Back in Orange Country!

Ride, ride, ride, ride, Ride Em' Cowboys right down the field

Fight, fight, fight, fight, Fight Em' Cowboys and never yield

Ride, ride, ride, ride, Ride Em' Cowboys to victory

Cross K-State's goal, and we'll sing Oklahoma State!

That's right everybody, I'm back in the home of red dirt music, the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, the original Sonic, Eskimo Joe's, and most importantly, the Block Built on Rowdy, the Brightest Brand in the Land, home of America's Brightest Orange, THE OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY!

Yeah I love my school, got a problem with that? Wanna fight about it? Ok cool whatever.

Soooooo I've been back for a while now but I'm just now getting around to writing this. What? Its been a busy 6 weeks.  Lay off.  

So I've got some catching up to do now.  So let's layout a plan here: Philmont, coming home, school, sports, and miscellaneous. Hold me to that now, mkay? Good.

PHILMONT

So this summer was absolutely fantastic.  As you know from my last blog post, I spent my summer working in New Mexico at Philmont Scout Ranch, dressing and living as a homesteader in the year 1907.  Living that way is a blast and so refreshing as a result of shedding the modern amenities that cloud our view of the world and of life.  The people I lived and worked with this summer have become some of my best friends and I would go to the ends of the Earth for them. It was so hard to say goodbye to the land I love and the people I love.  But alas, I had to come home.

HOME

After a short 3 hour drive, I made it to the Panhandle: the start of my drive through the state I love, the state I was born and raised in, the great state of OklaHOMEa.  Though the drive may be a little boring at times but there's nothing more beautiful than the red-orange sun beginning to slide down below the horizon.  Then the clouds rolled in and kissed me goodbye with one last great rainstorm in the final hour of my drive back in.  And bam, I get to see the Tower Wentz, proud and tall.  What a welcome.

SCHOOL

School.  It started.  Its boring. What else to say?

SPORTS

Football season has started, got our Big 12 home opener this weekend.  Playing K-State, camping out for the game with the Paddle People.  Oh yeah, joined the Paddle People.  First row seats, every game, painted up with my best buddies.  Soccer is fun to go to, we heckle the opposing team's goalie.  WVU's goalie was awesome and a good sport about it.  Tech's goalie apparently just completely ignored it all and one of their fans threw a fit about it.  I can't wait for basketball to start.  It can't get here soon enough.

MISCELLANEOUS

So I'm just making my way along right now.  Going through physical therapy to fix up my knee pain has been getting worse.  The electro therapy treatment has gotten tougher and my IT band is now almost always sore.  It'll get better I hope, sooner rather than later.

Well this will wrap up my wrap up of the last several months.  Right now, I gotta get ready for RHA Senate tonight and then for the campout at the stadium.  Good day my friends.

Good night, good luck, and God bless Pistol Pete and OSU.

Go Pokes.

Good to be HoME

I'm writing this post from the front porch of the Silver Sage Staff Activity Center (or SAC for short) at my home away from home, Philmont Scout Ranch.  Forget Disney World, this is the place to be.  The mountains, the views, the challenges, the friends, the Phil-families, just everything about PSR makes it the greatest place to be.  While I have been here for several days now, I haven't had time to get out my laptop and sit down and write so I have a little catching up to do.

Currently, I am at base camp while I get trained for my job (that's a loosely defined term) as a program counselor at a backcountry camp called Rich Cabins.  The idea of this camp is that the participants are stumbling upon the house/farm/ranch of the Rich family (Brothers Joseph, John, and David, Sister Frida, and Step sisters Francis and Rose, along with five hired hands that will be fixing up the place, including Rose's half brother and John's local gambling buddy) in 1907, and being gracious hosts, they welcome them in the rest and relax as long as they're willing to do a few chores in the meantime.  I will be playing John, the second youngest brother who was a former railroad worker who had moved into Joseph and Frida's house so they all can help each other.  After a little research, I did find out that John went on to take the family's herd of cattle to Kansas City to sell and took the payment and lost it all in a poker game and had to return home to sell the house and start again somewhere else.  Yeah, I get to be the guy that eventually ruins the family.  It'll still be fun.

