Tag: beach

December 4-7, 1998.  My first conference for teachers. (#201)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 2 Comments

“Are you doing anything this weekend?” Mrs. Tracy asked me, as I packed up my things after my period student teaching in her classroom ended.

“The Shorehaven conference,” I replied.

“Oh, that’s right!  That’s this weekend!  I haven’t been to that in a few years.  Is this your first time, as a new student teacher?”

“Yeah!  I’m kind of excited!”

“Have you been to the Shorehaven conference grounds before?  Didn’t you grow up around there?”

“Yes.  Plumdale is about thirty miles away from Ocean Grove.  I’ve been to Ocean Grove many times, but not actually on the conference grounds.”

“It’s beautiful!  You’ll love it!”

“That’s good.”

“Have a great weekend!  I’ll see you Monday!” Mrs. Tracy said.

“You too!”


A couple months ago, in our student teaching seminar, Dr. Van Zandt told us about an annual conference bringing together hundreds of mathematics teachers from all over the northern half of the state.  He encouraged us to attend, even though the event was at Shorehaven Conference Grounds in Ocean Grove, a three hour drive from Jeromeville each way.  We would have to pay our own expenses, but since my parents lived just thirty miles away, I could stay with them and avoid the cost of either a room at the conference grounds or an overpriced touristy hotel room in or near Ocean Grove.

The schedule included a keynote address on a Friday night, breakout sessions and vendor booths all day Saturday, and two large group speeches on Sunday morning.  Some of the breakout sessions included materials given out to attendees; I had to choose two of these in advance, because of the limited supply of materials.  After I sent my registration form and fees, I received my name badge and tickets to the two ticketed sessions in the mail.

The Shorehaven conference, officially the “Western Mathematics Council Education Conference – North, Shorehaven,” was held annually on the weekend after Thanksgiving.  I had no education classes on Friday afternoons, so after I came home from student teaching on that Friday morning, I spent the rest of the afternoon packing.  I only needed two changes of clothes, but I packed an extra change of clothes as I always did.

I left Jeromeville around two o’clock and took the slightly longer route home down the Valley.  On a Friday afternoon, the more direct route through Los Nogales and San Tomas would lead me directly into the middle of massive traffic snarls.  I arrived at my parents’ house around five; Mom said she would have dinner ready for me.  She made chicken and mashed potatoes.  Since this was a work trip, I made sure Mom knew that I only had an hour at most before I had to leave for the conference.

The drive had been cold and gloomy.  The gray December sky that had been above me so far on this trip had turned completely dark by the time I left my parents’ house, except for a faint glow in the east where the moon was rising behind the clouds.  I drove south on Highway 11 and turned at the south end of Plumdale onto Highway 127 west.  Five miles down the road, in Carsonville, Highway 127 merged with Highway 2 south and ran parallel to the coast.  Carsonville was near the mouth of the Gabilan River and its fertile surrounding valley, so here the highway ran a few miles inland, surrounded by farmland.  I drove over a few low hills across the cities of Marine Beach, Seaview, and Santa Lucia, then exited on Highway 86 west toward Ocean Grove.

This stretch of Highway 86 was a twisting two-lane road that climbed a thickly forested hill, but since it was dark, I would have to wait until morning to enjoy the view.  After a few miles, the road widened and became Cypress Avenue.  When I saw Cypress Middle School at the corner with Sycamore Avenue, I turned onto a side street and looked for a place to park on the side of the street, finding one about a block past the school.

The conference was so large that it took up three locations within about a mile and a half of each other: the actual conference grounds on the beach, this school near the top of a hill, and Ocean Grove High School in between.  The Friday keynote address was at the middle school, the two Sunday talks were at the conference grounds, and the Saturday breakout sessions and vendor tables were at all three locations, with the local school district donating its buses to be used as shuttle buses between the three sites..

Cypress Middle School was an old building, probably from the early twentieth century.  To my knowledge, middle schools were a newer concept around here; this building looked like something from the era of when only elementary and high schools existed.  I wondered if this school might have originally been an elementary or high school. I walked inside, where two people sat at a table with boxes full of tote bags.  “Hi,” one of them said.  “Do you have your name badge?”

“Yes,” I replied, handing it to her.  She looked through a very long list, found my name, and handed me a tote bag.

“Enjoy!” she said.

Apparently I got a free tote bag for attending this event.  I was not expecting that.  The bag was black, with a yellow logo printed on it, some kind of repeating fractal design with spirals.  Above it was printed the slogan “Mathematics Is Beautiful,” and below it, “Western Mathematics Council 1998.”

I carried the tote bag as I followed signs to the theater.  Cypress Middle School was a two-story building, with a strange layout; in order to reach the theater, I had to climb to the second floor, go around a corner, and then go back down a different set of stairs.  The theater was large, with probably around a thousand seats, not typical of any theater found in any middle school I had seen before.  I was almost certain now that this building had once been the local high school.

When I arrived, the theater was only around a quarter full, and I did not see anyone I recognized.  I took a seat and looked through my tote bag to see what was inside.  An updated catalog of courses, including last minute changes and corrections.  A note pad, with the conference logo and dates of upcoming conferences from this year through 2002.  A lanyard and plastic sleeve in which to put my name badge.  A pencil and pen.

The speaker was a curriculum director for some school district in the suburbs of Bay City.  He was talking about the importance of cultural diversity and how students from different cultures respond to various scenarios in school.  I tuned out about halfway through, because I had heard a lot of this in one of my education classes, and this was a hot-button issue in those days that I did not completely agree with.  Every student is different, yes, and as a teacher I should be familiar with my students enough to recognize that some will react differently to school settings than others.  But assuming that students will be a certain way because of their cultures, or the colors of their skin, to me seemed like just racial stereotyping all over again.


In those days, when I slept at my parents’ house, I was usually on a school break, so it was a little difficult to wake up at 6:00 to get ready.  I wanted to lie in bed for a while Saturday morning, but I had to get up and get dressed, because I had a ticket for an 8:00 session.

Highway 86 was much more beautiful in the light of the rising sun, with views of the ocean from the summit of the hill.  I parked near where I had parked the day before at Cypress Middle School and walked to my session.  It was about algebra tiles, small plastic blocks used to model simplifying, factoring, and expanding algebraic expressions.  This session came with a free sample of three-dimensional algebra tiles, which could be used to model expressions with exponents up to the third power, whereas traditional flat tiles could only be used for the second power.  I could see where this would be a useful manipulative, but it seemed like it would take a long time to teach students how to use them, long enough that I was not sure it would be useful.

I had an hour and a half until my next session, so next I walked around the vendors in the school cafeteria.  I took lots of business cards, pamphlets, and free samples of pens and pencils as sales professionals tried to convince me to buy calculators, classroom manipulatives, and computer software.  As a student teacher, I was not in a position to make a large purchase, but I was interested in knowing what was out there.  I spent money once that day, and it happened when I turned a corner and saw a booth selling mathematics-related t-shirts.  I knew I had to get something.

“Do you have the quadratic formula shirt in an extra large?” I asked, pointing to the shirt in question. “I’m teaching that right now, actually.”

“Let me look,” the man behind the table said.  He looked through a box and pulled out a shirt in my size.  “We only have it in green.  Is that okay?”

“Sure,” I said.  I paid him and put the t-shirt in my tote bag.

After I finished walking around the vendor tables, I left the cafeteria through the back door, which opened right onto a street running behind the school.  I got on the next school bus to arrive and rode through the neighborhoods of Ocean Grove, a little over a mile down a gently sloping hill, to the main conference grounds.

I had never seen the Shorehaven Conference Center up close, and it was absolutely beautiful.  About twenty-five old wooden buildings, many with stone chimneys, were scattered among coastal cypress and live oak trees, with the beach just beyond a row of dunes at the west end of the conference center.  The north side of the grounds held dormitories, with exhibition halls and meeting rooms on the south side.  I found the room for the next session on my schedule, where I sat listening to a veteran teacher speak on creative ways to keep students engaged in learning.  I wondered if any of that would work for the difficult students I had in Mrs. Matthews’ Basic Math B class.

Next, I climbed a hill to a large exhibition hall, an imposing wooden structure with a stone façade in front and tall paned windows.  The catalog said that there were more vendors in here, but a quick look around showed me that these vendors were mostly textbook publishers.

“Are you adopting?” one saleswoman asked me as I approached her table.

“Huh?” I asked instinctively.  Adopting?  Like adopting a baby?  That did not make sense in this context.  I was not sure what she was asking.

“Is your school adopting this year?” she repeated.

