10 Most Popular Posts of 2012

Note:  Photos and blog links will be added to this post tomorrow evening, January 1 [Update: photos added, with links in blue].  Tonight we're heading downtown to get our New Year’s Eve on!

All good things must come to an end.  Parting with 2012 is such sweet sorrow.  A bird in hand… well, enough of the clichés.  2012 was our best year so far!

The overseas journeys (some of which were not even mentioned here on Garth’s Blog), the growth and development of Baby Lena, the unforgettable time spent with God, family, ministry partners, and amazing friends… 2012 has been a banner year.  Thus, I’m taking a different approach to choosing the year’s highlights.

It has been humbling to see the readership (aka, page hits) of “Garth’s Blog” grow exponentially this past year.  In honor of both our loyal and newly discovered BlogSpot audience, it seemed best to let you, the readers, pick the highlights of 2012.  In order of page rankings, here are the most popular “Garth’s Blog” posts of 2012 (links are in blue): 

Runner-up:  Twitterfied

A reluctant blogger’s leap aboard the Twitter bandwagon

10.  The Face of Fear

 A silly throwaway teaser for my upcoming skydiving post, which has yet to see the light of day.  Early 2013, anyone?

9.  (TIE) Tokyo Drifting, Part 1

This post from Japan fared slightly better than my sequels:  Tokyo Drifting 2: Senso-Ji Temple, Tokyo Drifting 3: Fleeing Sumida, and an educational encounter with a Japanese toilet.

This was just one of my many brief overseas trips to sample the Japanese (and many other countries') nightlife in 2012.  In early 2013, I'll try to blog about some of my other previously unmentioned 2012 international trips.

9.  (TIE) Thankful for Lena

 A Thanksgiving-themed update on Baby Lena, brimming with photos

8.  Tomato Battle: Portland

Portland’s biggest, rowdiest, messiest food fight

7.  Happy Halloween from Delta Airlines

Absurd, nonpartisan nonsense from failed VP nominee Paul Ryan and the A-Team

6.  Coldplay Put a Smile Upon My Face

  A taste of Para...Para...Paradise from Coldplay’s final Portland show before announcing their three year hiatus

5.  Belgium- Spring Break in 

the Low Countries, Day 3

  The most popular of my Benelux countries travel series with my dad, which also included stops in Amsterdam, Luxembourg, and EuroRail purgatory

4.  Backpacking Elk Meadows

An example of the many types of outdoor adventures that we provide for our students

**********

Before we reveal the top 3 “Garth’s Blog” posts of 2012, here are the two other most highly read E.P.I.C. student ministry updates from this past year:

International Youth Convention: Denver

 A rare appearance by guest blogger Kathy, who puts to shame my earlier post about this year’s IYC trip with high schoolers

E.P.I.C. Student Ministry Update- Feb 2012

 Serving the homeless, worshiping God, boating, camping, and shaving cream fights

**********

And now,

the Top 3 most popular posts of 2012:

3.  Intermission: Banks Lake Wakeboarding

 This was the Hamilton family's annual Banks Lake camping trip in eastern Washington, a.k.a. an excuse for a week of wakeboarding, waterskiing, kneeboarding, and white-knuckled tube riding.  Lots of great action photos in this post!

2.  Behind the Scenes in L.A., Pt. 2

 Decisively trumping March’s blog post about Lena’s first ever plane ride to Los Angeles, this 2^nd chapter of the making of our “Delta Wanderland” holiday video focused on the music video shoot itself.  Part 1, technically #8 on this 10 Most Popular countdown, shared the blood, sweat, and tears (okay, maybe just the sweat) that we dancers shed at the International Dance Academy on Hollywood Boulevard.

I milked the video shoot’s ridiculously lax policy (compared to the countless other film sets where I've been shot) on cell phone cameras for all it’s worth, and these posts are the result.  A brief, professionally made behind the scenes video was also added here last week, including some all-too-brief clips of our Soul Train dance-off.

1.  Lena’s First Christmas

 Was there ever any doubt?  Lena starred in the first “Garth’s Blog” post of 2012 and also tops your year-end Top 10 list!

Sadly, that cute little 15 ½ month old is currently ill for the first time in her life.  The promised Christmas 2012 update will be rolled into a Lena retrospective, and it’s coming in early 2013.

So there you have it.  Some of my personal favorites didn’t come close to making the Top 10, but that’s life.  Note that this list excludes those oft-viewed posts from years past which refuse to die:  Touring London, Kathy’s baby announcement, Banks Lake, randomly popular ministry updates, the Black Crowes, and boogie boarding.

