A Christmas Reflection

I lead a couple of Bible studies each week, and we've been looking at the passages in the Gospels that deal with the birth of Christ.  While it's true that we are never instructed in the scriptures to celebrate Christ's birth, and the whole idea behind Christmas trees, red and green colors, Christmas ornaments etc actually goes back to the pagan middle ages.  I don't really care about the origins of those symbols, because in our context today I don't personally know anyone who worships their Christmas tree.  We have a tree too that we cut down in the forest about 20 miles from here.  The forest service is pretty serious about this whole permit thing too; they set up a roadblock at both ends of a 4 or 5 mile stretch of highway that's been designated for tree cutting, and you have to stop to show them your permit before you can go through.  It dawned on my as I was trudging around in the snow with Daphne and the girls that the forest service guys are geniuses - they get tons of fire mitigation done without having to do the work themselves, and they even get paid by those who do the cutting! 

Anyway, my train of thought got derailed there for a moment.  Where I meant to go was to talk about Mary and Joseph and the Christmas story.  It's fun leading these bible studies because most of those who attend are young believers or they're still trying to figure out this whole Christianity idea.  For several of them this is the first time they've ever opened a Bible, so everything they're reading is new and (sometimes) pretty confusing.  I've been around the church and the Bible for so long that I can approach all of this with a "same 'ol same 'ol" attitude, and in the process I miss the wonder of reading the very words of God written for us - words that have the power to change us and heal our hearts.  So as we've been reading through the various Gospel accounts of Jesus' birth, several things have grabbed our attention.  For instance,  when Gabriel appeared to Mary, Joseph and Zacharias (Elizabeth's husband and Mary's Uncle) one of the first things he said was, "Do not be afraid".  Why?  while I'm sure that it must have been terrifying to have an angel suddenly show up in your room,  I believe there's more to it than that.  Throughout the bible God says over and over and over, "Don't be afraid."  I think fear is probably Satan's most effective weapon against Christians.  Fear, worry, and anxiety can so overwhelm us that for all intents and purposes any influence we might have in our society is eliminated.  Joyful, peaceful, restful, thankful Christians are so rare that anyone on the outside would look at the church and wonder what possible benefit they would gain from becoming an insider.  All the same worries and problems, and more rules on top of that.  Yeuk. 

When Gabriel told Mary and Joseph that she would become pregnant by the power of God, they both had to realize the obvious implications of her pregnancy, and what everyone else in the village would be thinking - "Oh, so God got her pregnant?  Right.  That happens all the time!"  They knew they would be rejected, misjudged, and possibly run out of the village - or even worse.  So Gabriel starts by telling both of them not to be afraid, because God is in the middle of this whole bizarre situation.  And to their credit, both Mary and Joseph (who were only in their teens in all likelihood) responded by saying, "OK God."  That's why God chose them, because He knew they had child-like faith that would carry them through the turmoil and distress of the coming months and years.  That's the kind of faith I want  - to be able to rest in God's peace, knowing that I am never forgotten and never alone.  Peaceful.  Restful. Thankful.  Our lives are full of unknowns right now, so I'm encouraged by the example of Mary and Joseph to hold on to what I know to be true about God.

A parade truly Bailey-style

Last Saturday evening we co-hosted (with Chip and the Cutthroat Cafe) this year's  annual "Drive-By Christmas Light Parade".  I once asked Chip why he calls it that, and he replied, "Cause that's about it... we just drive by!"   You never know who's going to show up to be in the parade, and we had to postpone it one week due to the absolutely frigid temperatures last weekend (well below freezing).  This time around we had Logan's trailer stacked with hay bales for the hay ride, a vintage fire truck to lead the parade, another fire truck with lights flashing, two horses decked out with electric lights, my truck strung with intermittent Christmas lights (more on that in a moment), and two Park County deputies to block the highway as the enormous parade crossed on our way down and back.  We had a few people who gathered at the country store to wave us off, and I think one or two who peeked out of their curtains as the procession passed by on our way down county road 64.  We'll have to work on getting our fellow Bailiens (Bailyites? ) more involved in this momentous event next year. 

