot harder to see these things in the dark. And, ok, maybe we were a little stupid). At about 3am, he gave up with half his body soaked to the bone and entered the car. I huddled close to the retaining wall for the rest of the night with the bottom half of my sleeping bag wet. Attempting to sleep in the fetal position close to a wall is a strange experience. It was some of the worst sleep of our lives. The guys in the car didn't really have a much easier time of it, except that they were dry. We poured out sincere supplications that our next few nights of camping would be dry.

We woke up the next morning and waited for the sun to peak over the massive granite cliffs. Once it had, we used its warmth and light to find a camp-site early and dry out our soaking wet sleeping bags, clothes, shoes, etc. Then, we continued up the Going to the Sun Highway and found a day-hike right off of Logan Pass. As typical of this time of year (the height of tourist season), the trail to Hidden Lake was packed with crowds of all ages and languages. Keaton, who has been keeping track of all the state license-plates all along, scored big and found nearly all fifty in the National Parks we were in. Once we got past the boardwalk section which provided an "easy way" to the overlook (in spite of massive snow-fields all around), we could continue on a real trail down to the lake with much less traffic. On the way, we saw many a hoary marmot and figured out very quickly that the mountain goats had grown fully accustomed to human traffic on their trails. A couple mothers and their babies grazed high up on the mountain. Down closer to the lake two different males were meandering right by the water. Oftentimes, they did not even try to get out of our way. We kept a respectful distance; they did not. Allen nearly had to climb into a tree to get out of the way of one of the bigger males. :)

We hiked back out and camped that night, warm and dry. We were still on the ground, but we are young so are bodies can handle that. The next morning, glorious and bright, we hiked a tiny nature trail through one of the oldest stands of trees in the park and found a few cool places to take pictures. We found a hollowed out tree that was still alive on top, but could fit three of us in the bottom. :) From there, we had to say goodbye to Glacier and head down that day to Yellowstone. There were a couple planned stops along the way to see a bit more of Montana and Pullmann family history. But this post has gone on long enough without pictures. Here they are!

Yes, Glacier provides a beauty almost impossible for us amateurs to capture on film.

Here are our best attempts.

These were just some of the sights we were able to see right from the road. Land of a thousand waterfalls this place could be called.

The pass, well, we didn't have to hike to that... so this is a joke picture. :) The goat, was much closer than that, but who can get their camera out as a mountain goat walks towards you? And the passes full of snow, yes, we were hiking on those.

These last three are from our first camp. Allen and I spread the tarp from the picnic bench to the other edge of the screen. That was our "tent" during the thunderstorm. Be Prepared, eh?The other two are from the camp the first night--beautiful, when dry. :)

How many college grads can you fit in a tree?

From Coeur D'Alene to Camping

2009-07-22T15:00:00.003-04:00

Leaving Seattle in its typical (though some friends beg to differ) cloudy rain, we continued up and over the Cascades once more. The higher latitude brought out a different aspect of the Cascades; though we didn't believe it possible, they actually grew greener and wetter. Stopping on the highest mountain at a tiny little ski resort to gas up, we smelt the "dearest freshness, deep down things" as Hopkins once described it. The world is indeed charged with the grandeur of God, it rushed down the slopes of the Cascades right into our eyes, noses, and ears. Eastern Washington continued with the typical "desert-side" of most mountain ranges, but it was by no means as desolate as the deserts of California and Nevada.

It was late afternoon when we arrived in Idaho, but we couldn't really tell the difference as the cloud-cover had not let up much the whole way. The rain, lightly sprinkling on and off, was quite refreshing after so long in the dry south-west and western US. Coeur D'Alene, literally translated to "Heart of the Awl" and mysterious in its nominal roots, was already gearing us up for the foothills of the Rockies. The Jenkins' family, with whom we stayed, lived on several acres outside of town in a true log cabin just finished by their father. He was a logger who explained to us a lot about the business of designing and building a house where the walls, insulation, plumbing, and wiring all had to work around solid logs. There wasn't much drywall or plaster in the place. It's rustic beauty suited the countryside around it quite well. We also found ourselves not only in the warmth of a cabin, but also once again in the radiance and glow of a big family. They knew how to cook well for four post-college guys and we ate our fill. The next morning, they helped us plan our route to Glacier and through their knowledge of the area and helpful atlases, we were ummm....ready... for our camping trip.

Puyallup and Friends

2009-07-21T01:02:00.004-04:00

We faced the worst traffic we had ever seen on the ENTIRE trip in Olympia. Nathan nearly pulled the steering wheel off the car. It took us an hour to move 17 miles. It was NEVER explained. But, we did arrive in one piece and were greeted by Jody's parents. It was a shame that Jody was in DC, but we got to see our housemates childhood home. They were, of course, full of Jody stories, but so were we. :) They provided us with delicious snacks before our concert, and had advertised so well for our concert that we had our biggest crowd! Plus, there were three Hillsdale alums there: Hans Zeiger and his family, Jules and her family, and Eric Blanchard. Afterwards, we caught up with all of them. Hans gave us a place to perform in Montana at a camp he had worked at near Flathead Lake. Jules and the rest of us went back to the Lent's for dinner. After a delicious dinner, Nathan and I went back towards Olympia to pick up Anna Stinogel and took her and Jules and Keaton up to the house of Jeff Myers. Now, if any of you know anything about Jeff Myers... a very good time was had by all. :) Jeff is hilarious. He told us about his future plans and we showered him with stories (mostly the ones embarrassing me). We had good cheese, good beer, and some awesome conversations. We returned home and hit the hay. Idaho's panhandle was waiting for us. We had many memories from Washington, but alas... not many pictures. :( Sorry.

Portland and Environs

2009-07-21T00:39:00.004-04:00

And so we continued through the Pacific NorthWest, through the National Forests and deep into the Cascades. Unfortunately, a fairly thick cloud-cover prevented us from seeing a lot of the volcanic beauty around us. We crossed the border into Washington and found (eventually) the house of the Sims. They live nestled in an old farm house with four grown kids and the youngest (Catherine) still romping around the grounds of an orchard, a delightfully British garden, a christmas-tree farm (or a piece thereof), and some delicious berries. Catherine gave us the grand tour of the grounds and the house. The house seemed to fit the family perfectly. One big bedroom for the five girls to line up their beds and books. One small room for the boy to dream big and prepare his adventures to the center of the earth. After our concert at Holy Rosary, Catherine and I slipped into Portland to have some fun. As it turns out, neither Catherine nor I nor are GPS were very good at getting us around Portland. That, however, did not prevent our having a good time... and even meeting some of her friends.

While we didn't quite make it to the VooDoo Donuts place that KPay had so ardently recomended, we did stop at a coffee shop with a musical flavor called the Rimsky-Korsakoffee house. It was filled with fruits and nuts, but I have come to expect that of the Left Coast which I called home for 18 years. It's color had a certain appeal, though. There is something I love about individuals being themselves and not putting up with a lot of pop-culture stereotypes. I guess I think of it as them that much closer to real truth when they'll at least question the cultural air they breath. But, many of them still don't. We still have the working definition of a hippie as someone who will kill a baby before an animal. And, yes, we cursed them frequently in the car. "Damn hippies!" became our favorite apophthegmatic expletive to shout as if we were ornery old men. Perhaps the only adjective that doesn't yet apply is old. :)

After the coffee-shop of fruits and nuts and some lively Catholic conversation at a level too loud not to give offense to the many free spirits in the room, we gallivanted off the a close Chinese restaurant with a couple of other friends of Catherine's and one of the older siblings of her brood. Our gallivanting found us a parking lot more than 10 blocks from where we needed to be, which perturbed the older sister in this picture enough to complain vociferously... but we decided to love her anyway. After some tasty Chinese food, we had not the energy to continue our adventures in the strange city of Portland... so we headed home. The night continued well with good conversations turning over any and every examination of every good thought and read we had had that summer... but alas, Tom did not have infinite energy (take note, all ye who disbelieve it). I went to bed, tired, but happy. The Pacific Northwest God has filled not only with awesome natural beauty... but good friends with quaint houses and awesome land. :) The next morning brought the most beautiful mass that Allen and I had yet been to and a drive up to a very old friends house, our housemates parent's Jody. And that was adventure full of other delightful friends. I'm sensing a theme developing...a theme augmented with ornate variations.

In a totally random side note, while the Lutherans were waiting for the Catholic's mass to end...they went to see a waterfall just outside of Portland. I leave you all with some pictures of their adventures.

Nathan playing hide and seek in something that looks like a cave, but really wasn't:

And the waterfall itself. Each one is so different, I don't know if we can tire of the beauty of all the ones we've seen, from Niagara to Multnoma.

Sisters and Bend - A Whole New World

2009-07-19T00:12:00.004-04:00

And we struck off up the Oregon Trail. Then our OXEN DIED!! Ok, not really. But we were all headed toward territory none of us had explored before: the Pacific Northwest. None of us had been to Oregon before. We expected tree-huggers, hippies, fruits, and nuts. We were a bit pleasantly surprised to find a lot of sane people in addition to the aforementioned motley crew of liberals. After a rather boring drive through the desert side of Northern California and into Eastern Oregon, we noticed a subtle change. Eastern Oregon began to give way to taller and taller foothills which separated long, flat, fertile valleys. The beauty increased steadily as we approached the center of the state. In the West, we had taken the least amount of Interstate. Our serpentine route up the coast and into the heart of Yosemite required almost entirely state highways. What a difference it makes,not only in terms of speed, but also in terms of what you see out the window. These foothills joined up with a mountain range that is geologically connected to the Sierra Nevada. The Cascades, however, differ profoundly from the mountains of the Sierra Nevada. Much of the beauty in the Sierras was either carved by a glacier or happened naturally with tectonic movement. The Cascades announce their volcanic roots from the beginning. Their perfect conical shapes, disrupted at the very top by a tangle of reaching rock, wretchedly barren, belies the glacier and volcanic influence in their development. Their beauty if astounding, and we got to stay with our friend Katelyn Pay right in the middle of it all. Sisters, Oregon is a resort town where many Oregonians go in the summer to vacation. Blanketed in snow in the winter, the summer meadows, streams, and mountains offer a beauty that I had not often heard advertised (read: never).

KPay had arranged a couple surprises for us aside from the breath-taking beauty. A graduate from our class, Cameron Wilkens, came out to hang out with us and see our concert. Our concert was at an Episcopal Church in Sisters and had the three mountains which named the town as the backdrop to the altar. It was a gorgeous country church with a good sound. Afterwards, we chilled at Red Robin. Waking up early the next morning, KPay led Keaton and I on a bike-riding/kayaking tour of the area around Black Butte Ranch. We had to get up to Portland, but we were a little sad to leave all the beauty of the Three Sisters (Faith, Hope, and Charity are the names of the mountains) and their surrounding valleys. But, in Portland (or just outside it), was waiting a dear friend and an area I had been longing to see for a long time. :) And thus we directed our Garmin to the house of Sims. Pictured above is Mount Washington, the view just as we headed up to Portland.

