Plodding along

We're doing ok here in Marseille. We all survived the fast and my eating is now back to normal with no harmful side-effects. We've been going out a bit to talk to people and we visited someone at her home in Aix-en-Provence as well, which turned out to be pretty cool. It's a nice place. Maybe I'll put some photos on here later.

Marseille is an interesting place and there are all kinds of amusing things going on from time to time. I actually forgot to mention before, but I almost got my phone stolen by a couple of pickpockets. I was waiting outside the Jesus Revolution place for someone to come with the key to let me in and two young guys come along asking me the time and starting up a conversation. When they noticed my accent, they asked where I was from and we got talking a bit. They ended up talking to me about Zidane, the French footballer famous for headbutting an opponent in the chest during the world cup.

They were standing beside me, trying to demonstrate a move he does and reaching across in front of me with their feet. I thought this was a bit odd, but put it down to the friendliness of people here and the fact they're a bit more physical than back home. Well, as they were doing this I felt one of them touch my hip pocket with happened to have my phone in it. I instincively recoiled and checked the other one, trying to remember where my wallet was. I remembered it was in my bag and relaxed, realising nothing was gone. After that, they realised they were rumbled, although one of them still tried to show me the Zidane move one last time. When I backed off, they got the hint and left. It was funny, because they were very friendly and polite the whole time. I couldn't help thinking that a similar situation in Scotland would result in a knife being pulled or a bit of a scuffle after the cat was out of the bag but here they just went on their way. I'm now a bit paranoid about my hip pockets, though, and I tend to be a bit suspicious of anyone behind me.

I discovered with great interest that there's a tourist attraction here worth visiting. It's called Château D’If and it features in the story The Count of Monte Cristo which has been made into a film a couple of times as well. I've seen the most recent one with James Caviezel and I liked it. The château is a fort on a an island (called If, as it happens) just off the coast of Marseille in the Mediterranean. It's a short boat trip from the Vieux Port harbour and not too expensive either.

A wee bit hungry

Well, I've been in Marseille for almost two weeks now and it seems like no time at all. I'm settling in quite nicely and the rest of the team all arrived a couple of days after me. I'm staying with a crazy bunch of French young people called Jesus Revolution. They're doing outreach in their own, unique way and they graciously allowed me to stay in their spare room while I'm here.

This week we've been doing a seven day fast to seek God's direction for the outreach. Primarily, we're trying to figure which area of the city to concentrate on. Three of us have been fasting from food and the others were fasting different things. I started off with the idea that I would still have breakfast every day but only drink water the rest of the time. I heard that this was a bad idea, though, as it's important for your body to get used to there being no food in it and frequently introducing some food every day could confuse matters.

With that in mind, after Monday I changed to only water. It was pretty hard going and on Wednesday in particular I was feeling really weak and faint. I've never fasted like this before so I didn't know what to expect. It kind of reminds me of when you give blood. You're just that bit slower and more easily tired. Some of the others were finding it pretty tough as well so we changed it slightly. I'm now drinking fruit juices as well as water. It's made a huge difference. I'm more alert and energetic, although I'd still love to get my teeth into a big steak right now!

Today we were prayer walking around the marché aux puces (or Flea Market to you and me) where they had TONS of food lying out on sale. Man, I wanted to eat EVERYTHING. Ok, so I wasn't too inspired by the squid, octopus and other generally manky-looking fishy stuff, but pretty much everything else was appealing to me. In fact, I even took a photo of a frightfully appetising looking selection of olives on sale. Check it out and let me know if you're salivating too:



The fast ends tomorrow at dinner time. I'm going to try really hard not to eat too much. My teeth are bored, though.

Landed in Marseille

I'm now in France. Yes, it's true. I really am. I had a couple of flights today and arrived in the evening. It's a pretty interesting place already and I'm excited about the next 3 and a half months. I still don't quite know where I'll be staying, but it's going to be fun, I'm sure of it. I discovered they even climb here! How can I not like it?

A spot of New Year climbing

I do like a spot of climbing, I have to say. Thankfully some of my friends do as well. I went yesterday with Stephen and Gillian to the Glasgow Climbing Centre for a spot of climbing.

The Suspects:

Steve


Gillian


Ken



The Videos:
Since I've been getting quite into the whole YouTube thing, I've got a playlist of some of the highlights here.