Anyway, I decided to decorate my truck this time year, and borrowed a voltage inverter to run the lights (you plug it into the cigarette lighter). I wish I had a picture of the finished product, but I was too busy trying to get the whole thing to work for more than 60 seconds to snap a photo.  Don Morrison and I spent at least two hours duck-taping the strings of lights all over the truck, plus we had a metal "sculpture" screwed down in the back with string lights in the shape (loosely) of snowflakes.  We were going to stand one of our wooden sasquatch cutouts wearing a Santa hat in the bed of the truck, but when the wind kicked up I thought it wiser to keep him on terra-ferma.  (I could just imagine sasquatch flying through the air and killing someone on the side of the road - it would be the first confirmed death by sasquatch).  We managed to get all the lights working by 4 in the afternoon, although we blew at least 4 or 5 fuses in the truck in the process.  When "showtime" arrived, I started the truck, turned on the lights, and promptly blew another fuse.  Then another.  Then another.  I was ready to give up and park the truck, since I was holding up the parade while I tried in vain to bring some Christmas cheer.  Then one of the firemen said that he had an inverter in his car, and if I had a really long extension cord we could run my lights from his vehicle.  What a great idea!  So we ran the cord out of his window and up to the bed of my truck, and the whole thing worked like a charm... for about 3 minutes.  After that the lights would come on, then go off, then on again.  Only in Bailey could you have two vehicles connected by an extension cord driving in the Christmas Light Parade. 

After the parade we all gathered in the store for coffee and hot chocolate and for the giving of the coveted Green-Bean-Can trophy.  It's actually about ten different cans - all unopened mind you - of vegetables, marshmallow cream, and whatever else all glued together.  Whoever wins the trophy is supposed to add something else to the "structure", which is now about 4 feet high and weighs a good 25 pounds.  It was great fun.
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One last thing:  this coming Thursday morning, the Bailey Country Store and Sasquatch Outpost will be featured on Denver's 9 News!  They were up here a couple of weeks ago during the power outage, and they ended up broadcasting from the Cutthroat Cafe all morning.  The reporter and her cameraman stopped by the store for a snack on their way back to town (when she walked in wearing black tights and a fur coat, I had an inkling she wasn't a local) and she was so enthralled by the whole Sasquatch theme that she wants to come back and do a story on us (since, as she put it, Christmas is the "season for believing").  We're not sure what to expect, but we're excited about the publicity this could give our store.  Stay tuned for more!

Creepy Dummys

Last night I decided to take care of an issue that I'd been avoiding for a long time: I bought a roll of 9 inch thick insulation to attach in between the floor joists under the store floor.  I've been avoiding it because 1 Its butt cold under this old building and 2 I hate working with fiberglass insulation because it gets all over you, makes you itch and sends you into coughing fits if you don't wear a mask and 3 I hate wearing masks and 4 its really, really creepy down under the floor.  We'd already closed the store, so it was just me down below with my thoughts... and its interesting what kinds of thoughts one has while climbing around in the dirt underneath a 130 year old building.  "I wonder if there's a body down here that someone dumped 100 years ago? Or what about giant rats, or brown recluse spiders?".  Needless to say, I got the job done in record time.  Some jobs are better left for the daytime, especially if you're afraid of the dark as I am.  Yes, I'm 51 years old and I still hate the dark.  I attribute this lifetime phobia and dysfunction to my older siblings, who used to lock my younger brother John and I in various rooms in the house, in the dark of course.  I vividly remember banging on the door and yelling, all the while imagining the monsters and ghouls crawling up behind us, ready to snatch us under the bed forever.   At the last possible second when the trio of torture would open the door and save our lives as we came tumbling out of the room.  It wasn't all our imagination either.  My older brother had one of those dummys that you could make talk, move its head, and make the eyes open and close.  It was totally creepy.  One day John and I were rummaging through my parents closet and we found that dummy on the upper shelf.  We looked at it and played around with it for a few minutes and put it back.  When we went back to get it a few days or weeks later, it wasn't there.  It had MOVED, BY ITSELF!  All our fears were confirmed... the dummy was ALIVE!  So when older brother and chief torturer Bill would shut us in that room, we just KNEW that the dummy was crawling out of whatever hiding place it had found and was dragging itself across the room to attack us. 
Of course, I'm not afraid of the dummy anymore.  My fears are much more rational, like finding a 100 year old corpse half buried under the country store.