I still was not sure what she was talking about, so I said, “No.  I’m just looking.”

“Can I tell you about our program, so you’ll remember us in your next adoption year?”

“Sure,” I said.

As she began to explain the features of the textbook that she was selling, I inferred from the context that “adopting” is educational bureaucrat jargon for selecting and buying new textbooks and curriculum.  As I flipped through one of her books, she explained that this was an integrated curriculum.  “So, instead of having algebra one year and geography another year, you get it all combined.  We don’t have a geography book, but if you do our three-year core high school curriculum, you get all the material for a year of geography.”

I nodded, more confused than ever.  This was math, not social studies.  Why would there be geography in this textbook?  Was this curriculum so integrated that these textbooks taught math and social studies? I did not see any maps in the book I was flipping through, just math.  “So can I sign you up for anything?” she asked

“I’m not ready to get anything now.”

“That’s okay.  Here’s my card.  Contact me when your school is adopting.”

“Thank you.  I will.”

“Enjoy the weekend!”

“Thanks!” I said.  As I walked around the room, about two minutes later it occurred to me that all of her talk about geography was actually about geometry.  I reached into my tote bag, found her business card, and threw it away; no student needs to learn from a textbook published by a company whose sales representatives do not know the difference between geometry and geography.

I finished walking around the publishers’ exhibits shortly before noon.  I had a session at 1:00 back at Cypress Middle School, and I was picking up a box lunch at the school.  But instead of waiting for the next shuttle bus, I decided to walk.  I followed the same route I had taken on the bus, walking out the main entrance, across Shorehaven Avenue, and straight down Sycamore Avenue to the school.

Ocean Grove is a great town to take a walk.  The neighborhoods closest to the beach have no sidewalks and curbs, just beautifully kept up old houses among large cypress, pine, and live oak trees, some covered with Spanish moss.  I saw squirrels climbing trees and birds flying by.

The walk to the school was a little over a mile.  About a third of the way there, a curb appeared on the side of the street, and parts of the street now had a paved sidewalk as well. This neighborhood looked more like a typical well-kept older suburban area, the trees not quite as dense or tall.  The overcast December sky that had hung over my trip home yesterday had given way to a beautiful blue, cool and breezy but sunny with no clouds in sight.  This part of Sycamore Avenue ran along the top of a ridge, and a few times during my walk, while crossing a street, I could look to my left down the cross street and see the dark blue ocean far off below me, with the faint hazy outline of the Lorenzo Mountains even farther away across the Santa Lucia Bay.

When I arrived at the school and walked to the table where the lunches were being distributed, I saw Ron Pinkerton, Melissa Becker, and Ryan Gaines from my student teaching program sitting at a picnic table.  I sat with them after I got my lunch.  “How’s your day been?” Ron asked.

“Good so far,” I said.  “I have a session here at 1 about teaching fractions.  The Basic Math B class is doing things with fractions right now, and a lot of them don’t get it at all.  Then back to the grounds to hear Howard Jacobsen at 4. He wrote the textbook that Ryan and I use for Basic B at Nueces High, and I also used one of his textbooks in high school.”

“Howard Jacobsen will be good,” Ryan said.  “I’m not gonna make it, though.”

“We’re gonna go check out the vendors inside,” Melissa said a few minutes later after she and the others finished their lunch.  “Have you been in there yet?”

“Yeah,” I replied.  “I got a quadratic formula t-shirt.”

“Nice!  I’m going to Howard Jacobsen, so I’ll see you there?”

“Yeah,” I replied.  “Have fun in there.”

After the session about fractions, I now had some new ideas on how to make the students visualize what fractions really meant.  Now I had to take another shuttle bus back to the grounds.  The walk was pleasant, but I did not particularly want to walk that far a second time today.  When I arrived at the grounds, I walked toward the beach and found a nice big rock to sit on.  I closed my eyes for a bit, but I was not positioned comfortably enough to fall asleep, even with the soothing low roar of waves breaking as background noise.

As the time for Howard Jacobsen’s talk drew near, I started walking in that direction.  The room was mostly full when I arrived, just in time, but I saw Melissa, and she had saved me a seat next to her.  “Thanks,” I whispered to her.

Mr. Jacobsen did not look much like I imagined.  I recognized him from the “About the Author” page in the Basic B textbook, but he was older now.  He was shorter than average for a man, and his head, with slightly bushy gray hair and a mustache, looked too big for his well-dressed body.  But once he began speaking, I was instantly fascinated.  “Every year,” he explained, “I keep an eye out for stories in the news that I can use in my classroom.  Here are some of my favorites for this year.”

Mr. Jacobsen showed a photo on the projector of a drawing of a normal human, with marks showing his height at six feet, then next to him a drawing of a giant baby, also six feet tall.  “Babies do not look like miniature humans,” he explained.  “Their different body parts grow at different rates.  So if you scale a baby up to six feet tall, it looks different from an adult man.  I used this illustration last year when I was teaching proportions.”

Next, Mr. Jacobsen put a photograph on the projector of a man dressed like Elvis Presley jumping out of an airplane with a parachute, and a table showing the number of professional Elvis impersonators in various years.  “So this article was talking about the rapid growth in the number of Elvis impersonators since the time of Elvis’ death.  You could easily tie this into a lesson about exponential growth.”  He next showed a page of equations on the projector and added, “Here we calculate that, if the growth rates continue, by the middle of the twenty-first century, every human being on Earth will be an Elvis impersonator.”  Many people in the audience laughed, including me.

After an hour of such examples, when the talk ended, I said goodbye to Melissa, who was headed to dinner with some of the others from our class.  She invited me, but I had plans to have dinner with my parents.  After Melissa left, before I went home, I walked up to Mr. Jacobsen at the front of the room and nervously said, “Mr. Jacobsen?”

“Yes?” he replied, turning around.

“Hi.  I don’t know you.  My name is Greg Dennison, I’m a student teacher from Jeromeville, and one of the classes I’m student teaching is using your Survey of Mathematics textbook.  And I used your geometry textbook myself eight years ago when I was in high school.  I just wanted to say I love your textbook writing style.”

“Thank you!” Mr. Jacobsen replied, sounding genuinely pleased.

“I love the way you creatively work in so many other topics and find ways to connect them to math.  Just like what you were talking about today.  It’s very unique, and that’s why your textbook stood out to me all these years.”

“Thank you so much.  That’s what I try to do.  It was nice meeting you, Greg.”

“You too.  I’ll probably see you next year if you’re here again.”

“I should be!” he exclaimed.  “I look forward to it!”


I skipped the Sunday morning sessions and got back to Jeromeville around lunch time on Sunday, as I had planned.  I had some reading to do for my classes.

Dr. Van Zandt was at Nueces High School on Monday, to record his student teachers there and make observations.  He observed me in Mrs. Tracy’s class third period, but he did not know that I had a little surprise planned for the class.

I wrote “ax2 + bx + c = 0,” the general form of a quadratic equation, on the board.  “The first problem for today is going to walk you through how to get x by itself, to solve this equation,” I said.  “Work on that in your groups, fill in the blanks, then we’ll talk about it together.” I walked around, helping students get unstuck as Dr. Van Zandt pointed a video camera at me and took notes.  After most of the responsible students had successfully gotten x alone by completing the square, thus deriving and proving the quadratic formula, I wrote the formula on the board.

“And I also brought a little study guide for you,” I said.  The students watched as I took off the sweater I was wearing, revealing my new green quadratic formula T-shirt underneath.  Dr. Van Zandt’s camera captured all of it, including the students’ reactions as they laughed and cheered.

“Where’d you get that, Mr. Dennison?” Andy Rawlings shouted out.

“I went to a conference this weekend.  They were selling math shirts.”

“I love it!”

I wore the quadratic formula shirt many times the rest of that year, and the students all seemed to react positively to it.  Once I wore it to Jeromeville Christian Fellowship, and a younger university student saw it and said, “The quadratic formula!  I remember that from high school!”  His response puzzled me; as a mathematics major, the quadratic formula was not something to be remembered in the distant past and forgotten, but something fundamental to the way the universe worked.  I supposed that many people did not see it that way, though.

I went to the Shorehaven conference a total of twelve times from 1998 through 2014.  I  made the walk from the conference grounds to Cypress Middle School at some point every time I went, because that was such a beautiful, peaceful place to take a walk, with all the trees surrounding the conference grounds, and the waves breaking on the adjacent beach.  I have not been in over a decade at this point; the other mathematics teachers at my current place of employment usually do not go, and the school district only sends instructional coaches to that conference.  I did go to the adjacent beach once since then, in 2024 while driving around with my mother on a visit home.  I may return to the conference someday, though; I still have well over a decade ahead of me before retirement.