I shot a man in Reno... just to watch him die

2009-07-18T23:54:00.004-04:00

As macabre as the title is, it is really just a reference to the Johnny Cash that we listened to on the way out of California (after a tasty dinner and stay at Allen's dad's house). An old friend had arranged us a place to stay; alas, we did not have a venue in the wonderful rodeo town of Reno. We noticed that it was a bit less seedy than Vegas, but we didn't stay long. In typical Katie T. style, I easily convinced her (as I was already convinced myself) that we should show the guys Lake Tahoe and eat dinner there. Lake Tahoe borders California and Nevada and is exalted to the skies as the largest, deepest, and arguably most beautiful alpine lake. It is 1,644 feet deep and 192 square miles. Thankfully, we now have the camera back and can show as well as tell about the lake. We went to a great Mexican restaurant where we were strangely served by a Polish emigrant (only in America). Nathaniel had a Lengua burrito... cow tongue in the vernacular. It tasted a lot like liver (YES, we all tried it). We then drove back watched Ocean's 13, sang a bit for Katie T., fixed her router, and went to sleep (not all in that order). Here is our proof that we have in fact been to what Katie calls the "bottom of heaven" because it is so beautiful.

Random side story evoked by pictures. When in Missouri, we had been very close to the boyhood home and stomping grounds of a rather favorite author of mine, Mark Twain. His biography of Joan of Arc I will recommend to everyone until I die. It annoys my close friends how often I talk about him and that book. At any rate, on the way to Tahoe, at a gas station, we MET Mark Twain. Ok, real story... a kindly old man with a wizened face honed for humor was sitting on the bench reading a newspaper. He was clearly a gentleman in his white suit out-bleached only by his white mustache and head of hair. I sidled up to him in a manner that I knew would put him at ease, affecting my most gentlemanly southern accent, I asked him what he was reading. He congenially told me about the weather in the places he had recently travelled. He had apparently just spent the summer in San Francisco and remarked that he had never had a colder winter than his summer in San Francisco. I chuckled at the witticism and joined him on his bench. Here I am, basking in the salt of his wit:

And here I am, proving how fast we forged a friendship in minutes!

Wine Country and Yosemite

2009-07-18T23:18:00.004-04:00

While we stayed a few days with the Zarcone's, they were mostly uneventful, resting days. Allen got to spend time with his family and the guys got to catch up on sleep, letters, reading, etc. It was there that I caught up with the blog through to Vegas. :) Oh how slow I am at these things.

We did do quite a bit of singing, however. We sang at St. Apollinaris, the Zarcone's home parish. After two nights with Mrs. Zarcone, we went out to Allen's grandparent's house and sang for them as well. Later that day, we went to Yosemite and "HALLELUIAH" we had the camera back. The camera and our skill with it cannot do justice to the beauty we saw in Yosemite Valley. Unlike the Grand Canyon, we actually ventured out on a bit of a day hike. We went up to Vernal Falls on what the map called the Mist Trail. It was no misnomer. Once we had hiked a couple miles in to the base of the falls, everything began to be gently pelted with a light mist. It grew heavier and heavier, increasing the foliage around us and intensifying the color of everything from the wildflowers to the grasses to the black granite around us. My descriptions do about as little justice as the pictures. Consider this an advertisement to GO TO YOSEMITE. The conundrum for us on this trip after we have seen the beauty of five National Parks is which one to return to first. :) Here are some pictures and explanation of Yosemite.

Vernal Falls:

At the top of the Falls:

A really sweet rock providing scale:

NorCal - City by the Bay and Wine Country

2009-07-18T22:48:00.002-04:00

The Howards hosted us well in Berkeley and Zach had arranged a couple of concert opportunities that really paid off. Before we performed, we went to church in San Francisco and met up with my best friend, Tom Dudro. We toured the most basic part of the city that every tourist ought to see--Fisherman's Wharf. There is so much to do along that stretch of road, that we had little time to take them elsewhere. On a rather interesting side-story about Keaton, he was conned into helping with a break-dance show. Every ethnicity was represented in this break-dance team--except white. So, when the host asked for "two really tall white guys" to volunteer from the crowd, Nathaniel and I pointed out Keaton rather dramatically. :) They ended up picking him and renaming him to make him "black," which they associated with "cooler than he was before." His nickname? Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Could be worse, right? At least now he had basketball skill. The other guy was granted the nickname of the "greatest black man who had ever lived" (to which most of us thought they would say either MLK or Michael Jackson [seeing as he had just been beatified]). Wrong. The other white guy volunteer had the name of Obama thrust upon him. Their show was talented and funny. Their politics... well, it was San Francisco, what should we expect? We then returned home to change and get ready for two performances.

The first place we performed was the Howard's normal church. In Berkeley, to attract potential Christians to the gospel, they promoted a really relaxed atmosphere. The pastor reminded everyone to listen with open minds and open hearts and we sang, in English and Latin. It was awesome to bring into the open air voices that were not heard in that city very often. Voices of medieval and renaissance Christianity were brought to the ears of moderns and post-moderns for a dialogue that many had never thought about. I hope it struck much of the congregation as a bit more than "cool" (which is was) and served as a testament to the roots of Christian worship through music. After all, that's why we do these concerts in the first place. :)

The second venue that Zach cooked up was a warehouse in an industrial district that acted as a multi-purpose room including but not limited to Christian worship. With the relaxed setting, we mixed it up in a similar structure to what we did in Southern California at my house. Several Hillsdaleans were there and we were more than happy to hang out with them afterwards. When things settled down, we headed up to Allen's house in American Canyon to catch up with the family we had not seen in too long-- the Zarcone's!

Cavorting up the Coast

2009-07-18T19:06:00.002-04:00

My rule was: we all had to wear board-shorts as we went up the coast so that, should we see an inviting beach, we could run out and jump in the water without anymore effort than taking off our shirts. So we began winding the way up the Pacific Coast Highway through areas I'm familiar with (Santa Monica, Malibu, etc) into areas with which I was less familiar (Santa Barbara and almost everything north of there). We hugged the coastline all the way through. We stopped at a few missions (Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Carmel). It was awesome for me to see them again and remind the guys who hadn't been out West that even this coast had some older history (they were building the missions around the same time the country was being founded). It was also nice to know that California's history was, from its first contact with the West, Christian. We also enjoyed the coastline and parked the car at a mostly empty beach below Big Sur but above Goleta. Water temperature did not deter us and we sprinted in and played in the waves. While it was cold, it was also exhilarating and we remained in the water longer than expected. We then checked out some of the rock formations along this coast. Although there were no tide-pool creatures, Keaton led the way climbing a large rock that jutted almost straight out of the water about 100 feet into the air. On top, we found a lot of bird poop (several inches of dried layers of it) and a couple dead cormorants. There were some live birds that were also annoyed with how close we were coming to their nests. The view was astounding, but the climb down was a bit rough on our feet. In the end, totally worth it for an unbeatable view of the not so peaceful Pacific Ocean.

The last place we stopped was the city of Monterey. A gentle bay hosting a fascinating fishing population, we saw otters, seals, sea lions and the ever ubiquitous sea gull (attempting to steal fish out of the mouth of the sea lion). In town, we walked around the historic district and saw how important Monterey was to early California history. We had some delicious seafood and then finally turned inland (sort of) to go up the East Bay.

As dusk closed in, we decided we would find a tall hill and watch the fireworks shows of the whole Bay Area from the tallest hill we could find. It was at the top of a gated community, but we found one in Fremont. :) It was delightful. We literally could see hundreds of fireworks shows going off for miles around us. From Fremont (look it up on GoogleMaps), we could almost see the the city of San Francisco. We could see shows in the East Bay, shows in Oakland, and show across the Bay as well as nearly every show directly in the San Jose area. Glorious. Finally, as night cloaked us in firm darkness, we descended the hill and drove into Berkeley, CA where our friends the Howards live. I have always loved Berkeley for its color and weirdness. It was made so much more lovable by the knowledge that a Christian family lives there on purpose to preach the gospel to those colorful people we often dismiss as "damn hippies!" :) The Howard's house was amazing and we had two venues at which we could sing. But, I'm getting ahead of myself because this is only supposed to cover the Coast.

California - Here We Come!

2009-07-18T18:52:00.003-04:00

So, hello everyone! After a long hiatus in which we seemed to fall off the face of the earth, we have returned. I told you we'd be back. Right now, we have one week left of road-tripping, but it looks like I have a lot to catch you up on before we get to any and all of that.

So, driving out from Vegas, making good time... we headed straight for the land of glitz and glam, the land of facades and film: Hollywood. Taking the guys to Hollywood and Highland I showed them where the movies premier at the Mann-Grauman Chinese Theater, the Kodak theater, and the Walk of Fame. The most interesting part (since all of us love good movies) were the hand prints and foot prints of famous actors and actresses through the years right in front of the Grauman. We walked down Hollywood Boulevard and took in the sights (of course, we saw the sign). We also noticed that a lot of street vendors were selling Michael Jackson paraphernalia. In that town, you would have thought he had just been canonized. We checked out a cool record/DVD shop famous out west called Amoeba Records; that too had colorful people and more than one tribute to the King of Pop. When we had been satiated on grime and overall chicanery on which Hollywood thrives, we turned south and headed to my house. Not much had changed, and I had a lot of people to catch up with.

The next day, Keaton and I went and explored historic Pasadena, one of the oldest cities in the Los Angeles area. That night, we went Swing Dancing (something we hadn't done since Dallas) and had a blast. The next day I showed the guys Huntington Beach and Laguna Beach. Our stay in Huntington afforded us ample time to walk on the pier and take in the sights and sounds of "Surf City, USA." Because of traffic, we didn't have as much time at Laguna Beach. After driving through the canyon, we sprinted out of the first parking space we found (after throwing a quarter in), sprinted down the hill, removed enough clothing to swim and swam for about five minutes. We then dried off primarily by running back to our cars. We had made it into three oceans in less than a month.

That night we had to return promptly for the party my parents had arranged to "host the Hillsdale boys." We had invited pretty much everyone my family knew who might be interested in either my singing or Hillsdale. A great deal of them showed up! I got to see Lowell again, twice in the same year! That hadn't happened since we'd gone to high school together. We sang a lot that night from all of our repertoire-- sacred, barbershop, and secular (pop). It went over pretty well and we represented the school well for my friends and family. Many old friends stayed late and we caught up for a long time; who knows when I'll see some of them again.

The next morning (the 4th of July), we got up early to book it up the coast on the Fourth. Well, we didn't exactly book it. We meandered. And the drive itself was so beautiful it is worth a blog-posting all its own. It's too bad we still didn't have the camera. :(

What happened in Vegas... was pretty sweet!