 Just too creepy

Bitter Cold

We've experienced record-setting cold temperatures for the past few days, with the mercury falling to minus 20 or lower.  A couple of days ago we had 10-12 inches of snow as well, but it was the bitter, bitter cold that was the hardest to take.  I was out plowing from 4am until 8pm.  A very long day.  The power went out at 1:40 that morning and stayed out for four hours (something to do with a line or a pole that snapped in the -25 cold).  In that short span of time pipes froze all over Bailey and many were without drinking water or showers for one or two days.

Things are slow in the country store, probably a reflection of the weather more than anything.  On the morning of the power outage, channel 9 news from Denver sent a team up to the mountains to find a good story and they ended up at the Cutthroat Cafe next door.  I didn't see the broadcast, but they stayed at the cafe all morning and would cut out to the news, then back to the cafe again.  We've got some colorful characters up here and I think they interviewed every one of them - tatoos, cowboy hats and all.  Later on the woman presenter stopped in to the store to buy a snack for the drive back to Denver.  I knew- through my keen powers of observation - that she wasn't local.  Course,  the tights and fur coat were a dead giveaway.  She was immediately enthralled with the store and the whole Sasquatch theme, and she wants to come back up and do a story on us before Christmas... since this is the season of "believing".  Believing... in Sasquatch?  Hey, maybe we should start a new religion called Squatchism ("I'm a Squatchist; what are you?"), and I could be the Right Reverend Jim "Squatch" Myers!  Hmmm... maybe not.   Anyway, I hope it works out cause it would be great advertising for the store.  Speaking of Sasquatch, I'm thinking of asking one of the local micro breweries if they would make a special batch of just for us that I would call "You Don't Know Squatch" beer.  I think it would be a huge hit!  I've already bought the domain name - youdontknowsquatch.com   Yes, I'm serious.  I know a great idea when I hear one.

On to more serious matters: Today is the SEC CHAMPIONSHIP game between Auburn and Missouri, and Auburn is a 2 point favorite.  2 points??  Never heard of a spread that small.  Two days ago it was 1.5 points, so I guess the bookies suddenly gained .5 points worth of confidence in Auburn.  Who knows?  By this afternoon it could be all the way up to 2.25 points.  Anyway, today is also the annual Conifer Christmas parade that starts around the same time as the game, so I may end up watching the game with me, myself and I. 

The headlines of the Birmingham News newspaper this morning: 

 WAR DAMN MIRACLE!   

Yes, Auburn did it again: a last second, totally impossible, game of the century win - this time over arch rival #1 Alabama.  I was watching the game with friends and family, along with at least 300 screaming Auburn fans, at the pub where the Rocky Mountain Auburn Club meets.  Below is a video of the bedlam that followed the 109 yard touchdown return of Bama's missed field goal attempt with 1 second left on the clock, an event - I might add - that has only happened three others times in all of college football history.  Two weeks ago was the "Immaculate Deflection" where Auburn beat Georgia with what was - until last night - considered to be one of the most improbable endings in college football.  Yesterday's Iron Bowl will now go down in history as not only the greatest Iron Bowl ever, but one of the most incredible college games of this decade, if not ever in the sport.  The crowd of 90,000 stormed the field for the world's largest block party as the Alabama team and coaches slunk out of the stadium in defeat.  It's on to the SEC Championship game against Missouri next week and then... the BCS National Championship???  With this incredible, most amazing comeback season in Auburn's history, who can predict how this will all end?  All I know is this:  IT'S GREAT TO BE AN AUBURN TIGER!

Back in the Saddle

Yes, I know, it's been ages since my last blog entry.  I don't have an excuse... and come to think of it, I don't really need one. 
But before I get into my runaway train of thought - first things first:  Today is the annual Iron Bowl game between Auburn and that other team across the state.  We are playing in AUBURN, and we are playing for the highest stakes ever in the history of arguably the greatest rivalry in all of college football: to clinch the SEC West championship, then play for the SEC championship and possibly the National Championship.  Auburn came roaring out of nowhere this year, just like we did in 2010, and now we're knocking on the door to kick Alabama OUT of the race and ruin their chances for another national title.  It doesn't get any sweeter than this folks.  The stars have aligned to bring us to this momentous day.  To all my dear Bama friends:  we're gonna run smash-mouth football all over you today and there ain't nothing you can do about it.  Prediction:  Auburn 28, Bama 24.  Thus sayeth the Lord.  I'm going down to Denver to the Irish Snug pub to watch the game with my sister Cathi, her husband Gary and my fellow Auburn grad nephew Nate... and about 300 insane fans from the Rocky Mountain Auburn Club.  WAR EAGLE!! 

