Really, Really Ridiculously Good Looking

My planeteer costume from last year and Lindsay

As an adult, Halloween has never really been my thing.  I don’t mind dressing up, but I’m not a big fan of the effort and/or money involved in creating a costume.  Last year I was a planeteer because the costume was super-simple and referenced my childhood.  I thought about being a planeteer again this year, but then I had a better idea.

I’ve been told for years that I look like Peewee Herman, and I concur (I’ve also been told that I sound like Ben Stein and have eyes like Kermit’s).  At one of my middle school’s last year we had an era dress up day – the 8th graders dressed up like the 80’s, the 7th graders like the 70’s, the 6th graders like the 60’s, and the teachers like the 50’s.  I didn’t have anything that looked very 50’s so I decided to wear a red bowtie with a dress shirt, my suit jacket and I parted my hair.  I could have passed for a mid-century professor, but I also could have passed for Peewee Herman.  I decided then and there that I would be Peewee Herman for Halloween.

Fast forward about six months and I’m living in Tucson.  Kevin, my roommate, told me that the next day was 80’s day at his work and he didn’t know how to dress up for that.  After recommending neon clothes and sweat bands I said, “Just dress up like a nerd.  Tuck your shirt into your jeans and wear a bowtie.”  He liked the idea, but didn’t have a bowtie so I lent him mine.  He got home from work and excitedly told me that people had said that he looked like Peewee Herman and that he was going to be Peewee for Halloween.  He asked me if he could borrow my red bowtie for his costume.  At first I wasn’t sure what to say because he had just accidently stolen my idea, but he seemed really excited about the idea so I agreed.

Kevin doesn’t read my blog (or so he says) and he doesn’t know this story.  So if any of you know Kevin for reals, let's keep this story between you and me.  I don’t want him to feel bad for unknowingly stealing my costume.

I now had a costume dilemma.  We had a Halloween dance at church on Friday night and I didn’t know who to be.  I didn’t bring my planeteer vest to Arizona so I would have to buy another one and didn’t feel like spending $5.  I briefly considered skipping the dance, but that seemed lame.  I also considered going to the dance and not dressing up, but that seemed even lamer.  I did what I usually do when I don’t quite know what to do – I checked Facebook.  One of my friends had posted: “I've narrowed down my Halloween costume ideas to two: Marty McFly, or ridiculously photogenic guy.”  I had completely forgotten about the ridiculously photogenic guy of Facebook fame and immediately decided that I would be him for Halloween.  And I didn’t feel bad stealing my friend’s idea since he lives in Washington.

Here's the guy in case you've never heard of him

I told Kevin, and Manny, and Maurie, and Christina that I was going to be the ridiculously photogenic guy, but none of them had heard of him.  This made me think I’d made a bad costume decision.  I explained to them that some photographer had taken a picture of some random people running in a marathon and the guy in the picture was unusually photogenic for someone running in a race.  The photographer posted the picture of Flickr with a caption that said, “Mr. Ridiculously Photogenic Guy,” and for some reason the image went viral and was the source of numerous memes.

I decided to be the ridiculously photogenic guy anyway mostly because it was super-easy (I wore my running clothes and taped a homemade marathon bib to my shirt).  A lot of people at the dance didn’t know who I was and I explained it a few times, but I formed a special bond with the people who did recognize me.  A few strangers said, “Hey, you’re that meme!” and “You’re that guy from Facebook” and my heart warmed when someone said, “You’re the ridiculously photogenic guy!”  So instead of portraying a man that was arrested for indecent exposure, I portrayed a man a girl once described as “handsome.”  I think I made the right choice.

