I meant to put this up back around the new year… better late than never, I suppose.

2008 was truly a unique and wonderful year for me. I saw some amazing sights and lived some great adventures on the other side of the planet. Here’s to hoping that 2009 is half as good.

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while… here’s what I’ve been up to:

I went to Portland,

and used a speaker cluster older than dirt:

We went to Canada and played a hockey arena in Kamloops. It was a bad day.

We flew to Alaska and put on a show. I went skiing on some of the best snow ever.

We spent a week in Beverly Hills playing the historic (translation: small and old) Wilshire Theatre.

Came back to MN for Christmas… heading back out tomorrow to Tucson where I’ll get out of the cold and ring in the new year!

Oh! The tour bus was out with The Jonas Brothers (ask anyone in middle school if you don’t know who they are). New bus and new driver after Tucson… there may be a round TWO of “guess who used to ride Dillon’s bus!”

Some folks have asked to see more bus picts… here’s what I’ve got.

Glittering prizes for whoever can correctly guess who had this bus out before the JCS crew took it over…

Got underway from Alto, NM and into Colorado for a couple shows in Colorado Springs (our official opening) and Greeley. So nice to see the Rockies! The crew is riding in style for this first leg of the tour — we’re all keeping our fingers crossed that the luck will continue when we get back from Christmas break.

We had a stop over day in Las Vegas for Thanksgiving. Patty and I spent the day exploring all the touristy things we could find on the strip in the rain: NY, NY’s roller coaster was closed, the double-decker “Deuce” bus was running (we got front row seats on top!), the Stratosphere had closed it’s thrill rides, but the observation deck was open. We ended up finding a nice (very tasty) turkey dinner at the MGM Grand and had bought tickets to see “KA”, a Cirque show at the MGM. The show ended up getting canceled due to a broken motor/cable. Very sad for us.

Made it out to Palm Desert, CA (temp = 80° F) for five shows over the weekend. On Saturday, a few cast members organized a cookout on the patio off the green room. It was great to grill out and hang with everybody between shows.

Off to Portland, OR tonight for two shows, then into Canada for a couple one-nighters before saying goodbye to our bus and flying to Alaska on Monday for a week’s worth of shows in Anchorage. We’re not bringing any set, lighting or sound equipment — just using what’s up there. Should be interesting, to say the least, to learn to mix the show on a new console in one day. We’ll see how that goes…

Just finished up the Jesus Christ Superstar tech rehearsals and two preview performances in Alto, NM at the Spencer Theatre for the Performing Arts. Had an amazing run at a pretty amazing venue. The 500-seat theatre is situated in the middle of nowhere, but has a great crew and a great stage to play. Had just a few hiccups on the sound end of things, but all-in-all, it was a great first stop.

Enroute to Colorado Springs on board the crew bus… load-in tomorrow, official opening night on Monday (?!?) night, then off to Greeley and then California by way of a Thanksgiving dinner and some time at the tables in Vegas with Doc.