Readers: Is there an annual event, work- or school-related or otherwise, that you attend every year, or attended every year for a long time? Tell me about it in the comments.

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June 22-23, 1998.  The Mystery Trip. (#181)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 8 Comments

Surprise… I’m back! Welcome to season 5!

Once last year, while driving back to Jeromeville after visiting my family, I noticed a new road sign in Nueces, sixteen miles west of Jeromeville.  The sign said NUECES CULTURAL CENTER, NEXT EXIT.  I thought this was hilarious, because Nueces was a bland suburb not exactly known for high culture.  Also, Nueces means “nuts” in Spanish.  The name refers to walnuts and almonds historically grown in the area, but countless teenage boys, and others like me who never outgrew teenage boy humor, associate the word “nuts” with something else.

A few weeks ago, I made a joke among the other youth group leaders at church.  Adam White, the youth pastor, repeated the common joke that “military intelligence” and “jumbo shrimp” were oxymorons, phrases with self-contradictory meanings.  “You know what else is an oxymoron?” I said.  “The Nueces Cultural Center.”  Everyone laughed.  This silly joke would become a part of a new annual activity for The Edge, the junior high school kids at Jeromeville Covenant Church.

The activity was called the Mystery Trip.  The students were out on summer vacation, and this trip would welcome incoming students from the preteen youth group and send off the students promoting to high school with a final farewell.  Parents would drop off their students one morning and pick them up late the following night, with neither the parents nor the students having any idea what the students would be doing.  We leaders knew, but we were under strict instructions not to tell anyone.

When I arrived, Adam was sitting on the floor of the youth room with some of the other leaders going on the trip: Noah Snyder, Taylor Santiago, Erica Foster, and Martin Rhodes.  Courtney Kohl and Cambria Hawley arrived after I did.  “These are fake directions,” Adam announced as the leaders gathered in the youth room.  “Put them somewhere in the car for the students to find, but don’t say anything.”

“That’s brilliant,” I replied.  I skimmed the directions and laughed loudly when I saw the first destination.  “The Nueces Cultural Center?  That’s great!”

“I know,” Adam replied.  “Read the rest of it.”  Chuckles and eye rolls spread across the group as everyone read the fake itinerary, traveling from the Nueces Cultural Center to a garbage dump in Ashwood and a grueling hike up Yucca Mountain.

Courtney was sitting next to me; I heard her wonder aloud, “What’s Yucca Mountain?”

“A nuclear waste dump, in the middle of nowhere in Nevada,” I explained.

“Oh wow,” she replied, laughing.

“I hear people outside,” Adam said.  “Let’s pray for this trip, then we can start checking people in and loading the cars.  Noah, do you want to pray?”

“Sure,” Noah replied.  We all bowed our heads as Noah began to speak.  “Lord Jesus, I pray for safe travels today and tomorrow.  I ask that this Mystery Trip will be a meaningful experience for the students.  I pray for the new students coming into The Edge, that they will look forward to coming back and experiencing God’s love and fellowship.  I pray for those who will be starting high school in the fall, that this last junior high activity will remind them of how much they have grown, and how much you love them.  And I pray that all of us will have fun!  Amen!”

“Amen,” everyone else murmured.

We had instructed the parents to drop off the students at nine in the morning, with plans to leave at exactly ten.  That should give time to load the car and wait for stragglers.  As we waited, I noticed Courtney and Erica doing what appeared to be swing dancing moves in the nearly empty youth room.  Swing dancing and the associated music from the early 20th century had suddenly become oddly popular over the last year, with many bars, including one here in Jeromeville, holding swing dancing nights.  I thought the whole thing was dumb, and a bit creepy, considering how some of my friends had become obsessed with swing dancing practically overnight.

“What are they doing?” a student named Phillip Long asked me.

“Swing dancing,” I said.

“That’s dancing?”

“I guess.”

We left at 10:12, sooner than I expected given how crazy things can get while chaperoning a group of thirty-seven teens and preteens.  The church van was full of students, and a few leaders and parent chaperones, including me, had students in our own cars.  I drove my Bronco with Ted Hunter, Zac Santoro, Phillip Long, and Frank Krakowski.  I had known Ted and Zac for a long time; a year and a half ago, I had only been attending J-Cov for a few months, and they asked me to hang out with them after church and said I should be a leader in their youth group.  Noah always said he thought it was hilarious that the students chose me to be a leader, instead of the other way around.  Phillip and Frank had one more year in junior high.  Phillip’s mother attended J-Cov, but Frank’s family did not, and I got the impression that his family did not attend any church.  He found The Edge through friends at school.

“How’s your summer going so far?” I asked as we turned west onto Highway 100 .

“Good,” Zac replied.

After no one said anything for another minute or so, I tried again.  “Do any of you have any exciting summer plans?” I asked.

“Not really,” Ted said.

“Nope,” Zac added.  “Just hanging out at home.”

“Going to Disneyland,” Phillip said.

“That should be fun,” I replied.

“Yeah.”

After no one spoke for several seconds, I tried to engage them in conversation again, asking if any of them had any idea where we were going today.  No one did.  Somewhere between Silvey and Nueces, I put Edge Mix ’98, the mixtape that we made for all of the students who came to Winter Camp this year, ino the tape player.  Hopefully these kids would enjoy the same music we played at youth group.  The first song was “Suckerpunch” by Five Iron Frenzy.  I nodded my head along to the song.  Since I knew something about this song that the students in the car did not, I tried to notice their reactions, but no one said anything until about a minute into the song.  “What is this music?” Frank asked, loudly and disdainfully.

The others were not as negative as Frank.  “Five Iron Frenzy!” Zac exclaimed.

“They’re awesome!” Ted said.  He started singing along, getting a few of the lyrics wrong.  It was nice to know that someone was at least paying attention and on board with the music.  Frank stopped complaining.

Either no one had found or paid attention to the fake directions, or no one noticed road signs outside the car window, because no one asked any questions when we passed the Nueces Cultural Center sign without turning off.  We drove for two and a half hours, through Pleasant Creek, Los Nogales, Sullivan, Irving, San Tomas, and other smaller suburbs in between.  South of San Tomas, Highway 88 climbed steeply into thickly forested mountains.  After twenty miles through and over the mountains, with many sharp curves, Highway 88 ended  in the middle of downtown Mount Lorenzo.  Traffic was heavy because Mount Lorenzo was a popular tourist destination, nestled between the beach and mountains.  I grew up just thirty-five miles from here, and I associated Mount Lorenzo with hippies, of which there were many here.

After we parked at the beach, I led the four boys to the place where Adam had told us to assemble.  “This is our first stop,” Adam announced after everyone had arrived.  “Mount Lorenzo Beach.  We’ll put down some picnic blankets, and you can eat your lunch now.  We’ll be here until five o’clock.  If you want to go on rides, make sure you stay with a leader.”

Next to Mount Lorenzo Beach was an amusement park with roller coasters, thrill rides, a carousel, and carnival games.  Admission was free, so guests could walk through the park and get tickets for individual rides if they did not want to buy a day pass.  “I love the Giant Wave,” I said to the nearest person who would listen, which was Mrs. Willis, a parent chaperone.  “One of my favorite roller coasters.  I hope I can get some kids to go on it with me.”

“My daughter probably won’t be one of them,” Mrs. Willis said.  “Samantha isn’t all that into rides.  She just wants to hang out with the girls today.”

“That makes sense.”

“You just graduated this weekend, right?” Mrs. Willis asked me.

“Yes.  And I’m staying at UJ next year for the teacher training program.”

“Congratulations!”

“Thank you!”

After we ate and had time to digest, I asked the boys in my car if they wanted to ride the Giant Wave.  Ted, Zac, and Phillip did, but Frank said, “The Giant Wave is dumb.  It doesn’t even go upside down.”

“It doesn’t go upside down because it’s historic,” I replied.  “The ride was built in the 1920s.  And it’s still one of the best roller coasters.  But you don’t have to come with us.”

I walked with Ted, Zac, and Phillip to the Giant Wave, leaving Frank with the students and adults who stayed on the beach.  “When I was in eighth grade,” I said, “we had our honor roll trip here.  I was afraid to ride the Giant Wave, and my friend kept bugging me to go on it.  Finally, he said that if I went with them, he would tell the girl I liked to sit next to me.  So I went on the Giant Wave with them, and I loved the ride so much that I didn’t even care about my friends or that girl for the rest of the day.  I just kept riding it over and over.”

“That’s funny,” Ted replied.  No one else responded.

