I’m back in the 509! That’s Spokane for those that don’t know. Flew in a few days ago. It's been hard to adjust back to “real life” now that tour is over. I'm preparing for the road again with LeeRoy and can’t wait to get out there! I’ve been buying supplies and yeah, spending way too much money. New shoes, new cell phone and I'm thinking about getting a newer smaller tent.
For the last 6 weeks I have been on tour selling merch for the band “Spoken” and telling as many people about my project (needle2square.com) as I can. We started in Dallas and have driven everywhere from San Antonio to Denver to Vegas to Reno, Missoula, Seattle, and Calgary just to name a few. EVERY SINGLE DAY has been a new adventure. So many great things happened while I was on tour and I'll share some of those stories later but for now, you’ve got to hear this one. It happened about a month ago in a little town way up North in Canada…..
We had the night off so we hit up a bar called Fynnagan’s and asked if we could come and play some acoustic songs. They agreed. Fynnagan’s is a small spot on the edge of town. It’s one of those places that seems packed even if only ten people show up that night. You know… small towns are like that. Matt Baird, the singer, Matt Roberts, the guitar player and I were the only ones that went out. The rest of the boys stayed at the hotel. We took it over that night! We had so much fun. Matt Baird was only planning on playing for an hour and it quickly turned in to 2 1/2 hours. He ended up playing a few songs multiple times because the people couldn’t get enough of his sweet jams. I love to get the good times rolling and hype it up wherever I go. I was talking to everyone who walked in the door, learning everyone’s names, making sure everyone was having a good time! We played some pool and darts and just had a killer time. Matt Baird started playing and after a few songs I yelled at everyone in the bar, "We are all in this together so y'all better sing along!"
Matt started doing cover songs and one of them was Bon Jovi’s “Livin on a Prayer”. If you can imagine 20 strangers in this little bar with their hands in the air singing at the top of their lungs. “WWOOOAAAHH, WE’RE HALFWAY THERE. WOAH, LIVIN ON A PRAYER. TAKE MY HAND. WE’LL MAKE IT I SWEAR….LIVIN’ ON A PRAYER” It was like a scene out of a movie.
By now the ice was broken and the conversations began. Matt mentioned that I was walking across America with a goat. People always look at me like I’m crazy and ask why. I tell them about Uzima which leads to talking about my faith. You get the picture.
Most amazing moment of the night... Matt finished his set with a worship song that he wrote. Oh man, it was perfect. No one was talked. Everyone sat in silence as Matt poured out his heart in worship to the Lord in front of perfect strangers that I'm convinced had never seen or heard a worship song before…let alone in a bar. Their bar. You could feel things happening in the room. I wish you could have seen the people soaking up every word he sung. As soon as he put down the guitar people start asking him questions and it was just a perfect…beautiful moment. Those interactions are what this trip is about as well as saving babies in Africa.
I’ve got to say, I miss those guys. That tour was good times.
Alright, back to the walk… I feel like I’m starting to run out of time to get back out there. I'll be back on the road before you know it...and I'm cool with that. I’m ready for more! More blisters…more backpacks….more goat horns and rap tracks. My mom has been talking about coming out to join me for a part of this leg of the trip. We’re thinking this is how it would work best. I'm going to give LeeRoy a break and have him trailored through Colorado and I will run (yes, run) across the complete state. Stop laughing. Sounds crazy, I know, but you just wait. I have a whole list of things I want to do on this walk! Things like run a state, swim a lake, bounce a ball across a state just to name a few. Anyone have any other crazy suggestions for me? Colorado is about 500 miles across so if I run 15 miles in the morning and 15 miles at night I should make it in about 17 days. My current training program of energy drinks and Youtube is really gonna pay off! I can feel it! But for real, having my mom following me in her car carrying my gear will be great.
Oh, one other thing, I signed up for online school and it starts this summer. I know what you’re thinking…why add something like that? The thing is, I need to finish my AA and I figured there is no time like the present! I may fail completely but if I was able to finish my credits and get my AA on this walk that would be a huge accomplishment for me and will probably a story in itself. Haha… pray for me. I’m gonna need it!
No comments:
Post a Comment