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Disc Golf

When I started playing disc golf towards the end of last summer, I started learning that I was right in the middle of a big surge of interest in the sport. It really spiked when COVID hit and the interest has continued. UDisc is the most popular app for tracking scores and finding courses. They have an annual report about the growth of the sport if you’re interested in stats.

It’s been a big hit in our house because it’s something that all three of us can enjoy, and it’s generally free. UDisc says that 90% of all disc golf courses are free to play. You can get a starter set of three discs for about $30 and I used my starter set for a very long time before buying some specific, fancier discs for $15-20/each.

I’m writing this post because I realized there have only be a couple blog posts that mention disc golf. Considering how much I have been playing, that feels a bit off, so I thought I’d use this post to answer some of the questions I had as I got into it:

Where do you play? There are courses at lots of local parks. UDisc says that 28% of Americans live within 2 miles of a course and 88% are within 10 miles. You can find them by going to https://udisc.com/courses or searching on internet maps. I’m lucky to live near a great course at Blyth Park in Bothell.

It seems intimidating. How do I not look like a moron? This is the biggest thing that held me back from playing. I regret the time I lost worrying about this. Disc golfers are generally super friendly! With so many people joining the sport, you’re probably not the only newbie out there. If you don’t know what to do, find somebody else who is playing and just ask them. Or if you look confused, someone will probably offer to help.

What do you do? When you get to the course, find the first tee. Sometimes there’s a map showing all the holes. Or if you have the UDisc app, it will show you a map of the course with your current location noted. That app is really helpful as you go from hole to hole looking for the next tee. Once you’ve found the first tee (usually some kind of a concrete or dirt pad about 2 feet by 6 feet), throw your first shot. Walk up to your disc, make sure one foot is right behind where your disc landed, and throw your next shot. Eventually you’ll make it to the basket and your disc must end up in the basket. Count your strokes and move on to the next tee.

How long does it take? My local course has 10 holes. (9 and 18 hole courses are the most common but it’s not super rare to have a different number of holes.) I can play a round by myself in 30-40 minutes, but obviously if there’s a lot of traffic on the course that can slow things down a bit.

What is the etiquette? If you’ve ever played traditional ball golf, a lot of etiquette is very similar. Some general guidelines are:

  • Wait until the people in front of you are out of range before you throw. Generally this means waiting until they’re done with the hole.
  • Yell “Fore!” if your disc is heading toward someone else.
  • Whoever is farthest from the hole throws next.
  • Play “ready golf” by knowing which disc you’re going to use and being ready to throw when it is your turn.
  • Be aware of people throwing on holes near you. Disc golf courses can be tight and it’s easy for errant shots to veer into neighboring holes.

What’s the difference between a disc golf course and a traditional/ball golf course? While both have “tees” and “fairways” and conceptually are similar, the physical appearance can differ in a few ways:

  • Disc golf holes are shorter. Most holes will range between 200-350 feet if they are beginner-friendly while long/pro holes can stretch over 1000 feet in some extreme cases.
  • Disc golf courses have a lot more variety. Courses might be set in thick woods, an open field, zig zagging across an old golf course, etc.
  • Disc golf courses make a lot more use of natural terrain and obstacles and some will even include man-made obstacles like a tall fence stationed at a key point in the middle of the fairway to make the hole more interesting.
  • Some disc golf holes include a “mando” (short for “mandatory”) which means that you must go to the right or left of a specific obstacle.
  • There’s no “green” for disc golf. There’s an imaginary circle around the basket with a radius of 30 feet and there are slightly special rules in that zone, but generally this isn’t explicitly marked.

Why do my discs always go to the left? Because of the physics of a disc, most discs will curve to the left, especially at the end of their flight. As people get better and can put more speed and spin into the disc, they can have different flight characteristics depending on the disc. As a beginner, I just plan for the curve.