Okay, so maybe I'm not ridiculously photogenic,
but at least I'm somewhat photogenic

Kevin doing the Peewee dance

Drunk Running

Running in Tucson has proven to be rather difficult for me.  It’s been so freakin’ hot here that running in the middle of the day is out of the question.  I could run in the early morning, but anyone who knows me well knows that I am not a morning person (I had one roommate who would always enthusiastically say, “Good morning!” and I’d always groggily reply, “What’s good about it?”).  I’ve tried to get up early a few times to run, but it just doesn’t work.  I usually run at night when it’s hot in the summers, but Tucson is super-scary.  My friends from the Phoenix area have described Tucson as “sketchy,” “ghetto,” and “usually five degrees cooler than Phoenix” (the last one is a good thing).  I’ve been told that since there are observatories in the area there is a light ordinance in Tucson to prevent light pollution.  My neighborhood has some unsavory people living in it and I would not feel comfortable running through my poorly lit barrio at night.  So instead, I go running at Reid Park which is well-lit and has a bike/jogging trial.

As I drove up to Reid Park on Saturday night I saw a sign that said: “BEER FESTIVAL OCT 6.”  I got to the park at 10:00 pm just as the beer festival was ending.  Usually at that hour the park is mostly deserted with only a handful of people running and few shady characters talking in the dark areas of the parking lot, mostly likely dealing drugs.  But on Saturday night there were a TON of people there, many of them drunk.  It made for an interesting run.

When I run I occasionally get catcalls from random people.  It’s rare, but it happens.  On Saturday at least two dozen people yelled at me.  Most of the catcalls were nonsensical things like “AHHHH!” or “EHHHH!” but I did get a few sentences like “YOU’RE RUNNING!”  and “IT’S LATE!”  and other things that a good Mormon boy wouldn't repeat.  Whenever someone would yell something encouraging I would do a raise-the-roof motion with my hands as I continued my run which usually resulted in laughter and more yelling.  There’s one section of the trail where I have to double back and I ran by the same drunk people twice.  They yelled more the second time.  I could smell alcohol in the air.

Drunk people don’t tend to think super-clearly and I saw one guy whizzing behind a palm tree.  The restrooms were less than 50 yards away.

As I was running by a different guy he suddenly lurched toward me and I was momentarily worried that he was going to shank me.  Then I realized that I don’t ever use the word shank and getting shanked isn’t a regular fear of mine.  He was simply stumbling and I just happened to be in the direction of his stumble.  Luckily I escaped unstabbed.  Another guy almost ran into me while walking his bike.

All in all, it was a much more exciting run than normal.  And on a running note, I have greatly improved since I got to Tucson.  Before I could barely run two miles in my minimalist shoes, but now I can run four.  I'm hoping that using minimalist shoes will move my legs from the "skinny" category into the "sexy" category.  But it may just be a pipe dream.

Note: at no point during my run on Saturday night was I drunk, nor have I ever been drunk.

Photos courtesy of: tucsonliving.blotspot.com

Sometimes I'm an Idiot

My friend Melissa got home from her mission in July 2011.  A month later I made the two hour drive from my parents’ house to her house.  It was the first time I had seen her in 18 months and I was excited to hang out.  When I got to her house she said, “I’ve got something really fun planned for us to do.  We’re going to bake cookies and take them to lonely people.”  I thought that was an awful idea and my words and mood made that evident.  I had just driven for two hours and now I was supposed to go visit lonely people that I didn’t know.  I was not a happy camper.  Melissa, however, would not be swayed and we baked a nice batch of chocolate chip cookies and visited some lonely people.

Melissa said that we were going to visit her new friend Karen.  On the drive over to Karen's house Melissa explained to me that she talks a lot.  I said, “So she’s weird?” and Melissa responded, “She just needs the gospel in her life.”  I was now even less interested in visiting this lonely stranger.  Karen was a member of the church, but hadn’t been active for quite some time.  I had a really bad attitude about the whole experience until we entered Karen’s home.  Melissa was right, not only did Karen talk a ton, but so did her boyfriend.  Her boyfriend was not a member of the church ans was not interested in it at all.  To make a complicated story very simple, by the time we left, Karen was making plans to return to church and her boyfriend had excitedly agreed to meet with the missionaries.  I was flabbergasted.

