Amazing Day !!! Updated with pics

The morning was pretty normal. I started planning my trip to New York, I only have 3 days, so I thought I'd figure out where I wanted to go and which day. Around lunch time Sam recieved a call from The Late Show with David Letterman - so you'll need some background info first. About 3-4 weeks ago I looked on the internet to see if I could get on the David Letterman Show while I was in New York. So I filled out the online form and waited for them to call. Nothing for the first few days, so I kinda forgot about it...until today !!!

So Sam gave the phone to me. I spoke to a woman who told me I had to call someone else and answer a trivia question about The Late Show correctly to get the tickets. So it's me, Sam, Smalls and Mez in the Smalls house. We instantly go into an excited panic, well maybe it was just me, to try and figure out how to answer the trivia question. Not being huge fans we called a few other people to help us out. Chris, Sam's mate from Day of Fire was on speaker phone to help us if we need him. So it came down to the big moment when I made the call......only to get a voice mail, dang it !!! (my fav new saying) We tried again to no avail. The third time we got through. So she first asked me how many times a week I watch the show, I said "at least twice....", obviously a blatant lie :) So then she asked me the trivia question....Now Sam had already Googled some triva questions regarding The Late Show, and they were on the laptop beside us.

"Where does Rupert Jee work?" was the trivia question that came down the phone line. "Who the what is that?" I thought to myself, so I got her to repeat the question. I stumbled a bit, so she said "It's just round the corner from the studio"

"The Deli, it's the deli" said Sam.

"The Deli", I said.

"That's correct, you've got tickets for The Late Show with Daid Letterman", she replied.

Yes Yes Yeeesssss !!!! I got my ticket, I was so stoked, I was jumping around all crazy and everything.

But that's just the start of the cool things :)

There's a moment in life when a boy becomes a man, and this was my moment......or so Bretta kept telling me. Yes that's right it was time to go shooting !!!! I have never shot a gun before, so this was my big chance. We went out the back of the place where Brett and Narn are staying. Vince Emmett who produced Main Attraction has a big property out the back of Franklin, TN. So me, Sam, Bretta, Josh and Vince's Dad went out the back to shoot some guns. We started off with a .22. They had a couple of shots before they handed the gun over to me :) I carefully lined up the target and softly put my finger on the trigger....BANG !!! The gun went off. I was surprised by how easy it was to pull the trigger.




We ended up shooting 4 different guns, my favourite was the pump action shootgun, baby that was cool! First shot had small pellets in it, the second was a slug, and I felt that thing kick when I shot it. It put a hole the plank of wood I was aiming at :)



Last but not least to finish off the night, we bought some fire crackers, and set them off in the dark. Heaps of different ones, including rockets, my personal fav. It was like we were little kids, I had a great time. I don't know why they are banned in Australia.

Well that finishes off an awesome day. Watching Australia play Croatia tomorow, I really hope we get up, it would be amazing to get to the next round of the World Cup.

Go Australia !!!

David Letterman Show !!!!

Well just got some great news, I've got tickets for The Late Show with David Letterman !!! I'm off to New York next week for a few days. I put my name down to get tickets for the show about a month ago. Well they called today. I had to answer a trivia question about the show, which Sam Hatch helped me out with (he Googled some stuff). So on Tuesday afternoon I'll be at The Ed Sullivan Theatre for the recording of The Late Show with David Letterman! I'm so happy to be in the audience, it's going to be a great experience!

Nashville

Well I realised that I haven't blogged in 2 weeks, gah !

We stayed at a couple more places before we got back to Nashville. Omaha, Nebraska was the first place after Colorado. I guess your average kinda city. We met up with Randy Maricle there, AB's manager. We played a church there (whatever night of the week). After the show we played a game of cricket with some of the people in the church. We had to show them of course, but we had a great time playing it with them. The next day we played at a bookstore. The owner let us pick out a CD each for free. I picked out the Mat Kearney CD, and bought a CD from a fairly new band called Red Umbrella. I guess they are a combination of Travis, Stereophonics and Coldplay.