We all rode the Giant Wave once, and it was just as thrilling and wonderful as I remembered.  I waited behind while Ted, Zac, and Phillip went on a few other rides.  When we returned, I could not find the rest of the group.  I eventually spotted Adam, some of the other students and leaders, and our stuff about two hundred feet away.

“Is this where we were before?” I asked.  “Or did you move?”

“We had to move,” Mrs. Willis said.  “Some naked people started dancing in front of us.”

“Wow,” I replied, not entirely surprised because of all the hippies in Mount Lorenzo.


In the early evening, we loaded everything back in the car and ate at a diner near the beach, some place apparently famous among tourists.  I was very full after eating a double cheeseburger, French fries, and a vanilla shake with whipped cream and a cherry on top.  Frank complained that his food looked disgusting, but he still ended up eating it.

After dinner, we drove back over the mountains.  As I pulled into the parking lot of our next destination, Frank loudly read the sign on the building.  “Iranian Christian Church of Sunnyglen,” he said.  “We’re going to an Iranian church?”

I could not tell if the disgust in his voice was mild racism, surprise at a church being part of a fun trip, or something else that I misinterpreted, so I explained the best I could in a neutral tone.  “We know the youth pastor of this church,” I said.  “He used to go to J-Cov.”  I started to explain more, how he volunteered with the high school group, and how this Iranian church in Sunnyglen was such a perfect fit for him as the child of Iranian immigrants, but I stopped, knowing that nothing I said would make Frank feel any better.

“Who is it?” Zac asked.

I almost said “Kevin Tabari,” but then remembered that this was the Mystery Trip, so instead I just said, “You’ll see.  It’s a surprise.”

The students who knew Kevin were pleased to see him.  “Greg!” Kevin said when I walked in, shaking my hand.  “How are you?”

“I’m great,” I replied.  I had not seen Kevin in about a year.  “I graduated.”

“Congratulations!  What comes next for you?”

“Doing the teacher training program at UJ, and student teaching at Nueces High.  And staying with The Edge another year.”

“Nice!  My sister is going to UJ next year.  You’ll probably see her at J-Cov.”

“That’s awesome.”

Once we got settled, Adam led a short Bible study with the students, then we stayed up for a bit playing with the games in the youth room of Kevin’s church.  Bedtime was ten o’clock, and we all slept in sleeping bags on the floor.


We stayed at Kevin’s church until mid-morning, eating breakfast and playing more games.  Zac and Ted challenged Phillip and me to a game of foosball; Phillip and I lost badly.

Next, we all drove north to Bay City and took a walk in a park, up a hill with beautiful views of the Bay.  We ate lunch at Dock No. 7, an old shipping dock on the Bay that had been converted to a well-known tourist trap with restaurants and shops.  After lunch, we had some free time to shop; I bought a key chain of the Bay City Captains football team.  It broke a few months later.  For dinner, we drove across the bay to Noah Snyder’s parents’ house in a rural area in the hills outside of Los Nogales.  The Snyders had a large yard, where the students ran around and threw Frisbees and footballs while Mr. and Mrs. Snyder grilled hot dogs for us.

After dinner, we headed south to our final destination, a large, modern-looking church in Sullivan with two buildings on its campus.  I overheard some of the students wondering why we were going to another church, and why so many people were at this church on a Tuesday night.  I noticed some students in our group asking people not from our group what was going on.

“The concert is that way,” a man said, pointing toward the building that was not the church’s main sanctuary.  The students began murmuring about the concert and ran to Adam to ask him who was playing.

“Just a minute,” Adam replied.  “I’ll pass out the tickets once everyone gets here.”  I just smiled, knowing who we were about to see, while the students speculated who would be playing a concert at a church.  The rest of the cars arrived within the next ten minutes, and Adam passed out the tickets.  I read mine: “FIVE IRON FRENZY with special guest THE W’S.”

“Five Iron Frenzy?  The W’s?  Who are these people?” Frank shouted loudly.

“You know Five Iron Frenzy,” I said.  “We play them at youth group.  And we listened to them in the car yesterday.”  Frank had no response to that, and I was glad he did not keep asking questions, because I had no answer to the other thing.  I had never heard of The W’s.

Eventually, we entered the building, twenty minutes before the show was scheduled to start.  The venue was standing only, with no seats, and our students were instructed to stay close to the leaders.  We stood together in one group facing the right side of the stage.

When the show started, I watched The W’s take their places on the stage. I assumed that this was a ska band, from the way that they were dressed and the number of people playing horns, and the fact that they were touring with Five Iron Frenzy, known for their blend of ska and punk rock.  But about a minute into The W’s’ first song, I could tell that this was no ordinary ska band; the rhythm and sound were a little different.  People in the crowd started dancing, differently from the typical frenetic flailing at ska shows.  To my right, Courtney, Erica, and Cambria were dancing, and on my left, Phillip was looking at me.  He asked, screaming loudly over the music, “Is this what I think it is?”

I made an exaggeratedly horrified face and replied, “Swing dancing!  Noooooo!”

The W’s’ set continued, and I realized that I did find their music a bit catchy.  It was not exactly the classic big-band swing sound, more like somewhere in between swing and ska.  But I was predisposed to dislike swing music and swing dancing so much, because of how my friends all acted so weird with swing dancing these days.  I did not understand the appeal, although that was probably because I lacked dancing ability in general.  And my friends certainly seemed to be having fun, so I ignored them and did my best to enjoy the music.

The W’s played for about forty minutes.  Five Iron Frenzy took the stage shortly after that; I cheered, loudly anticipating music I actually knew.  Reese Roper, the lead singer, was dressed as Captain America.  When I discovered Five Iron Frenzy about a year and a half earlier, I liked their sound, but I did not like all of the lyrics.  Some of the songs were excessively critical of Americans and the shallow, materialistic nature of American culture.  The criticism was certainly warranted in some cases, though. I wondered if Reese’s costume was intended to make a satirical point, but I did not think about it too much.  I had learned not to overthink Five Iron Frenzy’s strange sense of humor.  They opened the show with “Handbook for the Sellout,” from their most recent album, appropriately titled Our Newest Album Ever.

“Here’s another song from the same album,” Reese said next.  “I hope you hate it.”  Five Iron Frenzy had a self-deprecating sense of humor, calling their own songs dumb and stupid and the like.  The next song was “Suckerpunch”; I liked that one, because I could relate to its lyrics, about a nerdy, awkward school kid whom God loves anyway.  I leaned over to Frank and said, “This song was on this year’s Edge Mix,” hoping that he could engage with the music.  He did not respond.  I could not tell if he was enjoying himself.

I looked around.  Courtney and Erica and Cambria were no longer swing dancing.  Some people were doing the weird, uncoordinated dance movies associated with ska, including Adam.  I supposed that a youth pastor who is just twenty-six years old could get away with that, without looking dumb.  I turned my head behind me, where I could see a stocky, dark-haired man running the sound board.  Something looked familiar about him, and it took about a minute for me to remember that this was Masaki Liu, the band’s producer.  I met him at the 1997 National Youth Workers’ Convention, where I had seen Five Iron Frenzy play before. Masaki ran a table for their record label at that convention, and he was in a band called Dime Store Prophets that I had seen twice.  I would learn later that he also produced The W’s.

This Five Iron Frenzy show was every bit as much fun as the other time I saw them.  That other show was what made me a fan of the band after my mixed feelings about their first album and the anti-American lyrics.  They closed the show tonight with Every New Day, one of their most prayerful and worshipful songs.  For an encore, they sang the contemporary hymn As The Deer, with no instruments or microphones.  Many people in the audience sang along, including me.

“That was so good,” Ted said as we walked back to the car.

“So good,” Zac repeated.

“I know!” I said.  “That was my second time seeing them.  Both shows were so good.”

“I’d never seen them before,” Phillip said.  Frank did not say anything, but he seemed to be in a good mood.




I put the Edge Mix tape on as we drove home, but the boys all quickly fell asleep.  We did not arrive back at church until close to midnight.  The parents had been instructed to pick up their students at 11:30; I was glad that so many parents were willing to pick up the kids so late, entrusting their students’ late night to us.

I do not know whatever happened to Frank.  He showed up at The Edge off and on over the course of that year, but I never saw him after that.  He did not come to church on Sundays, and I did not know if he stayed involved with the high school group.  It was the nature of a large youth group such as The Edge that students would come and go over the years.

