Look out Apollo!!!!

Jaden and I went ice skating last night and you have got to see this kid! He is amazing on a pair of ice skates!!! I helped put them on and the he just took off walking around on them by himself. I thought he would need help getting used to walking with them--false. He showed off by walking forwards, backwards, sideways, and with his eyes closed!

We went to the Olympic Oval which is a speed skating track, not your typical skating rink. The oval is huge, about the size of a running track. We went around the whole track 5 times!!! Each time we went around Jaden just got better and better. The first time he held onto my hand and the wall. We basically just walked around on the ice with little stutter steps.We went pretty slowly but Jaden taught himself how to stop using the toe pick and stopped himself from falling quite a few times...but we did fall...a lot. Jaden was such a good sport, he just said, "I'm okay!" and got back up and kept going. After the first time around, which took about 30 minutes, we had to take a break because the zamboni had to clean the ice, which took FOREVER. Seriously, 23 minutes to clean the ice. We were getting antsy.

When we got back on again, Jaden started getting more brave and picked up speed. We went around in less time with fewer falls with every lap. Then he started actually gliding a little bit on the ice, closing his eyes, taking little jumps, weaving his feet in and out a little, and then...he let go of the wall...and then me! He started doing it all by himself. Then when he would fall, he would say, "It's okay to fall because that's how we learn." On the last time around he only fell 2 times! That is incredible because the track is ginormous and it was only his first time! Way to go Jaden! We had so much fun! He did say that he wished his family was there so that they could see how good he was. So here are some videos of him skating. Sorry they aren't very good, I'm not the most coordinated skater/photographer.

Movin on Up

I'm done!!! I took my last undergraduate final yesterday!!!

Also, I thought I'd show everyone what Nathan's stocking looks like. Mom is so good!

And if you notice the new location, it is due to the increase in population of the family. And look how far up the stairs I am!

In other news: I am now unemployed! Hooray!!! :o)

You mean there's a right answer???

Granite School District came to BYU to interview secondary education majors graduating by next August today. I received a call a few weeks ago telling me to sign up for an interview and since I didn't think they would call every single education major, I was feeling special and signed up. I'm still not positive if I want to try and teach first and pursue a Master's Degree or just go to school first. I figure it depends on if I can get hired or not, so I prepared for the interview anyway.

I got up at 6:30 this morning so that I could actually do my hair. No joke, this is the first time I have ever blowdryed, curled, and styled my hair since I've been at BYU. Then as I got into my car I noticed a gigantic run up my nylons so I had to go back and change them. My interview was at 9:00 but I was supposed to be there 20 minutes early to fill out paperwork. I realized at 8:00 that the resume I sent the district had a typo on it (how EMBARRASSING!) so I printed out a new one to hand into them, hoping they hadn't looked at the one I submitted online yet. I also discovered that my professor still hadn't given me the letter of recommendation I asked him to write on Monday, so I only had 1, instead of the 2 to 3 the district asked for. :-(

Anyway, I got there at 8:30 and started filling out the paperwork and tried to calm myself down because I felt like a lot of things were not going my way. I told myself I had 30 minutes to relax, spit out my gum (I wanted to have spearminty fresh breath), think of awe-inspiring reamarks to say in my head, and reapply chapstick. Five minutes later the guy called my name and I just stared at him like, "Uh...yes..." while thinking, "I'm not ready yet!"

So I go into this teeny tiny coat closet and sit down and there was no room to put all my stuff so I just sat there and held it, I had to swallow my gum like a teenager going to talk to a teacher trying to not get 5 demerits, and my lips suddenly felt dry and pasty. Then he pulled out my resume with the typo on it and I cringed. Then he said, "So you want to be a PE teacher. I saw on your resume something about soccer." I thought he was referring to my coaching internship so I started to explain it but then he said, "Did you see that BYU game with the girl?" (he started making hair-pulling gestures) I explained to him my familiarity with the situation.

The man says the HR person who scheduled the interviews got sick so he was filling in and didn't really know much and couldn't answer any of my questions, which was a little frustrating. Then we got down to business and asked:

1. What are the most important things to do during the first few days of the school year?

2. How important is it to work together with coworkers and how would you do it? (Seriously??)

3. What are the best teaching methods you would use...or something like that...I turned my answer into that question regardless of what the actual question was.

