Daniel On Top Of The World

While Ali and I were on our San Francisco trip Daniel was on a 21 day wilderness trip with his school, Coastal Mountain Youth Academy. Here he is at 10,834 feet, on the summit of Mount San Jacinto in the San Bernadino mountains. This accomplishment came towards the end of the program which included activities such as high ropes, rock climbing and backpacking. This was certainly an experience of a lifetime for Daniel and the other young adventurers, and one that they will never forget.

The Amazing City Of San Francisco

It was a beautiful day so I was able to get a good panorama. This was 9 photos stitched together. You gotta love Photoshop! Unfortunately at this size it doesn't give the full impact.

One of the most famous and most recognizable bridges in the world. The Golden Gate bridge from the North shore.

San Francisco City Hall. There are some amazing buildings in this city - old and new!

Side by side...
Groovy!
Reflected...

Surrounded...
Looking straight up from street level.

The city area is huge. Block after block after block of tall buildings. There's not a lot of flat ground so you're going up and down a lot. It adds to the feeling of constant motion and the buzz of something always happening.

This guy was rocking out on the city street corner in the full blazing sun. he was pretty good too. Actually, this city is one place where you'll see it all. Lots of creativity, lots of money, lots of degradation and moral decay, and more homeless people than I've ever seen anywhere in the Western world. It was quite confronting actually.

There are some seriously steep streets... like a rollercoaster.

The Palace of Fine Arts, a Roman-style remainder of the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. The outdoor rotunda, and its lagoon, are some of the city's most-photographed sights.

These ruins are amazing. Just like being in Rome... well, maybe not, but impacting all the same.

We loved seeing San Francisco. A beautiful city for sure but underneath the gloss there's a lot of pain and dirt - more than she'd have you know.

Cookin' a Break!

Beat Box Kitchen

This guy is talented! I thought it was worth sharing. Enjoy.

Brooke Fraser in LA at the Hotel Cafe

On Monday night Bryce (Green) and I went into LA to the Hotel Cafe to see Brooke Fraser play live. What a funky little venue! It's been a while since I've been to a venue like that and when we walked in I thought we might need night vision glasses. It's a small and intimate club where relatively unknown bands of generally a gentler leaning come and play. One band each hour starting at 7pm. The crowd ebbs and flows with the talent. I felt sorry for the guy who was on after Brooke, as the room emptied when her set was done.

Brooke did a great set consisting of Lifeline and Arithmetic from her first album, What To Do With Daylight, and a whole bunch of tunes from her latest album, Albertine. As always she was vocally exquisite and these songs come straight from her heart.
This album is outstanding. Brooke is an amazing songwriter - eloquent and musical, emotive and credible. This CD has stood the test of "endless repeats" in the car. There are not many albums that can go the distance for me, but this one does. You have to get it!

DecembeRadio Blaring Out Across Orange County

Last night we went to see DECEMBERADIO play at The Flock just down the road here in Irvine. It was a 7pm start at Woodbridge Community Church with about 100 people in attendance. I'm still amazed by this - a Grammy nominated band, nominated for 4 Dove awards, a single that's done really well - and no crowd...

These first two photo's give you a pretty good idea of how the night went. It was rockin'! This really took me back to the early 90's when I used to play in a rock covers band. I must find a photo or two from those days to put up!

These are the influences they list on their MySpace site: "Black Crowes, Audioslave, Lenny Kravitz, Led Zeppelin, Porcupine Tree, King's X, Tonic, Thornley, Aerosmith, etc". Actually, I think they left one or two out. They sound remarkably like Giant - remember them from the early 90's? I loved 'em! Perhaps just a touch of AC/DC too. They describe their sound as Guitar Rock with soaring melodies and musical heroics. That's pretty close I reckon.

This boy can sing! He's pretty good with the rock poses too :-)

Well I must say I thoroughly enjoyed the night and we were home by 9pm... Only in America!

This is their debut album. Great production. Great Rock'n'roll!

