Forida - Tour Days

ey Guys, Sorry it's been so long. The tour has come to a close, tomorrow we have a day off - going to see some alligators at at an alligator farm then we travel home on thursday.

We've played 16 concerts in 3 days. no, i'm not kidding. By the end of the week we will have played 20 events in 7 days (we're playing 4 services at Northview in Abbotsford this week)

For those of you who don't know, I've been on tour playing bass with Perry and The Poorboys. I've known Perry a long time and we've recently started to play together quite a bit. It's a lot of fun and i get to travel and play with a good band so i enjoy it.

For this particular tour we've been blessed to only have to play one built in venue - the LCMS Lutheran Youth Gathering, It takes place once every 3 years and this year there are 27,000 or so kids at the event. I've never seen so many people in one area in my life. We did do 1 off site concert for 600 kids from kansas, that was a lot of fun. here are some pictures from our busy time here thus far.

This one is for Courts. I found this gecko on the screen meshing around our swimming pool. I florida there are so many creatures, mosquitos, geckos and alligators that out door poolyards have these huge framed in mesh things like this. i'll get a better picture to show you guys tomorrow. The body of this gecko was only about an inch long, maybe a bit less. The thing was just tiny

This is the main auditorium to the youth conference

On the first day of the conference there was a pilot writing messages in the sky! he wrote Got Jesus, God = :) and a few other things - just goes to show how much of a big deal this youth conference is
This is a picture from the night that we did the Kansas District Concert. These kids were really responsive and really got into it.
Our merch table
This is a photo for my Mom, Ricka, and Carolyn. It says MN essentials you do not need in Orlando.
This is a picture of perry with a few of our new fans. If you look closely they have orange buttons on their shirts that say 'kiss me, i'm lutheran' i don't think i understand that. mom? do you get that?

Talk to you guys soon, - also, feel free to comment! It makes me feel like blogging more often if i know someone is reading!

Floriday Day 2

Once we got to florida we found that we didn't have to play until Sunday. So Jared and Shanna and I decided to spend some time at Universal Orlando . We went on tons of rides and had lots fun. We went to the hardrock cafe for dinner and saw a person with 2 heads. i'm not even kidding. 2 heads, 2 names, one body. Here are some pictures from the day!
I tried to get this guy in the weak spot but he got kind of upset with me
Dad, this ones for you! I know you love the blues
I got to volunteer to sail on a boat for a blue screen demonstration, i'm pretty sure i'm a natural.
Jared was to scared to go on all the big coasters, so shanna and i went on them. This particular one is called the Hulk. It was intense. Another we went on is called Dueling Dragons - a feet free coaster that battles against another coaster. At one point the coasters come within 12 inches oc eachother



This guy would turn his jet ski around and spray people
In one of the twin parks there was a huge lake and they did water sports on them - a big show. It was lots of fun

Gotta go - going to see a movie!

I love courtney nickel.

SK.

Florida Day 1

So a few days ago i travelled to florida with a few friends to play some music. Jared and Shanna, Perry, Julia, Helen, Emma and Ryan and I all travelled down to Sunny Orlando to play at a huge youth conference - there are 26,000 kids at this event. It's the largest set up i've ever seen. I'll post pictures of that later
On the way to landing there were about 80 or so thunderstorms going on. There were massive thunderstorms everywhere. when we were above the clouds the sky looked amazing! when we landed in the airport it was pouring rain like you wouldn't believe. Jared said it was the worst driving weather he'd ever experienced while driving from the rental car place to the airport.
After we left the airport the sky cleared and this is some of the sights that we got to see
Here is the mirmaid, trust me, you don't want to see whats behind those tree's.
more sky
we're staying in a 5 bedroom villa with a private pool and hottub. its lots of fun, except for nate from texas, he kind of smells funny. but i'll get over it.

Thats it for now.

Airport Posting

Well, we're on our way home. we're all sitting in the airpot at bologna waiting for our flight. i have a few minutes left of internet i bought so i thought i would give you all some photos and an update.

Please pray for those of our crew who don't travel well,

The two young families, mama toews, courts and ricka, jenny, and maybe some others. also, please pray that i can be awarded an exit row for our next 9hr flight from london to vancouver. check out the shots and see you soon!The other night we went to dinner in a dungeon that we'd ate in before. look at this bruschetta! mmmmmmhm

Prince Ali
look at those big monster lips!