Soon my camp will scatter into the backcountry to set up for when the first participants arrive in a week.  We're all ready to go but sadly we have to finish some more training (that I already received a year ago) before we can go.  In the meantime, I'm meeting new friends, including several rangers from Oklahoma, and reconnecting with old ones and just having a dandy time pickin' on the porch and just having fun.

My next post probably won't be until my next set of days off (I don't know when that'll be) when I get back to internet connectivity and my computer but I'll still keep y'all updated.

Until next time, good night, good luck, and God bless Ronald Reagan and the fine folks at CZ.

-CP III

Well, Well, Well...Here We Are Again

Roughly a year ago, I was wrapping up my senior year of high school.  I was terrified of what the future held in stores for me.  Everything around me was safe and comfortable, but now I've learned something that would have probably changed my entire life in high school.  I first heard it from my former roommate's twin brother.  He heard it from somewhere else but that's irrelevant.  He said, "Life begins where your comfort zone ends."  Sure, I had been in situations that were strange and challenged my comfort zone, but I had never plunged out of it head first, hoping everything would work out.  After graduating, I worked at Philmont where I had no safety net.  So what was I to do? Tread lightly and hope I didn't fall? Desperately call back to my family and friends at home for support? Nope.  There was only one way to do it.  And that was to forget about being timid and shy and jump into every situation with everything I got.  And it worked.

Now I'm at the end of my freshman year of college and about to go back out to Philmont.  I've barely scratched the surface of what my life will include but now I know that whatever I may face and whatever lays before me, I can rise to the occasion and face it head on just by being me and not letting doubts and fears slow me down.

As comfortable as I may be, I'm not living.

And now I'm going to forget my comfort zone and attack it head on.



Sorry for the irregularity of these posts, but its been a busy couple of weeks.  I might go into detail a bit more later but don't be waiting for it.  As far as posts over the summer go, they'll be very irregular, but I'll keep y'all updated on what's going on in my HoME in New Mexico.

Until next time, good night, good luck, and God bless Ronald Reagan and the fine folks at CZ.

-CP III

It's a Trap!

So after I gave y'all a little background about me, and more stories like that are sure to come, but this blog is for me to express myself a little, and that' what this one is about.

So let me tell you about one of my most familiar foes.

THE FRIEND ZONE

Yeah that's right, the freaking friend zone.  The pit of eternal disappointment and hopelessness.  I've been there many-a-times and am still there with several girls.  If you don't know, the friend zone is where you get put when you have a crush on someone but they don't feel the same so they just keep you at that "just friends" level when you want to be more than friends.  But before I go into my stories, I'm gunna tell you how to know when you've been friend zoned (if for some reason you've been either A: you've never been there or B: you're worried you might be).  So basically there are 4 ways to know if you've been zoned.

1. She/He conveniently finds ways to mention people she/he likes
2. She/He tries to hook you up with her/his friend or relative so that she/he can see you happy
3. She/He doesn't try to look her/his very, absolute best around you
4. If she/he says, "You're like a brother (sister) to me," then you are on CODE RED MAXIMUM SECURITY FRIEND-ZONE LOCKDOWN...where there is no escape...even in your wildest fantasies.

So now that you know about the friend zone, its story time about my friend zone incidents.

For the most part, the majority of the females I get close to friend zone me.  And its not always me in those situation.  Sometimes they're in a relationship when I start talking to them or whatever.  The first incident of being friend zoned that I remember was back in freshman year of high school.  This was back in the day when I was reeeaaallllllyyy shy.  I started to like her but so did another one of my friends and I backed off.  But when they got together and broke up within the span of a week, I was left out in the cold because she friend zoned me.  And before long, I had achieved brother status and was on CODE RED MAXIMUM SECURITY FRIEND-ZONE LOCKDOWN (Yes, it will always be in all caps and red).  And I never escaped.

I can think of this situation happening at least 5 different times in high school and about 8 times since I got to college, but luckily the college friend zone status is not CODE RED MAXIMUM SECURITY FRIEND-ZONE LOCKDOWN.  For the most part, they put me in the friend zone because of very recent relationships, so I haven't given up on them quite yet but the situation is bleak.