Do discs get lost? Yes. Most people write their name and phone number on the back of the disc and people are pretty good about calling or texting if they find your disc. Thankfully I haven’t lost a disc yet, but I’ve probably spent more time than is reasonable looking for lost discs. Losing a disc isn’t as common as losing a golf ball though which is good because people get more attached to their discs as they learn how each specific disc flies.

What are some good sources for learning? I subscribe to quite a few disc golf channels on YouTube. Here are three of my favorites. All of these have a lot of videos so click on their playlists section to zero in on content that interests you.

  • Robbie C Disc Golf – Robbie has a lot of beginner friendly videos and always focuses on mechanics that are helpful to average players.
  • Overthrow Disc Golf – Josh was a full time professional tennis coach before switching primarily to teach disc golf. He is excellent at breaking down body mechanics into simple steps.
  • Foundation Disc Golf – Foundation is mainly an online store that sells discs, but they have a fun YouTube channel as well. There is a ton of content of them playing rounds with various tweaks to the rules (like only using the worst selling discs in their store, playing doubles but taking the worst shot, etc.)
  • JomezPro – Over the past few months, Elijah and I have started watching the final round of the touring pro tournament series. JomezPro posts very nicely produced coverage of the rounds 12-24 hours after they finish. It’s wild to see what the pros can do and it’s interesting to get to know the various players in the game.

Can you be a professional? I guess I answered this with the JomezPro recommendation above, but one of the most interesting parts about disc golf for me is that anybody can be ranked on the same charts as people who get paid to play the game. If you join the PDGA for $50/year, as soon as you play in a sanctioned tournament, you’ll be assigned a rating. Your rating goes up and down every time you play in a sanctioned tournament so you can directly compare your skill level against the pros. On the PDGA website, you can see how much money everyone makes in tournaments. As a local player, you’d be doing very well to make a couple hundred bucks a year. The highest level pros would do well to make $100,000/year from tournaments, but they are likely to have additional sponsorships that make them more than that. Estimates are that the highest paid pros may be making around $500,000/year but that’s a guess.

It’s a deep rabbit hole, but you can easily play casually and have lots of fun. According to my UDisc app, I’ve already played 19 rounds this year (39 last year). With the longer days and drier weather, I’m able to head to the park quickly after Elijah goes to bed to play a round in the evenings. It’s a relaxing way to get away from the computer screen for a while and get some fresh air. I’m more than happy to play a round with you if you live near me and are interested!

Blyth Park Disc Golf Tournament

I played my first disc golf round in early August, so less than two months later, I’m clearly ready to enter a tournament, right?

We play most often at Blyth Park and I saw some signs up for a tournament. This was an “unsanctioned” tournament meaning you didn’t need a PDGA (Professional Disc Golf Association) membership to enter. I figured it would be a stretch for my skill level, but the $40 entry fee included three discs and that’s about how much three discs would cost so it seemed like a reasonable way to add more discs to my bag and learn more about the sport. The catch was that you can only use those exact three discs in the tournament even though you’ve never thrown them before.

My tee time was at 12:30pm so I showed up around 11:30am not knowing what to expect. We got there just as an ambulance was pulling up. I quickly learned that a player had broken their leg on the course! It winds through the woods and there are some very steep sections. He took a bad step and SNAP! That delayed everything by about half an hour so I didn’t end up teeing off until 1pm. The injury happened in the furthest point from the road so it took them a long time to extract him.

There were three other guys in my group and thankfully they were all nice to play with. Most people in the sport seem to be very nice but there are always a few of “those guys.” The first whole on the course is very difficult. There’s a row of trees across the fairway and it feels a bit like the windmill hole on a putt putt course. You try to get it right but there’s a lot of luck involved (at least at my skill level.)

I was encouraged to see lots of other players hitting the trees too. That was a common theme for me during the day. Lots of other people struggle with the same things that I do. Anway, my tee shot survived the trees (in a different gap than I aimed for) and my next shot from about 100 feet out hit the chains and bounced out! I was thrilled with a par on that hole and told me teammates not to expect more throws like that from me in the future.

