A San Francisco reunion with Rev Peyton and his Big Damn Band
It’s kind of funny how as life goes on and as you get exposed to more and more exciting things your tolerance for this excitement seems to go up just the same way that your tolerance for cheep beer goes up in college. If you have been following this blog for it’s seemingly short-lived life, Steph and I have done some things that have just blown us both away. Things that afterwards we say to ourselves, “Damn, this might be hard to top…”. Well, somehow, someway we always seem to top whatever it was and end up with some amazing footage/pics/stories to prove it.
But, getting back to what I was first saying, even though we keep on trumping one amazing experience after another, the bar of awesomeness that is required to get us both super excited about doing something keeps on rising even higher and higher. So, it has been our mission to keep on finding these things that seem to always give us those little butterflies that pop up in your stomach when you are about to do something that you are truly excited for.
Lucky for us, the butterflies are basically built into the adventure that we’re taking on tonight. I mean, we’re going to see the Rev in San Francisco, California and when I say the Rev, I mean The Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band. The same Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band that is from our home of Indianapolis, IN. The same Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band that makes people go insane(and sometimes naked) at their shows. The same Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band that has been traveling all over the freakin’ place in a van spreading some Big Damn Love. The same Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band that features Breezy, a crazed, washboard-shredding, facial-expression-rocking woman(who also happens to be the Rev’s lovely wife). Oh and yes, the same Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band that is led by the one and only Rev Peyton, whose guitar playing and screaming is second only to his brother, Jayme, who keeps the Rev on beat with a barrage of some ridiculously fast-paced drumming.
Did I mention how excited that Steph and I are for this show?
Anyways, here are the details on the show, if you happen to read this blog before the show tonight shoot me an email at ryan.hupfer@gmail.com and we’ll get crazy at the show together.
Where: 12 Galaxies in south San Francisco
When: Doors open at 8pm with Ha-Ha Tonka opening up at 9pm and the Rev following, probably around 10pm
How Much: Tickets are $10 online, but we’ll probably buy ours the old fashioned way - at the door when we get there.
One more thing - here is a video that I wanted to dig out of the archives for everyone to see. It’s when the Rev and crew were selling all of their stuff so that they could hit the road for good. Man, I can’t wait to see these guys.
Stephanie’s roomie gets hitched, are we next?!?
Now as far as I know, I haven’t popped the question yet to Stephanie, but according to the results of the bouquet and garter belt toss at her old college roomie’s wedding reception last weekend, it shouldn’t be long. Yep, Stephanie caught the bouquet AND I caught the garter belt. What are the odds of that, right? 
Of course I got the entire thing on video, along with some other things that caught my eye and if you’d like to check out how everything went down feel free to click here to check out it out on YouTube or watch it below now. More posts and pics coming in the next couple of posts - talk to you all soon!
Coming back home to visit is serious business
Stephanie and I have been home now for almost a week and I think that we’ve packed about as much as we possibly could have into this crazy Midwestern rendezvous. We have been to my 10-year reunion in Pendleton, we have seen all of our friends in Indianapolis, we have partied WAY too much(and WAY too late), Stephanie has hung out with her parents and grandparents, we have seen my nieces and nephew in Kentucky and as I write this we are in Michigan because Stephanie is a bridesmaid for her college roommate’s wedding. She’s actually at a lingerie party for the bride while I am siting here in our hotel room getting my Internet fix. It all works out, right?
Since I have been unable to sit front of my laptop for any extended period of time the past couple days, I have some PhotoCrank work to get done, but after that I promise to post all of the details of our Midwestern adventure. It’s well worth the wait to see some of this stuff, believe me.
But, until then, I’ll leave you all with this pic of Stephanie and I rocking it out on the dance floor last night at Arnie’s at Newport on the Levee. I’m not sure what we were doing, but feel free to Crank it by clicking on the purple button with the plus sign (+) in the bottom left of the photo.
Back Home Again in Indiana!
Yep, we took a little vacay to spend some time at home with our friends and family. My awesome roommate from college, Holly, is getting married this coming Saturday and Ryan’s 10 year High School reunion just happened to fall a week before, so we figured we had a pretty good excuse to come back to good ol’ Indy for a bit. I can’t tell you how weird it felt to fly into the Indianapolis airport and think to myself, “I’m on vacation… in Indiana” haha. What a vacation it has been though; it’s only Tuesday and we’ve had enough fun to last us for the whole week already!