PS:  sure hope I won't be eating crow pie this evening!

OK, where was I?  Oh yeah - Since I last wrote, we made a decision to leave the staff of the Journey Church and Daphne and I have taken over the lease of the Bailey Country Store and Sasquatch Outpost.  I could write volumes on all that transpired to bring us to that decision, but suffice it to say that it was the right move and we're grateful that God has given us a ministry in the lives of Bailey folks through this awesome little grocery store and mercantile.  Much more to write on that later. 

Praise God that we closed on our house in Conifer three days ago (We had the house on the market since the beginning of August), and we're now (sort of) comfortably installed in the apartment above the country store.   We could no longer afford the mortgage on our five bedroom home, and I'm GREATLY relieved that we can take our time to find a smaller home.   The store is doing well and paying its own bills - but not much beyond that.  The folks in Bailey are slowly but surely getting the idea that the store is open and that we're a lot closer to drive to than Conifer if they just need a few groceries.  We're now getting calls every day like, "Do you have any vanilla?", or "Do you carry that stuff to hold your dentures in?".  Because it was closed for four years it will take time for the locals to realize that it's back in business again.  Since the store won't earn enough for a long time to come to actually support us, I've gotten back into the snow plow business, and I'm trying to ramp up my Storm Guides consulting business.  I Just added Denver Seminary as a new client, and I'm very excited about that.  AND, God has provided a job for Daphne doing part-time data entry, which will really help our bottom line in the short term.  So we just keep pressing on, taking it one day at a time.  I had a funny thought the other day:  all the years we were overseas as full-time missionaries we thought we were living by faith.  But we really didn't even begin to learn what that means until we moved back to the States and we're now having to trust God to provide for our needs literally day by day.  I never imagined that was one of the life lessons that He brought us back here to learn!


And now, just to brighten your day and for no other particular reason, I took a bunch of pictures with my computer this morning using the various special effects with the Photo Booth App.  Enjoy:)

Cuckoo! Cuckoo!

Chipmunk

Blockhead

Alien among us

Bug Eyes

????

There's a little frog in all of us

A very different kind of hike

Last Monday I went on an unusual hike with my friend Chip who owns the restaurant next to the Country Store.  I'd heard the story of a B-24 bomber that crashed on Mt Logan in September 1943, apparently on a training mission from Lowry Field in Denver.  Since there was no such thing as a flight data recorder back then, one can only guess as to what happened.  Witnesses said two of the planes four engines were on fire as it came down.  The pilot managed to arrest the downward spiral for a moment, then plunged straight into the mountainside.  The top gunner managed to bailout and drifted into a wooded  area 10 miles away.  The remaining 11 men went down with the plane.  Chip and I climbed up near the tree line, but couldn't find the wreck.  I had enough cell signal to call a friend, who called another friend and got the lattitude and longitude of the wreck.  I then downloaded an app where I could input the coordinates, and in about 2 minutes I had a graphic image on my phone of our location related to the wreck site.  We were probably 300 yards from the spot, and we managed to climb down to the wreck in about 30 minutes.  Chip (who's a flip-phone hold-out) was so amazed that I could find the wreck just using my iphone that he became a "convert" and decided to buy one himself.   All told, It took us over 4 hours to reach the plane and it was a pretty intense climb at times. Duke was with us and he kind of freaked out when we had to cross three boulder fields.  Although he has four legs to my two, he can't grab with his hands.  Chip and I had to lift him across several large gaps between the bigger boulders.  When we reached the wreck, both Chip and I were stunned by both the amount and spread of the wreckage.  Apparently, once the bodies had been recovered the army blew the plane up to prevent someone from stealing any technology (seems like a joke now, but I suppose the planes were technically advanced for their time).  We combed the wreckage for over an hour.  I can't speak for Chip, but walking around all those twisted pieces of metal was a surreal experience for me,  knowing that 11 men died on that spot almost exactly 70 years ago.   We left when the thunder started rumbling in the distance, but it was a FASCINATING day spent with a good friend.  Life is great.

The Evolution of a Dream Part 2

 This is part two in the story of how the Bailey Country Store and Sasquatch Outpost came to be.

We had to move all the old fridges & freezers out of the store,
some of which dated back to the 50's.  