Next was up to Des Moines, Iowa, for another book store, I think. That was just a day there, then we drove to Nashville during the night.

Most of the guys live around Franklin, which is about 40mins south of Nashville. It's a cool little area. It looks like Currumbin Valley, but with a few more people living there. I wouldn't mind living here, it is beautiful. I'm staying with the Smallbones. They have a small office area to the side, and I just sleep in there.

The weather is quite hot during the day, and the humidity can get high. It's now 7 here and the sun is still well above the horizon, I guess the sun sets about 8:30, so it's great to stay up and hang outside. They also have firebugs here, which is really cool to see.

So last week was just spent hangin out and doing some work. We watched the Australia v Japan game on Monday. It was so great to get a win in our first world cup game for however many years.

Early Friday morning we drove up to Ichthus festival in Willmore, Kentucky. AB played on the Worship stage at 1 pm. About 100 turned out which was pretty good considering no one had heard of them.Delirious? played that night. Their set was not as "rocky" as I've seen before, so they weren't amazing, but it was still good to see them. After that we went to the local college to play a dodgeball tournament. On a preivous Ichthus tour AB played some Dodgeball with the other bands, so the festival organised a dodgeball tournament for us to play in. Basically anyone could enter a team to challenge the Australian team. "Captain Swanny" set up a myspace page, check it out...http://www.myspace.com/australiandodgeballteam. Well we basically played 17 games straight of dodgeball, we came out the winners 12-5.

Forgot to mention that the dodgeball finished at 1am, and we had to get up at 6 the next morning!!! AB played mainstage at 9am Saturday morning, first band of the day. They got a pretty good crowd for that time of the morning. I got to use one of the new digital yamaha desks (PM5D to be precise, 24 aux out, awesome!!!!) to mix their in ears, so that was a great experience. Spent the rest of the day surviving the heat. That night Audio Adrenaline played. They are on their last tour, so it was great to see them for the last time. Also got to see Chris Tomlin, who wrote How Great is our God. He was awesome, some great good, praise and worship songs, I'd like to get his album.



After Audio we packed up all the merch and Sam, Swanny and I started the 3.5 hour drive home from Willmore to Nashville. Got home early morning, went straight to bed. Got up late Sunday morning, and headed out to Vince Emmett's (AB's producer for Main Attraction Album) house to watch the recorded game of Australia v Brazil. Needless to say I was disappointed by the 2-0 loss. I was hoping to get at least a draw, but our boys played execptionally well. I think there's a chance we could get to the next round. Vince has an amazing property right out the back of Franklin. On the way home Smalls drove me past a few sights of Franklin. The Newsboys recording studio, Rebecca St. James' studio, Michael W Smiths studio, the studio were DC Talk recorded Jesus Freak, Delirious' producers studio. So basically it was a tour of the christian artists studio's.

Which leads me to today. Had a great sleep-in...up at 12:40 :) Sam and Chris (Sam and Moo live with Chris and his wife, Chris is the bass player from Day of Fire) came round. We went and got some burgers for lunch and then off to the park for a spot of frisbee and fishing (not done at the same time of course). The amazing thing was we each managed to catch a fish :) Just played some basketball with Smalls, so I think it's time for bed.

Audios

Vail Colorado..beautiful

I am curently sitting in the Library of a beautiful hotel in the city of Vail, Colorado. We have had 2 big days of driving, but have seen some amazing sights and have been very blessed.

So I wrote my last post at 1:30am Saturday morning. Well I had to get up at 5:15 that same morning to leave. I managed to get a bit of sleep. We had a whole day of driving ahead of us. We left San Louis Obispo and headed east towards Nevada. There's some beautiful scenery out the back of California, we passed this stretch of country packed with mini oil pumps, it was really cool.