Shortly after arriving we headed up to P-Town for Ryan’s high school reunion. Wow.. really is all I can say. I didn’t know that Donnie’s( a little photo for your pleasure) could hold that many crazy Pendleton Arabians at one time! You know it’s a good reunion when you didn’t even go to the high school that the reunion was celebrating and you still had the time of your life. That’s all I have to say about that
Last night we attended our first Mojo Monday Night at the Spot since we left for CA two months ago. It was an awesome night, and we stayed out on the deck for most of it just soaking up the fabulous Indiana summer night. It’s comforting to come home and be with your old friends again. It really makes you step back and reminisce a little about the fun times of the past, and know that you always have an incredible support group of friends at home. It’s funny how I don’t really feel homesick at all when we’re actually in California, but coming home kind of brings some of those feelings to the surface a little when you re-live your previous way of life for a bit. It’s true that you have to move away to truly come to an appreciation of your home where you grew up. I know that I’ve viewed Indiana a little differently this time around. It’s our home and it will always be here, we’ll always love it, but there’s so much left to experience and explore.
Now it’s time to go and live up the rest of our week here! More to come on our crazy Hoosier adventures
The evidence of the Bay to Breakers madness
As Stephanie and I have continued our California journey together there have been many things happen along the way that I would call ‘crazy’ or ‘wild’ or even going as far as ‘pretty nuts’. However, there hasn’t been anything that has even come close to the madness that was the Bay to Breakers race in San Francisco that we joined in on a couple of weekends ago.
We saw crazy people, we saw people doing crazy things and of course, we saw naked people. The race was 12Ks of pure insanity and for some unknown reason I waited until now to create and post the masterpiece of a video that you can watch below or over here on YouTube.
Let me know what you think about the crazy day that we had in San Francisco and be sure to enter in your email in the subscription box that’s located at the top of the column to the right. It’s the best way to keep up with what we’re doing out here in California - you know you want to keep up with us!
Stephanie wears men’s underwear in public
Ever since this past Saturday when Stephanie and I went to Bay to Breakers in San Francisco I have been wondering how to possibly blog about it in a way that lets all of you know how amazing the event really was. Basically, it’s a 12K ‘race’ that goes through the middle of one of the craziest cities in the entire world. The race is for real and was actually won by a really, really fast Kenyan who could have beat us all in his sleep.
But, the race is just a small part of the crowd who comes out to experience Bay to Breakers - most come out to dress up, push floats, drink lots of alcohol and stumble the 12K (if they actually finish) through the streets of San Francisco. There are over 150,000 people who participate and I would have to guess that over 80% were of the drunk, stumbling kind. Stephanie and I spent all day in the madness and after taking in all of the sights, sounds and shots we both agree that it was most likely the most amazing day of both our lives.
If you need proof of the awesomeness, check out the Facebook pics over here. Consider yourself warned and please prepare yourself for the naked man that me and Stephanie both snapped a picture with. Yeah, I said naked.
Here are a couple pics that I wanted to Crank for all of you to enjoy below and go ahead and make your plans to come out for next year’s installment - we’ll definitely be there and you should, too.
Stephanie in men’s tidy whities and me in her running shorts. What a couple, eh?
Stephanie put the split in banana split. Awesome.
Abdo rocked out a nightie like no one’s business.
Bikes rule the roads in Palo Alto
If you all think hard enough, I’m sure that all of you can remember the days when your only mode of efficient transportation to any place outside of your neighborhood was to hop on your bike and pedal your ass off. I mean, pedal your ass off ALL day long and not even care about it. We were young, we wanted freedom and it’s way better than having your mom drop you off.
I can honestly say that I haven’t consistently ridden a bike since back in the day when I was fifteen years old and had acne that even Proactiv would be scared of. Back in the day when I would dream about being behind the wheel of a new ride as I rode my bike to Drivers Ed each morning at 6am. Man, those were good times, but the days of peddling, peddling and peddling some more have been long gone up until I moved out here to Palo Alto. Now the bike is back and it’s back in a BIG way. Old people ride bikes, young people ride bikes, girls ride bikes, guys ride bikes and this one guy even rides one of these bikes and I have no idea why.
After becoming part of the biking community I came up with a few reasons of why so many people around here choose the bike as their main mode of transportation around town:
- It’s safe and very bike-friendly: There is a bike lane on EVERY road out here besides interstates. There’s even a Bike Boulevard that runs through the middle of the city and cars are only allowed to travel on a very small portion of it.