When Melissa and I left the house I said, “Wow, I wasn’t expecting that!”  Melissa said, “Can we say a prayer?  I want to thank Heavenly Father for what just happened.”  I was a little surprised because my friends don’t usually ask me to say prayers of gratitude with them, but we did.  I was so amazed by the experience because our mere presence in their house had blessed their lives and I felt immensely stupid for not wanting to go earlier.  As we were talking about the experience on the drive home Melissa said, “For the rest of my life all I want to do is be an instrument in God’s hands.”  What she said is so simple and it gave me a new goal.

At that time I had just recently graduated from BYU and had not yet found a job.  For weeks I’d been telling people that all I wanted was to get a job.  I’d said, “All I want is to get a job,” so frequently and to so many people that when Melissa said, “All I want…” my mind immediately went to what I had been saying for weeks.  And then when she finished her sentence with, “… is be an instrument in God’s hands,” I felt a need to change.  My statement, contrasted with Melissa’s statement helped me to see how selfish I can be.  I’d been focusing on me and on what I need when I should have been focusing on others.

This is the story that ran through my mind as I watched the first session of General Conference this morning alone in my living room.  If you don’t know what General Conference is click here.  In the very first talk President Monson announced that a temple would be built in my new home of Tucson (you can watch that clip here).  It was a happy moment.  And then he announced a change in missionary policy.  Before, men could serve missions at the age of 19 and women at the age of 21.  Effective today, men can leave at age 18 and women at age 19.  I don’t cry much, but when President Monson announced this I started to cry.  They were tears of joy, of course.

While Melissa was on her mission her mom forwarded her weekly emails to me and I read them every week.  She was a marvelous missionary.  I currently have two very good female friends serving missions in Taiwan and Russia.  I read their emails home, too and they are stupendous missionaries.  They had both wanted to serve missions for years and couldn’t wait until they turned 21.  They would have left years earlier had they been able to.  And now, women don’t have to wait until they are 21.  I imagine a lot more women will be going on missions now.

When I was 18 and a freshman at BYU, my friend Aaron and I hiked to the Y on one of our first nights in Provo.  It was our first time living away from home and we talked a lot about the changes in our lives and how much we wanted to go on missions.  We both expressed that we didn’t want to wait until we were 19, we wanted to go right then.  I was really impatient and didn't want to have to wait any longer.  I felt ready for the challenge of a mission and couldn't wait to go.  Had I been allowed to leave when I was 18 I would have, but I had to wait six more months.  And now, those boys who are anxious to go out and serve don’t have to wait.  It’s so awesome.

This policy change is going to be an enormous blessing to the young people who serve missions and to the people of the world who will be taught by them.  I cried because this felt so right.  The army of Helaman (who missionaries are often compared to) has always been young, but it just got a little younger, and I imagine it’s going to grow a lot, too.  Today was a great day for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and I’m pumped for the final two sessions of conference tomorrow.

The Morales family.  They are very happy people,
I promise.  Mexicans often don't make cheesy
smiles in pictures like Americans do.

Note: I was going to add a picture from my mission, but I realized that I don't have any digital copies of my mission pictures (that's right, I had an old fashioned camera back then).  So here's a picture from when I went back to visit my mission in 2009.  This is the Morales family, some of my favorite people in the whole world.  

Backyard Bleating

My backyard is not landscaped at all.  Kevin, my roommate and landlord, isn’t interested in doing anything with it so it just sits there, growing weeds.  Since we live in the desert it’s mostly just dirt, but a large amount of grass has grown up around the edge of the porch.  Kevin cut it all down with a weed eater once, but then it grew back (as grass is wont to do).  The solution to growing grass?  Get a goat.

The offensively tall grass

Kevin's friend Luis recently bought a goat to eat the weeds in his backyard and keep the grass trimmed.  I’ve been to Luis’s house and the goat does a pretty stellar job.  The grass in our backyard has gotten pretty tall and Kevin didn’t want to cut it again so Luis offered to lend us his goat. 

