Recovery

I'd say I'm recovering pretty well.

I've gotten the sweetest little sercies in the mail from Inheritance of Hope supporters (Mike and Ike's, fun socks, a gift certificate to get a pedicure, an hour long massage!) and then today for work, we had to go mountain biking. Tough life right? 

Our newest client has recently built an incredible mountain biking trail right outside of downtown Brevard and they are in need of a signage system to let visitors know where they are in the trail plus what they are seeing and why it is important.

Today was the day to go ride the trail and see the project first hand.

We rode/hiked the first half of the trail. It is REALLY TOUGH. Like crazy hard. Uphill. We got so excited we actually riding our bikes that we missed our main turn (this is why they need signs) and we ended up riding/hiking our bikes an additional 2 miles.

After a disastrous downhill decent that resulted in a dead-end and a long mile long hike with bikes STRAIGHT BACK UPHILL, I declared this to be the worst thing I have ever done. Which is hard to declare since I almost died of dehydyration three days ago. But it really was.

That little dip in the middle? That's where we went straight down and then STRAIGHT BACK UP. UGH. 

We finally found our way and had the most exhilarating, amazingly beautiful and thrilling bike ride I've ever had. We descended over 1000 feet in elevation in a little over 2 miles so it got rowdy with hairpin turns, switchbacks, waterfalls, riding in the middle of fallen trees and did I mention that is absolutely beautiful here in WNC?

I am SO tired. But it was SO worth it.

Love this life!

Lump in My Throat

A good addendum to my previous post about my kids starting school and us having survived the summer would be THIS video.

Just saw it today and it is such a good memory to make memories and not just assume they will happen.




Of course it was produced by an advertising agency (those buggers). Speaking of which, have you seen the work my ad agency has put out lately? We are in the middle of building our new website, but our portfolio is up and you can see our latest work.

www.thebigbridge.com

Live Kite Pimping

My boss, Stephen Lutz is launching a new website this fall. It is a Christian online networking community, called livekite.com and it is mainly focused on groups; such as Bible studies, small groups and churches.

It is similar to myspace and Facebook except that neither of these groups really offer much in what groups need such as calendar options, blogs, discussion boards etc.

I am working on a launch event that is happening next Tuesday night at The Grey Eagle in downtown Asheville. I really love all of the artists that are performing to support this website launch. What am I working on? I am doing all of the public relations work and so here is a sample of my press release that was sent to media outlets around Asheville on Friday:

ASHEVILLE, NC—The online community site, livekite.com announces a local networking music event called, “LiveKite Live” that will be held at the Grey Eagle on October 9th at 8pm with no cover charge. Local musicians including Derek & Kevin Stipe of Monday Morning, William F. Gibbs, Karl Ruch, Millie Palmer and Doss Church will be performing throughout the evening.


Two Asheville locals, Doss Church and Stephen Lutz, founded Livekite.com. The co-founders formerly worked together in magazine publishing and struck up a conversation about networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.

“I joined Myspace in the early days and was fascinated by the concept and the rapid growth. I also saw what a great business plan it was,” said Doss Church, president of LiveKite.com. “Before long I realized that there were gaps in the Myspace model where Christian groups should be.”

“As we were planning the development of the site we talked a lot about providing a way for bands and fans to connect,” said Church. “Partly because Stephen and I are both big music fans ourselves but also because we felt like it would be important to a lot of people on the site.”

An Event for Musicians and Fans

“I had been involved with some singer/songwriter in-the-round events in Nashville,” said Church. “I knew how fun they could be for everyone and thought we could do something similar with a few hand-picked Livekite artists.”

The purpose of LiveKite Live is to thank local supporters, in addition to hosting an event where members of the website can meet and socialize in person rather than just have an Internet relationship.

“LiveKite Live is an event that is taking online community into the real world”, said Stephen Lutz, co-founder of livekite.com. “We hope that this event will create a local community around our website and get people excited about local musicians.”

Singer/songwriters will perform acoustic versions of their original tunes currently featured on Livekite.com. The format will be casual and intimate as the artists sit on stage together, interacting with one another and the audience as they each play 2-3 of their favorite originals.


LiveKite Live will be on Tuesday, October 9th from 8-10:30pm at The Grey Eagle on Clingman Avenue.


I am really posting this on my blog to see if my GoogleAlert works and to see if it will get picked up by other sources. Wish me luck! Also, feel free to come to the event and check out the site-sign up even! This is the way that I make money, so thanks for helping me out!

Today!

Since this week, Youth For Christ is renting out Crooked Creek; most of the assigned team has no job! So the agreement is that the A-Team will take on other jobs around camp for three days of the week and have the rest of the week off. So today, Matt and I traded. He took the kids and I went and worked in the laundry for half of the day and led the mountain bike trips for the rest of the afternoon. We folded over 300 fitted and flat sheets, along with towels, pillowcases and the work crew's personal laundry-all this morning. But it was so much fun to learn HOW to fold a fitted sheet with precision. I will give a tutorial tomorrow. Then we took over the bikes. It was so much fun! About ten minutes into the ride, we saw a moose with two calves out in the middle of the field. Moose sightings are much sought after around camp and I was one of the few who got to see one. And with twin calves! They were about 500 yards away. After about five minutes of staring, we realized that we might be in charging territory and should probably be on our way. About that time, the moose realized the same thing and moved on her way. It was incredible. Almost as incredible as spending the whole day away from my kids and loving every single minute of it.

BTW: this is not my picture. I was not brave enough to bring my camera on the ride.