A Day Off!

Today was my first day off in the past two weeks. It was quite nice. As I mentioned previously, I worked last Sunday, for the dedication of the new Draper Temple. That was nice, but it was definitely better to not have to work at all.

My Dad has kept detailed records of every train ride I have ever been on since the day I was born. He has kept similar records of every ship I have sailed on and every airplane I have flown on. The train to me is the most interesting, so I was looking over that a little bit this evening. I am surprised, even having traveled on nearly 1,200 trains and tens of thousands of miles, how well I still remember almost every trip, even seemingly ordinary ones, I remember with detail that surprised me. In these records, the origin, destination, railroad, and date are all recorded. Occasionally other notes are added, such as when I have been the operator of the train, or when the train has been overnight. Because of this detail, one can easily figure out the mileage for every trip, and find out how many miles have been covered. I have been working on that a little whenever I have some free time. I still have about 400 more trips to go through before I will have totaled all of them. As I decided I was done working on this for today, I began looking at some of my earliest train rides. My very first trip was from Mineola to Roslyn, on the Long Island Railroad. It was not long, and it was to visit my great-grandfather, who was in the nursing home at the time. I do not remember anything about that trip, because I was five months old. That was a while ago! After that round trip, my next ride was with Karen, on a trip into Boston. She was nine months old, and I doubt she remembers that trip, but I actually do remember just a couple of things from that, even though I was only two. Rather than a detailed memory of the trip, I just have a few image-like memories from it. As I continued browsing the list, I found that there were several trips I went on with just my dad, which I do not remember. The next one I remember is again with Karen, about a year later. Again, I just have a few memories of that one, but more than the first. I did not remember where went, just that we rode the Orange Line, in Boston. As it turned out, we only went one stop, about a quarter of a mile. It was not a long trip. I really do not remember much besides getting on the Orange Line, with my Dad holding Karen, who was about a year and a half old then. I remember the trips when I was not alone with my Dad better. I am sure there are pictures of all the other trips I went on, which I do not remember, and I would like to see them now. There was one, when I was just over a year old, where we went to Oyster Bay, which still is a fun trip for the family. I do not remember that first one, but I would like to see the pictures now that I know it happened. I'll have to dig those out next time I go home.

On a bit of a different note, yesterday we had what was supposed to be our last Saturday Session for Holland America Line. It only ended up being a half day, which was a nice surprise. I was expecting it to go all day, like the others have. Since I had the rest of the afternoon to kill, I went to the Festival of Colors, at the Hare Krishna Temple, in Spanish Fork. It was a big religious celebration for them, and they invited everyone to come. It was quite interesting. I did not go in the temple, because I had turned purple from the dye they had floating everywhere in the air, but I would like to go back there sometime, when I am better dressed to visit a temple, and see the place. It is open to the public. I did not feel like jeans and a sweatshirt was appropriate attire for visiting a temple though, regardless of what temple it is. It was a nice, though crowded event though.

My First Passenger and 3,456 Miles of Toilet Paper

The last few days have been interesting. On Tuesday, I had another driving session. This time, we drove up to Heber, and I gave a tour during the trip. In a bus, it is about a 40 minute drive, because the speed limits in Provo Canyon, especially the bottom, are much faster than a bus can take the turns safely. Most of the drive was under the speed limit, but we got there safely. When we got there, the tour ended at the train station for the Heber Creeper, and then we went over to the Dairy Keen, and got shakes. Thinking about that makes me want one now! But I'm sure they would be closed by the time we got to Heber, if they are not already. Anyways, it was a really good trip up there and back, and it was fun to give a little tour along the way.

Yesterday I had my last driving session before the Commercial Drivers' License test. I have scheduled mine for the 4th of April. I should not have any problem with that. Since we really had nothing to do yesterday, because we have been over everything we need to do, and we had all afternoon, we decided to just go exploring in the area south of Provo. We went to a little town called Benjamin, where there is supposed to be a haunted house. We found that. It just looks abandoned. Someone has put fake cameras all over it, to try to deter curious people from getting into it, but the fence is only on one side, so you just walk around it, and crawl into a basement window. We did not go in at all, because there really was no place to park the coach! After that, we went back to Spanish Fork, and then up to Mapleton. In Mapleton, I decided to stop by the Wilsons' house, to show off the coach. It was the middle of the afternoon, so I was hoping Sister Wilson had finished her mail route early. As we pulled up, I saw her car in the driveway. I parked on the curb in front of the house, and then went to the front door. She must have heard the bus idling, because she came to the door with a really puzzled expression. She looked a bit surprised to see me, and then noticed the bus and asked if she could go for a ride. Trent was okay with it, so she got her coat and joined us on the bus. We just drove around Mapleton and Spanish Fork some more. It was fun. She was my first passenger, even though it was a free little joy ride for her. When she got off, we decided to put the bus away and call it a day, because we had been out there for a few hours!