I thought the whole idea of getting a goat was pretty silly since it would only take a few minutes to weed eat the grass, but I don’t own the house so I went along with it.  Once we got the goat, however, I was completely in favor of it.  Luis’s goat is a pygmy goat so he’s small, about the size of a dog, which makes him look very adorable.  I also enjoy looking out the kitchen window and watching him stare at me while he endlessly chews in a circular motion with grass hanging out of his mouth.  He really, really wants to come in the house and tries to follow us in every time we leave the backyard.  Yesterday after Kevin and I both came in he got up on his hind legs and started scratching at the doorknob.  My greatest fear is being realized, he’s learning how to open doors just like the raptors in Jurassic Park did. 

Here he is, eating the grass like a good little goat

He doesn't have a name, but I call him Plutarco
(it's an old Mexican name and it suits him)

The goat and I have become pretty good friends.  He spends all day alone in the backyard so I go out and pet him at least once a day.  He seems to really like me and follows me everywhere I go.  I exploit this for my own amusement.  Since I know he’s going to follow me I purposely walk over things that I know he’ll have to jump over because I like to see him jump.  A typical afternoon in the backyard includes me jumping over the tall grass, followed by the goat jumping over the grass, followed by me jumping back over the grass, followed by the goat jumping back over the grass, etc.  I wish I could say that we usually play this game until I get bored of it, but we usually play until the goat gets bored of it.

Just a friend coming to say hello

Today as I was trying to feed a handful of grass I had just picked to the goat, the thought came to my mind that my life is starting to resemble a foreign film.  The kind of movie where something quirky and unexpected happens to the protagonist, but there really is no story line or point to the film -- just a dude hanging out with a goat.

On a non-goat related note, we spent a few hours on Saturday "landscaping" the front yard with rocks.  Before the front yard had a wooden fence, a lot of dirt, and a fair number of weeds.  It reminded me of the wild west.  Now our yard is just rocks and while it looks cleaner, I can't help but think that it looks like a parking lot at corn maze.

Here's what the yard looked like before (looking from the porch)

Here's what it looks like now (looking from the street)

My Only Hope

Last Wednesday I was nominated for a position in SLATSA, my program’s student association.  I don’t know who nominated me or why, but it was a flattering surprise.  The position mostly involved fundraising and writing grant proposal which not only do I have zero experience in, but they don’t seem very fun either.  I emailed the SLATSA president and told him that I didn’t think I was the ideal candidate due to my lack of experience, but he told me to accept the nomination anyway.  So I did, but mostly because I don’t have a job and I need some way to support Thai food eating habit. 

Now that I was nominated I just had to win the election to get the position.  On Thursday I got the same email that everyone in my program received telling us how to vote.  The voting process involved six steps (including making a login name and password) and I wasn’t feeling up to the complicated voting procedure at the time so I put the email in my procrastination file (that means that I starred it for later). 

On Friday mornings I have a three hour long class with all the first years in my program.  We have a break in the middle of class that usually involves cookies.  As soon as the break started I stood up and exclaimed, “I love cookies so much!” as I walked to the cookie table.  While chomping down on my second or third cookie Hope walked up to me and said, “So I guess this is where we both wish each other luck on the election.”  I said, “Oh, you’re running, too?”  (I would have figured that out if I had already voted).  We chatted briefly about the position and it turns out that she didn’t feel super-qualified for it either. 

One of my friends in the class overheard my conversation with Hope and asked me why I was applying for the position.  I said, “I just need a way to earn some money,” to which he replied, “You do realize that it isn’t a paid job?”  No, actually, I hadn’t realized that.  You see, there was a different position on a different student council that was paid and I had gotten the two mixed up and had somehow agreed to do something that I didn’t want to do for free (and I wasn’t really that thrilled to do it for $12 an hour either).  I allowed myself to briefly feel like an idiot.