For Megs Joy

Megs - i only have a sec - but this one is for you. i heard you wanted a photo and i know you always appreciate a real nice haircut. you may want to show this to your boy jared and see if he'd be keen on a few horns.

talk to you all soon!

Steve

last day of camp

Well its lunch time on the last day of camp. It's going to be a quick lunch because we're having a slideshow for the kids of camp pictures from our two weeks here.One thing we've been noticing here is that they have alot of unique signs. We've been slowing down and taking pictures whenever we see unique ones. i've seen at least 3 different signs for a school zone. this one is my favourite - i love how the kid is sooo excited to go to school that she is pulling her dad across the street - italian elementary school must be quite something! When i return home i'll try to do a big post with all the different signs we've taken pictures of along with the descriptions we made up for them.
Last night we went to a pizza place in Faenza where a good friend of Phil and I lives. His name is Mario, he helped out a lot 2 years ago and his daughter Antonia is one of our translators for this week. In a few weeks she's actually moving to abbotsford to live with the kaspers. It's great that the team gets to know her here - she'll have lots of friends at home now!

I like this picture because phil seems like he wants to eat his pizza so bad but finn stole his fork so he could eat it and becky is also feeding finn some other food. phil is definately getting the shaft.

Ricka got a little fruity cake with a candle on it for her birthday. too bad it wasn't chocolate. we'll have to all go out for some good chocolate icecream when we get home i guess.after dinner we went to a fruitteria - a place that you just order fruit from. it was pretty amazing really - people were ordering just wahtever kind of fruit they wanted - even huge platters of fruit.


a bunch of us just got this slurpee's. In italian they're called "Granite" - menta, limone, or a fruit punch with mostly cherry. sooo good!!Thats pretty much it - pray that we find courtneys kick pedal so it doesn't feel like she's drumming with someone else's underwear. i probably won't post until we get back. but if i do then i do.

i'm only just starting to miss home today. love you mom and dad! see you on monday.

sk

quick post

Here are just a few quick pics from the last few days. Some events include, going river rafting with some of the kids, courtney and my one year of dating (7/11) and another trip to bertinorrowDad - this ones for you. i know you love a good sail boat.
Steve Schulz - this ones for you. i know you like fast food - i don't think it gets much faster than this.
here are some of the rafts the kids took down the river. only some of the leaders could go because only half of the kids were allowed to go rafting, so i had to hang out back at the lake with the kids.
This is a sign by the river. The river seemed really funny because it was almost dry. apparently when this company is taking rafts out they have to open a dam and let water out. there is only a period of time that the water is high for - the rafters got started a bit late and ended up getting stuck 13 times in the rocks due to low water.
This is the lake that is spent the day at with a few other leaders and the rest of the kids, it was really beautiful
ok, courtney is afraid of a lot of things - but i can't believe she let this butterfly sit there this long.

some shots from bertinorro

I got courtney this watch out here for our one year. its funny to buy an american made watch in italy - turns out i payed probably double what i could've got it for, but none of the italian watches were very cool. oh well. she's worth it.


today the italians put me in goal. great. the outofshape canadian playing a sport that italians seem to rule. not to mention the other team had a 20 yr old goalie who plays that position in a league

the REAL italy

alrighty - dinner is over and it seems we are still here. i'll take this moment to tell you all about the camera disaster that could've ruined all of my photos. The one major difference between film and digital cameras is that the part of the camera that recieves light on a film camera is the film. this means that each time your camera advances a new frame of film comes out of the film canister which is lined with a soft fabric brush so as to remove any dust that may have gotten on it while it was in the film canister. A Digital camera has a permanent sensor called a CCD . This is a sensitive instrument that recieves the light images it see's while the shutter is open and translates them into digital information. If any dust gets on your CCD it will reveal itself in all your pictures. It's virtually impossible to have a perfectly clean CCD so often you have to remove a few specs later - but its not a big deal. The other day i tried to clean my mirror in my camera (a part of the camera that reflects what you see, into the eye piece) this sits just in front of the CCD. I guess while i was cleaning it a whole bunch of dust ended up on the CCD - this is something that you can only clean with special tools that i don't have.

I ended working with stan to phone a few camera shops to see if they were able to clean it, they all said no. Stan then left and i was left to call people on my own. I had to use my limited italian and pursuade someone to help me, well after many phone calls and hack job italian conversations i found a guy who could do it that evening. So, with the help of 'Jane' our GPS and Elmer, we went to the camera shop downtown and my camera was fixed within 10 minutes. take a look below at the before and after. ISNT THAT UNREAL?!!!

before:


after: