I went horseback riding just the other day. It was February 25 to be exact. The day was a beautiful and breezy one. The perfect day to go riding. Not too hot. Not too cold. I went with my friend Tara who owned the horses. Arriving at the ranch, we noticed that the horses were quite dirty. We tried brushing them down but, to no avail. The dirt from the recent rains was embedded down into the fur of the horses backs and sides. To wash the horses would take too much time so it was decided that we should just ride the horses the way they were. A little bit of dirt would make the experience even better. So, we saddled up the horses and soon we were off. Tara and her family own a nice little piece of land out in Somis and we rode on her property. First up a small incline and then down a long incline. Talk along the subject of differentiating between a hill and a mountain seemed to interest us. So we talked. Soon we were back to where we had started. Then we started off again. This time in another direction. We began traveling along the road and soon the decision of riding to the top of a large incline presented itself. We call it a large incline because we still had yet to come to find the defining terms between a hill and a mountain. So we backtracked and began our journey up the incline. The incline held a path and the path led to the constuction of a new home. A new home Tara and her family would live in someday. Someday soon. After checking out the half built home we were off to descend the large decline. My horse was hungry. My horse stopped to eat. I stopped. I was not hungry. I wanted to move along. The horse moved along. Eventually we can upon the same clearing that held the ranch. The clearing was full of green grass and we stopped. Tara and I decided to let the horses eat before dismounting them. After the horses were done, we took them to their homes and disassembled the saddles. The horse I rode decided he liked me, not only as a rider but as an itching post and preceded to rub his large nose on my shirt which covered it in horsehair. After we put away all the tools used to ride, we left. Riding is fun and I enjoyed it alot. Being able to sit on a large creatures back and control its movements seems to thrill me somehow.

Jamming with the band

So over the past two weeks I have been pretty busy. A lot of my time has been consumed in pursuing my dream career of playing drums in a praise and worship band. I try to spend at least an hour a day playing random stuff while the click track is clicking in my ear. But sometimes I hook my MP3 player up to my ear phones and jam to a song from one of my favorite artists. But I decided I would like to play drums with the band at my church and so I asked the leader of the band would I could audition and he told me to just come down one Thursday night while they were rehearsing and I could sit in for a bit. So I did. The band heard me play and said, "aight!" Brigg the team leader asked everyone what they thought and pretty much everyone said he's good. There was one guy though who said he thought my time wasn't sitting in the pocket just right. So he gave me some tips to practicing that could improve my timing. That's where I got the click track idea. So Brigg told me I was in with the group and I could jam with the guys. He also decided that I would start off playing percussion so as to learn all the songs the way they play them. So the next Thursday that there was practice I went and learned how to play the congas to one song. But they liked how quickly I picked up the congas and told me to be at the church on Sunday and 7:45 to rehearse real quickly before the services started. So I ended up playing in all the 3 songs that we played on Sunday and by the time we were done with the first set my hands had started to swell up because they weren't used to playing the congas. Plus, the drums were right next to me so I had to play super loud which meant hitting the heads much harder. All-in-all I believe I did really well and I know for a fact that I had a blast!