We were keeping score right in the UDisc app. I don’t know if there are other disc golf apps, but this one seems to have pretty much cornered the market. They’ve done a really good job with it and I keep all my scores in there. For the tournament, it easily let one person track scores for the whole group and all the stats show up right on everyone else’s phones so they can find errors, track live leaderboards, etc.

When playing the course normally, there aren’t official out of bounds areas clearly marked but they had them all marked for this tournament. Some of the baskets are within a few feet of the out of bounds line so that adds a significant challenge. On hole three, my putt hit the chains of the basket, bounced out, and had an agonizingly slow roll just barely across the line. So my par 3 turned into a 5. Ouch!

I can finish a round (10 holes) by myself on an empty course in 25-30 minutes. If I play with Elijah, it’s about 45 minutes. But it took us 1.5 hours to finish our first 10 holes. (For some reason this course has 10 holes instead of 9.) Thankfully, the weather was perfect. It was a real blessing for being so late in September. It was in the low 70s and sunny, and if there was anything to complain about, there was just enough wind to make you think about it on some throws.

I get to spend a lot of time learning my recovery shots when I hit a tree and end up off course.

I finished the first 10 holes at 4 over which is good for me. I’ve had two rounds at 3 over and if you factor in the OB rules that I had to contend with this time, I was very happy. Two of the other guys in my group were a stroke or two under par and the third guy was quite a few strokes behind me.

The second 10 holes was rougher and looking back, I think I was getting tired. It had already been a long day and I usually only play 10 holes at a time. The whole course is in the woods so it’s not uncommon to hit a tree, but usually I can recover and still get par or bogey. But I hit multiple trees on both holes and double bogeyed both. I was able to pick up a birdie later to offset some other less than stellar holes a little and ended up +6 on the back 10 for a final score of +10 over 20 holes.

Tyla and Elijah came to watch my final few holes and take some pictures.

There were some extra competitions happening within the tourney too. You could pay an extra $5 for an “ace pot” to be split among any players who got a hole in one. As far as I know, only one player got it so he won $500. (It was on hole 8 if you know the course. He had a good throw plus a bit of luck with a friendly tree bounce.) The other competition was “closest to the pin” on every hole. There was an orange flag marking the closest tee shot. By the end of the day, all of the flags were either touching the pole or within a couple feet. It was amazing to see some of those throws when I’m happy just to par the holes.

I’m waiting to see the official results with the full 100 players, but the UDisc leaderboard says I was 65 out of 84 players. My goal going in was to have fun, stay out of the way, and not be last. I’d say I accomplished all of those goals!

Will I do it again? Yes, but probably not very often. I like that you get free discs for playing the courses, but until I’m good enough to have a chance at making it into the money, I probably won’t do more than one a year. The top 30 players got a payout in this tournament and a score of +1 was the cutoff for that. That’s a big stretch for me right now but my personal goal is one round (10 holes) at even par. I have a ways to go before I’m in possible contention for the money but it seems achievable.

Disc Golf Newbies

The new craze in our house is disc golf. I asked for a cheap starter pack of discs for Father’s Day, and all three of us enjoyed it the very first time we went out. There are about half a dozen free courses within a 30 minute drive and the closest one is only 5 minutes away.

I was a bit nervous/embarrassed the first time we went out, but I’ve found the disc golf crowd to be extremely friendly and welcoming. Plus, we quickly learned that lots of people are just out there having family fun and we weren’t as slow or bad as we thought. Course etiquette is very similar to golf so I was able to work on those social norms with Elijah first and then we started learning more about the game.

YouTube is a great resource for learning disc golf and it helped us understand the basic form, the flow of play, special rules, etc. While there are people who are extremely good at the sport, I’ve found it to be very accessible for inexperienced players. You can go out there knowing nothing and have a blast. And while it would take a huge amount of time to master the sport, you can find bits success early on. For example, only about 10 rounds into the sport, we’ve all made a par and I was a few inches off from a hole-in-one. You can pick up a starter set of discs for around $30, and as I mentioned, many of the courses are free. The UDisc app is a great way to find nearby courses and keep score.