4. What kind of relationship do you want to have with students?

and the big one...

5. What is unique to you as a teacher? How will that help you to teach?

I felt like my answers were well articulated, I don't think there's anything I wish I would have remembered to say or said something else instead. But because my interview was so far ahead of schedule I had to sit outside the interviewing closets and finish my paperwork while the 2 interviewers talked and waited for the next interviewees. I overheard the man who interviewed me asking the other interviewer (a woman who actually knew what she was doing) about the questions and she said, "I have not been impressed with the responses I've been given so far. Nobody has gotten any of them completely right." I stopped writing and thought, "What?! You mean there are actually right and wrong answers? I thought they just wanted our opinions and were trying to get to know our teaching philosophies and stuff." She continued to explain that we get certain points for certain answers and then there's an overall score at the end...I had no idea. It felt like we were just shooting the breeze public school teaching style. Then I started to feel really dumb and juvenile. She said that the 1st question about the 1st few days of school no one had gotten right. She said everyone says that setting up procedures and routines is what is most important, (which is what I said and I was pretty proud of my answer) but the RIGHT answer is to learn everyone's names. What??? As a secondary level teacher with 150 students you think learning everyone's names is more beneficial than keeping everything under control until I can get a chance to learn everyone's names?! Fine. I missed those 3 points completely.

In conclusion, I don't think it went that well. But I'm okay with that. This interview is just the first of many and it was good practice experience...I guess. Schools don't even start posting job openings until April 1st so then we'll all have to re-interview or something anyway. I just thought I would let you all know. Have a good weekend! Only 3 more weeks until Christmas!

The Next Big Step

I got my student teaching assignment today. I'll be at Oak Canyon Junior High in Lindon, UT. I googled it and it says it should be an 11 minute drive from my apartment...excluding traffic...and snow...I don't know much yet except I'll be at that school the entire semester. They usually try to get us at a junior high for one half and a high school for one half, but I guess not for me.

Here Comes the...

We did it again! Saturday, November 7, 2009, Dad and I participated in the Telos Turkey Tri in Orem. It's a Spalsh Distance race in reverse order consisting of a 3 mile run, 10 mile bike, and 350 m swim. Zach Collins' work is the company that puts on the race (Telos) so he was there also. Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of him. When we signed up for it in September we were positive that there would be snow on the ground and we almost didn't sign up because of it, but we were very lucky to have a warm, sunny Saturday in the 50's.

We got to the race at 6:45 and the gun went off at 8:30. Everyone all started at the same time, so Dad and I decided to start at the very back of the pack. We don't think there was a starting line to cross over that started our timing chips and I was waiting to start my watch until we crossed it, but we never found it. So we think our official race time started when the gun went off, which stinks because we started last, and my watch was off because I didn't know when to start it. Anywho, the race took place in a residential area, so we had to run and bike on the street with traffic. We also rode around the UVU campus. I finished the run about one minute before Dad and then about 2 minutes into the bike Dad zoomed passed me and I didn't see him again until after the Finish Line. Yup, he totally smoked me!! The swim was in an indoor pool and completely packed. Dad and I had to walk/doggy paddle most of the time because of slow swimmers ahead of us or there being 4 people traveling down a 4 ft wide lane as one solid mass.


The official times aren't posted yet but I finished with a time of around 1:15 and Dad came in a few minutes before that. Zach said he finished at 1:05 and we're all pleased with how we did. It was a lot of fun...except for a couple of things (both of which have to do with the blasted bike portion).


When I run/bike outside my nose runs almost as much as I do. I brought kleenex but left them in my pants, which was a big mistake. I was okay during the run but by the time I got on the bike, I was really struggling. I'm not very comfortbale riding a bike through traffic so I was very apprehensive to unglue my hands from the handle bars and effectively blow my nose (into my shirt). So I tried wiping my nose on my right humerus, but that only moved everything to my right cheek. So then I tried to push it back by wiping in the opposite direction on my left humerus, which was only slightly effective. This lasted for a couple of miles until I was sniffing so frequently and violently that my head was stuffing up and starting to hurt. So I did what I had to do. I just turned my head to the right and blew forecefully into the air. Apparently whatever muscles required for blowing snot rockets have not been adequately strengthened inside me because I just had crap hanging out of my nose...just dangling there. So again, I wiped once to the right and once to the left. At this point my lips were getting all dry and pasty too. So when I dismounted my bike and walked it back to the rack, I literally had to scrape snot and boogers off of my cheeks (I did this while passing a woman with a camera, I hope she was not the official race photographer) and those white crusties off my mouth. It was nasty.