"They don't make 'em like they used to!".  These machines were made of steel - I think we
took four of them down to the metal recycling place and they weighed 3000 lbs plus!

One day our new friend Dan - who called himself an atheist - pulled up in front of the
store with a trailer and donated every power tool he owned to the church.  He'd decided
to move to Texas and felt "impressed' to give us his tools.  We rebuilt the whole store through
his generosity.  He's not an atheist anymore.

 RED TAG DAY

September 5th, 2012.  I was planning out our next steps for the store when a fellow walked in and in a very gruff manner asked me what were were doing.  Without really waiting for an answer, he declared that we were remodeling without a permit and 

cited us for being in violation.  As he attached the red tag to the door he made it very clear that "No Work" was to be done until we applied for and received our remodel permit.  This would prove to be a very frustrating, two-month process.  The county building inspector became my ever-present nemesis.  It seemed like he showed up every second day due to some complaint from our neighbors.  One time a deputy Sheriff showed up and told me that the complaint they'd received was that we were "blowing asbestos" out of the building (??)  How exactly does one do that?  We got to the point where the rumors and gossip going on about us and the new store were really amazing!   I got tired of all the whining, so I made a couple of signs that I put in the window: "We're doing Asbestos we can to get back to work!" and "Free Asbestos; inquire within".  I thought it was hilarious, but the next thing I knew an agent from the State Health Department in Denver was at the store, looking through the windows.  He called me and declared that we had a "probable Asbestos spill" and that no one should be in the building.  I asked him if it took special training to identify Asbestos by looking through a window.  He didn't think it was funny.
All that's behind us now.  

The Evolution of a Dream Part 1

Last Saturday was a very big day for Daphne and I and for our whole church.  Not only was it Bailey Day - the main festival of the year for the town of Bailey (and my first attempt at organizing the entire event), but we officially opened the doors of the newly renovated Bailey Country Store for the first time.  Nine long months of hard work, sweat, frustration, delays, financial shortfalls, amazing partnerships, generous donors -- and we're finally here.  The Bailey Country Store and Sasquatch Outpost are officially and legally open!  But I'm getting ahead of myself;  there's an  amazing story to be told here, and I want to tell it with pictures.  

August 2012

When Michael (our Senior Pastor) first proposed the idea that we lease this old country store, I thought he was insane.  The paint was peeling off the walls,  half the lettering gone - it was in truly horrible shape.  Vacant for four years, time and the weather had taken their toll.  

    

    The state of the inside of the store was - if this is possible - even worse than the outside!  The floor was uneven and rotten, most of the old fridges and freezers didn't work anymore and 

it was full of accumulated junk from countless owners.  The building itself is over 130 years old... and it looked every bit of it!

 

   This is how the old shelves looked when we took over the lease.  The former owner was known for his meat - and that is virtually the only question people asked us when we started working on the building, "Are you going to sell the Tri-tip roast?"  Seems no one really cared about the groceries, just the meat!

 

This is how the back room looked - bare concrete walls, concrete floor.  The plywood square in the corner covered a 12 foot deep cistern... probably the original well.  The transformation in this room is probably the most dramatic of all... but I'll save that for Part 2 or 3 :)

Graduating #2

Graduate Number 2!

Nicole graduated from Conifer High School last weekend.  She finished as a Distinguished Scholar in the top 10% of her class, and in August she's heading for Chapman University in Orange, CA to pursue a degree in digital animation. Chapman is a private university that costs around $50K per year.  This is significant because we've told all our girls that they're free to attend any school in the country - or out of the country - that they choose, as long as they figure out a way to pay for it.  When Nicole first mentioned her desire to attend Chapman I was concerned that she was shooting too high due to the cost, but she was determined and her grades landed her almost $45K a year in grants and scholarships.  Not bad for a girl who spent her first 10 years of school in France!  We are very proud of all that Nicole has achieved through her determination.

Country Store Update

I've grown to develop a love-hate relationship with all State and county building inspectors.  Well, actually it's a hate-hate relationship with most of them. Tomorrow we have the third inspection by one of the inspectors - I won't say who, but he deals with water and pipes and toilets.  We dug the hole for the sump pump last week, then he added a whole list of stuff we had to do for the ADA toilet.  I'm all for trying to be in compliance with state and county building codes, but this is a 130 year old building for pete's sake, and it should by anyone's standards be razed to the ground.  We've vastly improved the whole place in the last nine months, so all we need is a little grace here so we can get open before Bailey Day on June 16th.