It’s fun to discover a new activity where I can compete against myself, play for basically free, and see myself rapidly improve since I went in knowing nothing! If you’re in the area, I’d be happy to share some discs with you and show you what it’s like. At the very least, you get to enjoy walking around in a park for an hour.

MLC Visit

Tyla and I have been getting increasingly more involved with Martin Luther College in New Ulm, MN. It’s Tyla’s alma mater and it is where ALL of our national church body‘s pastors and teachers are trained. (Pastor’s go on to Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary for an additional 4 years of post graduate study.) MLC is plays an incredibly important role of giving all of our teachers and preachers a solid foundation before they head out into their positions. There aren’t a lot of church bodies that put this much effort into their worker training programs!

Running any college would be difficult but running a small college that effectively caters to two majors and draws from a relatively small pool of people constantly presents new challenges. How much money do you invest in campus buildings or decreasing student debt or increasing the available classes or online training for post-college age students? The list goes on and on.

President Gurgel has started a new President’s Advisory Council and we were thrilled that he asked us to participate. We recently had our first meeting which was in-person and on campus. A huge thank you goes to Tyla’s sister, Megan, for taking vacation days to stay with Elijah at our house while we were traveling! In addition to a full day of meetings on Friday, we made the most of our time:

  • Full campus tour
  • Catching up with teachers we had in high school and college
  • Football game
  • Volleyball game
  • Schell’s Brewery
  • Disc golf on the MLC campus
  • New Ulm Glockenspiel
  • Dinners at 209 (the replacement for the Lamplighter) and the Kaiserhoff
  • Wanda Gag House
  • Reformation service at St. John’s
  • Flandrau State Park

Not bad for about 65 hours in New Ulm, eh? I had visited campus a couple times back in the early 2000s, but Tyla obviously had a lot more experience there and was a great tour guide. We were so happy to see the chapel (2010) and the fieldhouse (2022). Those are major additions that have a dramatic impact on the campus.

So what exactly does the President’s Advisory Council do? Honestly I think we as a group are still trying to figure it out how to be most effective, but at a minimum, President Gurgel is hoping that we can provide some new perspectives on situations that they are facing as well as being ambassadors for the school in our own communities. It looks like we’ll have more of these trips in the future, and I pray that we can add value to what the wonderful MLC leadership team is already doing.

2024 Indiana Trip

We try to get back to my parents’ house in Indiana every summer and this year was no exception. Things were almost thrown off by a case of COVID, but then I learned that the CDC has updated their isolation guidelines. Thankfully that all worked out for us and the case was very mild (not even a fever.) It unfortunately did mean that we didn’t see some higher risk family members, but we still had a good time.

Dad and Mom surprised us by installing a new diving board! There was a diving board for all the years I lived there but about 20 years ago, it had to be removed because the rusty base couldn’t be safely held to the concrete anymore. The board was a BIG hit and got a lot of action! I’ve always wondered at what age I’ll do my last backflip and hmm… we might be past that point already. Either that or I need more height to get it done. Each time I tried it, I made it about 3/4 of the way around.

We went swimming every day but we also visited the new South Bend Chocolate Company location, played disc golf, picked berries, played croquet on Elijah’s made-up courses, went to a farmer’s market, and ate a lot of good food. I did edit a bunch of our videos together to remember the event, but don’t expect a cinematic masterpiece.

Thank you Dad and Mom for all the work you do to make our trip easy and enjoyable!

2024 PDGA Portland Open

In addition to playing disc golf fairly regularly, Elijah and I have watched a lot of the pro tournaments online. They have a subscription network for live coverage, but we generally watch an edited version of the final round for free on the JomezPro YouTube channel. Most of the tournaments are in the midwest and southeast but there were a couple Oregon tournaments on this year’s schedule, so last weekend we made a day trip to Portland for day 3 of the 2024 Portland Open.