Today I had to work at my custodial job. The work there is not particularly exciting, but the people I work with are a lot of fun. Today, I finished my daily tasks, and then we got an order of toilet paper and chemicals. I moved all the toilet paper to the building it belongs in and put it in the basement storage there. As I was doing this, I figured out that the combined total of all the boxes had 3,456 miles of toilet paper in them, and 55,296,000 individual pieces of toilet paper! That ought to last until about September. One of the Freshmen saw me carrying all these large boxes up the stairs and decided to help out a little. That was very nice of him. He obviously did not know my name, so at one point, when trying to figure out where I had gone, he called out, "Hey dude carrying boxes, where did you go?" So I am now known as the "Dude Carrying Boxes." I thought about what that must have looked like to him and other people who saw me. I saw several people a few times, and every time I saw them, I was carrying at least one very large box, with no really clear label on it. To some, it must have looked like I was just wandering around with mystery boxes! That made me laugh.

A Temple in the Marriott Center?

Today was a bit crazy, at least for a Sunday. Usually Sundays are pretty laid back, because there is nothing really to do. No one works around here, no one really does anything besides lay around and kill a lot of time. It is great! Today, I went to church, as usual, and managed to stay awake for most of it. For some reason I was really tired, though I am not sure why.

After church, I went over to the Marriott Center, because I had to work. The recently completed Draper Temple was being dedicated today, and rather than try to cram everyone in there for the ceremony, they decided to broadcast it to churches and such in the area, so people could watch it. The Marriott Center, being the largest building in the area, also was a broadcast host. They have seating there for over 22,000 people, though we were not expected to fill up for the dedication. I was assigned to be the Usher at Portal N. At the basketball games and other more typical events at the Marriott Center, the Ushers stay fairly busy, telling people not to stand on the seats, chasing people out of the stairs, asking people to put away the megaphones or refrain from throwing stuff, etc. The list goes on and on. Today the crowd was a little different though. It being a religious ceremony, the people came with a more reverent attitude, and there was no one to yell at. Actually, it was the easiest event I have ever worked at. I heard that there were about 15,000 people there, but it was very quiet. It sounded like there was only a couple of people there, it was rather strange! I have never seen such a quiet crowd. Part of this was because one brother kept making announcements from the pulpit that we were there for the dedication of a temple, and as such, the Marriott Center was considered an extension of the temple. This was the reason for the reverent attitude. Most people whispered, if they talked at all, and everyone behaved very well. In a way, it made my job a little bit boring! It was a nice change though.

After the dedication concluded and everyone filed out of the Marriott Center, I went to the Wilkinson Center for a fireside with President Brown. He is the president of the Utah Provo Mission, and he was doing a fireside for Karen's ward. I figured I would go, since he was my Mission President, and I wanted to say hi to him again. It was quite nice. As I expected he would, he made several comments about me and my work in the mission, which was strange to listen to. I always find it a little weird when people publicly compliment me, I am never quite sure what to do.

Finally, eleven hours after leaving the apartment this morning, I returned home, after President Brown's fireside. Then I went to Ward Prayer, also known as "Ward Stare," and I had a reason to stare! :D That was good, I guess, there really was nothing particularly exciting or unusual about it. It was a busy day, but fun. Tomorrow is back to the normal routing. I really don't want to go to Spanish class. I hate it, it is way to easy and I don't learn anything. I will I guess, and be bored to tears or asleep through it, as usual.

Midnight Hiking and CPR

Last night, I had every intention of getting to bed by midnight, because I knew I had to get up earlier than I would have liked to for a Saturday. I had a CPR and First Aid class scheduled for this morning, to get my certification for the summer. I had wanted to do that early though, so I would have the rest of the day to do whatever I wanted to do.