Also while I was biking, I heard a loud crack. I got super scared that something had fallen off of my bike and I ran over it. I pictured my bike just toppling over or crumbling beneath me and then imagined the horrible road burn I would soon feel. I heard some woman behind me yell, "I think you dropped something!!" I looked around to see what could possibly have fallen off, but I know nothing about bikes so I had no idea what to look for. But then I noticed my pump was gone, so that must have been it.

(This is after the race. He doesn't even look tired!!)

Anyway, so we finished! And da da da da!!!! Dad finished second in his age category and got a silver medal!! Wooh!! Unfortunately, I had to leave early so I couldn't get a picture of the champion, but I am so proud of him! He did amazing!

Candy Apple on a Stick, Makes my Tummy go...I forgot the rest...Kare???

For Family Home Evening (FHE) our ward had a pumpkin carving contest. My roommates and I weren't very excited to go because...well, we're never really excited to go because we don't know anyone and all of our activities are in large groups. Even when we just have our individual families meet, our entire ward is divided into only 3 families, so there are at least 20 people in each family. Due to the massive gatherings, it's hard for us to get to know anybody personally, especially when it seems like everyone else knows everyone else already and they already have their little cliques. But for my roommates, the promise of potential treats and for me the self-gratification that I at least attended a church acivity, motivated us to go. We also made a deal that we would each meet one new person.

Realizing that the treats were the same as usual, popcorn and hot chocolate, my roommates almost bailed. But then the ward Dad said that the winner of the carving contest would receive a prize. With that promise of a potential treat, my roommates were back in the game. We picked the cutest pumpkin and got to work. Thankfully, Kristen is really strong so she could actually carve and Hillary is very creative, so I didn't have to do anything except pull the guts out and hold the pumpkin in place. Jill acted as our social representative and talked to some girl the whole time that we didn't know. (She was the only one to meet someone new...the rest of us were busy!)

(This is Hillary with our pumpkin. It says "I LOVE BYU" with an eyeball, a heart, and a Y.)

After about 45 minutes, we finished carving and looking around at some of the weak sauce jack-o-lanterns, we were feeling pretty good about our pumpkin. We waited around for everyone to finish. Everyone lined up their pumpkins and our's was still the best...and then we realized we were waiting on 2 last pumpkins...apparently the longer you take, the more creative and amazing the pumpkin turns out because these pumpkins were insanely ornate and done without a stencil. They definitely deserved to win and they won a big bag of candy each. Deflated, my roommates wanted to leave. We all wanted a reward and a real Halloween treat, so Kristen and I went to the store and bought two bags of carmel. We went home smashed up my leftover birthday Heath bars, and made the most hardcore candy apples you will ever encounter. We used apples from Costco that are the size of softballs, making it nearly impossible to bite into. Then they were so smothered in carmel that we couldn't tell where the stems or seeds or the bottoms were so we had to just eat the whole thing.

We made a couple of rules: the apples could only be eaten with hands, no knives; and you couldn't wipe your face until you finished the whole thing. This was really hard because everything was melty, the apples were huge and incredibly juicy, and a couple of us had runny noses so it was hard to tell what was snot and what was apply juice. But they were DELICIOUS. My poor roommate Hillary has braces so there was no way any metal machinery could have handled what we were undertaking. She tried to dip a banana into the carmel but the banana couldn't handle the stickiness, so she just sat and stared at us, trying not to throw up. And for some reason, someone put on Christmas music, so we enjoyed our Halloween treats whilst singing Cindy Lou Who's, "Where are you Christmas?"

(Heather, who is not my roommate, she lives next door, but she's always over. She's in my program.)