Lincoln Brewster

I recently attended the Saddleback Worship & Creative Arts Conference at Saddleback Church which is only 25 minutes from where we live. They had an incredible line up of contributors there speaking, performing, leading worship and giving workshops. Rick Warren, Erwin McManus and The Urban Poets, Tim Hughes, Vicki Beeching, Lincoln Brewster, Abe Laborial & Friends, Kay Warren, Jimmy & Carol Owens, Brenton Brown, Paul Baloche... and the list goes on and on. An incredible roster of talent. It was 3 days of great input and inspiration.

Lincoln Brewster has long been a favorite of mine - mostly for his blistering guitar playing and tastiness. He and his band rocked the house on the Wednesday night, leading us all in worship and exuberant praise.

Oh yeah! Play that thang!

Form

On our trip up the coast I was killing time while waiting for Ali to come out of a shop... actually I wasn't killing time, I was using it to relax and to look for things to catch my eye so I could take a shot. I just liked the colors and form of this park bench and background.

Californian Coast

A couple of weeks ago we took the opportunity to have a week off and go on a road trip from Orange County to San Fransisco and back. Daniel was in the middle of a 21 day Wilderness trip with his school so Ali and I took our time seeing the sights of the Californian countryside. We set off with no particular schedule but to drive up Pacific Coast Highway (1) and enjoy the sights.

What an awesome trip! The natural landscape is spectacular - from jagged rocks and ranges to wide plains, from beautiful white sandy bays to sheer cliffs, from rolling hills to sand dunes to towering peaks, from boring dry brown desert to brightest blue skies and seas, fields of green crops and kaleidoscopic fields of flowers. Everything in America is big and on a big scale, and I wonder if that bigness is just a reflection of the amazing land that is USA.

I've gathered a few photo's from the trip here. Of course I took many more but this may give you just a taste.

Just outside the town of Solvang which is a town that was settled by the Danish. You'd swear you were in Denmark as you walk around this town. Anyway, you come around a corner and see this sight and just go WOW!

A couple of miles further on we had this striking contrast.

We stayed a night in Seaside, just outside Monteray. The next morning we went back in to Monteray and saw these seals basking on the rocks. Basking is probably the wrong word as it was very misty, almost raining.

Further up the coast we saw the Elephant Seal colony. These guys were basking, although the effort it takes them to haul themselves this far up the beach seems to make them pretty sleepy.

I can't remember the name of this place but this old lighthouse has been there many years. It no longer operates.

The actual road itself is pretty awe-inspiring. There are some amazing feats of engineering just in the road - this bridge included.

Of course, you can't go to San Fransisco and not see the Golden Gate Bridge. And what a beautiful day we had for it. You can drive (way) up the side of a hill to get views like this (well almost, the girl was a bonus! I ended up taking her home.)

My own Golden Gate Bridge postcard shot!

The Police Adventure

On the 23rd of June we made the trek from Orange County into LA to go to the Police Concert at Dodger Stadium. We had been looking forward to this little bit of history and to being able to be a part of it.
Most of the trip is pretty straight forward - just lots of cars and billboards for miles!
Straight up the I-5 Freeway for almost an hour and you're almost there... then it's a bit of a maze. Los Angeles is like a huge bowl of spaghetti! You have to really be concentrating. We actually missed our exit coming home and ended up driving around for an hour before we were back on track.
This is Dodger Stadium (with LA central in the background). It's probably a great Baseball venue but it's not a great concert venue. The sound was very disappointing and the view wasn't too good either unless you were directly in front. However there were a lot of good songs and everyone was singing along whenever they could (55,000 of them!) so there was a great atmosphere.

We thought we'd get into the spirit of things and because we were at the famous Dodger Stadium I had a beer and a hot dog and Ali had a margarita and a hot dog. Yep, classic American culture.

When we came out of the concert we came out a different way than we went in and couldn't find our car in the parking lot for about half an hour. We obviously weren't the only ones as there was a cacophony of car horns and alarms blaring as people tried to locate their cars. Once we realized we were in the wrong car park completely it didn't take too long to find our car. Funny that!

We ended up finally getting home at about 1am and getting about 5 hours sleep before we had to get up and set up for church. So overall it was a great experience and it was worth it for the memories.

Heart and Soul, Rock Worship!