Corn

A trip to the cave in December

Just a few days before New Year, I went to the cave with Alan to get back to nature and all that fun stuff. There are five videos to choose from here that all contain some of my comments at different points in the trip.

Scare Cut

So it's been a while since I've had a proper haircut and the other day there I was feeling like a change so I decided to get a bit of a chop. I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about it but it's good to have a change at least.

Heathrow Snack

The last couple of times I've returned to the UK after some time across the Atlantic, this has been the snack of choice I've bought at Heathrow, before heading on to Glasgow.

1. A litre of water is always good to help re-hydrate, and the fact that it's nice and cold is a bonus.


2. A British Dairy Milk is a welcome change after being on Hershey's for a while.


3. Wheat Crunchies are just brilliant. I might be the only person that thinks so, but I really like them.

Some new pics and a video as well!

I've been pretty busy finishing of a database application in my spare time and I'm finally out of the other end. I have some new pics and a video that I would like to put on here for all to see.

First of all, is a wee video of me doing some very tame version of Parkour or Freerunning. It's totally timid compared to the guys who are really good at it but I just saw the overhang recently and wondered if I'd be able to climb up there. This was about the fourth time I filmed it and it's the smoothest I've got it yet, although there's definitely room for improvement.



Next up is a picture of one of my earlier attempts of the same. The truth is that my friend Kevin was filming but we discovered afterwards he had it on "image" instead of "video". Oh well, not to worry. We've still got a video so all is not lost.

This one might seem a bit out of place, but it's still relevant. This is me reading a story to Kasey who is almost 17 months now. No, she's not mine before you ask. I know it's Christmas but no immaculate conceptions have been happening around here. Her parents, Kevin and Angie, are on the same course as me and it's been fun having a "small person" around.

Right, now it's time to go from the sublime to the proverbial ridiculous. I leave you today with a picture of me and what I have come to affectionately refer to as my "Biohazard Cookies". One of my hosts here in Kansas City works at a doctor's lab and he drives around picking up various dubious samples of different varieties. (He told me he even picked up a leg one time.) The disturbing part is that he uses the left over biohazard bags to present cookies to me. He told me the bag hadn't been used before, but I'm starting to feel a bit funn..#:;,...

Latest from Kansas City

It's been about a month since I've written anything about the CPx course that I'm doing just now. Truth be told, I've been having a bit of a rough time. I don't know if it's culture shock, team dynamics or generally losing motivation for missions, but somewhere along the lines things got a bit tough. Some people tend to get more communicative at such times but I tend to withdraw and go quiet.

I'm feeling a bit better now but I still reckon God's challenging me by putting me in situations that make me uncomfortable to expose my heart and turn me to Him.

It's only three weeks until I go home for Christmas and I think it'd be a huge relief to be around people who understand me a bit better. I've been getting a number of odd questions from well-meaning locals saying things like "So do you celebrate Christmas on the 25th of December over there in Scotland?" There's only so much of that you can take before it gets annoying. I've also realised that after a while you start to feel like you're uniquely "special" in the oddness of your worldview. I remember one time coming home and being really excited about driving in Scotland because other drivers responded the way I expected them to. For instance, when I came up behind someone in the fast lane, they'd change lanes to let me past. It may be a small thing, but it's just one example of people seeing the world the same way.

I've got a few videos I made recently so I thought it was about time to upload them to YouTube.

The first one here is my attempt at a "Borat" impression while out in my kilt in Kansas City. You need to take my word about the kilt part, you can't actually see it in the video.


Video number 2 is a brief rant about the fact that they had a Christmas celebration in November and it wasn't even Thanksgiving yet.


Finally (for now) we have my thoughts on the possible onset of winter.

More about Peak Oil

I realised last night's post was pretty brief so I thought I should explain more about what this whole "Peak Oil" thing is about. I have also read a few websites that reckon it's all a big conspiracy by governments to control people and that there's no problem at all. I would suggest that even if there is no shortage of oil, we should probably still use less of it to cut down on greenhouse emissions.

So why is Peak Oil such a big deal? Well, first of all we should consider what we use oil for. It's not just a question of finding something else to fuel our cars. (I always thought it was.) All plastics are made out of stuff derived from oil. Inks also come from oil. A lot of pharmaceuticals also rely on our supply of crude oil. Finally, almost all of our food industry in the west relies heavily on oil to exist. Tractors, farm machinery and of course the trucks that transport everything around are reliant on oil. If there is no oil, we have no food, medicine, transport or even ink. That's pretty bad.