When we finally finished, I was cleaning up the kitchen when someone knocked on the door. I still hadn't cleaned my face, luckily someone else answered the door because I had forgotten that I was covered in chocolate. A girl from downstairs asked if we had a clog. We all started laughing because we thought she was referring to clog dancing because we had used a plate, a pot (which got bent in the process) and a hammer to smash up the Heath bars. We thought she was asking what was making it so noisy. But then she added that their sink was overflowing and they were having to use buckets to put all the excess water into the tub. She meant a clog in the sink. We said we didn't have a clog and she stared at us and left. I kept my back turned to her the whole time so she wouldn't see my dirty face.

(Jill and Kristen)

After she left we started feeling guilty because we were afraid that all our carmel had clogged up the sink and caused problems for them. About an hour later a dirty, old, (yet friendly) gentleman from the apartment's emergency pager number thingy came and said he had to go through our sink to fix the downstairs peoples' sink. Mind you, this was at 11:00PM. We still don't know if we had anything to do with the comotion downstairs, but oh well. We had fun...


...until the next morning. I was so sick. I spent quite a bit of time in the bathroom this morning, trying to coordinate with Kristen's showering schedule. Then I had to go and suffer through class and I felt horrible. But I think it was worth it.

Faja-razzi

The official race photos are online from the Daybreak Triathlon if you are interested in viewing them. I am unable to load them onto the blog, I think that may have to do with copyright issues, or I might just be retarded. You can download and save the pictures to your computer. And be nice...some of the pictures are really attractive.

http://www.ustrisports.com/daybreakgallery.htm

Finish Line:
Alli: 510
Dad: 641
Zach: 667
David: 691

Swim:
Zach: 9440
David: 9444
Alli: 9658
Dad: 9821

Bike:
Alli: 159
Dad: 290
We can't find Zach or David...5 gold stars to whoever can point them out.

Run:
Alli: 76
Zach: 9979, 9980...I think he ran in front of someone else's shot and ended up with 2!
David: 9353
We can't find Dad...a big gulp slurpee for the discovery of this photo.

Tri This At Home

We did it! On Saturday September 19th, 2009 Dad, David, Zach, and I completed the Daybreak Triathlon. After months of training (some more than others) and dreading, it is done! From the beginning...

David and Zach went to pick up their wetsuits on Thursday afternoon and received some upsetting news. Some swimmers from the Oquirrh Lake got sick from roundworm, an obscure parasite that the Health Department never tests for because it is so rare. As a result, the race directors had to completely eliminate the lake swim from the race. For the sprint distance swimmers a 750m swim and the olympic distance a 1 mile swim were both reduced to a 75 yard sprint in the Eastlake Pool and a one mile run was added from the pool to the bike transition area. This was sad for Dad because the only reason he signed up for the race was so that he could swim in the lake. He was also looking forward to playing around in the wetsuit that take 20 minutes to get on and off. I was sad because the swim was going to be my best event, the same for Zack. Plus, I think we all felt as if it cheapened the race and made it less of a triathlon. But stuff happens. I was just happy to be out there.

We had to go pick up our race packets, bibs, and get our body markings on Friday night. They put our racing number on each arm, an O for olympic or an S for sprint on the left calf and our age on the right calf. Then as a last minute adjustment, we had to rate our swim sprint ability from 1-5 and they wrote that on our hand. Zach and I picked 4, David a 3, Dad a 0 but the lady looked at him and wrote a 1. I woke up with a black 4 on my cheek and an S and 20 smudges all over my legs. David and Zach were manly men and signed up for the Olympic distance which was originally a 1 mile swim, 21 mile bike ride, and a 6 mile run. They claim that they thought Dad and I also agreed to do the Olympic distance so that's why they signed up for it. Dad and I did the sprint distance which usually is a 750m swim, 12 mile bike ride, and a 3 mile run.

We woke up at different times from 4:30-5:00am and ate breakfast and rode our bikes down to the lake to pick up the timing chips and set up our transition stations. This was where you started to separate the experienced triathlese from the amateurs. The smart athletes had a flashlight with them so they could set-up their bike and actually see what they were doing, while the rest of us tried to figure it out in the pitch black. The transition area is on the boat ramp with a few super duper long poles that you hang your bike seat on. Some people lay out all of their equipment so they can easily pull stuff off and on. Dad and I just put up the bike and stuck our backpacks on the outside so we could find our bikes easily. We finished all that at 6am and then sat around in our little racing outfits until about 7:30am. Yes, it was FA-REEZING! I shaved the night before for no reason. I was in a constant shiver and a whole-body muscle contraction covered in goose bumps for over 2 1/2 hours.