Now I'm sure you realized by now that there was an instance that did lead me to write this post, and if you haven't figured that out by now, well you got bigger problems.  So now its story-time about my most recent trip to the friend zone.  And by trip, I mean stay.  So I met this girl and we hit it off pretty quickly.  I met her for coffee, took her to a movie, and the next day she came over to my place and we watched our favorite types of TV shows (crime dramas).  Well a week went by and we hadn't seen each other so I texted her asking if she wanted to come over some night and just watch Netflix.  She then went into a deal about how she's not ready for a relationship and yaddah yaddah yaddah and long story short, she wants to be just friends.

Fuck that shit, don't be leading me on for two weeks to friend zone me.


Until next time, good night, good luck, and God bless Ronald Reagan and the fine folks at CZ.

-CP III

The Mountains are Calling...and I Must Go!

Yeah I know this has taken forever to publish.  I've got stuff to do! So pardon me for putting school and social life in front of my blog for a bit.

AND ON WE GO

I worship the spirit who doesn't just look down
He looks up and through and all around
Find him in the rocks and trees
Cause there's no reason to pray
When you wake up every day to the sunrise
Over Cito Peak

These lyrics come from the Phil-anthem, "I Don't Mind" by the Tobasco Donkeys. This song is all about leaving civilization to find yourself in the great outdoors. That is certainly where I found myself.

I have been taught from a very young age to respect the outdoors, to leave the land as you found it, if not better, and to appreciate everything out there.  Its the magic of stepping out of your tent and inhale a whiff of the fresh, crisp air only to look up and see the suns rays peeking over the horizon and through the trees.  When you get to see the splendor of this great planet we call home from 12,441 feet above sea level, you can't help but be humbled by it.

I've  been from the mountains of the Rockies of Northern New Mexico down to the shoreline of Big Munson Island in the Florida Keys and stayed in many of the states in between.  And the greatest part of being outdoors is that its just completely away from every single problem you can face in the real world.  You might just be a mile from the nearest interstate or maybe even a 2 hour hike to get to your car to drive to only drive another 30 minutes on a dirt road before going another 15 on a highway to get into a town but you can still feel separated from society and modern worries.  Its a glorious feeling to not give a f*** about anything for a week at a time; just playing guitar, chillin in a camp chair, listening to the wind in the trees, hearing the wildlife all around, staring into a clear blue sky, and feeling the sun on your skin.

When you're worry free, you can do nothing but self-reflect and figure out who you are, where you want to go with your life, and what you want with your life.  That's where I discovered all that.  And because of that, I now look forward to getting to go back out to the mountains where my worries melt away and I'm at 8,000 feet with my work, my thoughts, and God.

So find some ground, lace up your boots, start walking
And you will find reason
Enough reason to believe
Well you can drop your worries at the parking lot
Or way down in the city where the sun burns hot
Although civilization is a nice place to visit
I wouldn't want to live there

Until next time, good night, good luck, and God bless Ronald Reagan and the fine folks at CZ.

-CP III

Let the Music Flow Through You

Hello everybody
How do you do?
We're here to sing
And play for you

So if you didn't get it yet, this post is about music, how I got into it, how it's affected me, and what it means to me. Music has played such a role in my life and it continues to be the driving force that keeps me moving forward.

Let's start at the beginning: for Christmas of 2007, my siblings and I got Guitar Hero 3 and that was my first taste of playing music. Prior to that, the only listening I did was what my mom put on (Garth Brooks and Josh Groban) and what my brother put on (Relient K, Blink 182, Bullet for my Valentine). After playing that game, I started opening my eyes and ears to all sorts of music. Culminating when I babysat for family friends and the oldest daughter played the electric guitar. That was the very first instrument I had ever touched (excluding recorders from middle school, but hey, who liked those?). My brother had an acoustic guitar but he didn't really ever touch it. I told my mom I wanted to get an electric guitar but she said I had to learn on my brothers guitar before I could buy one. After learning 2 riffs (Ironman and Smoke on the Water) and the G chord from my friend, Josh, I decided I wanted to play electric bass. I figured bass must be easier because it had less strings and my favorite sound in the world was Journey's Ross Valory's bass line during the chorus of "Don't Stop Believing." After bugging my parents about buying my own bass for a couple months, they gave me a Squier by Fender Jazz Bass for Christmas of 2008. I was thrilled. I learned all my favorite songs by tablature and developed basic skills on my own on that bass. Though I didn't bring my J-bass to college with me, it is still very much my baby. I once dropped her (all my guitars are shes by the way) on stage at a jazz choir/band concert. I almost walked off stage and cried. Luckily the only thing that happened to her was a lovely scuff on the bottom and several "drop the bass" jokes.