Newly infused with the power of three cookies and worried that I might have to do extra work for free, I came up with a plan to not win the election.  In all honesty, I probably didn’t need a plan because Hope is a phenomenal student and well liked by everyone and probably would have won anyway, but I came up with a plan nonetheless.  Hope was now my only hope of getting out of doing more work for zero dollars.  Our program isn’t super-big and considering the cumbersome voting process I assumed that few people would vote.  This meant that not winning would be easy.  Instead of giving my full attention to the lecture I took a few minutes to vote for Hope and then emailed Josh and told him to vote for Hope, too, which he did.  I assumed (and hoped) that those two votes would be enough to lose.  Later that night I received the following the email: “CONGRATULATIONS to HOPE for winning the position and thank you all for your support and participation." I was relieved, very relieved.  And plus, Hope will do a great job and it will look great on her resume and I can spend more time watching House Hunters International.  There was Hope for me.  Indeed, there is Hope for us all.   

O Remember, Remember

One of my greatest regrets is that I didn't keep a better journal while I was on my mission in Mexico.  I did well at the beginning, but I got so busy that I decided I didn't have the time to write and so I stopped (I know, I know, I'm an idiot).  A few years later I was reading through my mission journal and I was surprised (and rather saddened) by how many experiences I had recorded that I had forgotten about entirely.  There were people that I named that I had no recollection of, but who at the time were important enough that I wrote about them.

Since that day I have thought a lot about forgetting.  I've heard people claim to have good memories, but the truth is that they don't know if they have good memories or not because no one can know what they've forgotten.  Around this time I heard a talk by Elder Eyring in which he urged us to write about how we saw the hand of God in our lives each day.  As a result of that talk I committed to write in my journal every day and I've been a faithful record keeper ever since.  I started out thinking that some day my children or grandchildren would be interested in reading about my life, but I've come to see that I'm the one who truly benefits.

Before I moved to Arizona I knew it would be hard at first and it has been hard, but it's been hard in different ways than I had expected.  A few days ago I was hit with some particularly bad news and I was feeling pretty down.  I decided to flip through one of my old journals and I found some entries that I had completely forgotten about that I had written when I was a camp counselor at EFY.  Remembering these experiences completely changed my mood from feeling sorry for myself to being grateful.  Maybe they won't mean anything to you because you didn't live these experiences, but they were poignant reminders to me.  Here are some out of context snippets from those entries:


8 June 2010, Tuesday
One thing that I want to remember is the dance competition from today.  About a dozen people danced in front of the entire session one at a time and we clapped for them.  The person that got the most applause won.  An autistic kid named Brad participated and he was really into his dance, but it wasn’t anything special.  For the first time I can remember I felt the Spirit at a dance because Brad got more cheers and applause than any other person.  The joy and excitement shone on his face.  I’m grateful for the amazing youth that made an autistic boy’s day by cheering and clapping for him and making him the dance competition winner.  

9 June 2010, Wednesday
I forgot to mention two things from the dance last night.  First, during a slow dance I asked a short, timid-looking girl to dance.  I had been dancing a lot that night and I was sweating pretty profusely and during the slow dance a mixture of sweat and sunscreen got into my eye.  My eye, being a very wise eye, started watering like crazy and I had to keep wiping tears off of my face.  It was a little embarrassing. 
When I was working at the water table a group of four girls came up to the table and one of them announced that she hadn’t been asked to dance all night.  I told her that it was probably because she was too pretty and the guys were intimidated by her beauty.  Her friend then gave me a high five.  Later that night I found that girl and asked her to dance.

Some of my EFY kids waiting for
something exciting to happen.

17 June 2010, Thursday
During the variety show today a blind girl named Erin Nightingale played a song she wrote on the piano.  I was blown away by how beautiful it was.  At the end the crowd gave her a standing ovation that she couldn’t see, but that we all felt.  
Tonight was the musical fireside and I was really nervous because I know how uplifting it can be and I was worried that my kids wouldn’t prepare themselves for it.  They did a great job being reverent and really felt the Spirit.  Before the program I was talking with Hayley, the only person from our group in the program, and she was saying that very few people were in the choir.  I told her not to worry, that angels would sing with them.  And they did.  