A little before 8am the Olympic athletes got on shuttle buses that took them over to the pool to begin the race at 8am. David was the first from all of us to start, immediately followed (and immediately passed) by Zack at 8:10am. Dad and I boarded the bus at 8am and waited for the sprint athletes to begin at 8:30. Boy was it a crazy sight as soon as we exited the bus!

There were shoes, spandex, yellow swim caps, and half-naked skinny bodies everywhere! Everyone lined up according to the number on their hands and waited in a giant line. Originally for the lake swim they divide up the athletes by race and age and everyone starts in the lake and swim as a giant mass. However, in the pool it was completely different. Everyone waits in a forever long single file line and moves around the pool and down the wading stairs into the pool and every 5 seconds a new swimmer starts swimming. The pool only has three lanes so we swam in a snaking "S" pattern down 1 lane, up the next, and down the 3rd. There was a camera man in the middle lane and while I was finishing up the 3rd lane the guy in front of me somehow managed to take out the cameraman and caused a 3 swimmer pile-up with me in the middle. Dad was the second-to-last swimmer out of all 600 competitors to get in the pool and start. This was a GREAT racing strategy because he had only 1 person that could pass him and 598 people to pass, which is the most invigorating feeling.



So we get out of the pool and run out to find our shoes. Some people had towels to dry off with but I chose to forego this. I was freezing again because it was a bit breezy and the pool water was warm. But I quickly warmed up on the 1 mile run back to the transition area. It looked way different in the light so it took me a second to find our stuff. Then I hopped on my brand new bike and walked my bike to the mounting pad and got passed by 3 middle-aged guys whilst I attempted to start pedaling. I am not good at getting up and going, it takes me a while. But then I was off!



My new bike is so smooth and comfy, I was feeling good...for about 3 minutes. My quads started burning way earlier than I thought they would be. This was pretty discouraging because the first 4 miles is just a monotonous straight ride down 11800 S and gets old pretty fast. At this point I realized how lucky I was that the swim was almost nonexistent because I did not train well enough. I would have died. But I passed a couple women and got passed by a couple and a lot of men. The Olympic riders were already finishing their ride when I was just starting, which was also discouraging. But these guys spend thousands of dollars on these crazy bikes and helmets so I just said, "this is fun," and kept pedaling.

I kept looking for Zach in his pink polka-dot swim shorts and finally saw him on the steep hill up to the copper mine while he was wizzing on his way down. Poor kid forgot his shoes so he had to borrow Dad's old lawn-mowing shoes. He also forgot his goggles but luckily we didn't need them. So I kept going up the hill and my new bike just ate it up! It wasn't as bad as I thought, especially because I was passing all the people on mountain bikes and 1 woman who walked it up, so that made me feel fast too! Near the top of the hill someone has spray-painted "ALMOST THERE" which I find pretty cool. I made it up and turned around. This was the part of the whole race that I was dreading the most. The downhill. I am so scared of going really fast, hitting a rock, popping a tire, swiveling out of control, and experiencing unbelievable road rash. But I took a deep breath, squeezed my entire upper body on the brakes and coasted down. I got passed quite a bit, but that did not bother me at all. As the downhill was ending we approach a small hill to turn back onto 11800 S, so I started to go down to the next gear and my bike locks up. I couldn't pedal at all and I started to freak out. Luckily it was still downhill so my wheels had momentum to keep moving without me pedaling so I could keep my balance. I shifted back up and had to finish the rest of the ride in the highest gear. The guy at the bike shop said it takes about 60 days to break in a new bike's gears and whatnot, it had only been about 16 hours.



The bike is Dad's best event so he passed several people and made his way through the pack. I saw him about 2 miles from the start of the bike portion on my way back and we cheered for each other. I looked for David in his yellow Brasil jersey but didn't see him.

As I was finishing the bike ride my legs were feeling refreshed but my whole upper body ached from not being used to my new handle bars. But there were spectators towards the end so I wanted to look cool so I tried to lean over and look like I knew what I was doing for the last few hundred yards. The I almost fell while trying to dismount, I am not used to having my seat so high. Then I went to put my bike back on the rack. I passed my backpack and spent a few seconds looking around and then backtracking to hang my bike up. Then I started running.



