Larch Mountain Crater Hike

Today, along with Mike and Jessica Anders, Kelli and I did the Larch Mountain Crater Hike. We were going to do this one in late June but apparently there was still a lot of snow up there. Today there was no snow but it was cold enough to believe that there could be. Driving up there was incredibly foggy and when we got out of the car it was freezing. Still by the time we were done and were up at Sherrard Point it was still very cold.

Minus the impressive toadstools, and the great view from the Point (which on a clear day you can see Mt. Hood, Jefferson, Helens, Adams, and Rainer), the hike in the crater itself was kind of disappointing. Not a ton to see on this one unless you're really impressed by a boggy marsh. It was about 6 miles and the elevation gain was 1300 ft. so it wasn't a real challenging hike either. Here are a few pics but what I'm really excited about is doing the Rock of Ages hike in two weeks with Mike. The description sounds epic and is definitely the toughest hike we've done.

Tyler Ramsey

Tyler Ramsey, the guitarist for Band of Horses has a really good solo record that I've really enjoyed this year.
Perfect rainy day music.

Here's his myspace.

A Long Dream, Ships, Worried are all fantastic and he's got a good cover of Jackson Browne's "These Days" which you can listen to here.

Speaking of "These Days", another good cover is by Denison Witmer which you can listen to here.

I forgot....

...how good this record is.

If you haven't heard it, I highly recommend it.

Budweiser American Ale???

It appears that Budweiser is going to pretend that they're craft brewers after two decades of decreasing sales to try to compete with breweries that actually make beer. Obviously living in the land of the craft microbrew has influenced me in this opinion. Portland not only has the most microbreweries in the world, but in my opinion some of the best beer in the world. With the increasing popularity of craft beers that don't taste like urine mixed with water but actually have taste and substance, it is not all that surprising that Budweiser would pretend to be one of these brewers themselves. After all, only so far you can get by making a Pilsner with mostly rice extract!

I will admit that I have not tasted this beer (I'm not sure it's out yet) but this is my prediction... While Budweiser has no excuse for making bad beer with the money and the research facilities they have, Budweiser American Ale will be mediocre for two reasons:

1. They won't spend the kind of money necessary to make good beer. Their ingredients will be either sub-par or they won't use the amount necessary because they're more interested in making a buck than actually creating a quality beer.

2. Once again, because they are more interested in making a buck than creating good beer, they will create a recipe that almost tastes like a craft beer but will be watered down to appeal to the largest audience of beer drinkers that don't actually know what real ale should taste like. I'm sure it will taste great compared to regular Budweiser, but it won't cut it as a craft beer.

These are my cynical thoughts, but you've got to agree, Budweiser doesn't have a good history of making anything that would qualify as beer! If I'm wrong, I will be more than happy to get on here and repent!

Bears Name Starting QB...

...and it's not Grossman. All in all, that sounds like it's good news. But Kyle Orton isn't much of an improvement to the Bears chances.

It's like your mom telling you that you're not having spinach for dinner, but you are going to have turnips.

Neither option is great.

Go Seahawks!

2008 Music @ the half-way point.

First, I've got to say that at this point last year, there were a lot more quality records than this year. I'm not sure what is going on this year but it's been kind of bleak for good new music. I can think of more disappointments than I can great records (the top of the list for that would be My Morning Jacket's flaming pile or garbage).

That being said, there are four albums that I've found myself going back to again and again and loving. I'll save my commentary for the end of the year, but here they are in no specific order.

Fleet Foxes - S/T

Check them out on Myspace

This is filling the hole My Morning Jacket left in my heart after they decided to become a ridiculously horrible band.














The Everybodyfields - Nothing is Okay

Their Myspace page.

Sweet sounds from the foothills of Tennessee. Actually I'm not sure Knoxville has anything to do with foothills but it should. Bill? Any comment?










A.A. Bondy - American Hearts

Myspace.
















Grand Archives - S/T

The year's first great record as well as the first album Devin Vaughn as ever actually liked that wasn't Elliot Smith or Sigur Ros. You think Pitchfork is tough on music?

Myspace.

NFL

I just want to make a public declaration that this year, because of the Chicago Bears inability/refusal to get a good quarterback instead of keeping the worst quarterback in the league, for the 2008-2009 NFL football season I am officially a Seattle Seahawks fan.

If the Bears decide to finally make a smart decision and get rid of the worthless Rex Grossman, then next year I will consider re-pledging my allegiance back to the team I have rooted for since youth. But for this year I am boycotting the Chicago Bears.

Head Coverings?

After thinking about what would happen when we came up to 1 Cor. 11:2-16 in our series for the last three weeks I was pleased to escape with my life @ Evergreen this morning. I thought the discussion was very helpful, people made some great contributions to the discussion. It's unfortunate that those comments during the discussion time don't show up on the audio file because those times add a lot to the message as a whole. But unfortunately because we don't pass a microphone around, the audio is just me. :(

I know some of you have thought through this passage a lot but I wanted to go ahead and throw it out there as to how I approached it and where I came down. I'd love to hear your comments. This is a tough passage and I hope this can be of help to some other people who are preaching it. Discussing the passage this past week with Bob over email was very helpful as well. It's amazing how even a small form of collaboration can make a sermon that much better.

In any case, you can listen to the audio file here, or you can download the PDF and read it. Hope this is helpful.

A Music Rec...

I've been listening to Human Highway quite a bit which is a collaboration that a few guys from the band Islands recorded.

I think the album cover is hilarious, reminds me of something from a mockumentary. It makes me laugh every time I look at it. You can listen to a few songs on their Myspace.

This is a fun record that you should check out.

Out of Ur Article

Bob just wrote a good article here on going multi-site minus the video venue. Good thoughts. Couldn't agree more.

I obviously have a bias here since I'm the primary teaching elder at Hawthorne but I'm just trying to think how I would have felt had I been doing all of this work for the community, have a gift of preaching and teaching and then having Bob say, "we're going to do a video venue." How insulting that would have been. I dislike video venues for various reasons, many of which are expressed in the article, but one of the major reasons I dislike them is because they steal people's gifts, they rip arms off the body to put things in a more Pauline way. I never want to rob people of using their gifts for the sake of the community in the name of "efficiency" or to boost my own ego.

Quote of the Week

This week Chris Leonardo earned a spot at #1. This just happened tonight:

Dustin: "Chris, name one current running back in the NFL."

Chris (whom replied instantly): "Deion Sanders."

New Fantasy Football Category

I think this year on Yahoo's Fantasy Football they need to create a new category that will help us draft our players: "Criminal Record." I want to see a complete criminal history of the players I pick because I want to know what the chances are that my guy is going to be suspended two weeks into the season for 5 games. If there is a history of gun charges or domestic violence I want to know what percentage chance there is that a potential RB or WR is going to be locked up when I really need him. Is that too much to ask Yahoo?

...a needed rest

This past week I tagged along with Kelli and made a trip down to the southern Oregon coast and into northern California. It was a nice break and I feel a lot more energized now that I'm back. Last Friday and Saturday we had an elders retreat over at the Goff's and I didn't feel like I had anything in my relational bank to really spend on the elders so I felt bad for that. I pretty much just sat their and said very little. I wish I would have had more in me to give, but I was running on an empty tank. This week I was able to refill that tank and I'm looking forward to our baptism/bbq gathering tomorrow!

Anytime I step away for a few days I come to a realization again of how awesome the people in our community are. We've got a really incredible thing going on and I'm thankful to be a part of that!

I'm back and I'm excited to get ready for the head coverings passage next week!