I went to bed that night still on a high from the concert.  My relationship to Five Iron Frenzy had more ups and downs over the years.  I stopped listening to them in the early 2000s after a disappointing album, then started listening to them again during their farewell tour in 2003 and through their 2011 comeback.  They recorded another disappointing and overtly political album in 2021, and I unfollowed all of the Five Iron Frenzy social media fan groups I was part of at that time.  But I still listen to all of their older work.  I have also had some personal connections to this band, starting in 2003 when I attended a church where the worship leader coincidentally happened to be Masaki, the producer. This made my relationship to them more complicated over the years, but all of that is a long story for another time.

I wanted nothing to do with The W’s after that show.  I thought swing dancing was stupid and weird.  But life has a funny way of changing very abruptly, and I had no idea on that night what the rest of 1998 had in store for me and what changes were coming very soon.

Readers: Tell me about a band, or a song, or a genre of music that you didn’t like at first, but it grew on you.  How did that happen?  Tell me in the comments!

Also, just so you know, real life is kind of overwhelming right now, so I might not be posting season 5 weekly like I used to. But I’ll do my best.

If you like what you read, don’t forget to like this post and follow this blog. Also follow Don’t Let The Days Go By on Facebook and Instagram.

June 28 – July 4, 1997. Outings with my new classmates. (#137)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 12 Comments

On my second day in Oregon, when I had to make the half hour walk carrying as many full grocery bags as I could hold from the store back to my dorm room, I realized that I really should have brought my car.  I could have made the drive from home to Oregon in a day, and then I would not have to lug around these bags of groceries every few days, plus I would have a way to explore my surroundings. I chose not to drive because, shortly before I found out about this program, I had just had my first airplane trip, at least the first one that I was old enough to remember, and I wanted to go somewhere on an airplane again.  The airplane ride was fun, but had I thought things through more, I probably would have brought my car.

Of the eight students in my Research Experiences for Undergraduates program, only Marcus drove here; his trip was about as long as mine would have been.  Kirk and Jeannie, who attended Grandvale State year round, did not have cars, and the others came from farther away.  Unfortunately, Marcus’ vehicle was a small pickup truck.  So when someone suggested taking a weekend trip up to nearby Grand Mountain, then continuing over the mountains to the coast, the only way we could make it work was for most of us to pile in the back of the truck bed. 

“Is that legal here?” I asked, knowing that the laws governing motor vehicles sometimes varied from state to state.  I grew up being told it was illegal, although when I was learning to drive, I thought I saw that it was legal in my state in certain settings, even though seat belts were mandatory and pickup truck beds did not have seat belts.  This did not make sense to me, and I never did figure out exactly what the law said in my state. But knowing this was never a priority for me, since I never planned on riding in the back of a pickup truck until today, and I never have since.

“I don’t know,” Julie said dismissively, as if she did not care.

“I’ll drive extra carefully if there are people in the back,” Marcus said.  “And if I do get in trouble for it, it would be me, not you.”

“I guess,” I said, not thrilled with the idea of riding in the back, but also not wanting to miss out on this day out with my new colleagues and friends.

On the morning we left, it was mostly sunny with some clouds scattered across the sky, mostly coming from the west, the direction we would be going.  I wore long pants and brought a sweatshirt.  Back home, the weather on the coast can often be much cooler than the weather inland, and I needed to be prepared for anything.  Marcus, Emily, and I sat in the cab of the pickup truck, with Marjorie, Ivan, Julie, and Jeannie in the back.  Kirk was a local and had seen these places many times, and he had made other plans for the weekend, so he stayed behind.  We planned to take turns who would be sitting in the cab.

About five miles west of Grandvale, the road to the coast split in two, one heading west toward Baytown, the other southwest toward Forest Beach.  We turned southwest and followed that road for another five miles, then turned onto Grand Mountain Road.  A sign said that the peak was another nine miles up that road, and it became quickly evident that those nine miles would be full of sharp turns with barely enough space for two cars to pass each other.

“I like this view,” Emily said.

“Yeah,” Ivan agreed.  “Very different from back home.”  Ivan was from New York City; he probably saw forested mountains in his day-to-day life much more infrequently than I did.

It took about forty-five minutes to drive to the peak of Grand Mountain.  We parked at the small parking area at the end of the road, then walked a trail leading about a quarter mile through a grove of trees to the peak.  Two radio towers with antennae and satellite dishes stood behind a fenced-off area at the peak, with a few picnic tables just beyond this.  We walked to the picnic tables and sat, facing toward more mountains away from the radio towers.

Grand Mountain was the highest peak in the region, but from this viewpoint, it seemed to be surrounded by a sea of other mountains.  Normally, with a view like this, I would have wanted to look down on Grandvale and identify roads and landmarks, and see if I could pick out Howard Hall.  But the direction we faced from these picnic tables did not have a good view of all of Grandvale.  I could see the Willamette Valley opening up below through a break in the mountains, but from this exact spot, I mostly only saw fields in the valley.  Even if I had had a good view of the Grandvale State campus, I probably would not have been able to pick out Howard Hall to begin with, since I did not know my way around Grandvale well enough yet.

The surrounding mountains were green, thickly forested, with grassy clearings scattered throughout.  Normally, in my experience, trees on the edge of a forested area have branches covered with needles all the way up their trunks, but these trees had tall, bare trunks with a much smaller cluster of green needles at the top. It looked as if they had grown in the middle of a forest, and the adjoining half of the forest had suddenly been removed. I thought about this for a bit, then I said, “Why are there those clearings like that, with trees with no needles on the sides?  Is it because the trees next to them have been cut down?”

“I think so,” Marcus replied.  “Something like that.”

“Clear-cutting is so sad,” Julie added.

“At least they don’t cut down the whole forest,” I said. “They spread out the areas they cut down to make it easier for the trees to grow back eventually. That seems like a good way to do it.”

After we sat admiring the view for about half an hour, we drove back down the mountain and continued driving away from Grandvale toward Forest Beach on the coast.  A sign indicated that we would be passing through a town called Spruce Creek before we reached Forest Beach, and Marcus commented that he would probably have to stop there for gas.  As we arrived in Spruce Creek, Marcus said, “Looks like we don’t have much of a choice for gas,” as we drove up to one of the two gas pumps at the one general store in this town of less than two hundred people.

“This is a town?” Ivan said after we stopped.  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a town this small.”

“I know they exist, but yeah,” I said, although I had not grown up around towns this small either.

After we finished getting gas, Jeannie and Julie took the next turn in the cab; I got in the back with Ivan, Emily, and Marjorie.  Five minutes later, the truck slowed to a halt.  This certainly did not seem like the kind of road to get much traffic.  I stood up to look ahead and saw a long line of cars in front of us, then just barely in the distance, as the road curved, I saw a large, newly fallen tree across the road.

“What’s going on?” Marjorie asked.

“Tree fell on the road,” I explained.

“Can we get through?”

“I see cars coming in the other direction.  There’s probably one lane open, and we take turns.”

Just as I sat back down, I felt drops of water on my head, and within about a minute, the drops had grown to a light but steady rain.  “Great,” I said, not dressed for rain.

“It didn’t look rainy when we left,” Emily observed.

“With the mountains right on the coast, the weather can probably change a lot in a short distance,” I explained.

By the time we finally got to Forest Beach, the rain had softened to a light drizzle, still wet enough to be uncomfortable considering that my clothes were already wet.  We found a place to park, for a small fee, and walked to the beach.  The gray sky made the choppy water also look gray, and the lack of sun just made the whole experience, although scenic, feel gloomy.

“Here we are,” Jeannie said.  “The Oregon coast.”

The seven of us walked down to the damp sand.  Some of the others took off their shoes and socks; I did not.  I did not want to deal with the mess, especially with my clothes already so wet.  I saw a very small but recognizable stream trickling across the sand, less than a foot wide and easy to step over.  We spent about half an hour walking up and down the coast.  Ivan was talking about something that had reminded him of some movie I had not seen, and Julie had gotten onto the topic of her favorite sex positions, and with nothing to contribute to either of those conversations, I held back a bit and did my best to enjoy the view.

By the time we got back to Marcus’ truck, the drizzle had let up slightly.  We drove back the other way, fifteen miles up the coast to Baytown and then inland on the other road leading to Grandvale.  The other road was presumably a better road, more well-traveled, and we would not have to deal with the delay caused by the fallen tree. I approved of this decision; it would give me a chance to see different scenery on the way back.  The scenery looked very similar to what we saw on the westbound trip, thickly forested mountains with clearings where logging had occurred, but it was still nice to see something new.


The Friday after our beach trip was July 4, Independence Day.  The university was closed for the holiday, and we did not have class.  After a long week of researching quasi-Monte Carlo integration and low discrepancy sequences, I was ready to take a break from mathematics today.  I spent most of the morning reading and catching up on emails, and I went for a short bike ride around campus.

