Home Sweet Home

Almost two weeks have now passed since I began my big journey to Indiana and arrived here to settle down for the upcoming year. I don’t know how all to explain what I’ve experienced and seen in the past few days so I think I’ll just give it a State by State rundown of the highlights. Please don’t blame me for making you read this.

Oregon
The time I had in Oregon for summer was awesome. God blessed me with an unexpected 4^th of July on a sail boat in the Columbia river with friends and later that day I got to spend an evening with my brother and my nieces and nephew. I also got to spend several days with my longtime friend Aaron and his roommate from Alaska as we explored several of Oregon’s scenic areas including the beaches, lakes, and rivers.

On July 12^th my roommate, who was moving back to Colorado, and I headed out on our journey Eastward. As we traveled I decided to take pictures along the way to document the journey. You can see the best of those in my photo gallery on Flickr. My friend Aaron also gave me a traveling partner in the form of an inflatable donkey. I named him Balaam but unlike the biblical donkey that Balaam rode, he didn’t prove to be much of a talker on the trip. Of course that might be a good thing since Balaam’s donkey was used by God to oppose the trip that Balaam was making. I’m assuming therefore that God was endorsing this trip I was on. My logic might be flawed, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Idaho
What can I say about Idaho? Balaam proved to be my entertainment on those long boring stretches between Twin Falls and the Utah border as car after car would pass me by and take a double look at my long eared passenger.

Utah
Utah brought more people staring at Balaam as we made our way down I-84 to the I-80 interchange East of Ogden. Once we started heading into the mountains, the scenery was rather pretty with some interesting rock formations and enough winding curvy roads to keep my driving interesting.

Wyoming
I almost missed getting a picture of the welcome to Wyoming sign. But if you ask me that wouldn’t have been so bad because the “Wyoming: Beef Country” sign was better anyway that was only a few miles down the road. Wyoming actually had several interesting signs. The giant 20 foot tall ice cream cones might have been my favorite. I can imagine little kids nagging their parents for what must seem like eternity, begging for an ice cream cone because they just passed a huge billboard for one. The problem is…those ice cream cones are only 150 miles away and the signs keep popping up the entire distance across the state of Wyoming.

Colorado
Here again I was blessed with some more summer fun. After dropping off my roommate in Fort Collins, I traveled the short distance down to Denver to spend a day with my cousin there. We decided a fly fishing trip was in order in the Rocky mountains. A friend of his loaded our fishing gear up in his jeep and drove us into the mountains for a fun afternoon of fishing at a high mountain lake. Aside from the lightning and hail storm that we got stuck in, it was a lot of fun. The fishing was slow, although two guys we were with caught 7 nice trout between the two of them.

Kansas
Kansas gets a bad rap for being so flat and boring. The truth be told, much of Colorado is just as flat if not more so, than Kansas. Of course, I don’t know which is worse…advertising ice cream cones for eternity or advertising the world’s largest Prairie Dog and a 5 legged live Cow. You make the call.

Missouri
It’s too bad I drove through most of this state in the dark. Because of this small fact I don’t have any pictures and I can’t make fun of it. Who knows what kind of signs I was missing. The world’s largest Hamster maybe? Or the 101 legged centipede? I guess I’ll just have to wait until I drive through again someday to find out.

Illinois
Did you ever play with Lincoln Logs as a kid? Or do you remember being told that Abraham Lincoln grew up in a log cabin? Well they must have been lying to us because I didn’t see any trees big enough in Illinois to make a log house out of. What I did see was miles and miles of corn. In fact, one city I saw was completely obscured by the corn fields. Only the 60 foot high signs gave any hint that life existed beyond those corn fields.

Indiana
The line between Illinois and Indiana is obscure. I mean, one corn field begins and another one ends but who knows exactly where that is. Maybe that’s why Indiana decided to place their “Welcome to Indiana” sign upwards of 2 miles inside the state line instead of the customary hundreds of feet like most states. Maybe they just wanted to make good and sure these corn fields were really theirs and not their neighbor’s to the west.

All in all, my trip out from Oregon was very good and uneventful. Balaam never spoke up and I didn’t experience any car problems. That is until I had finished unpacking my car but that’s another story all together. Now I’m slowly getting settled into my new little apartment and I’ve been feverishly painting the walls and cleaning it up a bit to make it ‘mine.’ It’s a good start to a hopefully great year ahead.

In Case You Haven't Heard

It seems like I’ve been telling people for months now that I would be moving to Indiana this summer, but every so often I run into somebody that hasn’t heard yet. So in case you haven’t heard, this post is for you!

In the next week or so I’ll be leaving for Indiana to start my new position with OMS. I decided earlier this spring that once my time was finished with Dave Graffenberger, I would begin working at the OMS headquarters as a part time assistant to Dean Davis. Dean is the International Director of Every Community for Christ, which is the same department that I was working in while I was acting as Dave’s assistant. Other than my location, not a lot will be changing for me. I’ll get to travel around the world with Dean just like I did with Dave and there will be some other projects that I’ll participate in once I get to Indiana. The biggest of these projects will be the production of a video for ECC that we are hoping to have finished up by May of 2008.

As for my trip to Indiana, many people have asked how I’m getting there. I’ve learned a lot of cool car packing tricks from my time overseas so I've decided to give it a try myself. Next week I'll load my car up as much as possible then drive it 2000+ miles to Indiana. Those things which don’t fit into or on top of my car will just be left behind for now. If you get a glimpse of an overloaded VW Jetta running on the interstates, say a little prayer for me and my safe journey!

A few people have asked if they’ll ever see me in Oregon again. The answer to that is Yes! In October I am planning a trip out for the OMS missions in the Northwest conference. This will be held in Clackamas, Oregon on the weekend of October 5-6, 2007. This event is open to anyone to attend, so be sure to check out the link above for more information concerning it and save the dates on your calendar. In the near future a mailing should be going out giving more details as well. Regarding any other visits I may make to Oregon, I don’t have definite plans for anything just yet. I will say, however, that I have lots of frequent flyer miles to use up and the Oregon Ducks have 7 home football games this year so it might be hard for me to stay away come Saturdays this fall.

My Last Act of Assistance

Last week makred my final week working with Dave Graffenberger. On Tuesday I traveled down to Albany to spend the night at his house and perform my final duties for him. On the schedule was a 2 hour crash course photography lesson for his grandson Levi and a long overdue fly fishing lesson for Dave. Dave had actually asked for his fly fishing lesson last summer, but neither of us found the time to get it done. We didn’t want that to happen again this year so we marked it on our calendar and carried it out as if it were our final trip.

Dave and I got some fishing in on Tuesday night and then again early Wednesday morning. The reality was I didn’t prove to be a very good teacher. Most of the time was spent reacquainting myself with my fly poles and trying to remember just what I was suppose to be doing. This was my first chance to fly fish in over 5 years. In the end, Dave didn’t catch anything and I caught just 2 fish. Even though the fishing was slow it was an awesome way to spend our final time together and enjoy God’s beauty. At one point while we were fishing, a deer walked out on the river bank behind us and stood there watching us for quite some time. No doubt this will be one of my lasting memories of Oregon and Dave Graffenberger as I now look at packing up my stuff and moving to Indiana.