2009-07-09T20:26:00.002-04:00

And we'll tell you about it. We all knew that moving from the Grand Canyon to Vegas would be like going from God's natural creation at its best to human edifices and institutions at their... brightest? richest? and usually most sinful. In what I began to call the Incarnation of Capitalism, the Las Vegas Strip (old and new) lit up before our eyes. We had reconnoitered for a delicious dinner of elk steak (another first for me) at Nathan's uncles. Adding his cousin, a native of the area, to our eclectic crew, we headed into town. They say the lights are bright on Broadway and we had seen the lights of Times Square and Rockefeller Center. Vegas blinds them all. The visual overload is impossible to describe. The old strip is a covered mall and the ceiling is s constant light show (interspersed with advertisements). The old strip obviously tries to appeal to the old crowd and this summers theme was a throwback to Woodstock's Summer of '69. After several psychedelic buses, mediocre guitar solos, and suggestively groovy female dance moves, we had seen that strip and could move on.

One thing I did enjoy about Vegas was that there was no way I could be weird enough to turn heads. There was no way I could do anything strange enough even to stand out. It is a city of absolute individualism (if you can afford it). It is also a city that runs itself on the antithesis of the three monastic virtues: money, sex, and power. While it is tempting to vow poverty, chastity, and obedience just to get away from it all, some of the things in Vegas were pretty impressive. The fountain show at the Bellagio was set to music (sometimes Classical, sometimes rock). The scale models of Paris, Venice, and New York that they manage to fit into these casinos is impressive to say the least. It is clearly the triumph of imagination to have a hotel with its own Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe. The constant slew (or sewer) of pornographic and sexual advertising throughout the city is a little less than splendid. My theory is that in any city where there are extremes of poverty or sin, one can still find extreme examples of largesse, virtue, and beauty. The casinos had a bit of that. After walking a lot from one cathedral of capitalism to another, we eventually got tired enough to go home. Vegas is a mixed bag; I'm not sure when I'll go back. Disclaimer, this blog more than any of the others is heavily my opinion... not the entire quartet's. :) Allen likes Vegas a lot, but, with all his love for the city, he is smart enough not to gamble here with the "high rollers."

We woke up the next morning and Nathan's uncle gave us directions out of Vegas a bit to the North and West so that we could see the Red Rocks and pass the state park. It was quite a view of some gorgeous geological formations. More proof that I often underestimate the desert when I call it ugly. The desert once we got into California, however, was fairly ugly. I had the drive on Interstate 15 through to my hometown. I remember every time why no one lives in that area. Soon enough, we found ourselves in Hollywood... and the rest is history.

Flagstaff and that grandiose hole the in the ground

2009-07-09T20:13:00.002-04:00

So, my dad said "get a GPS, you'll get lost less." What he meant was, "get a GPS, you'll get lost less often, but when you do, it'll be much more creative because you will have placed your trust in technology and God still wants you to know that he understands the earth a bit better (as do cartographers) than a bunch of cans of aluminum orbiting the earth and shooting down signal to a stupid little box on your dashboard."

I was more than a little annoyed with this little Nuvi. After a beautiful drive through the desert (yes, even I will admit that the desert can be beautiful), we remembered that the Cook's had warned us that they lived off the beaten path. With this in mind, we didn't question when our Garmin Nuvi picked a dirt road for us to turn onto. We trusted it and soon (as in several miles later) found ourselves on an unkempt road through a farmer's ranch. Nathan (the driver this day) had the tenacity of a bulldog and kept driving onward. While there was as yet no risk to the car other than dirt, we were turned back when we noticed it was private property protected by barbed wire laid across the road. In Arizona, they mean business. Taken severely off course and ready to crush the Garmin under the weight of our car (and ire), we called Mr. Cook who met us at a gas station and adroitly guided us home without a blink of an eye. As it turned out, the Cook family did not live in the middle of nowhere; rather, it was a nestled valley up above Flagstaff in the beautiful forests that many people forget Arizona has. That night, Greenlaw Baptists Church hosted our concert and were very receptive and generous. It was a beautiful space to sing in and they admitted that hearing the Latin music was a rare treat for them. The Cook's, as with all the large families we have stayed with on this trip, were adept hosts. It was as if adding four guys to a big family isn't really adding much to the burden as adding to the joy, noise, and conversation. The kids were fun to get to know and the parents kept us entertained with information about the area and their roots in Flagstaff.

After spending the night in Tim and Josh's room (which seemed to lack their presence), we awoke the next morning to delicious breakfast and headed off for our first National Park... the Grand Canyon! We entered the South Rim and drove all the way across, stopping at the particularly breath-taking parts. I hadn't been to the Grand Canyon since I was much younger, and Nathan and Keaton had never been at all. It was worth the National Parks Pass that we bought to get in. We will use the same pass to get into Yosemite, Glacier, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, and Mount Rushmore. It will pay for itself. :) After the Grand Canyon, we had quite a bit of Western Desert left ahead of us until we arrived in Vegas that evening at another of Nathan's uncles.

Albuquerque - A Study in Color

2009-07-06T20:13:00.002-04:00

On down the spine of the Rockies we roared. I was driving out of Colorado, so we were roaring. Or I was roaring and trying to get the guys to join in... they though it was lame. When the bellicose sounds of elation had subsided, we discovered that New Mexico is much prettier than any of us expected. We also discovered that there is a Las Vegas, New Mexico. Don't worry, there is good reason you've never heard of it. If you have, then you know why we hadn't heard of it before we drove through it.

New Mexico, on the whole, surprised me in many ways. The northern part of the state is very much mountainous, not the desert scene I painted in my head growing up--complete with adobe filled arroyos. In fact, the mountains do not subside until you get to about Santa Fe. Furthermore, there are more ranges than just the Rockies on your Western side. Soon you find yourself flanked by the Sangre de Cristo mountains in the East. The mountains do shift in hue from the greens and blues of Colorado to the deep reds leading you subtly into the high desert. Albuquerque sits at an elevation of 5,314 feet above sea level. That was higher than Fort Collins (5003) and Denver (5280)! As we arrived in Albuquerque, we noticed that we were in a valley with mountains on three (nearly four) sides. The crisp, clean blue signaled that we were still fairly high up.

We arrived at the home of our Mu Alpha brother, Stephen Ford. His family greeted us with much warmth and with a TON of GREAT FOOD. It was so nice to be close to delicious avocados again (I ate nearly the entire bowl of guacamole BEFORE dinner). The Ford family's warmth overflowed into their ease of conversation and their broad knowledge of the United States. After making fun of North Dakota, I learned that Mr. Ford was from there (good times). Mrs. Ford, on a much more cultured note, was born and raised near me on the border of Orange and LA county. Clearly, this family had a bit of everything. They had travelled the world in their missions work and had instruments from all over and an cosmopolitan understanding of world cultures. It had all reflected in their son of course, but it was so edifying to see it in the parents as well. We had the pleasure of singing for their family and the pride of musical brotherhood as Stephen could join us for some of the songs. :) As the sunset, they took us into their backyard to show us the Sandia mountains around their house. Sandia means watermelon in Spanish and the mountains lit up with a deep red glow. The sky was so dry, however, that the sunset was not as we had seen for so long in Michigan, the East, and the South. Instead, the sunset lit up the ground beneath it and a bit of the sky, while the remainder of the sky held on truculently to its vibrant blue until it had to concede its color to the deep red band of clouds beneath it. The clash of blue and red continued until the whole evening was consumed in a deep shroud of purple. That night, we watched some Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and dozed off to bed.

We awoke the next morning, went to our respective churches and were off again. Today we set our GPS for Flagstaff, AZ... if only we knew how lost it would get us. :)

Colorado - Answering the Western Call

2009-07-05T01:57:00.002-04:00

And so we approached the Continental Divide... slowly but surely. Realizing that the part of Kansas that most people stereotype as the whole state is the part along the interstate 70. It's a shame to judge a state only by its interstates; at least meet its inhabitants first. Moving into Eastern Colorado we began to hit my favorite weather patterns again: tumultuous thunder-storms. Pullmann drove admirably under some pretty windy and rainy conditions. The lightning show that God put on was a good precursor to the Fourth of July, but the coolest part was that we could see the rain. Allow me to explain. From a distance, we could see exactly where the sheets of rain began. Approaching it across the flat plains, it felt as if we were driving toward Niagara, then it felt as if we were driving THROUGH Niagara. Then we caught sight of those colossal guardians of the West, the Rockies. We drove up the spine into Fort Collins, where Monica Way had prepared for us a delicious feast of Middle Eastern food. Grape leaves consumed and ice cream settling into the stomach, we explored Fort Collins, a lively (albeit slightly hippy/green-peace oriented) college town. We sang and gathered a crowd as usual, and explored a couple different shops. We met up with our fellow Hillsdale classmate, Lydia Melancon, and shared beer (local microbrews of course... Fat Tire and that family of beers) and great conversation back at the Way house.

Now we had rid ourselves of the humidity, and even the heat had become more bearable as it dried out. From Colorado we looked down the spine of the Rockies and headed straight for the Fire Swamp... also known as Albuquerque, NM.

Wichita - Flatness and Family

2009-07-05T01:51:00.002-04:00

Contrary to popular belief, Kansas is both more interesting and less flat than generally assumed. Driving out through Missouri, we noticed that almost the entire Eastern part of the state still contained something akin to rolling hills. Arriving in Wichita at my cousin's new house, we noticed that their first growing season had just ended; all the wheat field had been mown to stubble. My cousins had a sweet place and immediately offered us relief from the heat and the humidity in the comfort of their very own pool. After several reckless attempts at awesome jumps, we had thoroughly relaxed and a significant chunk of my extended family filled the house to hear us sing. We barbequed, sang, talked about Hillsdale, and just enjoyed ourselves. That night, Pullmann, Keaton, and I went out to see the new Transformer's movie. While the explosions and such were cool, we all thought the movie rather over-drenched in sex, especially for a genre that will attract young kids. The highlight? We got a pitcher of Shiner Bock delivered to our seats that we could drink during the entire movie. A bar and a movie theater... why had no one thought of this before? :) And so the adventure continued the next morning into Colorado... a long drive that one was.

Missouri - Backwoods and St. Louis

2009-07-01T13:30:00.002-04:00

From Dallas we had quite a long drive ahead of us through Oklahoma (going quite close to where my grandma grew up!) into central Missouri. We pulled up at Nathan's grandparents and saw some faces we recognized. We had met them at the beginning of our trip when Nathan's older brother got married in Montana. This time, they were the hosts instead of the guests right along with us. :) They were wonderful hosts. The weather was not nearly so obliging. Grandpa Groene has a ton of land, but we didn't spend much time enjoying it because it felt like August hit Missouri early this year. The thermometer fixed itself obstinately above 100 degrees and stayed there (even after dark it felt that hot). The heat index and humidity conspired against us as well. Our final foe in the field were mosquitos. Combining all of those we nevertheless enjoyed ourselves outside at times. On Father's Day, we went to celebrate with Nathan's Great-Grandparents (quite an experience for me...I've never known any of my great-grandparents). That involved quite a bit of sweet tea and delicious food. Of course, we sang for our supper.