After that Christmas, we went down to my grandparents house and I took my J-bass with me and my uncle gave me his 115w Fender Solid State Twin Reverb amp from the 70s. Though it was a guitar amp, I used it for my bass all the time. I still play around with it whenever I go home (it's too big for my dorm room). Along the way, I absorbed my brothers old Española acoustic guitar (ironically made in china) and a Yamaha FG-230 12-string acoustic that was my dad's that I found in the attic. Later that year, my friend Luke was moving away and gave me his old Squier Stratocaster electric guitar that he had only played once and forget about.

I had only been playing for a year before I started wanting to experiment with new sounds from new guitars. So after doing a whole lot of research, I decided to save up and buy a ESP LTD B-55 5-string electric bass. I chose it because it had both J style and P style pickups and active tone boost (basically, a battery in the guitar gives the sound a bigger punch, if that makes sense). The next Christmas I bought an Epiphone Thunderbird because it had humbucker pickups that so many of my favorite artists used. To tally: I had 3 electric basses, 2 acoustic guitars (one 6-string and one 12-string), and 1 electric guitar. And the only formal training I got was an intro to guitar class at school that only really taught me the G scale, the 28 basic chords, and a handful of songs.

A year later, I was a junior in high school and my senior friends were getting ready to graduate. Wanting to remember each and every one of them and how they affected my life, I decided I wanted them to sign my 6-string acoustic so that they would inspire any music I'd write on that guitar. After 7 months of organizing to meet up with people and driving to meet them, I finally got all 52 of them to sign it. Still today, this is the only guitar I can successfully write music on.

During the spring of my senior year, I found out I'd be working at Philmont Scout Ranch over the summer (see previous post for more info on PSR) and I'd be performing a campfire show every night. I had to decide on which instruments I'd take and that ultimately resulted in me choosing the Yamaha because it was the most country/folk/bluegrass guitar I had. But before I left, my parents got me an Ibanez Artwood acoustic-electric guitar for my birthday. Well, I clearly had no other option than to take both guitar with me. And boy am I glad I did. At Philmont, I grew so much as a musician in terms of playing more smoothly, learning on the fly, and improvisational skills.

Finally I did get one last guitar. It was before this past Christmas and it was a Michael Kelly Dragonfly 5-string acoustic-electric bass. It was and still is the most beautiful instrument I've ever seen. Quilted maple finish, rose vine inlays, expert craftsmanship. Just gorgeous. In case you didn't keep up, here's all the guitars I own:

Squier Jazz Bass
ESP LTD B-55
Epiphone Thunderbird
Michael Kelley Dragonfly
Española acoustic
Yamaha FG-230
Ibanez Artwood
Squier Stratocaster

Yeah I know, that's a lot.

However, these are not all the instruments I play. In my senior year, I joined my school's drumline and learned how to play a variety of percussion instruments. I won't call myself a drummer, but I'm competent with just about any percussion instrument.

Finally, I can sing as well. But this skill is still fairly new. I had always sung under my breath or in the shower but never anywhere else. Senior year, I decided I'd try as many things as I could as a final hoorah and I considered auditioning for the musical. Audition week rolled up and I still wasn't sure. Auditions were Wednesday and Friday, and Wednesday night I was still unsure of auditioning. That night I went to my youth group and played guitar in the band as usual. We got to a song, Needtobreathe's "Washed by the Water" (a song that was the theme song to a retreat that changed my life) and the song leader said he didn't know this song that well. The girl singing next to me, Coco, chirps up and says, "Oh Colin knows this one!" And before I could protest, they had already started playing. Too late. I'm in front of the bus. So I mustered up all the guts I had and gave it my all. Now the start was a lil shaky but I impressed myself with the rest of it. Then and there, I decided to audition, I then spent the next two days memorizing my audition piece and monologue. My audition piece was "Be a Man" from Mulan. And it was awesome. My audition landed me the role of President Roosevelt in our production of "Annie." I got comfortable with my voice there and I gained control over my voice at Philmont in the summer. I then went on to join the men's choir in college as well.