The name "Peak Oil" refers to the global production of oil hitting the highest it will ever hit and then dropping off. Although that means we have only used 50% of the world's oil, it means the remaining 50% will be very expensive for a number of reasons. 1) The longer you extract oil from a field the harder it gets to extract the rest because it is initially under pressure. As the pressure drops off, water has to be introduced to force the oil out, which then has to be processed more afterwards. This is more time consuming and more expensive. 2) The demand for oil and the world's population have both been increasing so even though we may drop to a level of production that was sufficient 10 years ago, it might not be enough for today. Increased demand leads to increased price.

I don't claim to be an expert on this subject. I'm just very interested in what it could mean for the future of our society as we know it. I already have been feeling that we have been very wasteful of the Earth's natural resources and this is one more thing to consider. It's naive of us to think that oil will last for ever and when you look at how much of our society relies on oil, it makes you wonder how we'd cope if we suddenly had no oil to run our lives.

I've read some articles by people who say Peak Oil is just a big scam. They claim that oil as actually being produced by the Earth itself and that oil wells are being re-filled, resulting in an endless supply. They believe Peak Oil is a scare tactic by our governments to prevent us targeting them when oil prices go up. One article goes far enough to say it's a Misleading Zionist Scam. Not being an expert, I can't claim to know who's right. It does seem, though, that each website opposing Peak Oil has a decidedly mocking, critical tone which makes the whole thing seem unprofessional and childish. I'm not saying they're wrong, just that the people who believe Peak Oil is reality seem a lot better at articulating their story in an objective, grown-up way.

Maybe the whole topic isn't as clear cut as I first though. I still think it's worth looking into. If nothing else, we should all try to use less oil anyway to fight global warming. We are meant to be stewards of this planet and we're not doing a very good job, as far as I can see.

Here are some websites I've found interesting on this subject:

postcarbon.org
Peak Oil page on GlobalPublicMedia.com
BBC Article on Iceland switching to Hydrogen energy
Anti-Peak Oil site suggesting it's a Zionist Scam

Peak Oil

I heard an interesting thing in class today. It seems that the global production of crude oil is set to peak in the next couple of years. This is no trivial fact. The result will be that production will be slower and more expensive resulting in crude oil being more and more expensive. This will result in petrol prices being impossibly expensive and oil-dependent nations being pretty stuck basically.

I found a website that says much the same as today's speaker was saying: http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

Our speaker tied it in with God's plan for the end times. He reckons that as oil gets more and more expensive, there will be more and more wars over the countries in North Africa and the Middle East that have the majority of the remaining oil. It's not too unrealistic a connection to make that the great end times wars and rumours of wars around Israel could well be relating to the shortage of oil.

It's interesting stuff, although not one of the more cheery things I've commented on.

I spoke up about something - and it changed

I've got a really cool story to tell that I'm pretty pleased about.

It all started with a new online game called The Ship. It's a game based on Valve's Source engine. If you're familiar with online games at all, that means it's based on the same world as Half Life 2 and Counter-Strike: Source. If none of that makes any sense to you, don't worry. It's not important to the story.

The ship is based on the classic murder mystery scenario with the scene set on board a Victorian sailing ship. (Think of Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile and you're probably close.) Each player plays the part of a passenger whose mission is to secretly murder another passenger whose name they are given at the start of the round. The tricky part is that at the same time someone else is trying to kill them. You don't know who's trying to kill you, and you should try to be as sneaky as possible in pursuing the person you're after as well. It makes for some pretty intense gameplay.

As if that wasn't all tricky enough, you also need to avoid security and take care of your bodily needs. You need to eat, drink, sleep, socialise, wash and even go to the toilet. This means there are certain times you are vulnerable. Someone could potentially get you while you're asleep or "on the throne". The game has a very humourous, cartoonish feel and it's a lot of fun to play.

The game has an inventory system and you find lots of clothes, weapons, books and so on scattered around the ship. Each item is accompanied by a witty description. Amongst other well-known books, the game includes the bible as one of the items you can interact with. Its description was, "Epic fiction about an angry, omnipotent guy known simply as 'God'." I was a bit surprised and saddened to see that there.