- Palo Alto is a VERY environmentally friendly place: It’s amazing how much people care about the environment out here on the West Coast. The only reason why I can think of why they’re so far ahead in the ‘going green’ game is that out here in California you have the most beautiful landscapes that you could ever imagine, which everyone loves and appreciates. When you have mountains, oceans, bays, amazing forests and everything else I think that you tend to want to protect it.
- Healthy and fit is the way to go: I rarely ever see anyone who is overweight out here in Palo Alto and I still have yet to eat any fast food at all. The amount of health-conscience people out here is amazing, which explains why people don’t mind taking the bike to work, etc. My landlord rides his bike 30 minutes away to work every single day and doesn’t think twice about doing it. Amazing.
Anyways, as you can plainly see, the bike definitely rules the road here in Palo Alto and even I ride the Brown Beast (my loaned bike) about two miles to work each morning, which I have totally grown to enjoy over the past few weeks or so. It gets you moving, it’s always amazing outside and burning a few calories in the a.m. never hurts, right?
I will try my best to give you updates on all of our biking adventures and I’ll keep trying to add a few photos like the ones below as well. Enjoy!
UPDATE: I was just reading the Palo Alto website and it appears that we are only one of four cities who have been designated with a ‘Gold Level’ designation. Sweet!
In May 2003, Palo Alto was designated a Bicycle Friendly Community by the League of American Bicyclists. This three-year designation ranks Palo Alto with only three other “Gold Level” communities (Portland OR, Corvallis, OR and Boulder, CO). The award is only presented to communities with remarkable commitments to bicycling. The League cited Palo Alto’s strong commitment to education efforts and model policies in their commendation.
Stephanie cruisin’ on a beautiful day
The beautiful Brown Beast
Me and Stephanie trying to ride the Brown Beast at the same time….very, very tricky
This way seemed to work better…but, still very tricky and very, very dangerous
Abdo has his bike up in a tree, but not real sure why
Heading to the mountains on the coast
What do you do on a Saturday afternoon in Palo Alto, CA when you have some time to hang out? Well, you drive over the mountains and go hang at the beach, silly. Duh. Check out our video from when we went and checked out San Gregorio Beach that’s located just over the Santa Cruz Mountains. Awesomeness.
Kevin Rose from Digg tried to steal my girlfriend.
Stephanie just posted about the Diggnation party that we headed out to last night at a night club in San Francisco. It was Stephanie’s first time venturing up to ‘the city’ and it was definitely an eye-opener for me as far as the level of diversity that a city such as San Francisco has - especially when compared to our last experiences with Indianapolis. Stephanie wrote an awesome post about how the night went, so I’m just going to post a few things that you all should be aware of and that I noticed throughout the night:
- Kevin Rose got me in a headlock and tried to steal my girlfriend. Ok, well he did get me in a headlock (see pics below)
- When we walked into the club, people were literally cheering while Kevin and Alex played Halo 3 on the big screens
- Mighty, the night club that hosted the event, is supposedly one of best new clubs in the nation, plays mostly techno and just hosted a party that was full of computer geeks like myself. Amazing.
- The place was crazy packed with people. Some who flew/drove pretty damn far just for this event.
- Stephanie’s step mom, Shannon is a dancing machine.
- Kevin and Alex literally took pictures with fans for about an hour straight
Here are a couple of the pics of the night - be sure to click the CRANK IT button in the bottom right-hand corner of the pic to view/add some Cranks!
Yee-Haw!!!
For the past week, I have been enjoying some good ol’ Texas fun with my family down in Houston. It’s pretty exciting down here in the hot humidity of the Lonestar state I’ve experienced a great deal of what Texas has to offer including some great shopping, the Houston Museum of Natural Science, and the beach at Surfside!
My dad and Shannon have definitely kept me busy with all of the site-seeing and fun activities that they’ve planned. I love it down here, and there is so much to do and see, I feel like I haven’t even scraped the surface of seeing what Texas has to offer. It is a pretty big state I guess. Speaking of big… EVERYTHING is big down here; it’s just the texan style really. If it’s not big then it’s not worth anything, or so it seems.
I’ve had a fabulous time here in Texas with my dad and Shannon and it’s good to finally have a picture of what their life is like down here since I’ve been hearing about it since they moved back in January. I can’t wait to make more trips down here, but I think i might wait to let the hot HOT summer pass before I head back for another vacay.
I head back home to beautiful Palo Alto tomorrow, which I miss A LOT!! Texas is beautiful and lots of fun, but I’ve gotta say that Palo Alto still holds my heart. And I’m beginning to miss that one tall guy a little bit too 