Mountain Lion Kill

My neighbor Brian called me a few days ago and said, "Hey, we just noticed a fresh Mountain Lion kill on our road, just below your house.  You should probably keep a close eye on your dogs for a few days."  Yes, we do live in the Colorado mountains!  Sure enough, a large female cougar had taken a deer virtually on our doorstep, and Brian managed to get a short video of her with a trailcam before she finished her kill and took off. 

Bailey Blog

Had a long hiatus from my blog, mainly due to being slammed working down at the Bailey Country Store to get all the issues resolved to the satisfaction of the various inspectors involved.  Man, have I learned a lot about trying to get things done in a small town and with rural county officials!  We are REALLY close to getting open - just need to pass a couple more inspections.  The store looks great, and I'll post some before, during and after pictures soon.  Yesterday the state plumbing inspector came by; nice guy, who gave us several things to change before he can pass us on the plumbing side of things.  The main issue is that we moved the water heater from the middle of the store to a back room next to the furnace.  It's definitely more out of the way now, but the problem is there's no floor drain in that room.  So, as I feared, he wants us to dig a hole big enough to accommodate a 5 gallon bucket with a sump pump.  Pete and I got through the 1 inch of concrete easily enough, but then we hit rock (which is why basements are not popular with contractors in the Rocky Mountains!).  Sledge hammers and shovels just couldn't get through it, so Herb kindly came by with his 80lb jack hammer and in about 30 minutes had a hole big enough for what we needed.  I've never used a jack hammer before, and now I know why Herb is in such great shape!  No job has been simple in this building, and we're not done until we're done.  Bailey Day - the big, annual festival in town - is on June 15, and the whole event is centered in front of the store (live bands, western re-enactments),  So we HAVE to be open by then, and hopefully a week or two before the 15th.  That's the goal anyway!

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.

Marriage Part 2

We're expecting somewhere between 3 and 15 inches in the next 24 hours.  How is it possible that one web site predicts "light snow" and another up to 15 inches??  Go figure.  Don't they all have the same computers using the same weather models to predict precipitation?  I don't get it. 

Anyway, thought of a couple more marriage principles that we've gleaned over the past few years:

5.  The first one to be humble wins.  It only takes one of you to humble yourself and admit where you're wrong - sincerely - for healing to begin.  Unfortunately, most of the time both parties believe they're right in their own eyes and in the end everyone loses.  It's very sad to watch.  It just takes one, because it's almost impossible to remain hard-hearted in the face of true humility and confession.

6.  The power of prayer.  I'm amazed how rare it is to meet a couple today who ever pray together.  Maybe it's a reflection of how far our culture has removed God from the picture.  I'm not talking about non-Christians here, but couples who've been in the church for many years but who have never actually prayed with their spouse.  There is great power available to us when we come to God in agreement, together, to ask Him to heal whatever is broken in our marriage. 

Odds and Ends about Marriage

Daphne and I have done a bit of marriage counseling over the years, and we've learned some interesting truths about life and relationships in the process.  Here's a sampling:

1.  We can't want your marriage to work more than you do.  Sometimes in seems like we're the ones doing all the cheer-leading while the couple sitting across from us have given up and don't even want to try.  Doesn't work that way.  If you don't want to work at this relationship, let's not waste all of our valuable time pretending.  We've even said to some couples, "Well, it's clear that you've got fighting down to a fine art.  Maybe you should write a book on how to have a good fight in your marriage."  Doesn't really help them, but it makes me feel better.  I think it's pretty funny, actually.

2.  The only person you can change is yourself.  "If he'll just change, everything will be great!".  Sorry, doesn't work that way.  You gotta deal with your own "stuff", and we've all got plenty of issues to choose from.  Nobody needs a Junior Holy Spirit getting on their case, and God has his work cut out just changing you, just like He does with your spouse.  So get out of the way.  Your nagging gives you some sick sense of control, but all you're doing is driving your spouse out the door and into someone else's arms. 

3.  The goal isn't peace, but understanding.  It's fine to slam the door and go outside for a smoke, or take a drive, or whatever you do to calm down.  But when you get home nothing's resolved, even though you've got an unspoken cease-fire.  Your disagreement is still there, hanging in the middle of the room for you both to knock your heads on and start another fight.  If you can't figure out what happened and why you keep reacting to each other, you'll never get back the intimacy you've lost.

