1,000 Hit Winner!

Congratulations go out to Ruel, for being the 1,000th hit on this blog. It’s exciting that it was Ruel who hit the mark. He was my right-hand-man at LBBC and was responsible for the most creative stuff ever seen. You never knew what he would do next but you always knew it was going to be good. So, congratulations again, my friend!

And as a token of my esteem, I’ve pulled out that stick of butter I’ve been saving all these years. It’s got hair all over it but I’m sure it will taste great on popcorn!

An Audience With the Queen

We are taking a trip to Great Britain in just a couple of weeks. We are doing a house swap with a couple from Wales. We made a love connection through a home exchange website about a year ago and we’ve been making preparations ever since. The folks from Wales move into our house and we move into theirs. This will be our first “real” vacation that does not involve visiting or staying with relatives. And it’s our first trip to Europe. And no, we don’t feel strange about someone else living in our house. In fact, it’s good to know the house will be lived in and taken care of while we’re gone.

But at the moment, everyone is going but me. We applied for our passports on March 23. The lady at the post office advised us that spending the money to expedite was foolish, a complete waste and that we’d have our passports in 4-6 weeks. No problem. So I listened to the lady. It’s been over 15 weeks and I’m still waiting for mine. I applied at the same time as my girls, and Sheri applied a week after me. They have all received their passports but of course, these things only happen to me.

The passport website congratulates me that my passport is being processed. In fact, it’s been faithfully congratulating me for 15 weeks. As instructed, I have sent an email every day for the past two weeks with no reply. Numerous calls to the information center have just gotten me disconnected. I’ve even tried calling numerous times to get an appointment in San Francisco to get a passport in person. But the phone lines are so jammed that I just keep getting disconnected. Today I am crippled with back and leg pain so I thought, I’ll work a bit and call in.

My first three calls were disconnected. I read on a website that you need to push 1-3-1 quickly and then do it again before the robot man disconnects you. I did that several times and after a 22-minute wait, I got through. Everything was going fine until the last four digits of my social. Then the entire nation-wide system crashed. It was down for over two hours.

So I call back but the same thing keeps happening. I cannot get past the robot man. Then, finally, after another 38 minutes I get to talk with a real person. She told me that my passport was sent to the new processing center in Charleston, NC. The rest of my family had theirs processed in San Francisco. Again, I don’t know how I get singled out for this treatment but I do. So, the nice lady kindly put an “expedite” order on my passport and told me that they won’t get the email in Charleston for another 72 hours. Now that’s interesting because when I email people, they get it in about 5 seconds.

Since it takes the government 72 hours to send and receive an email I thought I should cover my bases and go with a plan B. Since you can apply in person in San Francisco, this would be my backup. But the problem is that you need to resubmit everything you did in the first place. This means a new birth certificate, a new application, and new passport photos. Never mind that that they already have your stuff, they need it all again. So I call my mother and ask her to go to the Wright County courthouse to get a certified copy of my birth certificate. Thanks Mom. She even sent it overnight.

I get back on the phone and try to make an appointment at the passport agency. This takes over 5 hours of persistence. It took about 20 minutes to get connected and the rest of the time moving through the glacially slow government phone tree. It searched day by day for a first available appointment. It took about 45 minutes for each day to be searched. It was a horrible process. I finally got an appointment but unfortunately it was for the day before I leave. I guess that’s better than nothing.

A couple of days later I get back on the phone to check on my “expedited” status. Again, I am braced for a few hours on the phone to get through. But much to my amazement, I don’t get put on hold and I talk to a real live person immediately. Wow! And the news gets even better. She tells me that Fed Ex is delivering my passport and I should have it in less than 2 hours. The doorbell ring 30 minutes after we talk and I have a passport in hand. A miracle.

I plan to blog our way through the British Isles if I can get some decent and free internet access. So, in a couple of weeks watch for the photos and the interesting stories I am sure will happen to us. I’m hoping to have an audience with the Queen. Perhaps she will knight me.

CrAzY wEeK

What a crazy week. Crazy I tells yah. My life was taken up by a very ambitious project. Our summer theme with our kids is “Get your kicks from Psalm 66.” Our two mascot puppets, Sven & Ole, are taking a trip from Chicago to L.A. on Route 66. We’re also showing clips from Pixar’s Cars. Every week Sven and Ole visit a different city. We then talk about a character from the movie as we explore the wonder that is friendship.

So what took up all my time was the idea that we put a car on our puppet stage, gave it eyeballs and make it talk. We put our friend, Kathy, in a mechanic’s outfit and had her talk with Rusty the car. After getting a car donated (you know how I hate to pay for props) we stripped it clean, cut it in half, then cut the top off. We turned the car on its side so it would fit through the door, then reattached the top. It took a lot of tinkering by our friend Jerry to give Rusty a mouth and moving eyeballs. It took a week of working 14-15 hour days but we got it done.

The kids all knew something was up but they had no idea what they were going to see. When the curtain opened, there was complete silence. We thought there would be oohs and aahs but they sat there in shock. It was like they were inside a Disneyland dark ride. Needless to say, I’m exhausted. So that explains my silence for a week.

The Sunday before all these doing we put on a giant water carnival for our kids called “Summer Splash.” We had over 350 of the wee-folk come to church in their swimsuits. The fire department came and opened up their water canon on the kids. They blasted one little guy off his feet. One of our counselors went over to him and asked, “Are you alright, Garret?” He replied, “Wow! That was just like playing with God!”