Addio, 2012!  It’s been another riveting year!!

The Face of Fear

Friends, if you haven’t yet checked out my wife Kathy’s well written follow-up to my International Youth Convention post, here is the link.  Alternately, a link to my original IYC post from Denver is here, paling in comparison.  I hope you enjoyed Kathy’s stint as guest blogger as much as I enjoyed my break from blogging.

Our all-guys backpacking trip into the Mt. Hood Wilderness ended yesterday.  I was truly impressed by the views from Elk Meadows, and also by the full-bore hiking pace of our high schoolers: Brandon, Claude, and Michael.  I’ll post some camping photos here when it’s time for the next BlogSpot E.P.I.C. student ministry update.

Meanwhile, those skydiving and birthday weekend pics from my friends are still M.I.A.  As we all impatiently wait for my friends to cough up those skydiving photos (you know I love you guys!), let’s hit this from another angle.

I shared during my sermon last week (The link to the free MP3 is here:  Who’s the Boss?, though after a totally sleepless night it took me a while to get warmed up as I preach) about the most terrifying 15 minutes of my life so far-- the Skydive Oregon plane ride that flew me and the gang up higher than 12,000 feet for the Big Plunge.

Personal cameras were prohibited onboard, so there is no visual record of the moments leading up to the conquering of my fear of heights AND of falling.  Fortunately, Elitch Gardens theme park in Denver emailed me a photo that approximates the look of fear that must have been on my face as the airplane door cracked open:

The only difference is that that the Boomerang roller coaster provided Aloha High School senior Will and me a restraint bar to grab onto as the G-forces came a knockin’.

If there is a moral to this story, it’s probably that facing your fears is at times an essential segment along the road to becoming a man of courage.

But other times, that stretch of road can reduce men of courage to quivering, traumatized crybabies.

Speaking of babies, here is a bonus video clip of baby Lena from our Denver trip:

Swaddle the “Play” button above for an irresistible video of Lena’s contagious laughter as she yanks Daddy around by his youth pastor lanyard, on Day 3 of our trip to International Youth Convention in Denver.

Coming next on BlogSpot...

Our daughter Lena turns one year old on Monday!  Let’s celebrate with a cutesy retrospective of Lena’s first year… followed by a roundup of my favorite recent hiking trails with Lena!

Tomato Battle: Portland

IMG_8378_edited-1.JPG, a photo by gkhamilton on Flickr.

FOOD FIGHT!! Kathy, me, and Brett study the art of war at Tomato Battle- Portland

If only La Tomatina festival in Buñol, Spain wasn’t so tricky to reach flying standby. On July 21, those of us Portlanders choosing to remain in the U.S. this summer assembled for the next best thing-- Tomato Battle: Portland!

Fun loving Northwest tomato warriors (14 years old and up) showed up in droves for this massive food fight/concert/costume contest at MacTarnahans. It was tomato juice drenched chaos.


Many readers will be justifiably horrified about wasting food in a world where so many needlessly go hungry. Don’t worry, no “edible” tomatoes were used as ammo. With that issue put to bed, Kathy and I each came prepared for battle with a fighting spirit and a clear conscience.


In the abridged words of the organizers:
The Tomato Battle unifies as many as 5,000 fruit-chucking fanatics for an afternoon of dancing to music and flinging 300,000 pounds of roma tomatoes at one another. Mosh in a ketchup-covered fray with live entertainment and a costume contest. At 4:00 p.m., soldiers converge on piles of past-ripe tomatoes and set about pelting people with fruits like sentient apple trees avenging the initial-carving of amorous teenagers. Beats flow until past 7 p.m., when ruddy troops lay down their arms and rinse themselves clean of pulp and juice. An extra set of clothes is highly recommended.

All of the tomatoes used during the exhibition will have been previously marked for disposal, making the Tomato Battle an efficient and entertaining use of nonedible waste. Onward.

In other words, since all that red fruit was headed for the trash anyways, it would be a waste to NOT throw these tomatoes at people.


I passed up the earlier festivities of the day in favor of spending some time with baby Lena. By the time Kathy and I showed up at MacTarnahans, Tomato Battle was already underway. Here’s what we missed:

The first few hours of music


The costume contest


The opening salvos

[Both photos above are courtesy of Kyle Helstein’s Facebook uploads and his "Clever Brilliant Mad" BlogSpot page].