Even after learning all that, I still want to learn mandolin, harmonica, piano, banjo, and violin in that order.

Music has always been the way I deal with my emotions. When I was sad, I'd either listen to something to cheer me or something sad to make me feel less alone. When I was mad, I'd listen to something to get me to blow off steam and relax. When I was happy, I'd listen to something that made me want to dance around my room. Music carried me through all the best and worst times in my life. The ultimate punishment for me was taking away my iPod. Music was what kept my uneasy mind at bay and away from bad thoughts. Life without music was absolute torture.

To me, music helps me do everything. It's my sweet escape, inward reflection, statement of identity, connection to God, and my glorious release. I don't know where'd I'd be today without the inspiration of music.


Until next time, good night, good luck, and God bless Ronald Reagan and the fine folks at CZ.

-CP III

The Story of the Nicknames

Hello again.

As I mentioned before, I do go by many different nicknames to many different people, so I'll just tackle them one at a time.

CP (or CP III)
Simplified, CP is my initials but it was never used until I was playing ultimate frisbee one day after school.  While picking teams, two guys were collaborating on their next pick.  Their decision came as followed:

Vinny: "Alright, we'll take Colin."
Me: "WOO!"
Deuce: "Ay CP!"

He said it and it kinda stuck.  So the ultimate players started me calling that all the time and other people started to pick up on it.  Now CP III came from one guy, Aaron, that sat behind me in one of my classes.  This was early in 2012 and Robert Griffin III had just won the Heisman and Perry Jones III was in the national spotlight in college basketball.  So with RG3 and PJ3, Aaron slapped a 3 to the end of my nickname.  I liked it and still do.

Cone
The only person who calls me this is my buddy Audi (aw-dee, not ow-dee) but its one I don't mind.  He got to "Cone" because he knew it irritated me when people would write my name with two L's instead of when so he'd write it with three and then one day he just removed them all and tried to say my name and he came up with Cone and he just hasn't stopped calling me that.

Cal
This one's a good story.  Right after I graduated from high school I began working at Philmont Scout Ranch in the Rocky Mountains of northern New Mexico.  Philmont is the premier backpacking experience in the world and has 25-30,000 participants in any given summer.  Participants spend 10 days hiking through the backcountry, camping at both staffed and unstaffed camps.  Well I spent my summer working at one of those staffed camps.  Our camp was called "Clarks Fork."  Now, the theme to the camp is that its a group of ranch hands living and working on the ranch in the year 1950.  With it being a different time and place, we all had to create our own characters and backstories.  The character I created was "Calvin T. Simms," or Cal for short. I would answer to this name all the time for the summer and I'm fairly certain I'll still answer to it.

Doc
I got this one back in sophomore year of high school when I was basically playing match maker with my friends and their crushes and helping them get together.  For the most part, their relationships worked out really well and I got called Doctor Love by someone and Doctor Feelgood by another.  So Doc stuck around for a while.

Well, those are all the nicknames I still go by, so good night, good luck, and God bless Ronald Reagan and the fine folks at CZ.

-CP III

So, It Has Come To This

Oh Hi!

Didn't see ya there.

Well what can be said? I decided to start this blog after I found out a couple of my friends have their own so I figured, "Eh, why not?"

Well, I wanna get into writing as a form of expression and what better way than through a blog.

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Colin, but feel free to call me CP, Cone, Cal, or Doc.  Those nicknames all have their own stories and I'll get to those eventually.  To add a little more about myself: I'm a climber, outdoorsman, student, gamer, petrol-head, and musician.  If you wanna learn more, just stick around for a couple posts, you'll get a better idea about who I am then. 

To get a basic idea of what this blog will be about, it'll mostly be my quandries, random thoughts, rants, crazy ideas, and just various stories from my life.  Sometimes it'll be serious and sometimes funny, just depends on how I'm feeling that day.

Just to let you know, the title of this comes from a song called "Colfax County Jail" by The Tobasco Donkeys.  Why is that the title you ask? Well, cuz I like that song, and that's my favorite line in it.  And because this blog will be my way to settle the score with my shyness.  You'll see.

Hopefully you stick around awhile, there's more to come, I promise.

In the meantime, good night, good luck, and God bless Ronald Reagan and the fine folks at CZ.

-CP III