After I ate a microwaved chicken sandwich in my room for dinner, I met the other seven students from the REU program. Grandvale was founded in the middle of the nineteenth century on the west bank of the Willamette River, and since then it had grown from that original downtown, mostly to the west and north, with the east side of the river remaining undeveloped farmland. The seven of us walked a mile and a half from the campus to the river, where the city’s Independence Day festival was happening today. Grandvale was far enough north that the sun would not set until after nine o’clock, so we had a few hours until it would be dark enough for fireworks.

A park extended for about the length of five city blocks between River Street and the actual river, bisected by an old truss bridge carrying eastbound traffic out of town.  A newer, wider bridge had been built parallel to this one about half a mile to the south; I could see that one off in the distance in that direction.  River Street had been blocked off to traffic for tonight, and numerous food booths, community organizations, and people trying to sell things had set up tables along the side of the street.  Large crowds roamed River Street, whic had been decorated with United States flags and various banners with a similar stars-and-stripes theme.

I saw just ahead of me a girl who looked no older than twelve or thirteen, wearing a patriotic outfit and theatrical makeup.  She pressed Play on a small boombox-like device that had a microphone attached; as music began playing, the girl started singing “You’re A Grand Old Flag.”  That seemed kind of strange, just out of nowhere, but at least the song was fitting for today.  After that, she started singing other songs, mostly old rock-and-roll standards.

“I never really understood the Fourth of July,” Jeannie observed.  “It’s nice to have a day off, but what are we really celebrating?  We’re not exactly the greatest country in the world.”  I wisely held my tongue as she continued.  “And why fireworks?  It seems like there must be something better to celebrate our nation than explosions.”

“Celebrate the independence of your nation by blowing up a small part of it,” I said, in a fake accent to match that of the man who said that to Homer Simpson as he sold him illegal fireworks. That episode, the season finale from a year ago, was one of my favorites.

“Yes!” Ivan replied.  “The M-320!”

“What?” Marjorie asked.  “Is that from The Simpsons or something?”

“Yeah,” I explained.  “The family used the Flanderses’ beach house for the Fourth of July, and Homer went to buy illegal fireworks.  And he ended up blowing up the kitchen.  And Lisa made some new friends in the beach town.  Now that I think about it, it’s probably the only one of my favorite episodes that primarily focuses on Lisa.  Usually Lisa can be pretty annoying.”

“What?” Julie said.  “She’s the only sensible one!  The rest of the family is annoying.”

“But she can be kind of self-righteous and snobby, I think.”

“You prefer Homer the buffoon?”

“Yes!  He’s funny!”

At this point, we walked past the singing girl again, in the other direction.  I noticed that she sang the same four songs over and over again, and that she had a hat in front of her for tips.  Since she sang the same songs, I could not tell if she was actually singing along to recorded background music or just lip-synching.  I had never seen a street performer this young before, and something felt a little odd about her.

“I had actually never seen The Simpsons until last week when I watched it with you guys,” Jeannie said.  “It wasn’t quite as bad as I thought it would be.”

“‘Wasn’t quite as bad,’” I repeated.  “I see how it is.”

“Well, I used to not watch it on principle.”

“On principle?”

“Yeah!  Watching The Simpsons is like watching Beavis and Butthead.”

Great, I thought.  Insult one of my favorite shows by comparing it to one of my other favorite shows.  You probably also agree with Julie that Lisa, the intellectual snob, is your favorite.

As the sun started to set, the eight of us found a permanent place to sit for the night, on the packed dirt bank of the river facing the other shore.  Kirk had been here before to watch fireworks, and he said that they launch from across the river, so we should have a good view from here.

“Most of the fireworks I’ve watched have been at Disneyland,” Marjorie said.  “We have annual passes.  We’re gonna go as soon as I get home.”

“That’ll be fun,” Ivan said.  “I’m not doing anything when I get back home.  School starts right away for me.”

“I’m not going straight home.  I’m spending the weekend after the program at my boyfriend’s house in Ohio,” Emily explained.  “I was talking to my sister today, and she said, ‘Mom asked me, “Do you think Emily and Ryan are having sex?”’ If my mom wants to know so bad, why doesn’t she just ask me?  It pissed me off.”  They probably were, I thought.  I knew that the norm for people my age was not the Christians I hung out with who believed in saving themselves for marriage. At least they said they believed that.

“What about you, Greg?” Emily asked.  “What are you doing after this?  When do you start school again?”

“Jeromeville is on the three-quarter schedule, so we don’t start until the end of September, but then we go until the middle of June.  So I’m still gonna have a month of summer left.  I’m going to spend two weeks at my parents’ house, then move into my new house in Jeromeville, then I’m going on a retreat the week before school starts.”

“With that church group?” Ivan asked.

“Yes.”

Around ten o’clock, when it was finally dark, a hush fell over the crowd as the first firework launched into the air, then exploded into a brilliant multi-colored sunburst.  People cheered.  The fireworks continued on for almost half an hour, with recordings of marching bands playing patriotic music in the background.  At the end of the show, several rockets launched at once, briefly illuminating the sky in bursts of color reflecting off of the smoke of so many previous fireworks.  After this, everything went dark and silent as the crowd cheered, then the lights of the surrounding park came back on about ten seconds later.

“That was fun,” Ivan said as we stood up.

“That was amazing!” I added.  “I really didn’t grow up watching fireworks.  The fireworks in Jeromeville last year were really the first fireworks I remember seeing.  And this show seemed a little longer.”

“Why didn’t you watch fireworks?” Jeannie asked.

“I don’t know.  We just never did.  And sometimes it’s too foggy for fireworks.”

“Fog?  In July?”

“Yeah.  Plumdale is close to the coast, so kind of like what we saw on the coast last weekend.”

“I guess.”

“And home fireworks are illegal in both Plumdale and Jeromeville.  So fireworks are still a new experience to me.”

I was still on a high from the fireworks as we walked the mile and a half back to Howard Hall in the dark.  Marjorie was talking more about growing up going to Disneyland multiple times per year, some of the others were talking about graduate school plans, others were sharing stories about partying, and I mostly felt left out of the conversation. I walked along the same road as them, but I was in my own little world, comforted by thoughts of fireworks and explosions and celebrating freedom.  This was a familiar feeling to me; I often felt left out when others my age talked about normal life experiences that were foreign to me.

My story was unusual in that I grew up in the United States of America without watching fireworks.  And hearing others talk about things I could not relate to, or experiences I wished I had had, always made me feel rejected.  But instead of getting angry about it, maybe I should look on the bright side. Since fireworks were missing from my childhood, I still was able to enjoy fireworks as an adult, and I had not yet become bored or jaded by fireworks shows.  This trip to Oregon was only the second time I remembered being on an airplane, so riding in an airplane was still fun and exciting in and of itself, rather than a hassle to be endured before the rest of the trip.  And even though Marjorie got to go to Disneyland as many times in a year as I had ever been in my life, this just meant that Disneyland would be fun and new to me when I finally made it back there at age thirty-one.

Readers: Is there anything your friends often talk about that you’ve never seen or done? And do you ever wish you had?

Just so you know, it is possible I might be taking a week off from writing here and there over the next few months. Life is going to be unpredictable. Thanks for being patient with me. Make sure you are subscribed, so you don’t miss an episode.

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April 12-13, 1996. The road trip to Bay City and Moonlight Cove. (#78)

~ Greg Dennison ~ 29 Comments

“What will people think when they hear that I’m a Jesus freak?” the voice on the car stereo sang, followed by some other mumbling words and then guitars and more words.  At least it sounded like those were the words, although it seemed like an odd choice of lyrics for a rock song.  The song contained that exact line several more times.

“Who is this singing?” I asked Eddie.

“DC Talk,” he replied.  “I made this mixtape of Christian music for when I’m in the car.”

I nodded.  I had once seen another student at Jeromeville Christian Fellowship wearing a t-shirt that said DC Talk, but I had no idea what that meant.  Apparently DC Talk was a band that sang Christian music.  Other than stuff we sang in church, the only Christian music I was aware of was this Christian soft rock adult contemporary radio station back home in Santa Lucia County, which I never listened to.  But this Jesus Freak song was awesome.