Well, getting to bed at midnight just did not work out. I love biking, and I had been wanting to go on a bike ride all day, so I texted Rachelle, and asked her what she was up to that night. She also likes biking, so we go together once in a while, because it is always a lot more fun with someone. Now, I had to work, and I thought I would be there until about 11:00pm, and she had to babysit for some friends of hers, so we figured we would make it a midnight ride. Later that evening, we decided to make it a midnight hike instead of a bike ride, because there is still a lot of traffic around here on a Friday at midnight, and we wanted to go somewhere lighted. Well, we decided to go hiking in Rock Canyon instead, which was a lot of fun. I had actually never been hiking up there at all. It was a lot of fun. It was so much quieter up in the canyon than it is in the valley, which was sort of refreshing. We went up to a point where there was a large pile of snow, obviously the remains of an avalanche. We thought about climbing over it, but decided not to, because it was dark, and we really did not know what was on the other side. Also, it was nearly as high as the trees around it, so it could have been a much harder climb down the other side. That was our endpoint, and we turned around, and walked back to Rachelle's place. By the time we got back there, it was after 1:00am, so the whole idea of going to bed at midnight was gone. I hung around for a bit and talked, and sort of lost track of time, and I did not end up leaving until about 3:45am. I got home pretty quickly, though I was obviously the only one still up at my place. I went to bed, and got up four hours later to get ready for my class.

When I woke up, I was quite disoriented and confused. At first, I couldn't figure out what the noise in my room was coming from. After listening to it for a few minutes, I realized it was my alarm, which is on my phone. I got up to shut it off, and was quite puzzled. I couldn't figure out how to shut the thing off, and while it was still ringing, I accidentally called Rachelle, and then it just randomly stopped going. Well I was happy about that, but I was still quite unconscious! I got ready, and went to the CPR class.


They started the class with the First Aid portion. We watched a movie, which was a lot of common sense stuff, and rather boring. There were a few rather gruesome scenes of injuries, but other than that, no excitement. At the beginning they warned us that they hardest thing about the movie is staying awake. That was disappointing, because I had just had my shortest night of the year! I actually did surprisingly well though, and did not end up falling asleep. I made it through the entire training. After an exam, which I passed easily, we moved on to the CPR training. All of this was a review from going over it all many times in Boy Scouts when I was younger, but this time I actually got a certification for it. Once we had all been over the CPR portion, and had the chance to practice on the mannequins, we were done. It ended about two hours earlier than I was expecting which was nice. I went home and cleaned up for our cleaning checks. I ended up failing simply because I did not run the oven's self clean cycle, which was stupid, because the thing was clean anyways. Oh well, I ran it this afternoon, and I ought to pass the recheck, on Monday.

I took care of my laundry this afternoon, and then decided it was time for a bike ride. Originally, the plan was to go up the canyon with Rachelle, but she was at her house, so I just went alone. It was great. Most of the canyon was open. Up at Bridal Veil Falls, there was a gate closed across the trail and a sign indicating that it was closed from November 1 to March 31, but I just went around the gate. I got up about another mile, before I ran into snow. Now, if I had gone on my mountain bike, I would have just plowed through and kept going. It is sort of an adventure on a mountain bike. However, I had taken my road bike, because the trail is paced the whole way, so going through the snow simply was not an option. I did not even try. I was a little sad though, because I had to turn around about six miles before I wanted to. It was still a nice ride though. I feel so slow after not biking all winter. I am slower than I was in October, but I know I'll be able to get back in shape. It was a nice little ride, and only took about an hour and a half. It was 22 miles for the round trip. Since then I have just been relaxing a bit. I keep wondering why I am so tired, even though it is so early still, and then I keep remembering that I basically took a nap last night! I think I'll go to bed a little earlier!

Starting a Blog

I decided today, that it would be a fun little project to start a blog. I wonder if anyone will actually read it, but at least it gives me a little something to write from time to time. I find I am not very good at writing in my journal, at least not when I am in school, so maybe it will be easier to write here, and either way, I will still have some sort of idea what I have been up to. For now, this is just a collection of my little adventures, and perhaps I'll write some past ones. I have quite a lot, which seem to be quite entertaining to those who hear about them, as I am frequently told that I ought to write a book. Well, book or blog, this is a start, right? I suppose if I ever did write a book, it would be a whole lot simpler to copy-paste everything from here!