I didn’t really know what to expect and it was going to be a long day (6 hours in the car plus ~8 hours at the tournament) so I was hoping for the best. I had so many questions starting with “What is parking going to be like?” There wasn’t a lot of info available ahead of time about parking but I was thrilled to see that we could just street park within about a 5 minute walk of the course!

The tournament schedule had the ladies teeing off first followed by the guys. Elijah’s disc golf teacher was in one of the first groups of ladies to tee off and that had happened a couple hours before we got there. After checking scores on my phone, we made a beeline back to hole 16. There was almost no one around and we weren’t even sure we were in the right area, but then we saw his teacher come through. She spotted after teeing off and came running over to give Elijah a hug! We watched her through the final holes and got to chat with her after. She made Elijah feel super special and even took him up onto the #1 tee between groups to get a great photo by one of the big PDGA sign boards. You can see it on her Instagram account.

After walking around the booths and grabbing some lunch, we watched the top ladies groups finish up on hole 18. Then we headed over to hole 1 and parked ourselves in a great spot with some shade but also great views of the green.

It ended up being a magical spot. One of the first groups we watched had Niklas Anttila in it (one of Elijah’s favorites.) As Niklas walked by, he fist bumped Elijah and blew Elijah’s mind! It was a tiny act but the unnecessary kindness of it was so wonderful.

That was more than we expected but it certainly wasn’t the end. When Andrew Presnell came through, his caddy handed Elijah a signed trading card. And then when Ricky Wysocki came through, his caddy rummaged around in his bag for quite a while and came out with a Ricky t-shirt in Elijah’s size! Elijah immediately put it on and Ricky gave him a big smile as he walked by. Just being close to all the people he watches on TV was a hit but these extra interactions sent him over the moon. In this image below, we are back against the trees just to the left of the guy’s disc in his hand in front in front of the person in the red shirt.

We watched everyone come through and then we headed further out on the course to watch a few more players come through before finally settling on hole 18 to watch everyone come through again. It was about 10 minutes between groups but Elijah never once talked about being bored or tired even though it was about 8 hours on the course in total.

If Elijah had to pick one player as his favorite, it would probably be Calvin Heimburg. Calvin was in the second to last group. We got to watch him make a stellar eagle on the last hole. You can see us in this photo below to the left of the basket. We are all standing and Elijah has an aqua colored shirt on. Or watch this video for a longer clip of the video that this screenshot was taken from. You can see Elijah jump up and cheer.

If you kept watching that video clip to see Calvin’s putt, you might have noticed that Tyla and Elijah were gone. (I was standing there recording a phone video like a dork.) Earlier in the day, Elijah had picked out a Calvin Heimburg disc as his souvenier. After the round, he waited in line to get it signed by Calvin and even got a picture with him too!

As I mentioned, it was a long day and we were wiped out by the time we got home. The morning drive wasn’t too bad but it would have been really nice to have a hotel that evening. I was really thankful for the autosteer feature on the Tesla as it took a lot of pressure off both of the drives.

If you can’t tell by now, we were very impressed with the event. Yes, disc golf is still a niche sport, but they put on an excellent show. You can tell they’re putting a ton of effort into really polishing it as much as possible. But since it’s still picking up steam, it’s very easy to attend an event like this and tickets were only $21 (plus Elijah got in free.) The only time when a crowd was minorly annoying was on the final hole of the day with the final group, but realistically it was probably only 200-300 people. I was still able to see just fine, and there was zero traffic leaving the event.

Most of these same players will be playing next week a little farther south in Oregon. We’re excited to do this again sometime, but that’s probably a little too soon. We’ll have our eyes on the schedule next year though! Most events are east of the Mississippi but it’s nice to see a couple within driving distance for us.

A huge thank you goes from our family to everyone who made our day special, but especially Corey! She made Elijah feel like a VIP!