For the first forty minutes after we left Jeromeville, headed west on Highway 100, we passed orchards and pastures and fields interrupted by a few small and medium-sized cities, Silvey, Nueces, Fairview, and La Yegua.  After Fairview, the flatlands of the Capital Valley gave way to grassy rolling hills dotted with oaks.  Eddie had offered me the front seat, since I was the tallest of the five of us; Sarah, Caroline, and Raphael were in the back.  Just past La Yegua, we crossed a bridge over the mouth of the Capital River where it empties into the Bay.  “Hey,” Sarah said when we were halfway across the bridge.  “There’s the other car.”

I looked to the left, in the direction Sarah was pointing.  A small sport-utility vehicle passed us with Tabitha looking at us through the window in the back seat, grinning, and Xander making a funny face over her shoulder.  Haley sat in the front seat, smiling and waving.  Five of the ten people on this trip were neighbors on Baron Court, and the rest of us met there to carpool.  I had hoped that I would end up in the same car as Haley, but I did not want to be too obvious about it.  Since Eddie had invited me on this trip, it had seemed more natural to be in his car.  Kristina drove the other car, and I could see a silhouette of John behind Xander in the back seat.  I waved, although I was not sure anyone could see me from the front passenger seat.

We continued driving through the hills lining the shore of the Bay, through an industrial area, then through several cities and towns that all ran into each other.  In Oaksville, Highways 100, 150, and 88 all met at the entrance to another large bridge.  Eddie drove across the bridge as we saw the lights and buildings of Bay City approaching.

“This is such a great view,” Sarah said.

“Yes,” Raphael agreed.  “One of the greatest cities in the world.”

“I’m not used to seeing it from this side,” I said.  “When we came to Bay City, we always came up 11, and usually it was for Titans games on the other side of the city.”

“Have you never seen downtown Bay City before?” Eddie asked.

“Just twice.”

“It’s pretty awesome.”

We turned onto Highway 11 north, which became a city street, Van Winkle Avenue; the freeway was never completed across the city.  About two miles up Van Winkle Avenue, Eddie pointed across the street and said “There it is.”  I saw the sign for the Hard Rock Cafe, on a building on the corner.  We found a nearby parking garage and walked to the entrance, where the group from the other car waited for us.


The Hard Rock Cafe was loud and crowded.  The walls were covered with music memorabilia, and music played loudly over speakers.  While we waited to get our seat, I read a sign on the wall telling the history of the Hard Rock Cafe.  Two Americans living in London in 1971 started the first Hard Rock Cafe as a place to serve American food and listen to great music.  Eric Clapton became a regular customer, and he hung a guitar on the wall above his favorite seat.  The restaurant incorporated this into their decor and soon opened other locations in big cities and tourist traps worldwide, with music memorabilia on the walls of all of them.

I got up to use the bathroom and took my time getting back to my seat, admiring photographs, posters, guitars, and fancy costumes on display, each with a plaque explaining whom it belonged to and its significance.  I also saw a sign saying “No Drugs or Nuclear Weapons Allowed.”  I rolled my eyes… hippies.  I could not find my friends in the lobby when I returned, so I walked around the restaurant, looking to see if they had been seated and admiring more rock memorabilia as I looked for them.  When I found them, I smiled nervously at my good fortune; the seat that they had left open for me, coincidentally, was next to Haley.

“Hey,” Haley said when I sat down.  “You found us.”

“Yeah.  I was just looking at stuff on the wall.  It’s really cool.”

“Have you been here before?”

“No.  Have you?”

“Not this one.  But I’ve been to one in Hawaii, on vacation with my family.”

“Nice.  I’ve never been to Hawaii either.”

“I’ve only been once.  It’s so beautiful!”

“I can imagine,” I said.  “So how are your classes this quarter?”

“They’re definitely keeping me busy.  I’m taking a lot.”  Just then the server came and interrupted our conversation.  I ordered a cheeseburger, nothing too adventurous.

All of us talked more about life and classes and things while we waited for the food to arrive.  At one point, Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” came on; I thought this was the Hard Rock Cafe, not the Hard Rap Cafe, but I did not complain.  Kristina started rapping along with Coolio.  “As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” she began.

“That’s in the Bible, you know,” Eddie said to no one in particular.  I did not know the first time I heard the song, but I did now; it was from Psalm 23, one of the more famous passages in the Bible.  The song was from the movie Dangerous Minds, and I still had a negative memory of that movie, because of what I saw a few rows in front of me when I watched it.

By the time the food arrived, I was starving.  I ate my cheeseburger quickly.  I looked around; Haley was eating a chicken salad, and John, on my other side, had the same cheeseburger I did.  “How is it?” I asked Haley.

“It’s really good,” she said.  “You must have liked yours.  You ate it fast.”

“I did.  And I was starving.  I hadn’t eaten since noon.  It’s after nine o’clock.”

“Yeah, we’re eating late.  Do you know about this place we’re going next?”

“We’re going to sleep on the beach next, aren’t we?”

“Apparently we’re going somewhere else first,” Haley explained.  “One of the guys’ other roommates told us we have to see this thing, but Eddie said it’s a surprise.”

“He didn’t tell me.”

Eddie jumped into our conversation.  “Seriously, it’ll be worth it,” he said.

When the waiter brought our checks, he also gave us each a small button with the Hard Rock Cafe logo in flames.  “1971-1996, 25 Years of Rock,” it said.  Kristina pinned hers to the strap of her purse.  I did not know what I would do with mine; stick in a box somewhere, maybe.

And then 25 more years will pass, and I’ll write about that trip and remember exactly where I put that button.



After we finished paying for the meal, we went back to our cars.  Eddie worked his way southwest across the city, and at a red light he handed me an unfolded map.  “I need someone to help me navigate; I have to watch the road.  This is where we’re going,” he said, pointing at a green spot on the map labeled Bosque Hill Park. “Can you read maps?”

I grew up fascinated by maps, and up until that moment of my life, it had never occurred to me that some people could not read maps.  “Yeah,” I said.  It was a strange question to me.  I was reminded of those first few days of freshman year in Building C, talking about my fascination with maps.  I looked over my shoulder at Sarah in the back seat, grinning; she made eye contact with me and started laughing loudly.  I laughed too. She was thinking of the same thing.

“What’s so funny?” Eddie asked.

“At the start of freshman year, the day I met Greg,” Sarah explained, “someone told me that he loved maps.  So he made me tell Greg the highways near my house, to see if Greg could guess where I was from.  And he was right, and Greg and I have been friends ever since.”

“Good job!” Eddie said.

We arrived at Bosque Hill and parked on the street.  Street parking is usually scarce in Bay City, and when Raphael saw another spot open, he suggested we stand there and save the spot for Kristina’s car.  I wondered what was so special about Bosque Hill.  I had seen it on a map, and I had read that it was the highest natural elevation in Bay City, around 1000 feet.  I guessed that the surprise would be a spectacular view of the city lights at night.

After the other car arrived, we began climbing the hill on a well-worn dirt path.  A few people carried flashlights.  The path was surrounded by trees and brush on both sides, and the chirps and buzzes of bugs intertwined with the distant dull roar of the city.  A few times, I could see sweeping views of city lights below, but that was not the surprise Eddie was showing us.

The path turned a corner, and I could see the top of the hill, where a giant cross stood, towering over us, taller than the six-story building where my mathematics professors’ offices were.  What was this?  Why was it here?  I walked closer and read a plaque, identifying this cross as a memorial to pioneers who came from around the world and settled the area.  I looked up and saw that all my friends had adopted postures of prayer, so I did the same.  I looked up at the cross and prayed silently.  Jesus Christ, I thank you for this reminder that you died on the cross to save me from my sins and bring eternal life.  I thank you for the beauty of your creation, even here in the middle of the city.  I thank you that these friends, these brothers and sisters in Christ, invited me on this trip, and I pray that we will have safe travels.  No one spoke for about ten minutes.  I wondered how long we were going to stay here, but I did not want to interrupt everyone’s prayers, so I just kept praying until I saw people start to walk downhill.

“That was pretty cool,” I said when we were back in the car.  Eddie was driving toward the coast on the west side of the city, along the open ocean.  “I had no idea it was there.”

“I was thinking on the way down,” Caroline said.  “When we’re all standing there praying to a cross, couldn’t that be considered idolatry?”

“Hmm,” Eddie replied, thinking.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily idolatry,” I answered.  “We’re not praying to the cross.  We’re praying to Jesus, and the cross is a symbol reminding us of him.”

“That makes sense,” Eddie said.

“Good point, Greg,” Sarah added.

“Thanks,” I replied.

The coast south of Bay City was rugged and hilly, and we drove along the road that hugs the shore for about half an hour, to a town called Moonlight Cove.  I had never been this way before.  The town must have been named on a day unlike today, because tonight it was cloudy and no moon was visible.  “How does this work?” I asked, being completely unfamiliar with the concept of sleeping outside.  “Do we just put down our sleeping bags and sleep on the beach?”