The reaction I had to this was just one of disappointment, more than anything. Up to this point I was enjoying the game but now it had turned on me and I felt a bit insulted, as if it implied my beliefs were intrinsically wrong. I felt that God was being misrepresented as well and I wanted to express this to the company who made the game. I don't see God as an "angry omnipotent guy" at all.

The game is published by Outerlight, who I was pleased to discover are actually based in Edinburgh. I e-mailed them to express my sadness about this unnecessary, anti-Christian remark in the game. My initial couple of e-mails were handled by Ed Wilson, their Technical Director. He assured me that they were taking my concerns seriously and that the team would discuss it further.

A week or so later I heard from Ailsa Bates, the Operations Director at Outerlight. We communicated back and forth on the issue over the following month. Her opinion was that it was only intended as a joke and that everyone in the office had found it funny and didn't really see why I wouldn't be able to see the funny side. She suggested if I was able to come up with a better description they could change it. I sent a few suggestions that I considered quite witty along with one that my mate Greg came up with simply saying "A good book." (I also suggested making the bible a weapon so you could "bible bash" people, but Ailsa reckoned that'd be even more controversial.)

Today is a special day because I finally saw the fruit of my labours. As of the latest patch that I installed on The Ship today, the description of the bible has now changed! It has change from an epic fiction about an angry, omnipotent God to "A good book." It was so cool to see that! It's not about being proven right or anything like that. I'm just feeling more like, "Wow! I expressed my opinion on something and someone decided to change it, just because of what I said. I feel strangely valued!"

It's making me realise that I do actually have influence if I have honest, respectful communication with someone. I could have easily written off Outerlight as a nasty, anti-Christian company but through talking about it, I found where they were coming from.

It's nice to be heard.

We're going to France!

It was finally decided yesterday that our three-month church planting outreach will be to Marseille, in the south of France. We had been given a few options to consider including France, The Ivory Coast and South Africa. In the end we opted for France for a variety of reasons. Of particular concern, our group includes a married couple with a young baby and a second one on the way. Since Angie's pregnant, she can't get any vaccinations without potentially harming the baby. This ruled out The Ivory Coast and we also felt that the conditions in the South African location would be a bit challenging.

One of the cool things about Marseille is that they have a large Muslim population. We're going to be focusing on north African Muslims so that we can learn church planting in a Muslim community while still living in a stable and safe country. I'm excited about going there because I'll also be able to use some of my French which is actually my most academically studied language besides English, although I've never been in a French-speaking nation for any significant length of time.

We don't have exact dates yet but we'll be heading to France just after New Year and we'll be finished by the end of March or start of April. It looks like I'll be celebrating my 30th birthday in France. I daresay some of my Scottish chums could come to visit. I think flights to France are pretty cheap these days. :)

A great quote from "The Village"

I was watching The Village on TV tonight and I noticed a great line that I had not appreciated before:

The world moves for love.
It kneels before it in awe.
 

Rainy Evening

Tonight I was a bit bored so I decided to go out for a walk. I discovered there was an Einestein Brothers bagel shop nearby and although it was closed, I wanted to have a look around to see if there were any other shops nearby. It started raining but I stayed out for a bit longer anyway. Feeling somewhat peckish, I got a big bag of Tostitos and a can of Red Bull. The rain was pretty heavy and I sought refuge in a few interesting places along the way. Here are a few videos in case you're interested.

This first one is a commentary on my walk in the rain:



In this one, I talk about a potential Parkour feature I found:

Puja

On Sunday evening I attended an interesting worship experience. It is called a "Puja" which is a Hindu term from the Sanskrit language. We were learning in class about contextualisation, which basically means presenting the gospel in a way that people can relate to in their culture. Too often, missionaries present the gospel as a very western thing, resulting in the indigenous people thinking it is a western God, when in fact no-one in the bible was western at all.

The analogy we heard about contextualisation was to think of the message as the water of life in a container. The container it is presented in might be different depending on the culture. In the west, we are quite familiar with mugs with a round handle and an image printed on the side. In India, though, this would be very foreign. Contextualisation is the technique of using a vessel people are more familiar with so they can receive the drink.



The whole setup of the meeting was very different from anything I've ever seen before. We were still singing songs of worship to Jesus, though. We were simply using a style that Hindus would be very familiar with. This has been really successful in India where people have felt comfortable and familiar with the surroundings and able to receive the message and understand what is being said.

We had communion as part of the Puja. Instead of bread and red wine, we used bananas and milk. These are both things that are very abundant in India and easy for people to get. The milk can represent purity because it is white and the banana can represent Jesus body which was broken.

