Bigfoot Blog

Andrew and I have been working at the Bailey Country Store this week, and our plan is to get the store open by the end of this month if at all possible - permits permitting.  The shelves are just about finished and we should have the hot water running by the end of the day today.  Next week we'll have more help from the Journey team to put down a laminate floor in the store, and to build the deck and ramp in front.

Working on a 130 year-old store has been... well, interesting to say the least.  Yesterday John came by to help us get the hot water system functioning again.  Of course, since we last worked on the plumbing and fixed all the leaks there've been multiple freezing nights  - resulting in several new splits in the water pipes.  This is strange, since the water has been turned off the whole time.  Anyway, in the process of repairing the new breaks we noticed that all the copper pipes in the back (very cold) hallway aren't used for anything anymore, so we were able to just cap the whole section off and eliminate the source of most of the leaks.  I was climbing around in some of the dark, dank sections of the building yesterday following pipes and searching for leaks, and the thought came to mind, "I wonder what's back in here?  Nobody's been up here for decades... it would be a good place to hide a dead body."  When I shared my thoughts with John he wasn't amused.

On a totally unrelated note:  I've been tracking the story that first came out late last year of a dead bigfoot and a British documentary film company called Minnow Films.  Well, there has been a new development.  Apparently, the film (which has been renamed from "Of Men and Monsters" to "Shooting Bigfoot" will be premiered at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival at the end of this month.  So the claims of one Rick Dyer to having shot and killed an adult male Sasquatch outside San Antonio last September will be confirmed, or we'll chalk it up as one more (albeit creative) hoax.  I for one am hoping for conclusive proof that Bigfoot exists, cause there's a long line of people who'll owe me steak dinners!

The Llama is Angry Again

I've taken quite a long hiatus from my blog!  The main reason is that we've been working flat-out to re-open the Angry Llama Diner, and we're finally there!  We (Journey Church) completely renovated the Conifer Crossings building, adding the "new and improved" Llama Diner, new space for our Mountain Roads Driving School, a gym, a beautiful new meeting room that can hold up to 200, and office space for our church staff.  All the work was done by our church team and an army of volunteers over a period of about five weeks.  I would come home most evenings, have a bite to eat and crash by 8:30.  In my mind I'm still able to work just as hard as I did in my 20's, but at 50 my body says to me every day, "You want me to do WHAT?!?"  They say you're as young as you feel, which would mean I'm about 97 right now. 


One of the cool things about the new Angry Llama is that we've made all the furniture and decorations out of old wooden pallets.  You can see in the pictures on the right that the light fixtures are just pallets hung from the ceiling with a bucket attached as a lamp shade, the tables are made of pallet wood and covered in resin, and all the decorations on the walls are pallet products.

Starting next week we'll head to Bailey to finish all the work on the Bailey Country Store to get it up and running.  Daph and I stopped in at one of the restaurants in Bailey to grab a bite last night, and the waitress said, "I know you - you're the one trying to open the Country Store, right?"  When I told her I was, she replied, "Well hurry up!  We're all getting impatient!"  I've probably heard the same thing from a dozen people in the last month; nice to know the folks in Bailey are behind what we're doing.