I was feeling great for the 1st mile and horrible for the 2nd. I was going so slow and got passed, which is discouraging and made me want to go even slower. About half-way around the lake I finally saw David and screamed at him. He told me to wait for him. Ha, yeah right, I wanted to get done with that thing. I had to pee so badly!! The 3rd mile was hard but the end was in sight. I picked up the pace and then sprinted the last few hundred yards across the finish line as they say your name and hometown. The sprint was easy and didn't hurt and I thought, "why didn't I go that fast the whole way?"

I went to grab my camera but missed David finishing his 1st lap so I waited for Dad to finish up. He finished around 11am, Zack finished a few minutes after that, and David a few minutes after that. It was so exciting to get to see everyone finish!







Sorry, this long story is not over yet! We waited around for the awards ceremony because the race atmoshpere is so fun that we wanted to hang out for a while. Well, everyone else did, I just wanted to go home and go to the bathroom. They announced the overall winners on the stage and then went over to the side to announce the 1st-3rd place winners for each age class. And Dad got 3rd!!! He won a bronze medal for the male sprint 55-59 year-olds!! It was so cool!! I was way proud. Dad's time was 1:37:34. David's time was 2:59:23 and placed 4th out of 5 in his age class. Zack finished with a time of 2:45:35 in 7th out of 7. Their goal was 3 hours so they both made it! Congrats! My time was 1:36:11 and I finished 5th out of 12.



Then we went home and ate some delicious BBQ. It was fun to celebrate with family and friends. We missed the Bartletts and the Merrills, but ate enough for you. You're welcome. Dad has his whole story to tell I'm sure so maybe you can all encourage him to create a post. Doubtful, but call him and he'll tell you more. We talked about doing a beginner's triathlon in Orem in November, but I don't think either of us can think of moving for a little while.

Official Red Sierra Bash Site

On Monday morning, September 14th at approximately 7:40 AM, while pedaling to school I was hit by a red GMC Sierra truck. Clearly, I am not dead...just thought I'd mention that first before getting into the details of the incident.

I was riding my bike down Bulldog Blvd. There is no bike lane and traffic is pretty heavy at that time of the morning because Provo High School is on that street and BYU is right around the corner. I am not very confident with my riding-in-traffic-by-myself skills as evidenced by the fact that I crashed all by myself twice during the first week of school. Plus the fact that my roommate was riding on the street down Bulldog Blvd. last week and wrecked her bike. As a result of all of this, I was riding my bike on the sidewalk. The left sidewalk. Which I don't know if that's not proper because obviously you drive on the right side, but I don't know if you're supposed to ride on the right side. Perhaps that decision contributed to the incident.

Anyway, I was on the sidewalk approaching the Conoco gas station driveway. There was a huge red truck nosing its way onto the sidewalk trying to make a right turn onto Bulldog Blvd. I slowed down because I am an extremely paranoid rider. I never expect anyone to see me and even if they do see me, I never expect them to wait for me. (Most of my readers have lived in Provo, you know what it's like.) So I slowed, but didn't completely stop. The red truck was definitely stopped, I double checked to make sure his tires were completely immobile, and they had been for my entire approach so I figured he wasn't going anywhere. His truck was too high for me to make eye contact with (which the insurance lady asked me later). His truck was a little far into the driveway so instead of just going straight across the sidewalk as if there had been no car, I had to do a slight maneuver around the truck. Well, I tried to anyway. If I had been able to complete the maneuver I would have been able to stay on the sidewalk. I guess I could have gone around the back of the truck but that would have been a very round-about way to get across the driveway and then I would have had to worry about cars turning into the gas station that wouldn't have been able to see me because of the giant truck. And that just seemed like too big of a risk when the truck was clearly stopped and all I had to do was go straight across the sidewalk. Plus I figured even if he didn't see me up to that point, he definitely would notice as I started to pedal right in front of him. (Wrong.) See? I really thought about this whole thing before it happened, I am not a reckless biker. Despite all this planning, I should have just stood up and waited for the truck to make his right turn.