PacNW Christian Men’s Retreat 2024

Last year was my first time attending a retreat held by our area churches. I had a great time and instantly signed up for this year’s retreat as soon as they created the sign up form. Unfortunately, this year’s experience was dramatically different!

I decided to make the most of my trip to the Olympic Peninsula so I left earlier in the day so I could play a round of golf at Rainshadow Disc Golf Park. It’s one of the most highly rated courses in Washington and it didn’t disappoint. The holes are very well thought out and there is a lot of elevation change. Many holes have extreme penalties for throwing off the fairway because the fairway ends up being on the ridge of the hill with a steep drop-off on each side. Since I didn’t know the course (and I’m not that good), I mostly just played short throws that would stay in view, and I didn’t concern myself too much with my score. I shot a painful eight over par on the front nine and only one over on the back nine.

After finishing the round, I still had plenty of time, so I checked out the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge. I didn’t feel like paying the entry fee just for 30 minutes of walking around, so I checked out the surrounding county park instead. I’d love to go back with more time to explore though.

Dinner isn’t provided on the first night of the retreat, and I stopped for a quick bite to eat at Jack in the Box. It was so gross when I went in that I should have just turned around, but I felt obligated to buy something since I had already used their restroom. And since it was just me without the family in tow, I didn’t think too much about it. But then the fries tasted really weird. That’s odd. They were so weird that I ended up not eating them all. Strange. But whatever.

When I showed up at the Men’s Retreat, I felt off. I figured it was probably just getting old and not being used to eating a lot of fast food. But as I met up with some of the other guys from our church and walked around, it got worse. By the time the event started, I knew something was wrong.

I’ll save you the biological details but suffice it to say that it became obvious that I had food poisoning. I skipped the evening session, went straight to bed, and laid awake all night with trips to the bathroom (trying very hard not to make any mess in my room!) At 3am, I called it quits, made a beeline for the ferry in my little window of time when I felt ok after a vomit, and got back home. I proceeded to feel worse and worse throughout the day, but I was very thankful to be home and have Tyla to help me out! By Sunday and Monday, I was able to keep some fluids down and slowly build my strength back.

After looking forward to the Men’s Retreat for a full year, it was a complete bust. But hey, there’s always next year right?

Sports Streaming Costs

I haven’t regretted cutting cable in 2018. We’ve saved well over $3000 by not having that bill. I thought I’d miss it for sports, but honestly, I found that I was happy not watching as many random sports. Rather, I found specific sports I wanted to watch and paid for their streaming services. It’s interesting how much the price of those services vary though! I did some research to try to figure out how much it would cost to stream various sports leagues. I expect this will be out of date even before I finish researching it.

SportFull Season CostComment
Formula 1$85If you watch the races delayed by a day or two it’s only $30.
NFL$350 (out of market games)
$400 (in market games)		Out of market through NFL RedZone and in-market through Fubo for 5 months.

NFL+ is an interesting option too for only $40/year. You get access to replays of every game shortly after it ends plus live local games, but it’s only on a mobile app.
MLB$130 (out of market games)
$480 (in market games)		Out of market through MLB+ and in-market through Fubo for 6 months.
NBA$150 (out of market games)
$480 (in market games)		Out of market through NBA Leage Pass and in-market through Fubo for 6 months.
NHL$70 (out of market games)
$560 (in market games)		Out of market games through ESPN+ and in-market through Fubo for 7 months.
MLS$199All games through MLS Season Pass add on to Apple TV Plus. This price includes 10 months of Apple TV Plus.
Golf$960All events through the Golf Channel on Fubo for 12 months
NASCAR$800All events through Fubo for 10 months
Disc Golf$130Alternatively, you can watch many of the events for free with commentary on Jomez Pro’s YouTube channel.
MotoGP$135All events through MotoGP VideoPass

Existing laws and contracts make it difficult to stream the major US sports because in almost all cases, in-market games are not available on the league’s streaming service. That requires you to buy into something like FuboTV which is combines all the braodcast and cable sports channels. Alternatively you might be able to use an antenna to catch your local games as long as they are on a broadcast channel. Leagues that completely control their TV writes are in a much better position (F1, MotoGP, MLS, etc.)