Kathy and I arrived as clean as freshly laundered tube socks. We then learned, in spectacular fashion, that charging into a Tomato Battle already in progress makes you the hottest targets in the yard. A random girl cheerfully leaped up and latched onto me with a lingering tomato pulpy arms & legs bear hug. Tomatoes pelted us from all directions. The festive mob heaved, shouted, laughed, tackled, and showed no mercy.

Passing the camera around led to some interesting photos, but most of them were blurry and ludicrously framed. Here are a few good shots, mostly taken as the battle was winding down:





Sharp readers will recognize that Tomato Battle action shot of me, cropped down from my “Food Fight!” post on Tuesday. I launched a double-fisted aerial tomato counter assault on a retreating attacker. Believe me, he flung first.


This leads us to the one fatality that was inflicted during Tomato Battle. Our Canon digital camera, taken along with me on dozens of overseas trips, met a tragic demise. The camera was on its last legs anyway, so I thought it fitting to honorably send it afloat in a tomatoey grave. R.I.P., trusty friend.

It’s anyone’s guess how Kathy managed to stay so clean while my friend Brett and I got saturated with tomato slush and ketchup rain. But I and my fallen camera-in-arms shared a similar fate as we left the battlefield that day. We were both…

…completely and utterly PWNED by tomatoes.



Coming next week on BlogSpot...
My wonderful wife Kathy makes a rare appearance here on www.garthhamilton.blogspot.com to follow up my previous International Youth Convention post with her favorite moments and photos from last month’s IYC in Denver, Colorado.


And after that, I’m praying that I’ll still be alive to blog about this upcoming weekend’s adventure:

Birthday Skydiving!!

Japanese Potty Training

Now that we have Tokyo Drifting 1, 2, 3, and some summery fresh updates from IYC Denver and wave riding in Banks Lake WA (links) behind us, I have a small clarification:  

In my first “Tokyo Drifting” blog post, I had mentioned the utter lack of English signage in my Tokyo neighborhood.  That wasn’t completely true.  The more touristy shops and restaurants in the area sprinkled their Kanji displays with a Yankee phrase or two, and English instructions were ubiquitous throughout the Hostel Kawase Tokyo and Capsule. 

In fact, my capsule/hostel went the extra mile and added a helpful illustration to their posted English instructions for using their Japanese toilet:

Don’t laugh.  Odds are, countless American college backpackers have welcomed said instructions as they opened the WC stall door and found themselves staring down at this:

You just got learned.

Coming this Tuesday night on BlogSpot… Photos and tales from the trenches of Portland’s biggest ever food fight:

TOMATO BATTLE PDX!!!

Intermission: IYC Denver (from the road)

We’re all in Denver through this weekend, but check back here next weekend for the conclusion of my Tokyo travelogue.  I’ll throw in some pics from the touristy part of my quick visit to Japan.

We made it!  Since Monday, a small group from our E.P.I.C. student ministry has been breathing mile-high air here in Denver, Colorado.  International Youth Convention 2012 officially kicked off last night, but we flew in a couple days early for a little fun.

A wet and wild day at Elitch Gardens water/theme park got our adrenaline pumping on Tuesday.  Aggressive water slides like the mind-scrambling Tube Top and the various speed slides kept us cool for most of the day.

That evening, our bravery was tested on the rickety wooden roller coaster Twister 2 (seen in the background of the photo above, which, if you look closely, features me and Will hanging on for dear life in the 6^th car)… and especially on the up-down-forward-backward-upside down-sideways G-forces of the notorious Boomerang.  I lost all feeling in my face.  Is it possible for internal organs to liquefy?

The opening session of International Youth Convention was last night.  Thousands of teenagers sang along with Matt Papa’s passionate worship set, followed by a message from skater/boarder/surfer Zane Black. My conversation with Zane after the late night Group 1 Crew concert convinced me that he is a man of authentic faith who has truly been called to speak into the lives of teenagers.

Zane’s message led into an intimate time of reflection, response, and sharing with our students outside of the auditorium last night.

This morning, our students selected various breakout sessions to attend while the adult leaders were encouraged by energetic former Denver Bronco defensive back Steve Fitzhugh at the Youth Ministry Institute conference.  The IYC High School Band led an unbelievably gifted time of worship before the session!

In a few minutes, we’ll be leaving the convention center for our Impact: Denver service project.  Partnering with some other youth groups from across the U.S.A., we’ll be restoring and beautifying an inner city playground and public park.  It’s time to do some good!