At this point, I am not exactly sure what happened. After slowing down and seeing the stopped truck, I started to enter the driveway and then I started to hear this crunching sound. I realized that the truck did not see me and started to turn right onto Bulldog. My front tire got stuck underneath his front right tire and my bike was forced to turn right with it. I think my entire body was also torqued into turning right because my entire left side from my head down to my knee and my planted right knee also were extremely sore a few hours later. Miraculously, his complete ignorance of my presence under his truck caused him to accelerate pretty rapidly, which somehow tore the bike out from under me or between my legs, I don't really know, so that I did not get dragged along with the bike.

As my bike started to slip away all I could think of was, "are you kidding me? This is really happening? I just got hit by a car. I don't even like riding my bike, I am terrified of it. This is totally not even worth it. And this guy is going to keep on driving and never even notice me sitting here on the sidewalk." I didn't even try and go after my bike at this point. I seriously just sat there in complete shock. I realized then that Dad and I have our triathlon on Saturday, which was the whole reason I bought the bike. Then after a minute of processing I looked back to the street and noticed my bike got left in the street so I went to go pick it up . I pulled my bike onto the sidewalk and threw my helmet on the ground. A couple of men walked over and offered me my water bottle that fell off my bike and a cell phone to call the police and ambulance. I was totally fine so I didn't want to call an ambulance or anything and I didn't think there would be any point in calling the police because I thought the truck had driven away, never to know that he had hit me. So I turned around and saw that the truck finally had stopped and was coming back.

A BYU Policeman was driving down Bulldog and stopped to help. He has no real authority to do anything so he radioed the real Police and made sure I was okay. The man in the red truck came up with a confused look on his face like me and the two other men staged the whole scene and he didn't think it was real and said, "sorry lady. I didn't see you." I looked at him and said, "Clearly."

I called Dad and that's when I started balling. As soon as I got a hold of Dad, the fake BYU cop kept trying to ask me what happened so I had to hang up with Dad. I didn't know until later, but at this point Dad started driving to Provo. The fake cop asked the driver for his license and insurance card. His insurance card was expired and I said, "great."

My roommate, Kristen (who had been throwing up all night and could barely get out of bed that morning) drove by, swerved across two lanes of traffic to turn around and help me. While we were waiting, the driver kept rubbing this tiny spot of blue paint transfer from my bike. And I thought, "really? You've got to be kidding me. Get over it." Then the real police came and I had to fill out an accident report. I was so annoyed so I just rushed through that thing. Ten minutes after I had finished I looked and saw that all he had filled out was his name. Did I mention this guy was Hispanic? At this point I almost lost it. I looked at Kristen and said, "did I really just get hit by an illegal immigrant?" I really wanted to get off the street so I was going to call my friend Alex who served a mission to Mexico City to come and translate but he was where I was supposed to be, in class. So then I was going to ask if he wanted me to write down his side of the story, because it seemed like he could speak some English, and maybe just couldn't write it. But finally he went over to the cop and said something so maybe he wrote it in Spanish or something.

So the cop cited the driver for failing to yield to a pedestrian and gave me a copy of the police report. It was then that Kristen reminded me that we are taking a cycling class and so I now had to rent a bike for that too. I could not have needed a bike more than I do this week. I asked the cop if his insurance would pay for my bike rental fee for the class and for the triathlon this weekend and he said he didn't know. Do cops ever know anything you need them to?

We finally wrapped up and Kristen put my bike in the back of her car and the driver said sorry again. I put on my best "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Veruca Salt and Violet Beauregard 'Let's be friends...best friends' face" and I said, "I'll call ya later."

I called Dad back and told him what happened. I guess he turned around and went back to work, but he never even told me he was on his way. I went to school an hour late. Then at noon I finished with classes and saw that I had 5 missed calls from mom and I felt horrible. I hadn't called her because I didn't want to worry her unnecessarily. Apparently Dad had. I checked my voicemails. The first said that mom was leaving school. The second said she was getting off the freeway. The third said she was parked a block away from campus. Luckily, the last voicemail was only left about 10 minutes earlier so I hadn't made her wait for too long. She had called a sub and wanted to make sure I was okay with her own eyes. We went and got my bike out of Kristen's car and went to rent a bike for my cycling class. This was when my left side started to hurt and I noticed a bruise forming on my left tibia. I felt super bad for making Mom feel like she had to leave school and drive all the way down to Provo for nothing. Especially because Mom doesn't even miss school when she's sick and she left in the middle of school to come check on me. This experience made me very grateful for loving and worrying parents and the big guy upstairs because I could have been as bent up as my bike.