We also heard the gospel explained using a coconut as an illustration. As Dag, the leader, explained that Jesus was bruised and beaten for our sin, he hit the coconut with a hammer several times. Eventually, it cracked and the clear milk poured out of it, reminding me that when stabbed with the spear, water came out of Jesus' heart along with the blood. He talked about how we can now be as white as coconut because of this. To someone in India, a phrase like "as white as snow" would not make sense as most of them have not seen snow, yet everyone knows what coconuts are like.



Another interesting aspect was the use of incense. As we worshipped it was interesting to engage the sense of smell as well as sight and sound. It reminded me that Jesus can be like the air we breathe, able to expand and rise to places we couldn't reach.

We sang songs in Hindi with the English translation alongside it so we could see what we were singing. We sang about the name of Jesus, how it is a powerful, beautiful name and we sang about how he is our ultimate Guru and even that his word is our mantra. All the time, we were using terms people would be familiar with to help them understand our faith better.

The whole Puja experience gave me a bit of a feeling for how it must be for someone from a different culture to come to a "normal" church meeting in the west which is in a different language with all kinds of new things happening. At first I was constantly reading the English beside the Hindi to work out what I was actually saying. After we had repeated some of the songs a few times I started to remember and I was able to focus more on actually singing.

I've learned that there's no one structure or pattern that is correct for worship. In our western churches we are so stuck on the pattern of having a band playing worship songs and us all sitting in rows listening to someone at the front. These things are not bad, but they are not necessarily relevant to all cultures. It would be wrong to re-create the same thing elsewhere in the world and expect people to be familiar with it.

Village Experience

On Thursday and Friday we did an interesting practical exercise called the "Village Experience". We didn't know quite what to expect and we were told very little about what was in store for us. All we knew was that we had to bring a bag of overnight things including a sleeping bag and that we had to be able to carry everything. We were only allowed one piece of food each as well.

It started off late on Thursday morning when we were blondfolded and loaded into a van. We were instructed to be silent and to keep our blindfolds in place. We drove for maybe 10 or 15 minutes. It's hard to say how long it was because it seems longer when you can't see anything. Maybe it was some vague recollection of a Hardy Boys book or something but I started mapping our route in my mind. I memorised all the turns we took and tried to visualise a map in my head of the path of the van. In the end it turned out that information was irrelevant, but I suppose it illustrated that I still had to keep my mind active. Actually, if the journey was much longer, I might have just forgotten about it entirely.

Once the van stopped, we were told we could remove our blindfolds and get out. We assembled by the side of the road with our backpacks on and Randy explaned the procedure to us. We were given the first clue which would lead us to the next clue. Each clue would lead us to the next until we finally reached our destination. We were to collect the clues to give to Randy at the destination and we were to pray for the village at each clue.

The journey was a fairly enjoyable hike along a few country roads on the Missouri/Kansas border. The clues were pretty straightforward and they were easy to find as well. It was a bit weird praying for "the village" since we didn't know what that exactly meant. At the first clue, we were presented with 3 logs that we had to carry with us to present to the villagers. This proved to be quite challenging with the additional weight. Later one, we collected a jar of Jalapeño Olives which were also to be presented to the villagers. We also collected three more logs further on. This was really sneaky and deliberate of them. There were five people and six logs. The uneven load was a strategy to test our teamwork. Someone would need to carry more logs than the rest and that would test our patience and co-operation.

When we finally reached our destination, we were allowed to rest for maybe ten minutes before we were taken to "meet the villagers." The rest of the experience was far more bizarre than the hike.



As we walked down the path, we saw a secluded area of grassland up ahead that was surrounded by woods on three sides. We were confronted by two or three men dressed in middle eastern outfits with some kind of arab headdress. They blocked the path and looked inquisitively at us. They spoke amongst themselves in Spanish and didn't understand anything we said. Fortunately, we had two girls in our group who could speak Spanish so they translated for us.

It would take too long to describe each event in great detail, but we had all kinds of things happen. They didn't trust me because I wasn't married, and they got the girls in our group to each throw a log to see who could throw one the furthest. Then they tried to get me to marry the one who threw the furthest. When I refused, they gave her to one of their villagers instead.