I currently pay for the F1 TV package and then I watch disc golf tournaments for free on YouTube. Every once in a while I’ll toss in a Seahawks game recorded from our antenna or a Purdue basketball game streamed on our free (through Comcast with ads) Peacock subscription.

A big key in all this is deciding whether you want all the games in the whole league, all of the games for your favorite local team, or just some random sports to have on in the background while you take a nap. The prices for those three can vary wildly.

2023 Year In Review

Didn’t I just write one of these? Do I really have a years worth of events to summarize? Let’s see what that looks like…

I felt like I had a lot fewer blog posts this year , and while it was down about 20% from the previous years, it wasn’t that far off the numbers I’ve done since coming off my “post every week day” routine. I think the difference I’m feeling is that a lot of my posts this year were on a single topic (Tesla.) I have no plans to change anything about my posting schedule here. I’ll continue to post when I have something that I think is worth sharing/documenting and I’m not going to worry much about gaps between posts.

The first thing that comes to mind for 2023 is all the driving we did. Our big family vacation was a ~2000 miles road trip to and from Moab. That trip exceeded my expectations. The scenery felt like the complete opposite of what we get around here, the weather was great, the hike planning worked out perfectly, and the excursions were a blast. So many things could have gone wrong and changed our plans but the whole trip “just worked.” I came back itching to get on the road and do something like that again… which was good because we got the chance again quickly when Tyla’s grandma passed away. We made another ~2000 mile round trip drive to Glasgow, MT. God kept us safe again over all those remote roads and we enjoyed our quick weekend with Tyla’s extended family.

Those two big trips weren’t the extent of our travel though. We also spent a week visiting my family in Indiana, drove to Canada, and went to an airshow at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. We had two camping trips, Lincoln Rock and Grayland Beach, but neither one of them involved our tent. We stayed in a cabin and a yurt which were both an enjoyable way to camp. Next year we’ll be getting the tent out again though. We also did a couple family hikes to Cedar Butte and Sheep Lake.

Usually all of our vacations are taken as a family, but this year I took one by myself to attend the PacNW Christian Men’s Retreat across the sound at Fort Flagler State Park. Men from all our affiliated church’s in the area get together to study, socialize, and relax. The speaker this year was Professor/Doctor/Pastor Mark Paustian and he was a joy to learn from. The whole experience was so good that I’m already signed up for next year’s event.

My list of projects is quite a bit shorter this year, but some of that is because I worked on some bigger/longer projects. There was the custom LED panel, the completion of an 18-month aerial timelapse, a segmented cherry bowl made on the CNC, a walnut wall clock, Halloween boxes, bandsaw deer, and a family sign.

Other than woodworking, my hobby time was mostly consumed with more disc golf, a surprising amount of 3d printing, and a LOT of piano playing. I have been playing more often for church services, and it takes me a long time to practice. I do feel like playing for services has gotten easier as I’ve gotten back into the groove of doing it regularly.

Church was very busy this year too. We now have a fully documented mission statement along with core priorities and goals. It has been great to see people rallying around our defined strategy and contributing to our shared efforts of spreading the good news of Jesus to our community. God has blessed us with a huge number of visitors walking through the door. I’m excited for even more improvements in the coming year as we work on a new constituion and new bylaws. Those new documents will streamline our organizational structure and help get even more people involved.

So that wraps up the “clip show” of my year. I’m very thankful for all the blessings we’ve been given and the relative easiness of this past year. Let’s see what 2024 will bring!

Previous Year In Review Posts: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

Indiana Vacation

This summer we made another trip back to my parents’ house in Indiana. We spent a lot of time in the pool, playing disc golf, and eating delicious food. We also visited Indiana Dunes National Park and saw my grandpa. I put together a quick video recap of the trip and while it’s not going to win any awards, it’s a fun way to look back on the trip.