“Pretty much.”

Kristina’s car had beaten us here by a few minutes this time, and we parked next to them.  “Look,” I said as we were unloading.  “That sign over there says ‘No Camping.’  Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

“Yeah, but they never check,” Eddie explained.  “My friends and I in high school came here and slept on this beach a few times.”

“My family lives just over those hills,” Caroline added, “and we came to this beach all the time.  We never spent the night, but I don’t remember anyone patrolling the area or anything.”

“If you say so,” I said, still dreading the fact that we were doing something illegal.  After staying up talking for a bit more, someone pointed out that it was almost midnight, and we decided to go to sleep.

Today, as an adult, I recognize the value of experiences, and I have stayed up all night enough times to know that doing so will not kill me.  But in 1996, I felt like I desperately had to sleep, so when people kept talking as others drifted off to sleep, I felt a need to move somewhere out of earshot.  I quietly told them so, and I dragged my sleeping bag inland about a hundred feet to a slightly more secluded spot near some large rocks.  If the police caught us camping and hauled us off to jail, maybe they would not see me.

Even in my new spot, though, sleep eluded me.  I always had a hard time falling asleep in an unfamiliar place, and I was uncomfortable sleeping on sand with the ocean roaring nearby and the wind blowing.  After tossing and turning for a long time, I realized that I had to pee, but there was no bathroom.  I carefully walked behind the rocks, relieved myself, and returned to the sleeping bag.  I looked at my watch; it was 1:29.  I tossed and turned as my mind raced.  I felt somehow inferior to the others since I could not sleep outside, and since my life did not include sleeping outside in any childhood experiences.  I also had homework to do at home.  I tried to think happy thoughts.  Eddie inviting me on this trip.  Sitting next to Haley at the Hard Rock Cafe.  Driving places I had never seen before.  Haley’s pretty blue eyes.  Hiking to the top of Bosque Hill.  The way Haley’s whole face lights up when she smiles.  I got up to use the rocks again at 2:11, then I began praying like I did at the top of Bosque Hill.  I thanked Jesus Christ for all he had done for me and tried to listen to see if he was speaking to me.  I closed my eyes.


The next thing I knew, it was light out.  My watch said 7:02.  I had slept for almost five hours, and given the circumstances, that was probably as good as it would get.  As I returned from using the rocks as my toilet again, I noticed that no one else seemed awake.  I lay in my sleeping bag, enjoying the view, for about forty-five minutes, until I saw Eddie clearly moving around.  I walked back out of sight of the others and changed into the other clothes I had brought, then rolled up my sleeping bag and walked to the others.

“Hey, Greg,” Eddie whispered.  “You sleep well?”

“Eventually, but it took a long time to fall asleep.  I never sleep well in unfamiliar places.”

“But you did sleep.”

“I did.”

“Hey, guys,” John whispered, joining the conversation.

Everyone else woke up over the next fifteen minutes as we spoke in whispers.  Once everyone was awake and speaking at a normal volume, Sarah asked, “What’s for breakfast?”

“I was thinking we could go into town and just pick up a few things at Safeway,” Kristina suggested.  “Anyone want to come with me?”

“Sure,” Haley said, getting out of her sleeping bag.

This was my chance.  “I’ll come,” I said.

“Great!” Kristina said.  “Ready?”

As I walked with Kristina and Haley to the parking lot, I realized that I had not showered or brushed my teeth or put on deodorant.  This may not be the best time to be talking to Haley.  But, then again, she probably had not done any of that stuff either.

“I was thinking, get some bagels, and fruit, and juice.  And we need cups for the juice.  Does that work for you guys?” Kristina asked.

“Sure,” Haley said.  I nodded.

We arrived at the store, took a cart, and walked through the aisles together.  After Kristina walked forward to look at different kinds of bagels, Haley asked me, “So did you ever figure out where you’re going to live next year?”

“I’m going to live with Shawn Yang and Brian Burr.  Shawn is going to be student teaching, and Brian is going to work with JCF part time and apply to medical school.”

“Oh, wow.  Older guys.  Isn’t Brian applying to medical school right now?”

“Shawn said he didn’t get in.”

“Really.”

“He’s on a waitlist at one place, so plans might change if he does get in, but right now he’s planning to live in Jeromeville another year.  And there’s a fourth guy, Josh McGraw, he’s Abby Bartlett’s boyfriend, and he commutes to Jeromeville now and wants to move into town.”

“I don’t know Josh, but Shawn and Brian are great guys.  You’ll like living with them.”

“You’re living with Shawn Yang and Brian Burr next year?” Kristina said, putting bagels in the cart.  “Awesome!  Where?”

“We don’t have a place yet.  We’re going to get together sometime soon to make plans.”

“That’s cool!”

We returned to the beach with the food a few minutes later.  This was not my usual routine of cereal in milk for breakfast, but it was food and that was the important thing.  After we finished eating, Xander walked to the parking lot and returned with a guitar.  “I’ve been learning some worship songs,” he said.  He started playing some of the songs we sang at JCF large group, as well as a few that I did not think I had heard before.  Tabitha asked for a turn with Xander’s guitar, and she played and sang a few songs too.  We all just sat there for over an hour, praising God through music and enjoying the beauty of his creation.

In the early afternoon, we packed everything up and got ready to head back to Jeromeville.  “What are we doing for lunch?” Kristina asked.

“I know this great sandwich place where I used to go with my family when we would come here,” Caroline said.  “Does that sound good?”

“Sure!”

We got back into the cars, and Caroline directed Eddie to the sandwich shop in Old Town Moonlight Cove, about two miles from the beach where we were.  The others followed in Kristina’s car.  This place was much smaller, quieter, and less flashy than the Hard Rock Cafe, unsurprisingly.  I ordered a turkey sandwich with Swiss cheese; it was very, very good.

“I like this place,” I said to Caroline.  “Good suggestion.”

“So what was your favorite part of the trip, Greg?” Eddie asked me.  He had been asking everyone this.

“Probably the Hard Rock Cafe,” I said.  “I liked all the music stuff on the wall.”

“Do you play an instrument or anything?  You said you sing, right?”

“I sing at my church.  And I’ve always liked listening to music.”

“You seemed to like my mixtape too.”

“Yeah.  I haven’t really listened to a lot of Christian pop and rock music.”

“You should.  I think there’s some stuff out there that you’d like.”

After lunch, we got back in the cars and began the two hour drive back to Jeromeville.  Eddie put on a different mixtape of Christian music.  As we crossed back east over the Bay City Bridge, leaving the city, I heard familiar guitar chords coming from Eddie’s mixtape.  “Rain, rain on my face, hasn’t stopped raining for days,” the voice sang.

“Hey, I know this song,” I said.  “I’ve heard it on the radio before.”

“Jars of Clay,” Eddie replied.  “I know, I’ve heard it on 100.3.  It’s cool to hear Christian music get played on secular radio stations.”

“Yeah,” I said.  I had not listened to the lyrics closely enough to recognize it as Christian music, but it all made sense now.  “Lift me up when I’m falling.  I need you to hold me.”  

Somewhere around Nueces, Eddie’s mixtape ended, and he put on the first mixtape with Jesus Freak again.  I was definitely going to look more into this Christian music.  We arrived back at Eddie’s house in Jeromeville in the late afternoon.  Kristina’s car arrived a minute later and parked nearby, and everyone who did not live on Baron Court began unloading and moving their things to their own cars.

“Thanks for driving, Eddie,” I said.  “And thanks for inviting me.”

“Thanks for coming!” Eddie replied.  “Have a great rest of the weekend!”

“I’m glad you could make it, Greg,” I heard Haley say.  I turned to her and saw the smile I had been thinking of earlier.  She stepped forward to hug me, and we embraced.

“I’m glad you went too,” I said.  “Have a good rest of the weekend.”

After everyone said their goodbyes, I drove back to my apartment in north Jeromeville. This was the best weekend I had had in a long time.  Once I got inside with the car radio off, that Jesus Freak song started going through my head again.  This was my life now.  I was a Jesus Freak.  The despair of the past was behind me, and I was following Jesus with a supportive group of brothers and sisters in Christ.

I knew that the point of following Jesus was not about being part of the in-crowd, but it still felt good that the in-crowd was including me.  I had a group of friends who genuinely cared about me, something that I had not had for most of my life, and I was going to be living with cool older guys next year.  Of course, God had a lot to show me about how life really works over the coming years, but for now, life was good.