Epic Ride 2011: Almost Here

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Dana Pellerin

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For the last 4 years I’ve been doing what I like to call Epic Ride. It’s a long distance motorcycle ride consisting of at least several hundred miles, often thousands, and several days to someplace I’ve never been. It’s an adventure. It’s me, a machine and nothing but road. It’s interesting people and beautiful landscape. It’s quiet time with the Lord. It’s therapy.

This year I’m headed to our neighbors up north; Canada. I’m leaving very soon, and as I sit here in the garage getting my bike ready and all my gear laid out, I’m getting giddy thinking about LONG days on the bike with nothing but the rumble of the engine and the roar of the wind in my ears. It’s going to be fantastic.

Most people don’t really understand the appeal of long distance riding. They think it’s dangerous, risky, boring, whatever. That’s the routine of life talking. For me it’s bliss. It’s a time to turn off the world, and just enjoy time racing through God’s creation, completely exposed. The only better way to experience God’s amazing creation would be to walk, but unfortunately I don’t have that much time. But when you’re on the road, nobody can interrupt you. Nobody call call or email you or walk into your office. The road is mine. I stop when I fell like it, I eat when I feel like it. It’s my time.

So there’s a very private aspect to it, but there’s also a very social aspect to it. When you do stop, the people you meet are fascinating. We swap stories of where we’ve been and where were going. Theres a camaraderie.

So I’m just completely stoked. Epic Ride 2011 is going to be awesome. Stay tuned because I’ll be posting pictures and writing about my experiences as I head into the beautiful northwest.

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Rediscovering Family

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Dana Pellerin

Me and my cousins Lisa and Lora

This weekend I took the family down to Southern California to visit family. This is family on my mom’s side that I haven’t seen in over 20 years.

It’s a shame that we let that much time pass. However when I was a kid we moved a lot. I went to 8 different schools growing up. And so our family ties were broken early on. Not much a kid can do about that.

I never really thought much of it to be honest. When you grow up a certain way you think that’s the way everyone’s family is. But after I got married I realized it’s not. Michelle’s family is very close. And so as I grow older I’m really wanting to reconnect to those early childhood memories of my family and so we’ve made several trips to L.A. (where most of the family is) to catch up.

This particular trip was really nice because even though we’ve not been close to either side of the family, my mom’s side of the family was pretty much forgotten altogether after I was 6 or 7. I’d only seen them maybe once since then and I was a bit apprehensive about going down at first. People can change a lot in that amount of time and I found myself wondering if they’d even like who I’d become.

It was a great visit however. It’s funny how quickly you can reconnect with family. Even though we’ve built entire lifetimes of separate memories, it’s those few that we share that forever binds family together. Honestly, it was like I was a kid again and nothing had changed. We enjoyed each others company, laughed and reminisced over old times, and even got to go to church and worship together. It was an outstanding weekend.

I’m going to make it a point to keep pushing to reconnect with my family. There’s a lot of broken ties that need to be mended, but so far it’s always been worth it.

here’s some more pics from our little reunion.

https://picasaweb.google.com/danapellerin/SoCalVisitWithFamily

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Epic Ride 2011: The Great Northwest

Posted on July 16, 2011 by Dana Pellerin

I’m sitting here this morning with a cup of hot coffee, listening to Fair to Midland, and planning the trip of the year that I like to call Epic Ride. I’ve taken a multi-day motorcycle trip to someplace I’ve never been before each year for the past 5 years or so. This year, I’m heading to our northern neighbor; Canada.

My route will start here in good ol’ hot-as-heck Fresno and head north on 99. I’ll jog west on the 580, cut through the east bay and pick up 101 heading north through wine country.

My first stop will be Arcata, CA., a cool little town on the coast in northern California.  I like to have my longest leg of the trip be the first one. I will be exhausted at the end of the first day and I’m already looking forward to a bowl of clam chowder and a cold beer.

From there I will continue up the Oregon coast and stop in Newport, OR. Not sure what is in Newport, but mileage wise it’s right where I want to stop. So I’ll wing it there and see what trouble I can get into.

After leaving Newport, I’ll cut inland back over to I5 and make a beeline for Bothell, WA., which is east of Seattle. My wife’s sister and her husband live there and we’ll be staying there, visiting and enjoying the surrounding area for a week.

I’m taking one day of that week though and heading to Canada. I plan on crossing the border and heading to a little village called Harrison Hot Springs. It’s about 3 hours north of Bothell so it will make for a great ride and leave plenty of time to mess around. I’ll come back the next afternoon and visit some more before heading home.

