Been Working

Whoaaaaaaa. What? July?? Really?

I hate doing these kinds of blogs but I think it is necessary seeing as it's what?? November?!?! HOLY CRAP!

Well since July . . . August was filled with being on the road driving across Canada. That trip lasted into September. Then September kept me busy with the Hark The Herons side project I've been working on. We planned on starting to record in September so between recording and getting songs prepared for recording that ended up being a busy month. October saw us back in Canada, Alberta to be exact, for a week long tour ending at the Canadian Gospel Music Awards. Plus lots of editing and continued recording for the aforementioned HTH project. And here we are in November, still working on the album plus touring plus trying to maintain a healthy home life. Blogging has taken a back seat.

I have been reading though. Here's a couple of books I've read lately. The Grand Weaver and The Ice Master. Very different books but both really good.



















And the one I am currently reading, Kiss by Ted Dekker and Erin Healy. I've liked Dekker's books before and this one is turning out to be pretty good too.

And here are a few pics from the recording process. For those of you who have asked, expect the album in the Spring sometime and a website in the new year. We'll try to get all official in 2010!

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Outliers, The Story Of Success - Malcolm Gladwell

I've been wanting to get my hands on this book for a while. I've read both "The Tipping Point" and "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell and really enjoyed them so I figured Outliers would be good too. I saw an interview with him on "The Hour" (a Canadian talk show) and back in January I heard about the 10,000 hour rule he talks about and really wanted to get into this book. The library finally got to me in their queue of holds and now that I've read it I'm thinking about things differently. I'm looking at things through the "Outliers" lens.

It's got me thinking, how do I raise my children in such a way that they will have the best opportunities to succeed? I've thought that before but not in this way. You see, this book talks about how successful people, REALLY successful people, like top athletes, musicians, scientists . . . all worked hard but not only that had a series of seemingly random events in their life that brought them to the top of their profession. Without those events, without meeting specific people, without world events happening like they did, without being born in their specific month or year, their successes may have eluded them. So is there any way to manufacture that?

It's also got me wondering, what am I spending 10,000 hours on? What am I going to become an expert in, if anything? Gladwell explains a study which was done that tells how people who spend 10,000 hours at a specific task are the ones that become the top in their field. The study suggests "there are no naturals". What sets people apart in their ability is how much time they have spent on their skill.

"In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again."
Daniel Levitin

This goes against my understanding of how things work but as I look through this lens I can see how it can make sense. So now I wonder if the gifted ones or "naturals" are really just the ones who enjoy working on their specific skill the most which enables them to get in their 10,000 hours? Who knows? I do know that this book was a great read and one I'm sure you would enjoy.

GL

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The Glorieta Baldy Challenge

**If you have run Glorieta Baldy I'd love to keep a tally of the best times here so drop a comment with your time and I'll keep updating the blog with the newest times.**

I've spent the last week in Glorieta New Mexico which sits at about 7500 feet above sea level. So for the first few days I was constantly out of breath and needing to drink lots of water. After a couple of days which included some short runs and some extra napping I was feeling like my body had acclimatized so I decided at the end of the week I would try a pretty crazy run, at least by my standards.

There is a mountain peak here called Glorieta Baldy with a trail that takes you right to the top. The peak puts you at about 10,300 feet. It's a pretty advanced hiking trail with some serious elevation changes over short distances. The rumour around the camp here is that someone has run up and down in just under 2 hours. So I thought I would give it a try and see how close I could come.

I started in front of our hotel, The Hall of States, ran to the trailhead and continued up to Baldy only stopping my watch when I got to the top. My time to the peak was 1:31:23 The last 1.5 miles feel like they are pretty much straight up and are very difficult to do any running in. But when I reached the top the view was worth all the work. Here's a picture from the top looking down at the camp.


And this is the lookout tower you can climb up to get above the tree line for a great 360 view.

Coming down was much quicker and hurt just as much, just in different places. I made it back to the hotel in 2:27:53.

Here are some stats on the trail.

Total climb - 2,699 ft.
Top Elevation - 10,200 ft.
Distance up - 5.1 mi (from trailhead)

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Living Green On The Road

Road life isn't exactly conducive to reducing, reusing or recycling. My northern friends would be surprised at the lack of recycling options there are down south. We drink a lot of water when we are on the road which means a ton of water bottles that usually just get thrown in the garbage. Plus since we are eating out a lot we often have packaging for our food or Styrofoam plates that all just get thrown out. This has been nagging at me. There's gotta be a better way to be a better steward of what we have. So for starters I'm trying this out.