The Monday and Tuesday of that week we had a concert. Monday's was a little ways in a neighboring town and Tuesday's was at the Groene's home church in Owensville, Missouri. They were both small congregations but generous and attentive. After Tuesday's concert, we went out to dinner with Grandpa Groene's brothers (Nathan's great uncles). It was a rather uproarious dinner in which several new jokes were born and mirth was shared as plentifully as sweet tea (which was plentiful and ordered in an impeccable southern accent by myself). After being made fun of for milking a turkey, we spent the last night playing a game from Nathan's childhood: King Oil. The point of the game is to get as many oil derricks as possible on the board. For every oil derrick you had, you would get a certain stipend every turn based on the card you turned over. Having completely shut off the math section of my brain, I flipped over a card that gave Keaton $4,000 per derrick (he had six derricks). Doing the math quickly in my head I was astounded and, after a brief silence, announced in all seriousness "That's a hundred thousand dollars." ALMOST immediately realizing my egregious error, we broke out into laughter and anytime anyone has to guess at a number now on this trip... it has become 100,000 of any unit. It was a fun game, in spite of my arithmetical ignorance. :)

I almost forgot something. The Monday before the concert, we drove into St. Louis to see the sights as we so often have before. Our goal this time was the Cathedral Basilica. Outside it is a beautiful granite construction, a burgeoning emerald-topped dome and two imposing towers. Inside there isn't an ounce of paint. Completed in this century following a Byzantine style prevalent about 1000 years ago, every pictorial piece of art is a mosaic. Over 7,000 colors of glass were used and 24 different shades of gold. The artwork was astounding. We asked permission from the office to sing in the sacred space and they graciously allowed us in the West Transept. It wouldn't have mattered where we'd sung since the sound would bounce all over. But we obediently found the West Transept and sang facing the altar to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. When we had finished a few, we turned around and noticed that dozens of people had sat themselves in the pews to listen. We had stopped all the tours and even the janitor had temporarily stopped doing his job so that he wouldn't disturb (he later thanked us personally saying we made his day... he never heard music in here like that before). Before we finished, one of the priests of the basilica as well as the organist and the music director's wife had walked in. Impressed, they wondered if we would do a concert there (alas!). We told them this was more of a farewell tour anyway. They complimented us highly and asked us to sing one last one. So we sang Victoria's O Sacrum Convivium, one of the best pieces of polyphony we know. It was so amazing to hear the sound, the truth, the beauty of the music fill and reflect all around such a beautiful place of worship. Everything from the baldachinno and the beautiful crucifix with Christ carved out of the whitest marble in the world to the side altars with statues of prayerful angels contributed to shouting "God is King" and facilitating an air of humility and awe that is so necessary for a relationship with our God. Nowhere else have I felt I ever prayed our music better. We were glad that the church had been so generous as to open up their sanctuary for us and to be appreciative afterwards.

From there we toured a few more things, the Lutheran Seminary so famous for so many things (including famous Early Church historian, Jaroslav Pelikan). We checked out DogTown (the Irish center of St. Louis) and chilled in a coffee-shop for a while to beat the heat. And finally, just as our day ended and we were about to return for a concert, we discovered that even our GPS system can get confused. Telling it to direct us to a Bookstore, we followed is time and again to several dead ends or neighborhoods. While this facilitated us enjoying a great slice of the domestic architecture of the city, we never found a good used book store. :( Instead, we were visually accosted when we walked into a modern bookstore to find no fiction older than 50 years, and a larger GLBT section than any other section of their bookstore. Thoroughly grossed out by modern and post-modern thought... we left to go pray our concert. I apologize for not updating sooner. I hope to finish the updates through Southern California before we leave Southern California. Hope all is well with all of our friends all over the nation!

Dallas - Queer Eye for the Straight Guy

2009-06-25T00:19:00.004-04:00

NOTA BENE - This is Nathan's blog too.

After stopping in Austin for a large piece of Texan history (everything, including the history and capitol building, is bigger in Texas), we continued on our merry ay up to my sister's new house in Dallas. It is fairly nice, but she had not fully moved in. Many things weren't set up, including the water heater, but that didn't matter since it felt about 100 degrees every day we were there whether the sun was up or not. My sister worked a lot but managed to be pretty hospitable in spite of her busy schedule. The first night we were there, Nathan and I went out for drinks with some of her work friends. They included a motley assortment of people with interesting advice for our lives. I'm not sure Nathan and I will follow it any time soon. We learned a lot about the Country Club at which my sister works and had cheap Shiner Bock on tap. We slept on the floor since she hadn't moved very much in yet and offered our services to help her get more settled in her house. This came in the form of mowing the lawn, which felt great since I hadn't done it for so long. Yard wok is a good time; I will enjoy owning my own house.

The next night, Keaton and I looked up a Swing Club in Dallas proper and went swing dancing for a few hours. The club had a small dance floor but a lot of fun people. I stole into a birthday dance at the recommendation of the DJ since I was an "out-of-towner." We also realized that the road-trip gives us a lot of interesting things to talk about when you try to answer the simple questions of "what brings you to Dallas this summer?" Another good opportunity to talk about the school and our singing. Good times. We headed back fairly early (about midnight) so that we could wake up bright and early and head on up to Missouri. We stayed at the Groene's, Nathan's grandparents on his mom's side. Although we had to say goodbye to our cellphones and the internet for a short stint (a feat that killed none of us but Allen), the Missouri countryside was beautiful... but that is the story for another blog. We said goodbye to Texas and the true South and are gearing up to get out of the humidity soon!! Woohoo!

Corpus Christi - The Gulf Coast

2009-06-19T15:21:00.002-04:00

From New Orleans we began to realize how BIG Texas is. Many of you who have driven through it are surely laughing, but we've logged twenty or so hours in the car just between two cities of Texas. We also drove through or near every large city in Texas. Furthermore, I'm extremely glad that we decided to skip West Texas in this trip. :) That means we don't have too much more empty wasteland to cover. Or perhaps it just means that we'll be covering the empty wasteland in Kansas and Eastern Colorado instead of in Texas. Oh well.

From the Mississippi's bottom we continued ever further West. We felt called in that direction, being young men. This trek brought us ten hours down to our southernmost point of the trip. We're nearing the halfway mark in terms of time and have clocked 8,233 miles. Towards the end of those eight-thousand, we rolled into Corpus Christi, Texas on the Gulf Coast just a few hours North of Mexico (nearly on the same latitude line as Miami). The South doesn't get any deeper--but then, Texas isn't completely the South, it is its own mixed breed of midwestern, independent, and southern values. We stayed with Pastor Ken Jennings and his wonderful and hilarious wife at their parsonage. We arrived after ten hours of driving, warmed up, and sang. We haven't done that often, but it didn't work out too badly. The concert actually sounded pretty good and the church rang well in addition to being a beautiful space to sing in. Afterwards they generously took us out to eat at a Mexican restaurant and I had a good taste of Tex-Mex (good, if you're not setting your hopes on straight Mexican food). We sang a bit in the restaurant, which people enjoyed and some mistook for the radio! :) We also got to sample the local brews, which included one of my favorite beers: Shiner Bock! Nathan and I have been enjoying our Shiners here in Texas; we found a place last night in Dallas that had Shiner on tap for 2.50. Pretty sweet. From there we returned home, practiced a bit of music, unpacked and went to sleep. The next day, I woke up and Nathan and Mrs. Jennings were watching the latest Star Trek. I joined for the last half; it is a fun space adventure film and gives some sweet backstory (or alternate story) to the roots of the Star Trek saga. We lazed around (the only proper thing to do) until the other guys woke up and then headed out to the beach. Grabbing a bite to eat at Pier 99, we couldn't help but get excited at the sight of the Aircraft Carrier U.S.S. Lexington. Unfortunately, it was $15 per person to explore that, so after wringing every bit of free information off the signs in the front (including noticing the spot where a KamiKaze plane had hit the side and killed a hundred and fifty... but the Lexington carried on. The Japanese eventually nicknamed it the Blue Ghost because it had been reported sunk so often but had returned!). Then we went and swam on North Beach. The water was a smidge murky, which prevented Allen and Keaton from seeing the jellyfish in the water which later stung them. That did not flag our courage or vim. We continued to attack the water, regardless of the dangers it threw at us. Bring it on, Neptune! At any rate, Allen had the worst welt on his arm, but he said after his arm fell off he didn't feel any pain at all. We then came home pretty dang tired and chilled with Pastor and his wife that evening. He sang us a couple hilarious songs on the guitar and we had hickory-smoked brisket with delicious (and spicy) BBQ sauce. We hit the sack knowing we had a large chunk of Texas to cover the next day on our way to Dallas. We went close to San Antonio, stopped in Austin to check out the State Capitol building, and eventually ended in Dallas where I got to spend some quality time with my sister! :) And so it rolls; again, I can promise to try to update more often, but we're finding ourselves pretty busy. We're also only about a week from getting the camera back. :)

They're Always Having a Good Time Down on the Bayou...

2009-06-19T15:17:00.000-04:00

Still without a camera, we trekked across Lake Pontchartrain into the underwater city, or what had so recently been resurrected from beneath the waves of hurricane Katrina. I think we mostly expected the city to be built back up by this time. Unfortunately, it wasn't. We stayed with a Lutheran vicar in the Uptown area, most of the neighboring houses had been abandoned and still were. Some were boarded up; some were looted pretty regularly (even during the day). In some parts, you could easily tell the water damage. There were road-closures and construction all over the place. They had made the French Quarter a priority to rebuild and get back in working order, but many of the suburbs of the city are still working on it. The church at which we sang was a tiny congregation (about 30), and it had taken them two years to re-open their doors. We went up on top of the church tower to examine the city from birds-eye view. The vicar pointed out to us the famous churches and congregations (he pointed out the Latin Mass congregation just to the East of the French Quarter at St. Patrick's).

In the afternoon we examined the French Quarter. Parking at Esplanade, we wound back and forth on the streets from Canal St. to Chartres St. to Bourbon St. to Dauphine St. We saw the Basilica of St. Louis, the statue of Joan of Arc, the...ummm...colorful shops and bars along Bourbon St, but we could never conclude that the city had come back to the fulness of life it once had. On Chartres street we saw row after row of abandoned antique shops. The used bookstore we stopped in was one of the few on that street which had been so famous for them before. We stopped in a mask shop and talked to a local for quite a while. She had lost quite a few antiques in the hurricane, and even though she had been high and dry in a hotel, was shipped off to North Carolina in the name of aid. She had re-settled in the city recently and was now just trying to live and work a light load in her retirement. She acknowledged that the city was not what it used to be.

The other thing we noticed, of course, was the complete mix of cultures that New Orleans was. Obviously, as an important port city, it brought all kinds to its shores. Many stayed and settled. There is still a pretty intense Catholic streak down deep somewhere--the statue to St. Joan might give that away--Catholics of a Spanish and French variety mostly. We got Cafe au Lait and Bengettes at Cafe du Monde, they were sugary goodness for sure. There were also large populations of Creole and Cajun. I had Jumbalaya for lunch, Keaton and Allen had Po-Boy sandwiches, and Nathan had a Muffaletta. They were all signature dishes of New Orleans and they were all delicious. Instead of eating at Mother's, we opted for a place recommended by Keaton's mom called Masparo's. We returned to the vicarage to sing that night. The concert went fairly well, definitely for our smallest crowd yet, but they were receptive and nice. As it was, we got about a third of the congregation to be there, so I guess statistically we did well. We knew we had a long drive ahead of us the next day down to Corpus Christi, so we didn't want to stay out too late. We went to a street called the Frenchmen and walked up and down past a bunch of jazz clubs and bars. Some had cover charges. We opted for where we could get cheap food and beer. We tried some of the local stuff (NOLA and Abita Brown), grabbed a bite to eat, and then headed off to bed. New Orleans was a great town, I pray that it continues to recover at least some of its former glory. I also never, EVER want to be there during Mardi Gras. Bourbon Street was pretty crazy by itself without an excuse to "celebrate" and remove clothing.

