Spirit West Coast

Having arrived in California, the first engagement was to head off down to Monterey for Spirit West Coast (SWC), a huge Christian music festival (described by Janet as "Woodstock without the drugs"!). Well, SWC was AMAZING! The highlights for me were the Third Day concert (Third Day are one of my favourite Christian bands) and the Newsboys concert on the final night (Janet has seen Newsboys about 5 times and thought it was the worst of the five, but they really rocked and it was a great finale to a great experience). Seeing people/groups like Jars of Clay, Kutless, Todd Agnew and Aaron Shust live was also great, and I was struck at how they (and several of the others) really worked on keeping the focus off themselves and their "performance" and on God.

There were also some Christian comedians who were quite entertaining, and several seminar or "message" sessions which were thought-provoking and encouraging (in particular, one seminar on the influence of the media in society was very thought-provoking in terms of my own "entertainment choices").

The site of the festival (Monterey) is near the coast and reinforced all my negative impressions of the California coastal climate: the evening concerts (open air, admittedly) required a long-sleeve, thermal undershirt, a sweatshirt and a thick, fleece-lined, padded jacket, plus a polar-fleece beanie to keep my head warm - it was COLD!!! The days were lovely, warm and sunny, with a cool breeze, which was very pleasant, until the sun started to go down. On the last day, when we had to pack up and head back it turned foggy and miserable, which was well-timed - the festival would not have been fun in such conditions. On the way back we stopped off at the world-famous Monterey aquarium. It is an amazing aquarium and we had a good time there for a few hours before hitting the road for the drive back to Sacramento.