Leeland Mooring is the lead singer and writer of most of the songs. His brother Jack is on keys and co-writes on some tunes. This is definitely a band sound though. Fresh and Passionate. Great songs coming straight from the heart. These guys have a very big future indeed. We were blessed to be able to see them back in May, live at Harvest Christian Church in Riverside (Pastor Greg Laurie).

If you haven't heard this album yet, chase it down. It's musically and lyrically fresh and will inspire you to worship.

The Loudest Voice

There is a cool little community about 20 minutes from us on Balboa Island near Newport Beach. There's a narrow street of little shops, craft places and unique little fashion places mainly. (It's very unlike the rest of Orange County!) But there's also a very cool art gallery/shop there that we've enjoyed looking through a few times. I saw this statement on one of the creations there and thought it was quite pertinent. I know it's often like this for me anyway. How about you?
Found this outside one of the little shops. I thought it was worth a shot.

Spirit West Coast at Del Mar Fairgrounds

On Saturday 26th May Daniel and I drove down the 5 Freeway (I should say crawled! It took 2 hours to travel what should have taken 1) to Del Mar Fairgrounds where the annual Spirit West Coast Festival was happening. Paul Colman had managed to get us tickets into the event for that day. How cool! This was the second time we have seen Delirious in 3 months and the second time we had seen Newsboys in 3 months too. They both rocked, but I must say Newsboys sure know how to put on a show. They would be possibly the best show I have ever seen. Very impressive!
Paul Colman rocking out on lead guitar for Newsboys. He's doing a great job! Was good to catch up briefly too.
Peter Furler is the consummate performer and a pretty good bloke too. You've gotta go see these guys if you ever get the chance.

Big Weekend At Riverview

Ali, Daniel and I have just returned from 2 weeks back in Australia. After being in California for 6 months we took the very, very long trek back to Perth to take part in the Big Weekend at Riverview , including the Worship Recording. There was a lot of rehearsing, many meetings and much catching up with people - but not a lot of sleep! It was brilliant to be there though and be reminded that we are part of a GREAT church and that God is really up to something and we have the privilege of being a part of it.

What an amazing time we had there! The Big Weekend was incredible with Alun Davies and Andrae Olivier delivering fantastic messages. The creativity was once again absolutely brilliant - the art, multimedia and dance going to new levels, and the worship times magnificent. It was a great honour for us to have Mark and Darlene Zschech with us for that weekend and particularly since we were recording. Their input across the weekend was gold, as always.

I had so been looking forward to leading worship but in the thick of it I lost my voice and was unable to contribute the way I would have liked. It did give me the opportunity to sit out front though and see Ali being part of it. I was able to get some shots - and yes, that is Darlene Zschech out front! Very cool.

I was particularly proud of the worship team over the time we were there too. They are doing a magnificent job.

Eyecatching

Well, I sure have some catching up to do here! So much has happened in the last three months, but I've been unable to share it with you because of the status of my blog... I'll try to fill you in on the interesting things. But for now, something purely aesthetic.

This electrical transformer box caught my eye while we were in Perth. I loved the rich colours of green and rust and the way the elements have aged and weathered what was once a nice neat box. It's not always the clean and perfect that commands our attention. It's not always the fresh and new that speaks to us of deeper beauty.
[Now here is my dilemma now I live in the US - should I spell like an Australian or an American?!]

Back In Business

Well, finally I have my blog back! As you can see by the date of my last post, it's been almost 2 months since I "lost my blog". I actually deleted it by mistake. Well, what I was trying to do was change my email address (Riverview email addresses have changed format), but I could not figure out how to change the email address in my Google account, so I thought I would just delete my Google account and start again. What I did not know was that my Blogger account is part of my Google account and with one "click" I lost the lot. There was a sudden sinking feeling followed by "Oh, nooooo!" (and some other phrases I won't bore you with!) Now, some 6 or 7 weeks later, after emailing Google's help team and being very, very patient while waiting for a reply, we are back in business. So I'll be able to keep everyone up to date with every detail of what's happening in our lives again (but just because I'm able doesn't mean I will does it?!)

Good to see you all again! Ciao!