Atlanta, GA -- Cigar Smoke and High Culture

2009-06-19T15:12:00.002-04:00

We...ummm....left the camera in South Carolina. So, we probably won't have pictures again until Colorado. Sorry about that. :) Who needs cameras to remember everything anyway? This was God trying to remind us not to be too reliant on technology to store our memories... after all, He gave us memories too, didn't he?

From South Carolina we headed further south into the land of peaches and pines--Georgia. After driving through a whole lot of nothing but beautiful, we came across the outskirts of the city. It's a city that I never thought about growing up. When a Californian thinks of cities outside of California, southern cities rarely register. But Atlanta is a pretty sweet city by the looks of it. To judge by the people, it is an awesome place. For the second time on this trip (the first being New York), we were meeting people who had never really met us before. They were the family of a close friend of Keaton and I. They treated us like family. The Duddlestons, Heidi Schuermann's aunt and uncle, hosted us, most of Heidi's immediate family, Heidi's grandparents, and sundry other friends from church in a sumptuous southern feast! I had collared greens for the first time (not bad, especially good with vinegar). We learned a good deal about the South. Heidi's family has roots there that go way back. They knew the South like it was the backyard in which they were raised; mostly Mississippi and Louisiana, but they were getting to know Georgia and Alabama pretty good too.

We sang for them--I think they enjoyed it almost as much as we enjoyed the food-- and then we just had a good time out on the back porch, smoking cigars, drinking and exchanging stories about road-trips past and present. The company was delightful and the only time you can be outside in the South in the summer is after the sun has set! The mosquitoes began to eat us alive, but I have begun to accept them as a fact of Southern living, kind of like kudzu. I also began to realize the beauty of a slightly slower paced style of living. It makes you really think about what it is you're doing and you often get a lot more out of it. They enjoy their food, their conversation, their cigars, at a slower pace than I was used to... but at a pace that really made you sit back and enjoy the lazy heat of summer. Lazy is an active adjective there, not a passive one. The heat here makes you lazy, regardless of your work ethic...you HAVE to slow down in this sun and humidity. I guess I should say it makes you more leisurely. And for many (like Josef Peiper) leisure is the basis of culture...not work. So, the South has figured out this culture thing and revels in it. It's fun to join them. We said goodbye to the Duddleston's the next morning after we went to church and headed on further South into the heart of the Bayou. After a wonderful evening with them, we felt like we'd learned enough about the lore and layout of the South to experience the Bayou at its best.

Charleston, SC - Tourists, History, Thunderstorms, and BBQ

2009-06-15T01:20:00.004-04:00

So we rolled on through the Carolinas and I, who always have a song stuck in my head, kept humming to myself the James Taylor song "In My Mind I've gone to Carolina" except that I was there physically too now. We came to the land of Palmetto trees and were once again greeted first with delicious food after hugs all around and re-introductions and rememberings of faces and names. I had rice native to SC and a huge thunderstorm blew up during dinner, dropped about half the Atlantic on their house and then rolled by as if nothing happened. The thunder made it sound like God was not too happy with things here on earth. I can't imagine how much he can be happy about here in America. We talked about Obama at dinner and a few other depressing things. But, on the whole, we tried to stay positive. The church that night at which we sang was extremely hospitable and generous. We stayed long afterwards talking to the members of the church about everything from religion to politics to Hillsdale and beyond.

The next day, when exploring the city, we went to Fort Moultrie (a little less prestigious than Fort Sumter, but just as important to history). Because it is a lesser known fort, we got in for the family price of 5 dollars. SCORE! We got to climb on cannons and explore earthenworks and such, while learning about the importance of Charleston harbor from the Revolutionary War through to World War II. We then swam around for a couple hours in the warmth of the Atlantic Ocean, far warmer than I was used to for the Pacific (even in the summer time). After several hours of bobbing in the waves and swimming around, we returned to our towels collecting shells along the way and admiring the beauty of the beach. One of the most comfortable feelings in a humid climate is being completely soaking wet, that way the breeze always cools you when it blows. We found a friendly yellow crab on my towel when we returned to our stuff, and after whisking him away, continued on our merry way to dinner that night. Alex's little sister made delicious homemade vanilla ice cream that topped off the hot day and warm night perfectly. The Cothran family had a great sense of humor and we really enjoyed just sitting around the table talking, laughing, and telling stories about the craziest things. But eventually, all good things come to an end, and we had to get some sleep for the next day's drive. The South was proving to be much more than I expected, even in terms of hospitality. :)

Raleigh, NC

2009-06-14T23:16:00.003-04:00

Hello again, everyone. We are now officially in the South! It hit me slowly... but I'm loving it now. Raleigh was our next stop after Roanoke/Blacksburg and the humidity, sweet tea, mosquitos, and hospitality greeted us in style. We were treated, upon landing, to a delicious steak dinner followed up with awesome strawberry-rhubarb pie (second time having rhubarb...it is still SO good!). The family that put us up was Allen's girlfriend's family. The Conley's, for those of you who don't know, are awesome, in spite of Jaimie. ;) Our steak dinner was with the pastor of the church (St. Joseph's) that we would be singing for the next night. We stayed up late talking and got to know just how the big family works. They were all quite musical and well-schooled, so we had good conversations with all of them about the most random things. We didn't do much sight-seeing in Raleigh, but it was a nice break. I saw the dry cleaners and the Food Lion (those are so cool... one of these days, I want to see a gazelle run out of one and get chased down by a "Food Lion"). In the South, we have been shopping mostly at Food Lion for our lunch food. I find it strange that we haven't hit up a Piggly Wiggly yet... or a Winn Dixie. At this point, we had yet even to hit up a Waffle House, and you all know how ubiquitous those are in the South. We sang at random intervals for the family, but our main contribution occurred at Wednesday night mass. We sang our five minute long Sanctus and Agnus Dei, testing the patience of the zealous mass-goers attempting to put down their kneelers too early. :) They seemed to like it and afterwards we had an awesome reception where people listened to a few of our secular pieces, and we even dedicated a song to the hard-working Mrs. Conley on her birthday. We stayed up late again that night watching YouTube, running around trying to feed everyone pizza (no one is satisfied with my taste in pizza... except Gina, the next oldest sister). We rocked out and had a Disney party in the car. By that I mean I found Gina's Disney soundtracks, put them on and forced everyone to join me in a song and dance spectacle as we went out for ice cream after the concert. We sang some more at the ice cream place and then called it a night. We got up early the next morning, well-fed and well-slept and left for South Carolina. My little brother in Mu Alpha, Alex Cothran, had generously offered his house and church as a place for us to repose in Charleston. So off we went!

District of Columbia

2009-06-12T19:59:00.009-04:00

Washington DC was a blast. We arrived early in the morning from Pennsylvania to sing for the Heritage Foundation. Many of our classmates from Hillsdale are working in DC for the summer, and it was good to see them again. We stayed with Jody and Jody's friend Curtis. Thank you guys!

We sang a barbershop arrangement of all the armed forces songs... the Marine, Navy, Army, Coast Guard, and Air Force anthems. When we learned the arrangement five days ago, I had no idea that our armed forces had such cool songs. They do. Thank you to all the men and women who have served for our country.

While in the District of Columbia we managed to do a lot of sightseeing. Even though the other guys make fun of me for it, I "got my tourist on" and kept taking pictures. It turns out that someone in the capitol decided that buildings should still be vaguely beautiful, and made sure that most of the government buildings are made out of marble. I like that we still treat some things with respect and honor.

...I'm not entirely sure that the "Department of Engraving and Imprinting" really needs as gigantic of a marble building as it got, but I guess when FDR added a ton of bureaucratic departments back in the 30's, they all got big buildings too. I liked the Library of Congress... that can have a big building. I'm down with that.

One thing we did like the government spendin

g our money on was the monuments to fallen soldiers. We sang some of our patriotic music at the World War II memorial on the capitol mall. Thank you again, brave men and women who have served your country.

The Smithsonian museums were a lot of fun to examine as well. Being four guys, we naturally found the Air and Space museum first, and looked at all the things that fly. The exhibits about space travel were fun, as were many of the planes hangared there. One of our favorites was too big to be housed there: the Spruce Goose. It was made in the 40's to carry cargo overseas to the troops.... but since metal was in high demand, they made the entire 218 ft by 319 ft cargo plane out of laminated birch wood. That's as big, if not bigger, than many of the 747's we fly around in today. And yes, it can fly.

After that we went to the American History museum and the Natural History museum. These were decent, although it's weird to go through a history museum already knowing many of the things on the signs.

Seeing many of the things from older times were interesting though... it's not every day you get to see and understand how big the cannons were in the revolutionary war, or touch a part of "old ironsides," or look at the dishes the Lincolns used while in the White house. Seeing these things and being to these places really helps a person understand a lot of the history they can read in a book. Movies just don't cut it... there's something physical about people where they want to BE somewhere to understand something. I'm glad we came.

One more thing we like looking at when we're in big cities... churches! Cathedrals! Call me a crazy conservative confessional if you like, but I like the liturgy and old cathedrals. Here's a picture of the "National Cathedral" in DC. There's something in the building, in the architecture, in the design and construction of these cathedrals that offers praise to God for His majesty. Good cathedrals draw our attention to God and His works, rather than just the workmanship of the building itself. This one had a lot of cool reliefs on the sides, just like some of the ones in New York. Sweet churches are all over the place, and for that I am glad.

We went to Virginia after this. Tom has already entered that. After Virginia comes North Carolina...

-Keaton
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Roanoke-Blacksburg

2009-06-12T10:07:00.002-04:00

Skipping DC until Keaton gets around to it, I'll tell you how Virginia went.