4.  He needs respect, and she needs love.  You can re-package it anyway you like, or pretend that liberated women need respect as much as men, or that modern men just need a hug.  Doesn't change the way God designed us.  When she's loved, she feels respected.  When he's respected, he feels loved.  And here's the other side of the coin: when she doesn't feel loved, she'll act totally disrespectful, and when he feels disrespected he'll become an unloving brute.  Works that way every time.  

Finishing feels good

We finally finished building the floor in the Bailey Country Store, and it feels good!  Neither Brian (teammate) nor I had ever laid a floor before, so not a bad day's work for a couple of rookies (who had the help of a couple of experts, to be fair).  I can finally see some light at the end of the hallway that leads to the staircase that leads to the corridor that leads to the end of the tunnel.  We had to raise the floor so much (15 inches) that I feel like an NBA player when I stand in there now (except I'm not black and I can't jump worth a darn).  Now we just need to tackle the plumbing, the walls, the broken windows, insulation ...


Last night we watched the episode of Finding Bigfoot that was filmed in Bailey last September.  A friend of mine took several screen shots as proof positive that Gwyn and I do exist, and that we were present at the town hall meeting.  They even had a shot of my Sasquatch cut-out holding a sign that said, "I do not believe the evidence supports the existence of humans."
Of course, several guys from church texted me about Unicorns and fairies and such nonsense.  Skeptics can be so immature.  You'd almost think I believe in some mythical, hairy, 8 foot beast that roams the woods around Bailey.  Now THAT would be crazy.

Believe it or not, there is a recent report that an adult male Bigfoot was shot late last year while a British film crew was making a documentary about Bigfoot.  Apparently, they'd set a bait trap high on a tree and a Bigfoot came to investigate.  The crew's guide woke up, saw the bigfoot, jumped out of his tent in his underwear and shot it in the back of the head.  The film crew wrestled the gun away from him, but too late. According to the article (see the link below), the Bigfoot measured 7'8" tall and weighed 490 pounds.  I would be highly skeptical myself except for the fact that the film company - Minnow Films - is well known and has made a number of excellent, award-winning documentaries.  They claim that they're keeping the carcass until the film comes out in April.  We'll see.  Here's the article I read on this project - the film is tentatively going to be called, "Of Monsters and Men".

http://robertlindsay.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/bigfoot-news-december-12-2012/


They apparently filmed several seconds of the Squatch eating the bait from inside their tent before it was shot. Below is a clip of that video; judge for yourself.

Bigfoot news

For all my Bigfoot skeptic friends, this blog entry should be amusing.  A few days ago, a friend of mine who lives in Bailey sent me an email that she'd found some "interesting" tracks on her property.  I went over to investigate the next day, and took a few photos.  Unfortunately, we had a light snow after the tracks were made, so the definition was poor.  What was clear, however, is that something walked across her property with 7 foot strides, in a straight line, and the prints were 16-18 inches long.  One of the prints - see below with my boot next to it - still shows what might be the imprint of toes and a mid-tarsal break (believed to be a sasquatch characteristic). 

Of course, my skeptic friends - I'm talking about you Brian - say that it is clearly a hoax.  OK, let's go down that road for a minute:  the prints are located in a remote part of the property, and had to have been made during the night in sub-zero temperatures, on stilts (7 foot stride), without making one mis-step in the process.  I'm not saying the tracks definitely WERE made by a Sasquatch, but to believe this is a hoax is an insult to my intelligence.

Speaking of Bigfoot:  Apparently, the episode of "Finding Bigfoot" (Animal Planet channel) that was filmed in Bailey will be airing this Sunday evening.  I'm hoping that Gwyn and I will show up in our bright, green Sasquatch Outpost T-shirts on the front row of the town hall meeting, and that they'll show my Life-Size Sasquatch cutout as well.   Maybe this is the beginning of something really big... (no pun intended)...