Check out our church photo website here.

Look for Summer Splash and Route 66 Debut. And feel free to check out the other photo sets. The one on our annual meeting is especially exciting.

Ski Patrol

Here’s a complicated method you can use to get free chiropractic treatment. It worked for me. As I mentioned earlier, I was a novice skier when I had the opportunity to go on a youth trip to Colorado. I was working at Wagner Drug as assistant manager at the time and I was making about $5.50 an hour. That was big bucks then. I saved up to buy a pair of skis and boots from Hansen Sports next to the drugstore. I remember the whole package, including poles cost be a little over $200.

With my new gear we headed to Colorado. We stayed at a youth hostel near Breckenridge if my memory is correct. We had a great trip out in a blizzard but being from Minnesota, it didn’t bother us at all. Each day we went to a new ski area. I remember the day we were to ski at Vail, we couldn’t get in because President Ford was skiing there and the secret service had the place locked down.

Jeff and Sandy decided that the best method for teaching me to ski was to bring me to the top of the mountain where the only way down was black diamond runs. It was more survival than proper ski technique. But toward the end of the week I was starting to catch on. My form was dweebesque but I wouldn’t let myself fall no matter how stupid I looked.

One day during lunch in the lodge at Breckenridge, I had an idea. I took some butter pats and used a cloth napkin to launch them at the ceiling. Several of them stuck. Most of them stuck in the same area. At least I was good at something. But after about a dozen flings an employee busted me and I was escorted off the property and my lift ticket was taken away. But I was sneaky and I gave them the lift ticket from the previous day and went back to skiing once the coast was clear.

That afternoon is began to snow quite heavily. It was coming down gently in giant flakes and soon a bed of pure Colorado powder began to form. I remember watching Sandy come down the hill. Suddenly, she disappeared in a huge cloud of powder. When the snow cleared, Sandy was gone. We thought that was funny until she stayed gone for about two minutes. Then we thought, “Maybe we better look for her.” We went straight to the area and could not find any trace of her. Did we imagine seeing her? Nope. She was real. We dug around and poked around and then someone in our group saw a glove trying to break through the surface. Figuring it was her and hoping it wasn’t the Yeti playing with her glove after eating her, we gave the glove a pull and out came Sandy. She was laughing but was a bit blue from the cold and lack of oxygen.

On the last run of the last day, we were headed down an intermediate slope. Before us was a small jump someone had constructed. One-by-one everyone hit the jump. By now my confidence afforded me a shot at it too. I hit the jump square on, caught my tip upon landing, and wiped out in a giant cartwheel. One of my skis gave me a severe karate chop to the back. I also landed in a twisting fashion further injuring the aforementioned spine.

As I lay on the ground with my back in a complete spasm, a stranger came over to me and told me not to move. He was convinced my back was broken and I risked paralysis if I moved even a little finger. I assured him my spine was not broken and that I just needed help getting down the hill. But now a small crowd was gathering and the ski patrol was called in. Before I could stand up and prove to them my spine was not broken, the ski patrol was there. But maybe this wasn’t such a bad thing. My back was really hurting and so spazzed-out that I knew that I wouldn’t be able to ski down the hill. Maybe they could give me a ride on their snowmobile and all would be well.

But that’s not how the ski patrol does things. They take the cautious route. They treated me like a major spine injury. They completely bundled me up with every board and bandage on the mountain. Then they placed me in their red sled and pulled me down the hill. I couldn’t move my pinky I was wrapped up so well. On the way down people kept skiing over to get a look at me. I’d smile and they looked at me as though I were dying and gave me sympathy smiles back.

Once in the infirmary they unwrapped me. I immediately moved my arms and legs and they freaked out. I think they convinced themselves that I would never walk again. But all was well, sort of. They gave me some muscle relaxants for the long trip home and sent me on my way. I don’t remember much of the trip back due to the drugs but I think I was laying down.

Back home, My mom brought me in to see the our chiropractor. Fred Cox was a place kicker for the Minnesota Vikings and he was a chiropractor. He also attended our church. So in I went to get diagnosed. The first thing he did was to get a full spine x-ray. I waited on the sofa for the film to be developed. When it was ready, I limped into his office with my mother. I thought x-rays only showed bones. I had no idea that they also showed other parts in great detail. But there I was. My groinitals showed up on the x-ray in complete detail. And it was in front of my mother for goodness sake. And Fred just kept pointing and talking. Jeeze!

A couple days later I was back into the clinic for the full treatment. They put those shock pads on me and slowly built up the voltage. Then they took in for an infrared treatment. In the mean time, some other person went on the shocker treatment. When I was done with the infrared, they brought me back for more shock treatment. But instead of resetting the machine for 4 (my shock number) they left it on 30 (the other person’s shock number). The blast sent me flying off the bed in a seizure and made me unable to walk again. Fred treated me for free after that incident.

So that’s the story of how a simple ski trip turned into one of injury, a drugged stupor, an embarassing display of my x-ray’d man parts to my mother, and an electrocution with subsequent free treatment.

Almost done. I seem to remember one of my friends (Sandy?) telling me that they went back to Breckenridge years later and found a large oil stain on the ceiling of the main lodge cafeteria. Could it had been the butter pats?