I thought I'd seen Virginia because I'd seen the DC Area and the Shenandoah Valley. There is much more to Virginia than that. While the Shenandoah does have a beauty all its own (worthy of the song), I must admit that Blacksburg, VA and the surrounding area (home to the Virginia Tech Hoagies) blew me away. The road wound unpredictably through the valley between Roanoke and Blacksburg until we came to a driveway about a quarter mile long ending in the house of Keaton's aunt and uncle. They graciously invited us in and we began to chat about all sorts of things. Theology came up a lot, but being Hillsdale students, we were somewhat used to it. :) We learned a lot and it gave us a lot of food for thought and conversation in the car. After relaxing a bit and having a great dinner that wouldn't weigh us down at our concert, we drove off to the venue at New Mount Zion Lutheran Church. It was a tiny church nestled against the hills with a community of many Slovaks. After the concert we met the congregation and were blown away by the generosity pouring out from a less than affluent area. After the concert, the pastor invited us over to her house for snacks and such. Her son was ridiculously cute and spoke English and Slovak fluently. He seemed to enjoy getting into mischief, but he enjoyed shouting the most. :) After a few beers and snacks, we headed home to some delicious dessert that we had to save until after our concert. From there, we packed ourselves into the bed of a pickup truck and followed the trail up the hill about a mile into their property. Up about a mile removed from the valley floor they had built a small cabin which Keaton's uncle would use when he hunted on his own land (80 acres of beautiful Virginia woods). We gathered enough wood in five minutes to last for several hours of fire and then just chilled with Keaton's cousin and cousin-in-law until we bedded down in the cabin. It was a warm, southern night and pleasant in the cabin which fit the four of us perfectly. We awoke the next morning early because we wanted to meet a fellow Hillsdale student, Sean McDermott, for breakfast. We saw Marieke as well and heard tell that Alison was recovering. After meeting Sean's parents briefly, we headed out for some Southern breakfast comfort food and I had biscuits and gravy with some grits on the side. The one nice thing about the south is the food. The terrible things include kudzu (it'll grow on you if you stand still too long!) and humidity. After breakfast, we trekked out for North Carolina--Raleigh to be exact. And there we found another adventure, the adventure of a big family!

Fly By Night - Swiftly through Lancaster

2009-06-10T12:50:00.003-04:00

From NYC, once we got on the freeway, we headed out to Amish country... or so it is stereotyped. Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. After getting out of the smog and congestion of New York and New Jersey, we skirted the edge of Philadelphia and soon found ourselves in beautiful rolling hills with fields separated by beautiful stands of trees. We met up with several Hillsdale students at Rebekah Wilhelm's house. She had graduated with us only a few weeks ago, and it was good to see her in her domestic element. Her family was extremely hospitable and after a great dinner, they invited a great number of their friends to join us in our sacred set. We talked to the homeschool families, those already sold on Hillsdale (like the O'Dells) and those that weren't. It was great to see everybody again and we sang for them for nearly two hours. Our next gig was less than 12 hours away at The Heritage Foundation in DC, so after dessert we quickly went to bed and woke up at 3am. Rebekah kindly saw us off and even baked us muffins for breakfast. We were amazed that though we were only in Lancaster for a bit, the hospitality still poured all over us! :) We left a bit sleep-deprived, but happy to have stopped off in beautiful Pennsylvania. And from the country all the way back into the big city, the biggest city in terms of tax-dollars. No pictures... but in DC we finally had a chance to slow down for a bit and relax... I'll let Keaton tell that story. I did so much relaxing in DC that I didn't even have the energy to hit up the Smithsonians.

Partying it up in NYC

2009-06-09T19:43:00.008-04:00

Us. Enough said. Pastor Wrede took this sweet shot.

Tapestry in St. John the Divine.

Continuing in a long and glorious tradition, we got lost in NYC... Queens to be exact. Strange to be lost where your dad was born. We found Pastor Wrede and realized that God had given a host who completely understood the nature of freshly graduated college students. His house was made to entertain and his knowledge and anecdotes about the city were unparalleled. We told him what we wanted to see in Manhattan, and he gave us a map and directions infinitely better than GoogleMaps (that is, we never got lost). :) The morning after we arrived, we performed for a chapel service for Redeemer Lutheran School. After performing many of our sacred songs, we left the church and followed the kids to their classrooms to sing a few of our pop songs. We then zoomed into Manhattan on the Metro and began at the Anglican Cathedral St. John the Divine. After asking permission (very politely) to sing sacred songs, they declined. We called their music director and no one picked up. So we decided to discretely sing in a side chapel our five minute Agnus Dei. In the meantime, the church security had called NYPD and as we started our next piece, they... umm... kicked us out.

We continued on and explored Central Park. At the bottom of Central Park, we visited St. Patrick's for mass. A pleasant rain accompanied most of our outdoor walking. We checked out Ground Zero and are glad to see the new buildings on their way in defiance of Islam. :) Coming back up to Times Square (we didn't get all the way down to the bottom of Manhattan to see the Statue of Liberty... but we saw it on the way out), we joined Pastor Wrede at a GREAT Irish Pub O'Lunney's. We sang some barbershop music and got our SECOND round on the house. We then went to Rockefeller Center and took a picture of us under the Letterman sign. We then went to another O'Lunney's just around the corner from the Rockefeller Center. There, we also got a round on the house just for being with Pastor Wrede (who seems to know about 5 of the 6 million people in Manhattan). He is on good terms with all of them too. I have to admit that the "New Yorker" stereotyped attitude I never saw while walking around the city or in the pubs. It only seemed to show up on the road. TERRIBLE DRIVING! Getting through Queens and Brooklyn to get back onto the freeway, we had to get four miles through New York traffic. 4 miles took 45 minutes. The number of people that cut me off, turned left in front of me, honked, and yelled was innumerable in such a short space of time. As always, for those to challenged to read, we leave you with a few pictures... New York we definitely want to go back to as soon as possible, that city has far too much to do for just one day.

Saratoga Springs - Dinner Break

2009-06-09T19:30:00.004-04:00

We have seen nearly all of New York it seems. On the way down from Maine, we managed to meet up with an old friend of mine from high school. Lowell and his wife Joanna invited us to stop for a break in Saratoga Springs on our long drive. Much has changed in our lives since we last saw each other. I was the best man in his wedding and we had both just graduated from high school. He is now in the navy with 2 daughters and another child on the way (perhaps a boy). I am a college graduate with a job in the D.C. area. We had so much catching up to do. As always with good, old friends the conversation was great and we all too quickly discovered that we were still the same in the most important ways. In some ways, I felt like I still could've run out 40 yards for a pass from him or signaled to back him up as left defender when he played goalie. That was years ago, but the connections we had made on the field, in the classroom, and in church remained. His wife was just as I remember her too, a great cook and conversationalist. :) We stopped by for tacos after all day on the road and then headed the rest of the way down to New York City. We realized that between Buffalo, Oneonta, Saratoga Springs, and NYC, we would see most of the state of New York that wasn't a state park! All of it was beautiful, from Niagara to the Catskills. Here are a couple pictures from that dinner.

Rhubarb and Lobster - A Maine-landers feast

2009-06-04T01:43:00.009-04:00

So, the cliche is that we learn something new every day. Fortunately, on this trip, we blow that wide open. My mind is forced to expand whenever we enter a new state and I am confronted with the diversity of lifestyles in American as well as the consistency of Christian charity that we find in every corner of the union. And now for something completely different, we left the crowded, smoke-choked, honking-cussing city of Boston for the clean forests of Maine. We drove North up almost to Bangor to a small town (1.000 people) not too far from the Maine coastal waters and Lobster fishing region. We stayed with Keaton's aunt and uncle on their large piece of property where they raised Alpacas. Now that is an interesting animal about which I have learned a lot. I will not bore you with the details of alpaca spit, birthing, or eating habits which I found fascinating. Give me a call if you really want to know more.

The forests of Maine were immediately different from the Catskills and the Appalachians that we were used to. Green. Everywhere. Every corner of land that could be covered with tree was. You could walk 10 feet into a forest and feel as if you had just stepped into wilderness you would never be able to navigate out of succesfully. The roads? Unmarked. The directions we got included dams, local shops, and other landmarks. Not street signs. Though we got lost a few times, we always ended up finding our way in the end. I was introduced to rhubarb pie (and plant... it was homegrown in the Groene's garden) and we had a delicious lobster dinner (learned a lot about lobster anatomy). We hung out with their kids who were so much fun and full of energy, and we still got to sing a bit. The nearby town (Searsport) even recognized that we were coming and recognized us as we enetered the coffee shop. There was a sweet book store located in a former bank (thus, there was a SAFE in the middle of the bookstore!! SWEET). We then travelled to Belfast, a port city known for Lobster fishing.

We walked around downtown and soon discovered that Belfast had a city-wide square footage limit on the commercial enterprises allowed into their city. In other words, no Wal-Marts, Costcos, Big Lots, etc. It was a pretty thriving little town capitalizing on its local flavor. At the bottom of the hill, right on the harbor we looked up a bar/restaurant recommended to us by a woman in the bookstore of Searsport. She said we had to go there if we liked beer. So we arrived at Three Tides to find it closed and its owner holding his daughter and explaining to us that Monday was his day off. He heard we were only in town that day, so he decided to "open" the microbrewery for 15 minutes and gave us four tastes of all his microbrews...for free. It was awesome. The guy was so kick-back, kinda hippie, but ultimately just a really chill business owner. I bought a shirt 'cus I thought the place was so cool, and now the microbrewery has a story behind it as well. Of course, if ever in Belfast, I highly recommend Three Tides. :)

We came home to feast on lobster, we each got our own. It was a delicious dinner and a study in lobster anatomy (I can even tell males from females now). In completely random news about how Tom is an idiot, I suggest that you all avoid electrified fences in the future. While trying to pet their fluffy dogs, I leaned forward and my forehead came into contact with the electrified fence. A large snap was heard by everyone around me, I reeled backwards and was temporarily unable to see. After a massive headache, I recovered with just a slight mark on my forehead. From the boondocks (or lobster docks) are Maine we headed down to bustling NYC... but for the literally challenged, we leave you with a picture or two of the beauty of Maine.

Bar-fights, Weddings, Massacres, and Graveyards: Life in the Big City of Boston

2009-06-01T13:28:00.005-04:00

So...I have attempted to draw your attention with the title. Boston as a city is an adventure. Home to dozens of colleges sprawling in and around downtown (Harvard, MIT, Berklee, Tufts, etc.) Boston pullulates 20-somethings. Just wanted to use that word... pretentious? Perhaps. Classics Major? gotta do something with the degree. :)

At any rate, the first thing that struck us about Boston was traffic! We arrived at 4:30 and circumnavigated an area of about 3 square miles for an hour and a half before we were able to park. Once we had walked off a bit of the aggravation, we looked up an old family friend of mine, Megan Luna, who had just graduated from Berklee school of music! She lived just a ways up from some of the most important buildings of the campus on Boylston St. (for those of you who know the area). Our main stomping grounds, then, were south of the Commons. That night, we went out for some sweet beers (mostly home-brews like Harpoon and the like) and sang in line for the first bar. As our sweet tunes filled the air, a bar-fight almost broke out over people cutting in line. It was very strange to be singing "Change in My Life" and "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" as lives were being threatened and love had definitely checked out of the immediate area.