The ride home will be as fast as possible, straight down I5. We’ll probably spend the night in Medford, OR which is about the halfway point. That’s going to be two LONG days of riding, but as usual with these trips, there’s never enough time.

So I’m super stoked. I wish I had another biker going with me, but it’s hard to schedule vacations like this with other people.

Stay tuned for photos and notes from the road!

 

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All You Can Eat Music. So Disappointed.

Posted on July 15, 2011 by Dana Pellerin

To much fanfare the European music service Spotify was released this week. A buddy of mine sent me an invite so I checked it out. I’m so disappointed.

If there’s one thing that pisses me off, it’s being all worked up by the media and then discovering that something SUCKS. And Spotify really, really, really sucks. I checked out a competitor called Rdio, and it sucks too. Here’s why.

When I fire up a piece of music software I generally want to do three basic things which can be related to three real-life music experiences:

  1. I want to listen to specific pieces of music (like a Walkman/iPod)
  2. I want to browse music in a certain category (like a music store)
  3. I want to listen to pre-programmed music based on category (like a radio)

The problem with Spotify is that it doesn’t really do any of these well in my opinion.

The first requirement, listening to specific pieces of music, it does best. however, having collected music for the last 35 years, there’s nothing I really want to hear that I don’t own. I suppose there’s some benefit to having my music “in the cloud”, but considering the fact that a LOT of my music is not on Spotify, it’s still a better experience to just sync my phone with my library.

The second requirement, functioning as a music store, is probably the most frustrating failure of these services. Spotify has a crazy boolean search where you can enter stuff like artist:”grateful dead” year:1965-1970. REALLY? Are you serious? I’m a programmer. I write code for a living and this really makes me cringe. I would NEVER, EVER make my users learn some crazy syntax like this. I mean, is it too freaking hard to have a list I can click on??? On top of that, it just doesn’t work. Searching for “rock” returned zero results. Searching for “heavy metal” returned a bunch of plain rock, but then without anyway to sort and filter by release date my entire list was just old crap I already have. Useless.

Lastly, niether Spotify or Rdio has actual channels like a radio where you can just pick one and hear a pre-programmed stream of songs. I find this incredibly ironic for Rdio since… well, the name of their company is RaDIO.

So in my opinion, subscription music services are just a ridiculously lacking. You are never going to topple Apple unless you get the basics 100% right. And none of these services do that.

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Our New Site is LIVE!

Posted on July 14, 2011 by Dana Pellerin

Well, after a year of work, our new Drupal powered site is live. It’s been an incredible learning experience and I feel that compared to our old site, this thing ROCKS. The exciting thing is now that we have a great platform to build on, there’s no limits to what we can make the site do. Check it out at the link below.

http://communitymedical.org

 

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Star Wars Twitter Geekery

Posted on July 12, 2011 by Dana Pellerin

Alright, I’m either the biggest goob in the world, or I’ve just lost touch with reality, but either way there are a BOATLOAD of people following twitter accounts owned by Star Wars characters, so I’m not alone.

Here’s a few accounts I’ve run across that are making me chuckle.

There’s tons more, but let’s not get stupid.

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Helmet Laws

Posted on July 5, 2011 by Dana Pellerin

There’s a lot of buzz right now about a story of a motorcyclist who was taking part in a protest of mandatory helmet laws. Apparently, while riding in the protest, he lost control of his bike and fell, cracking his head open on the concrete and ended up dying from his injuries. An ironic tragedy.

I think it’s interesting that the debate around this issue always centers around weather or not wearing a helmet is safer than not wearing a helmet. To me, that’s a no brainer. If you wear any kind of protective gear at all, you are obviously a certain percentage safer against harm. That shouldn’t be the argument here.

The real argument is whether or not the government has the right to force people to do a certain thing, even if it means the citizen will be safer because of it.

When it really comes down to it, this isn’t about saving people. It’s about saving money. The government is a major payer of healthcare services in this country now, and so I think in the coming years you will see all sorts of very restrictive and personally invasive laws being passed in order to try and mitigate their costs. The other major liable party is insurance companies, and you can bet that every single law that has to do with safety was directly influenced by them.

Now, even if the government is acting out of pure self interest, shouldn’t we pass these laws simply because they really do help keep people safe? I mean, the ultimate outcome is better right? I say no, because you can’t put a price on personal freedom and responsibility. We’ve seen a steady reduction in personal freedoms even in my short lifetime and I honestly believe that the founding fathers would be shocked at what we’ve become.