Next was on to Las Vegas !!! We only had 2 hours there, so Me, Swanny, Sam and Bretta ran round like chooks with their heads cut off. We managed to see about 4 different casino's. We checked out the sights, it was really cool, everything big. Boy it was hot out there, I'm sure I lost some kg's just running round.

We left there and drove through Arizona and then on to Utah. Saw some amazing desert scenery.



We stopped in some cheap hotel for the night. we got there about 1:30am. Had a good sleep in till 10 am.

Another day of driving today, but not as far. Headed in to Colorado...wow !!! It's not winter here, but it's still beautiful ! Driving through winding canyons covered with tall trees. We arrived in Vail about 4:00pm. The church we played at tonight are putting us up in this resort. Man it is awesome, we have these really posh looking rooms. During ski season they charge $580 a night, but they know someone here, so the church is geting it real cheap. We have been really blessed on this trip, free San Diego Zoo, free Disneyland and now this awesome hotel in Colorado. There is a running river just outside our room, ahh the serenity.

Well time for bed, want to check out some of the area round here before our half price buffet breakfast :)

Busy...Busy...Busy !

Been very busy with AB the last few weeks. We are currently staying near a city called San Louis Obispo, about 4 hours North of LA. We are driving out to Vail, Colorado tomorrow and staying there a few nights (I think). It will be an all day drive, but we will be stopping in Las Vegas for an hour or 2 to have a look around and get some lunch. Swanny and I haven't been to LV yet, so we are really looking forward to it.

A few cool things have happened since my last post. Unfortunately I haven't had much of a chance to get access to a computer, so I'll give you some short details here.

2 weeks ago...
We headed down to San Diego Zoo. Our friends in LA Chris and Kym and their kids Kylie and CJ came down with us for the day. We started off with a train ride down the Californian coast to San Diego. I kinda reminded me of Kingscliff, nice beaches with small coastal towns every once in a while. The zoo itself was pretty big with a great variety of animals. Top mentions go to the Pandas, Polar Bears and the Apes. All very cool. So yeah we had a great day cruising round there.

Earlier this week...
I went to Disneyland !!!! About 8 of us went to Disneyland for the day, and we all went for free !!! One of the people we were staying with knows someone, who knows someone that works there, so we were able to get in for free. Sam Hatch has been to Disneyland 5 times, and has never paid the entry fee, how's that! Nothing like free entry to the greatest theme park on Earth. It was everything I ever dreamed of. Most of us reverted back to a child like state for the day (Swanny was already at the child like state). It was great having Matt, Mary and Isaac there. Man he is a cool kid, he was good the whole day, like for 10 hours.

So went spent the day at Disneyland and California Adventure Park, which is another theme park next to Disneyland, but it has more thrill kind rides. Best ride at Disneyland was Space Mountain, which is a really fast Rollercoaster, except it is inside, so your going really fast in pitch black...it was really cool. I also got a photo with Mickey Mouse, which sounds lame, but I thought it was cool. Swanny and I had a good time cheering at the girl who played Ariel (The Little Mermaid) in the Disney Parade. She gave us big smiles, a few cheeky waves, and blew us a kiss...she was prety hot...for a Mermaid ;) We stayed for the fireworks at night also, so it was about 12 hours actually at the park and about 14 hours all together for the day. I'm so glad I got to make it to Disneyland, it really made my trip.

Yesterday...
We left LA, and the people we were staying with. They have been so great to us and it has been awesome staying with them. We stayed at 3 different houses, and each family has been awesome to stay with and spend time with. We had a couple of BBQ's and a few Boys Pizza and Poker nights. The band will see them in a few months again, but I won't, so I will miss them. They welcomed me back anytime, so I would love to take up that opportunity.

But now a big drive tomorrow...actually I have to get up in 4 hours, so I better get to bed. It's a bummer I haven't been able to put up more info. But I guess that's what happens when your a fully fledged road dog on tour with a band :) I will try and put some of my holiday pics up somewhere, watch out for a link.

Time for bed
Peace Out!