We crashed that night at Megan's place and woke the next morning to see the historical sights. We followed the Freedom Trail and admittedly looked like tourists (particularly Keaton with the camera and me reading the guidebook (mostly out-loud!)). However, we quickly decided that the Midwest has severely hampered our sense of fashion and there will be few cities that our shorts, t-shirts, and tennis shoes will fit in with. The three other members of the quartet admitted that they have two looks: bum and REALLY fancy. I could only agree. :) Boston is packed with history. You step on and around it everywhere you go. The North End had some of the best stuff... an awesome statue of Paul Revere right near the Old North Church and his original house! The Italian food in the North End was delicious (as it should be, we heard that thick Bostonian-Italian accent all over). We didn't have time for gelato or cannoli, but it smelt delicious. We then crossed the Charles river and saw "Old Ironsides," aka USS Constitution. She had a sweet museum across from her that explained a lot about why she stood so strong in the War of 1812 and beyond. She has most recently been sailed in 1997, 200 years after she was built! The ship brought up that age old philosophical question... how much of "Old Ironsides" is still her, since ship-boards and pieces have to be replaced so often that within a hundred years you usually have an entirely new ship! Though we didn't solve this metaphysical crisis (though we talked about how Aristotle and Plato respectively would have weighed in), we discovered that the Georgia Oak 12x12s that constructed her frame are still mostly original. Nearly her entire shell and masts had been replaced. Check her out if you get to Boston; she is quite a sight! I have discovered that as four guys we can get distracted by cool things like ships and tanks. We learned a lot.

Boston was such a walkable city, that we didn't take the T (their mass transit) at all that day. Instead, we walked back up Beacon Hill and across into the Commons to sing a bit. We attracted a pretty good crowd as usual and people were thankful for the tunes (we have yet to get a hat to put out!). We then noticed all the couples in the park (after all, it is Spring and it isn't just Hillsdale that couples up at this time of year). We wanted to sing a love song for some couple or another when God suddenly provided the best opportunity. A Wedding Party had just arrived to take pictures in the beautiful Public Gardens across from the Commons. We promptly serenaded the couple reminding him to...umm...well... "Kiss the Girl." Her eyes lit up as soon as she recognized the song and the entire wedding party stopped to listen. We delighted everyone (even the mother of the bride who went out of her way to thank us). One of the groomsmen gave us twenty bucks to "buy drinks" and thanked us for a classy performance. We did, however, annoy the camera-woman. Apparently, she wasn't paid by the hour and wanted to get these pictures DONE! About half-way through the song, she started ordering the bride and groom around. Thankfully, the rest of the wedding party ignored her and enjoyed the song! :) That made the trip in many ways. Sometimes, being inside the music, I forget how much delight live music can bring to people.

We discovered on our later walks that Christian Science had been founded here by Mary Baker Eddy and we were depressed to see how much their power seems to be rooted here. Even more depressing was how they had taken so much of the good, true, and beautiful and perverted it. Twisted it just slightly (the very definition of heresy - opinion-based half-truths). We perused some of their publications, saw their gigantic church/museum, their egregiously large Sunday School (etymological pun intended on the adverb usage here - they are outside the flock), and their reflecting pool (which was beautiful). We all concluded that we need to do more research concerning this "faith."

We leave you with a couple pictures. The first is outside St. Cecilia's (fitting, eh?) where we sang a few of our sacred songs. Some people waiting at the bus-stop began to record us or call their friends. One guy even tried to go into the church to pray and was sad to find it locked. In their back garden, Keaton caught this beautiful statue of the Passion. Nearby in an alley, we'd found a strange truck and in many ways this picture describes the trip perfectly. Paul Revere is the statue... the rest should be self-explanatory.

Clocks and Rocks - NY State

2009-05-30T12:50:00.003-04:00

New York. So often limited in the minds of those who have never been there to the bustle and over-crowded city. Not so. We have learned so much about the beauty that up-state (and side-state) New York has to offer. The morning after our concert near Roanoke with the youth group, our generous host Kevin Kimble showed us his clock workshop. He and his wife have found the training to work on almost any and every clock imaginable. Cuckoo clocks, chime clocks, grandfather clocks, you name it. Clocks surround their house and clock parts fill their basement. The mechanics of a clock are impressive and the material that go into a simple time-keeper held more than a few lessons for us. It was so cool to see that there was a time when men built things to last; that is, they built things to be fixed. When something was fixable, you could tinker with it and hand it down generation to generation. I will not do that with almost anything I own. My computer won't last that long, certainly. Cars don't last that long anymore. What is there that is left that humanity (especially in the West) doesn't approach with the careless attitude of consume, destroy, replace? This clock workshop showed us that some of the greatest things to be preserved are those things capable of being understood and tinkered with the human mind. There is something more organic about a clock--cogs and all--that is far more humane than the digital world which we understand less and less and rely on more and more.

After being wowed by the clock workshop and amazing hospitality, we headed out to Keaton's Dad's house in Oneonta. We sang for a very receptive and bit larger crowd than we were used to. The concert was recorded well by Keaton's dad and we have a CD now to help critique our concert and make it even better. We stayed after the concert and talk about all things good, true, and beautiful. As expected, Hillsdale came up a lot. Hopefully we drummed up some interest; a few of the kids I met seemed like they'd be a great fit there. That night we chilled with Keaton's Dad, Martin, who is ridiculously musical. Nathan and I hit the hay pretty early, but Allen and Keaton stayed up late jamming and just talking with Mr. Christiansen. The sun rose and we decided to try to run. The area around Oneonta is very hilly. Deciding to run when you know you're out of shape is mostly stupid. We started downhill (always a bad idea) and ran about a mile and a half away. The entire, ENTIRE way back was uphill. None of us ran the whole thing (pansies that we are), and we wanted to die at the end. Perhaps, someday, we'll be back in shape. None of us even like running... but it is a good way to see the beauty in nature. We packed up the car (which always takes a while...I am always the mean guy rushing us out the door to our next stop) and headed up to Keaton's old house. We had sung the night before at the Lutheran church that Keaton attended until he was 10; today, we saw the house he lived in before he moved. He showed us the beautiful forests around his house which included sweet rock formations coming out of the ground in their steel grey sedimentary layers. The gray and the green combined for a beautiful, albeit wet, hike up the hill to Keaton's favorite climbing tree which, alas, is no more. We got a good view of the rot it has been experiencing since it fell (looks to be of natural causes). The forests around were fairly new growth, probably sprouting up in the last sixty years or so. We got to see the history of the forest which used to be a field. The entire area reminded me of the beauty of almost every Robert Frost poem. We saw many crumbling field-stone walls and I thought of Frost's poem "Mending Wall." Good walls make good neighbors, right? :) We then drove up and over the Appalachians into Massachusetts and on our way to Boston. We're now in Boston; I will update you on our way out. We're having a blast!!

oHIo and The Falls!

2009-05-27T22:45:00.005-04:00

In every adventure there are the unplanned bumps, the blind corners, and even the occasional false crest. Coming into Cleveland, we believe we hit all three. In any road-trip, a bit of planning is necessary. This is infinitely more important when people are expecting you to sing (and even to sing well) at the end of your travel day. We learned as men often do, from that most difficult teacher experience. Confidently re-arming ourselves in Hillsdale with a bit lighter loads, we seem to have forgotten the directions to the high school at which we were scheduled to sing that evening. Thus, we knew it was in Cleveland. Arriving in Cleveland, we decided to rectify the situation and grab directions from what Keaton thought was Lutheran High East. Calling my cousin, she successfully navigated us to a campus at which we were never scheduled to sing! We found this out 45 minutes before we were supposed to be singing across town in Lutheran High East. Needless to say, it was a bit stressful. Add to that the fact that we could not always understand directions (every big city has its own confusing network of changed names of highways, reversed directions, and counter-intuitive EVERYTHING). But, I will never say we were truly lost...perhaps just mighty bewildered at times. The concert was in a gym this time and we're learning just how different rooms can affect our sound. In some rooms we have to work quite a bit harder to make four voices fill the space.

After the concert, we got to catch up with some of our old friends from college. We stayed at Rebekah Keller's and appreciated the tasty food as well as the great time to catch up around the s'mores fire with old friends. They saw us off this morning to NEW YORK! Allen and I have never been in New York and we followed the 90 along Erie all the way to Buffalo. We turned off and, you guessed it, headed straight for Niagara Falls. I have always enjoyed large bodies of water (having been raised near the Pacific Ocean), but this was impressive. It felt as if Erie had been tipped like a large bowl and the entirety of its contents poured out every second. We stayed on the American side, but saw both falls (American and Horseshoe). After the guys convinced me that it would NOT be a good idea to go over in a barrel, we did the next best thing and just took a long walk enjoying the weather and the rush and roar of the rapids and the falls. We got a little camera happy and have decided two things: first, we have little to no talent with a camera. Second, we don't take very many pictures with people in them. The sunsets and sunrises we have photographed are already beginning to run together. :) Keaton would like to share a cloud we found in Minnesota while reading the first half of Ballad of the White Horse. We thought it looked like a dove. What do you think? Hopefully we'll be sharing more pictures as we get braver and take more. Perhaps they'll even improve (and perhaps we'll clean the lens!). God Bless! Keep us in your prayers, for you are all in ours. Tomorrow, we head to Oneonta, NY.

28 hours of driving

2009-05-25T10:29:00.002-04:00

Driving into a sunrise was an absolutely amazing experience that I don't do as often as I'd like. God played a light show on the horizon. The sky really does feel bigger in Montana, and the sunrise played on the horizon for a long time before the blindingly saffron orb reached over the top. We're returning to Hillsdale on the same interstate (I-94) as we came on, so it's like reminiscing early! We get to see everything we saw less than a week ago. It will be nice to get to Hillsdale for a break and a chance to re-pack a bit more wisely.

After I took the first leg, Allen drove the second leg until we ended up in Minneapolis-St. Paul and had dinner with the Stewart sisters (one an alumna, the other still at Hillsdale) and their brother. We sang barbershop walking in a park by the Mississippi and enjoyed the sights and sounds of a bit city (after a long time exposed to little cities like Hillsdale, Grafton, and Laurel/Billings...I was pretty excited). Some say all cities are the same. I say any area where people can live close to where they work and pray is that much closer to community. Random tangent: The Mall of America is the most heinous blight of consumerism in these great, free states of ours. They worship at the altar of novelty and shallow advertising. Advertising also tends to destroy language treating it as a tool to manipulate our thoughts and feelings rather than a medium of communication of fact or knowledge between equals. Done ranting.

Keaton assumed the wheel after MSP, my nickname for the twin cities (and apparently the airport code). Though the city had a rather blunted understanding of the directions that freeways ought to go, we eventually found our way out of the labyrinth without running into any Minotaurs (whew!). So we assumed our waxen wings and flew away; not too close to the sun. Spring was beautiful in all the states, but I was glad to be back in Minnesota and Wisconsin because they understand that trees are a big part of natural beauty. It was as if, during the week that we were in Montana, Spring cast the full array of her viridian cloak over the Great Lakes States and we go to see her upon returning. The forests in the late spring are splendid...and something I'd never seen because I had always been back in California up to this point.