New Floor

We made huge progress on the new floor in the country store yesterday, thanks to all the Journey staff guys who came down to lend a hand.  Basically, we're raising the whole floor up 14 inches over the original floor.  You can see the new joists in the pictures on the left - the floor will go down on top of those joists.  We have some technical issues to overcome - namely how best to raise the front door up to match the floor, and then we'll need to build a handicap deck and ramp out front.  Still, it feels good to get so much work done in one day!  The old girls still needs a huge amount of work, like repainting, fixing the walls, fixing many broken windows, adding shelving and counters... and the list goes on and on.  However, we're still shooting to open at some level by the first of February. Q This continues to be a faith adventure, as we do not have the funds to finish the renovation work and we're trusting that God will provide what we need, when we need it.  He already provided the resources to build the floor, so we keep trusting Him for the rest.

Quote from Steve Brown's book, "A Scandalous Freedom":
     (regarding the common viewpoint that Christians should always be "nice")  "Christians can be dangerous!  No, not those.  The real ones.  The weenies aren't dangerous.  They are irrelevant.  But those Christians who have discovered they don't have anything to protect and nothing to lose, who have learned that Jesus is Lord and that it doesn't matter what others think a bout them or do to them - they are dangerous... really dangerous."
     "Why are we so bound and so imprisoned that we feel afraid to speak up, stand up, and be Christ's witnesses in the church and in the world?  In other words, if we're free, why don't we use our freedom to be bold?"
     

Back to Blogging

After a hiatus of several weeks due to my computer being on the fritz (AND I fixed it all my byself) I'm back to blogging.  Duke (my yellow lab) is snoring on the floor next to me as we both try to stay warm by the fire.  Speaking of Duke,  I finally bit the bullet and bought an invisible fence to keep him contained on our property after getting at least 10 calls from neighbors... "Um, I have your dog here at my house; what should I do with him??"  I've never used one of these devices before, but even when I turn the collar up to the maximum setting Duke just strolls right across the wire without so much as a flinch.  I've thought about putting the collar on myself to test the shock, but in the end I'm just too chicken.  I've watched the YouTube videos and that's enough proof for me.  got to think on that some more.

The town of Bailey and the Bailey Country Store still take up most of my time now.  In the last 30 days we initiated a Christmas decorating contest among the businesses in Bailey, for which I created a "fitting" trophy made of a deer antler strung with battery-operated Christmas lights; I was elected to the board of the Platte Canyon Area Chamber of Commerce (think Mayberry);  and I wrote an article for one of the local mountain newspapers about "new beginnings" and the country store.  I was particularly happy about the article and several people commented on it last Sunday at church (I'd forgotten all about it by the time it was published).  The article describes well what the Lord has put on my heart for this little town and this forgotten country store.  So here it is:

She’s 130 years old, built when Bailey was young and steam trains still rolled past along the Platte River.  One of the first buildings constructed in the town (1878) the Bailey Country Store has always been there – providing not only groceries, but also a sense of history and stability to this little mountain community.   The past few years have not been kind to this old girl, however.  When the store was closed in late 2009, Bailey lost not only a town icon but the only functioning grocery store as well.  She’s sat quiet, dark and cold for almost three years – the paint peeling from the walls and the sign that once proudly announced her presence vandalized by bored teenagers.   Tourists would occasionally stop by for a few staples on their way to go camping, but the locked door and butcher paper covering the windows left no doubt that it was either back to Conifer or on to Fairplay to buy their marshmallows, graham crackers and Hershey’s chocolate. 

Until now.  Three months ago we ( The Journey Community Church) leased the building from its new owners with the goal of re-opening the Country Store to provide a much-needed and sorely missed service to the town of Bailey.  If you drive to the bottom of Crow Hill today and look to your right you’ll notice that the store has a new paint job and a brand new sign… and a life-size Sasquatch holding a cup of coffee.  The new Bailey Country Store and Sasquatch Outpost Coffee House are on-target to open their doors in early February.  The exterior looks great now, but inside there’s still lots of work to do.  The original floor is rotten and unsafe so a whole new floor must be built above it for the old girl to be useful once again – not to mention painting, repairing pipes, fixing the heating… and the list goes on.  It’s a time of new beginnings, not just for this old store but also for a community that’s been hit hard in recent years by tragedy and recession.  Bailey folks need a fresh infusion of hope: hope that better days are ahead and that their lives – like the old country store – still have value.  We can all start over again if we just have a little faith in God and in ourselves.

I believe in Bailey, and it’s time for this community to stand up tall and declare: “We are strong.  We are resilient.  We are community.  We are Bailey!”