Instead of water bottles or Styrofoam cups I'm going to try and just refill this aluminum Sigg bottle with tap water wherever I'm at. It's been fun to watch people's reaction when I ask for tap water. It's almost like they can't believe someone would actually drink it. Well I'll do it. I'll give it a shot.

Next will be bringing out my own dishes so I don't use Styrofoam. I heard that Canadian rocker Sam Roberts or his wife does that. We'll see . . .

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Garden Pics, Espaliered Trees, Rain Barrel

After days of hard work here's how our garden is looking today. For those of you who wanted to know, you'll see our espaliered fruit trees and our rain barrel too. Looking forward to seeing how everything looks when I get back from my next trip!

Facebook Photo Album

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On The Edge Of The Dark Sea Of Darkness

An interesting thing about this book is that is was written by one of my label mates, Andrew Peterson. Writing music and books! Wow. Inspiring.

I just spent the weekend in Denmark with my band. A weekend overseas means lots of travel time for reading. A sleepless night while in Denmark also allowed for much reading time! So with all that time to read I just finished Andrew's book "On the Edge Of The Dark Sea Of Darkness."

I like reading children's books. Partly because I'm sort of afraid of reading adult books. They're scary.

If you are into books like Harry Potter or Narnia this book is in that same realm of children's fantasy. Andrew has created quite an imaginary world and has infused his own humour throughout the book. I don't know Andrew all that well but he had me chuckling to myself quite a bit throughout. I'll admit that the beginning felt a bit slow to me but I think that was due in part to learning the characters and the context for the story. Once things got moving I didn't want to put it down. That may have had something to do with my sleepless night in Denmark! And since I read most of it straight through my mind was a little warped. I was thinking about thwaps in my home garden and wondering if I'd have any. And I hoped Slarb, a Fang from Dang wouldn't be anywhere near my children.

Support a great musician and author. Pick up this book and tell your friends about it! While you're there why not grab Andrew's newest album Resurrection Letters Volume 2. I can vouch for the quality of that record too!

GL

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Chirstmas Music, Sping and 11 Years of Marriage

The last few weeks have been quite busy as you can observe by my lack of posts! Fun busy though. We (Downhere) completed recording our first Christmas album. I gotta say it's pretty dang good. It will release in September and is called How Many Kings. We recorded some traditional Christmas songs a few of our own and a few that are just a little wacky. We had fun with it for sure! Marc wrote a post after it was completed.

Then during my home time Sherri and I have been busy working in our gardens. Our gardens, the ones we own! I'm still a little in awe about owning our own property. It is such a gift to be able to own a home. So for our first spring in our home we have been out in the garden quite a bit. I've been able to get my espaliered trees planted and pruned and tied up. A Macintosh apple, Honeycrisp apple and a Redhaven peach tree. We also planted a couple of blueberry bushes to go with our strawberries and raspberries. I'll post some pictures soon. We've planted and transplanted lots!! And the vegetable garden is still to come. I think we'll plant that next week as we have a frost warning still even tonight.

Then this past week Sherri and I celebrated our 11th anniversary! I can honestly say without a doubt this past year was the best one of our marriage and I'm so excited to see what the future will bring for us and our family! Sherri you are a wonderful woman and I feel blessed beyond all measure to have you in my life let alone being my wife! I love you! Sherri did a post about our 10th anniversary last year which we celebrated in style. This year however, only dinner and a movie. Oh well.

GL

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Rain Barrel Line Up

At the crack of 7:30AM I left the house to go get a subsidized rain barrel for my yard. I was hoping to get a couple but didn't organize myself fast enough to enlist the help of neighbours. The deal is you can get one from the region for only $30 but only 1 per family/household. First come first served. Anyway, below is a quick little video of the line up Dad and I had to wait in to pick ours up. It was HUGE!!! Our town is crazy about rain barrels I guess!!

The nice thing was we spent the day out in the yard trying to get things looking good. We finished cleaning up and I saw some dark clouds coming so I thought I might be able to get the down spout in place before the rain started, then I would catch myself some rain. I was totally soaked by the end of it but we now have ourselves a full barrel of rain water which we can use for our garden.

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