The kicker though is that you can’t have real freedom without actual responsibility. You can’t scream for freedom and then complain that nobody protected you when something goes wrong. We in America have a huge problem with that.

Anyway, the helmet debate is and interesting one because it’s a perfect micro-example of some of the challenges our country is facing.

And for the record, I always wear a full face helmet, armored motorcycle jacket and steel toed boots.

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Independence Day

Posted on July 4, 2011 by Dana Pellerin

Did you know that the song, The Star Spangled Banner, has four verses? I didn’t and I’m a bit embarrassed by my ignorance of such a meaningful song.

I Came across a bit of history on our national anthem this morning and thought I’d share it.

“In 1814, about a week after the city of Washington had been badly burned, British troops moved up to the primary port at Baltimore Harbor in Maryland. Francis Scott Key visited the British fleet in the Harbor on September 13th to secure the release of Dr. William Beanes who had been captured during the Washington raid. The two were detained on the ship so as not to warn the Americans while the Royal Navy attempted to bombard Fort McHenry. At dawn on the 14th, Key noted that the huge American flag, which now hangs in the Smithsonian’s American History Museum, was still waving and had not been removed in defeat. The sight inspired him to write a poem titled Defense of Fort McHenry. The poem was eventually set to music that had originally been written by English composer John Stafford Smith for a song titled “The Anacreontic Song”. The end result was the inspiring song now considered the national anthem of the United States of America. It was accepted as such by public demand for the next century or so, but became even more accepted as the national anthem during the World Series of Baseball in 1917 when it was sung in honor of the brave armed forces fighting in the Great War. The World Series performance moved everyone in attendance, and after that it was repeated for every game. Finally, on March 3, 1931, the American Congress proclaimed it as the national anthem, 116 years after it was first written.”

Full lyrics to the Star Spangled Banner:

Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thru the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream:
Tis the star-spangled banner: O, long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand,
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Happy Independence Day everyone!

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ROCK ON!

Posted on June 30, 2011 by Dana Pellerin

Little man head-banging to the very definition of heavy metal, Pantera. Sorry for the language in the song folks, but this is way too funny not to post.

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Moving On

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Dana Pellerin

One of the lessons life teaches you is that nothing is forever. Things change, people change, styles, attitudes, music, fashion…. everything changes. Even if you sat in a white room from birth until death, your view of, and feelings about, that white room would change over time. That’s just how we’re wired. We gather experiences, we age, and our viewpoint changes.

And so today I told our worship pastor I was stepping down from the worship team. And honestly, I don’t really have a full grasp on why. All I know is that things have changed. I’ve changed, the band has changed, the music has changed. And it’s simply no longer fun to me.

When I first started playing music, I knew even back then, 25 years ago, that I would never be a professional musician. Sure, you kind of kick the idea around, but deep down I knew I would never walk away from all responsibility and rely on something as fickle and unreliable as music to support myself and my family. And so I told myself then, that music was going to be my outlet. My stress reliever. I was going to use it as a means to blow off steam. I mean really, I’m a drummer, i get to hit crap with wood sticks and get praised for it! So that was going to be the type of drummer I would become. Whoever would watch me play, would know that I was having nothing less than an blast. And so that’s why I had to step down. Because I just wasn’t having a blast anymore.

It’s a big decision for me because I’ve been playing at this church for 13 years. I’ve recorded two albums with them. I’ve played literally hundreds of services for unknown thousands of people over the years. But as time moves on, eventually the “old guard” must move on as well.

When I first started playing at Clovis HIlls I was 30 years old. Many of the guys in the band were in their 40′s. And one by one as younger people came in with new energy and new ideas, the older guys, already having spent years busting their butts on the scene, moved on. It’s not really a bad thing. It’s just the way it is.

And so I think that’s where I am. I’ve been doing this for so long that I don’t really care about analyzing music or obsessing over technique anymore. I just want to get behind the kit and do what I know how to do.

So it’s been a good run, and I thank God for giving me the opportunity to serve his people for so long. Playing at Clovis Hills really saved me in many ways. I know they will continue to provide one of the best worship experiences around and I wish them the best.

So what’s next? That is the million dollar question. I just told an old friend of mine that I would never quit playing, and I don’t intend on letting my drums collect dust. I might do a little recording. I have a few gigs lined with with other friends so I’ll definitely do those. Or I might start looking for a new band to jam with. Maybe a rock band to play some outdoor festivals and stuff.

We’ll see.

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