The conversations up to this point in the car had been phenomenal. We had talked about everything from science and the 'grandeur of God' to life, cars, jobs, and girls. It was pretty awesome. Amazing car rides with men who know you well and can engage in good conversation...not sure there is anything better you can be doing in a car. Perhaps these conversations would've been better at a pub over a beer, but this is the next best thing. We read three books of Ballad of the White Horse and every time I want to drink Chesterton's language in. It is such a powerful epic-ballad about the beauty and importance of suffering for the Christian. This life is not easy; it is a valley of tears. We are called to fight and it is beautiful that in the humility and meekness to which we are called we ultimately find adamantine armor and infrangible blades. The Christian witness that I have experienced on this trip already has been amazing. The people and friends who open their doors to us and take us in for a song (literally). True community has always taken in the wanderer, from Odysseus to Aeneas to Paul and beyond, the traveller always finds himself protected by the communities he puts himself in. The quartet is extremely grateful to everyone who attends our concerts and feeds and boards us. :)

Keaton handed the baton to Nathaniel for the final leg just outside of Madison. The conversations continued but with fitful sleeping in between. Keaton and Nathaniel kept each other awake in the front seat. Allen and I attempted to sleep in the back. We arrived at Hillsdale this morning at about 9:30am Hillsdale time. We had left Billings at 6am Hillsdale time. Total travel time: 28.5 hours. Will we ever do it again? Not on this trip. Was it worth it? Most definitely. You are all in our prayers. We love you and can't wait to sing for you.

Seven states already under our belt and 3,000 miles behind us, our next concert lies ahead at a high school in Cleveland on Tuesday. From there, we will strike like LIGHTNING down the East Coast...in a blitz-sing maneuver. So far, things are beginning to fall into place. We still don't have a place to stay in Boston...any fans? God Bless for now. I hope our next blog entry will be able to be more entertaining and less "informative." Our drives should get smaller for a while which equals an increase in adventures, not just the dining adventures. :) You are all in our prayers, contact us is you need anything. Have a great Memorial Day weekend!

Montana - Nutshell

2009-05-25T10:27:00.000-04:00

So, we have failed at updating you all...and much has happened. This should be the last behemoth blog entry. The rest we will try to keep in easily digestible tidbits that can take you along on our adventure. Pictures should be coming too; we warn you, though, we are rather amateur photographers. All hints and tips are welcome.

Well, our first drive was a few short hours and I got us the whole way. Just a bit over six hours brought us to Grafton, WI--Keaton's home town. I must admit that I am the one on this trip who will have most of his stereotypes of the county shattered. My narrow Orange County mind has been forced to admit that beauty is all over the United States. Grafton, WI is no exception. A cute little town (yes, I just admitted it was cute) with quite a history in the jazz era, and a good swing club which we'll hopefully hit up on the way back. We stopped by a Kohl's and Target to pick up everything we had forgotten to get in Hillsdale and met up with sophomore Lauren Moroder. Lauren and I hung out and we saw Port Washington--proof that Wisconsin can be truly BEAUTIFUL. Watching the sunset from a pier on Lake Michigan is an experience I will not soon forget. Later that night, we sang for a family friend of the Christiansens. It was fun to sing for an experienced ear; Mrs. Schwartz had an ear trained for barbershop and many helpful comments. We also sang Disney songs as Allen accompanied on the piano. Needless to say, I had a good time. We didn't end up getting much sleep that night; the Christiansens know have a good time. :)

At about 3:30am the next morning, Nathaniel and I went to the airport in Milwaukee so that I could fly to Washington, D.C. for an interview. I'll let Keaton tell you how the drive from Grafton, WI to Minneapolis-St. Paul went and the stay they had there. When I landed Tuesday morning, returning from my whirlwind interview in D.C., we headed straight out for Billings, MT. Quite a long drive through all of Minnesota, North Dakota, and a large chunk of Montana. The drive was mostly uneventful; that's what happens when you drive through some of the least populated states in the Union. The places we stopped to eat were...umm...experiences. Nathaniel and Keaton had fleischkuchle, a large patty of hamburger meat, breaded, folded in half, and deep fried. It was good with ranch. We approximated that between Pete's Place (where we ate Lunch in St. Cloud) and Dakota Diner (dinner) we had as much grease as actual food. We pulled into Billings about 1am and went straight to bed. Thankfully, the hospitality of the Pullmann's was completely ready for us and we were asleep about 15 minutes after we had arrived. The next morning (Wednesday) we awoke and adjusted to our new surroundings. Pullmann's home church, St. John's, was right across the street. We were at about 3000 feet above sea level and the climate was much drier. The first day I just proved to the entire family the fullest extent of my awkwardness and became fast friends with Nathaniel's younger sister, Amanda. Their family worked well with sarcasm and handled puns quite well...they could even handle Keaton's. We began to rehearse in earnest and set ourselves up for two concerts on Friday.

Friday morning we performed first at Billings Public High School for two large choir groups. The mixed choir seemed pleased with what we had to sing, a very eclectic mix of secular, sacred, and barbershop. Some of them even came later to the concert we offered that night at St. John's. After leaving a bit of Hillsdale information with the high school students, we went home for lunch (all meals generously provided by the Pullmann family) and then rehearsed for the concert that evening. In the meantime, we also attended Zach's (Nathan's older brother) wedding rehearsal. We were scheduled to sing at the wedding the next day. Immediately following the wedding rehearsal, we started the concert. Our crowd was small, but we will gladly sing for any number. The concert is thankfully much improved from the one we put on in Hillsdale, and we are excited to hear ourselves improve. We drummed up some interest for the college and then packed up and went to the rehearsal dinner. After a long day, we finished with practicing Bohemian Rhapsody so that we could sing it at Zach and Rebecca's reception. In some ways I feel busier after college with all the planning that goes into this road trip. It involves contacting a lot of people and keeping up with a lot of information in our heads. We sleep WELL at night.

Saturday I woke up and ran around Laurel, the suburb in which the Pullmann's actually live slightly outside of Billings. It was another glorious spring day with the dry weather I prefer. The wedding was simply beautiful and we sang a four-part setting of a hymn as well as our barbershop version of the Lord's Prayer. We sang through Bohemian Rhapsody at the reception and...well...it's getting there. :) Hopefully it will improve with everything else we work on. We celebrated for a while longer with Zach and Rebecca, enjoyed the last sunset in Montana with the whole family (grandparents included), exchanged stories (embarrassing, funny, frequently both), and then the quartet tried to get to bed early. Such a fun family was tough to leave, but we were up at four and out the door long before sunrise.

Alpha

2009-05-20T18:16:00.001-04:00

And so it begins. Thank you one and all for all of your prayers, support, and encouragement. We're on our way to our first concert venue, and to sing for Nathan's brother's wedding. A special thanks goes to the folks at Hillsdale College; your support helps make this possible. Larry, Mike, Rich, you guys are great. Thank you.

As is only right and proper, we began this journey from church. The Word of God has kept us alive in the true faith through college. The community he gave to us has helped us to grow. Everything good I learned about at school culminates in the Word and the Sacrament found at church: God sustains us by His grace. History, literature, political science, the liberal arts, natural science, all these things point to God as the creator and author of all good things. Most problems seem to stem from people forgetting their place in His creation, their place with respect to Him. We begin and end with Him.

We packed quickly, said goodbye to all our friends on Saturday night, and left from church Sunday morning. The community we've been blessed with at Hillsdale, and at Zion Lutheran in Marshall has been an important part of our college education: teaching us how people live what they believe in the face of a contrary, distracted world. We are meant to live in good communities like these, connected to one another and vivified by Christ. Partings like this sting bittersweet; I will miss this place, but it is time for many of us to go. We have another calling now.

For this summer, I want to see how God is working across our land. If St. Paul wrote a letter to the people of God in America, what would he say? I want to see what it's like to be a servant of Christ in Minnesota, South Carolina, Texas, Colorado, California, Louisiana, or Maine. We're going to all of those places, but I bet the Word got there first.

-Keaton
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Concerts in Churches

2009-04-02T00:58:00.001-04:00

Welcome!

I've finally found the time to update our site a little bit more! Aren't I great...

Anyways, if you are interested in having a concert in your area, please see the list I've put up on the righthand side of the site. It is our itinerary for the trip, if you are at all curious.

As we've been arranging locations for our tour (and thank you so much to everyone who has contacted us), I've gotten some questions about what is entailed in hosting a concert at a church. I will attempt to answer those in some brevity here, although the best way is just to talk to us directly.

Holding a concert is less scary than it sounds, at least not when connected to your church. Ask your pastor or music director if they are interested in, and approve of, having such a concert. When they say yes (because who wouldn't want a concert of sacred music?), you reserve a time when such a concert can be held. I've posted the dates we worked out for our schedule over on the right. We've oriented our sacred concert thus that it would be entirely appropriate for a church sanctuary. We shouldn't need microphones, not unless your church has been blessed with a large sanctuary.

When I was a strapping young teenager in my lutheran high school, our choir went on a two-stop "tour" through parts of Michigan and Indiana. We had a lot of fun, and it worked largely the same as I'm hoping this concert series will work. We would come into town on the bus (in our case, Tom's car), get ready for a concert while the congregation would have a potluck dinner. Then we would sing! Everyone loved it. We ate the leftovers and went to stay with a host family from the congregation. We're not in high school anymore, we're college students who are well behaved and okay with sleeping on couches. Besides a venue, or location in which to have a concert, we would appreciate if you could find us a place to stay as well.

I hope that answers some questions! If you're curious or concerned at all about anything, don't be afraid to shoot us an e-mail at augmentedfourthquartet@gmail.com. Either Nathan or I will get back to you... sometimes both of us. :D

I'm really looking forward to being able to sing for you all. I've heard of a lot of you through my mom (she's on the MartinLoopers Lutheran e-mail list). I'm happy that there are good families out there... leaving college to start in the "real world" can be a little disconcerting at times, so it's good to see strong families out there. Thank you.

in His Peace,
-Keaton
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Midterms inDEED.

2009-03-26T15:25:00.001-04:00

Hey all!

We just got done with our week of midterms, which is why most of us have been hiding in our rooms studying. Nathan and I worked out a schedule for where we're going this summer and when we'll be there, so stay posted and I'll put that up here as soon as I can.

God's peace be with you!
-Keaton
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Augmented Fourth Quartet

2009-03-10T01:12:00.001-04:00

Welcome to the Augmented Fourth blog!

We are Allen Zarcone, Thomas Cox, Nathaniel Pullmann, and Keaton Christiansen, soon to be graduates of Hillsdale College. We started singing together in our sophomore year of college, and have been singing ever since. We thought it would be fun to take a road trip and visit all our friends in the summer after graduation. Then the idea moved beyond just a lark for us-- we could sing for all of our friends and their communities while we were there.

We have a concert of sacred music prepared, and would perform that set of music to glorify God along the way. We would sing for churches where our friends lived, and at arts festivals or where ever we could find an opportunity. As we considered the idea, we realized that it just might work (the Lord willing and gas prices don't rise). I'll add more about this topic later. For now, I have to finish my midterms (!!!).

I intend this place to be somewhere where we will post updates about our trip: pictures, laudatory comments about hospitable communities, musings from four liberally educated college grads, and, of course quotes from Tom. Always those.

Today's Tom Quote: "How is that nerdy? Knowing the historiography of the ancient world? That's not nerdy at all!"

Under the Mercy,
--Keaton
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