When we first arrived, we gave them the Jalapeño Olives. They looked suspiciously and made us each eat one to show them that they were ok. They fed us roasted grubs (which we had to eat), chicken and "cat". (which was actually rabbit)

The grandfather-type character was sick and we asked a few times to pray for him. When they let us pray, he got worse and called for the Witch Doctor who relieved the pain for a while. Later on, when we prayed again he got healed. The Witch Doctor wanted to buy the power from us with one of his necklaces.

We slept in tents nearby and it was COLD at night. In the morning there was frost on the ground and on the tents. It had dropped to freezing during the night.

Here are some videos I made along the way:



You can also browse the video playlist on YouTube.

End of week one

I've finished my first week of CPx. (The church planting experience) Today, Monday, is my day off so I thought this would be a good time for a brief update. We had class from Tuesday to Saturday with each session starting at 8:00 am. That's been a bit tricky to get used to. Usually we finish at 4 or 4:30 in the afternoon.

The class hasn't exactly looked like what I expected, although I didn't really know what to expect in the first place. We meet in a small house in a residential district of Grandview, which could be considered either a suburb of Kansas City or a neighbouring town. I normally get a lift to class in the morning from one of the others on the course, although I'm hoping to get a bike soon. One odd aspect of Kansas City is that a lot of the roads don't have pavements to walk on beside them. (sidewalks to you N. Americans) Even in residential neighbourhoods, I need to walk on the road or on the grass. It's a strange omission.

Each morning we start with an hour of prayer and worship. So far this has been a very quiet routine which I've found difficult to engage in. I think the point is to strip everything back to the absolute basics of what we might encounter when planting a church. Combined with the early start, I tend to find it hard to stay awake.

As for accommodation, I'm staying with an elderly couple who feed me and look after me. They have their own eccentricities but they are good to me. They have matching rocking chairs and a clock that sounds every half hour. On the hour it chimes the appropriate number of times and on the half hour it chimes once. (I noted this could lead to ambiguity around 1 o'clock.) Although this clock is in the living room, it has woken me up a few times in my room.

We've had a fairly interactive teaching curriculum so far. On the first day (Tuesday) we learned about prayer walking and then went out in pairs to walk through the neighbourhood and pray. The next day we learned more about contacting new people in the street. We went out again in pairs, this time to talk to people in the area and start to make connections. On Thursday and Friday we had testimonies. We each had to prepare a 20 minute talk about our testimony.

On Saturday we had a seminar on "What is church?" We looked at the different ways the word "church" is used in modern day English compared to what it actually meant in scripture. We looked at the Western model of church and noted some of the things that aren't actually essential but are still part of our image of church. When planting a church, you tend to reproduce what you are familiar with and care must be taken to avoid placing a Western worldview on a new church in a different culture.

On Sunday we had a small house church meeting before going out for lunch. It was fairly simple and community-based but it was still church nonetheless!

I uploaded some videos to YouTube

I've been making videos with my phone for ages now but I've finally taken the time to learn a better way to share them with you. I previously uploaded them to a really obscure website and then added links to the files manually. It was pretty clunky to set up. Now I've got an account with YouTube, which makes things a lot easier. You can see my latest videos on my YouTube profile page: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=kencares.

To kick things off here, I thought I'd share some specific videos of things that I've mentioned in a few recent blog entries.

Sailing on Lake Ontario


Windsurfing
There are two videos here. I made one each day at the end of each session in the water. In this first video, I discussed a few of the technical aspects of windsurfing.


In this second video you will notice I sound much weaker. That day was really cold and I think it shows in the fact that I look like I'm about to faint any minute!


Fun with Steve's Car
This first one shows Steve explaining how things work under the hood of his beast.


The second clip shows us flying round a dirt road on the way from Newmarket to Toronto. At one point, we skidded out pretty wide on a turn. Don't be alarmed by the extreme angle of the video. The car didn't actually tip! I temporarily lost control of the camera a bit as I was distracted by the slide.


After the fun and games on the dirt road, we stopped to inspect the damage.


Once we got to Toronto, we had a bit of fun doing donuts in the Colossus Cinema parking lot. There's not much happening at the start of this video but I couldn't find a good way to edit it.


This is the second video of donuts in the parking lot. We got quite fast in this one and you can even see the smoke from the tyres coming into the car.


We went and looked at the parking lot after the donuts.


Kansas City

When I arrived in Kansas City, I saw a tetherball which I found really amusing. Here's my Napoleon Dynamite impression.