Bringing us all up to date, the insurance people are waiting to hear from the driver who has conveniently not returned their phone calls. They also want to get an estimate from the bike shop to see how much it would take to fix the bike. This is a ridiculous waste of time because the bike is completely wrecked. So Dad and I are going to get a new bike this afternoon and I'll try riding it around a little bit before the triathlon tomorrow morning. We'll see.

As you can see the pedal is no longer attached to the bike. This must be where it scraped along the road.

A Full Marathon. One-fifth the Pain.

Yesterday, Saturday the 12th, Dad and some coworkers participated in the Utah Marathon Relay for cystic fibrosis in South Jordan. His work put together a few teams comprised of 5 runners each. Every runner runs the same 5.2 mile looped course. Dad ran the anchor (and hottest) leg for his team. The race started at 7am and lucky for Dad, he was still in bed when the gun went off. He left the house at 8am and started his run around 11:15am.

Here he is waiting at the finish line for the 4th runner to pass off the baton.

Unfortunately the conflabbed batteries died right as I was trying to take a picture of Dad receiving the baton...sorry.

The course is pretty cool because you get to see the runners during the race instead of just at the beginning and end. After 4 miles the path runs parallel to the start/finish line so we just sat at the park and waited for him to come running back through. He said he would be walking but he ran right by us. He didn't even stop to drink the water mom gave him, he just threw it on top of his head and...

kept on running. (Mi malo, my finger is in the way. He was just going so fast!)

Here he is turning the last corner a few yards from the finish line.

He ran straight towards the picnic tables and sat down.

I call this the, "I can't believe I just did that! Woah!" shot.

And this the, "Now why did I volunteer for this again?"

And finally the, "Oh yeah, that's why."

Dad did so well! It was amazing! He ran 5.2 miles in 54 minutes and 12 seconds. That's less than 11 minutes per mile and he didn't even run the entire thing! He set up his playlist on his iPOD to do (I think these numbers are correct) 10 minutes of running to fast music, then 1 minute of slow music to walk, then 11 minutes of fast, 1 minute of slow, etc. so that each set of fast songs would equal one mile. However, he was going so fast that after reaching the first mile marker, he was still on the fast songs! Mom and I couldn't believe it, we were sitting and waiting for him to pass by expecting him to finish the 4th mile in about 50 minutes but we headed over early because there was nothing else to do. It's a good thing because he came zooming by and were shocked!

So in conclusion, Dad rocks! He got a participant medal and earned the rep as the anchor who ran the hardest leg of a Marathon Relay! Way to go Daddy-o!

P.S. You have to ask him how to figured out his one mile run time while at work. :o)

There and Back Again

Dad and I hiked to the top of Mount Timpanogos last Saturday. We left the house at about 5:15 A.M. and got out of the car at about 6:15 A.M. It was a .7 mile walk from our car to the head of the trail. I thought we had to be getting close to the top several miles too soon on a couple of different occasions because there were hundreds of people already on their way down and it was still so early in the morning! I guess they either ran most of the trail or left sometime around midnight. It would be a death wish to climb that narrow trail and scale that mountain in the dark!


We only stopped once to eat a snack. It took us 4 hours to reach the summit, a distance of about 6.5 miles. We spent only about a ten minute break at the top because we were drenched in sweat and there was a breeze so it got really cold really fast. The descent took about three hours. I had to go to the bathroom so badly that I ran almost the last two miles down. (So sorry Dad, it was an EMERGENCY! (I guess I could have called the British emergency help line 811 9995 6523 899115...3)) Then we had to finish the return walk back to the car for a a grand total of just over 14 miles, finishing at 2:00 P.M.


The next morning I could barely get out of bed. Every muscle in my body hurt! Dad experienced a discomfort of his own but we are so glad we did it. It was something Dad wanted to cross off his bucket list and I think we'll do it again...but not anytime soon.

We saw 2 moose right on the trail.

Yes, that skinny strip of dirt IS the trail. And yes, there ARE people going both ways up and down it.