This next entry was after EFY when I was teaching Spanish at BYU.  I think the reason this entry touched me so much is that it's nice when others tell you that everything will be okay, but it's better to hear it from from yourself (well, a younger version of yourself).

29 June 2010, Tuesday

Squaw Peak -- my favorite hike in Provo

I was feeling a little depressed today with my lot in life so I decided to hike Squaw Peak to clear my head.  The hike up was tough and it was hot, but I was pretty much the only person on the trail so I had a lot of time to think.  The first song I listened to on my iPod was “I Know Heavenly Father Loves Me.”  And I felt very grateful because I really do know that He loves me.  It’s easy to forget how blessed we are and I think I’ve been forgetting too much lately.  It was nice to take some time to think and realize that despite my circumstances everything will be okay.  I know that everything will work out.  

More than sappy things, I try to record the funny things that happen.  Here's something funny (well, I think it's funny) that I wrote that I had completely forgotten about until I read it a few days ago.

14 March 2011, Monday
Today was Pi day so we wrote Pi-kus for FHE.  The first line has 3 syllable, the next has one, and the last has four (3.14).  Here are my two Pi-kus:
Benjamin 
Is 
My first name, yo!

I don’t bake
But
Girls bake real good 

It was really great to reminisce and remember.  I really needed to read these entries and I'm glad that I wrote them.  Journals are way rad!

Labor Day Adventure

It's taller than me

On Labor Day 2011 I embarked on a 720 mile journey to begin were I had started. You can read about it here. This Labor Day I had another unexpected adventure.

Danielle and Amy invited me to go on a Labor Day hike with them to a place called Romero Pools north of Tucson. I brought my roommate Kevin along, but didn’t know the other nine people that went on the hike. Even though we left early in the morning it was incredibly hot. The hike was beautiful and I finally got the cliché picture that every non-Arizonan needs of hugging a cactus.  I've seen a lot of these pictures and typically the person "hugging" the cactus isn't even touching it.  I made sure to give my cactus a real hug.

Amy jumping in the water

There were a lot of people at the pools and we had a blast jumping from 20 foot ledges into the water and swimming around. While we were hanging out in one of the pools I stepped on something that felt unnaturally smooth. I pulled it out of the water and was surprised to see that it was a waterproof camera. The screen said, “Memory card full,” and the only thing on the camera was a 52 minute video. I played the video and it showed a guy yelling, “Anything is possible!” and then jumping 20 feet into the water with camera in hand which he promptly dropped on impact (that’s why it’s import to fasten the strap around your wrist). The camera kept recording and I could see the guy looking for the camera. He got really close a few times, but never found it. I asked a few people if it belonged to them, but no one claimed it. Not too much of a surprise considering it’d been at the bottom of a murky pool for more than an hour. I am now the owner of a Kodak underwater camera that I really have no use for.

You can barely see Donald and Charity in the back.
At this point we had no idea Donald was hurt.

The results of scouting (the stretcher, not the shirtless men)

After hanging out at the pools for about an hour we decided to head out. That’s when we noticed that Donald could barely walk. I have to admit that up to this point I’d never said a word to Donald or his girlfriend Charity. Apparently right we when arrived at the pools Donald accidently slipped down a rock and fell 10 feet. We didn’t know this at the time, but he had broken one ankle and sprained the other. Since we thought he had only twisted his ankle we decided to walk the three miles back to our cars (really didn't have any other choices). With much effort and with the help of the strong guys in the group (myself not included) Donald made it about a quarter of a mile. He couldn’t go any further and we realized we were in real trouble. The Eagle Scouts in the group (once again, myself not included) fashioned a stretcher for him out of the trunks of two century plants and our t-shirts. It was pretty ingenious. However, the narrow trail and extreme heat quickly convinced us that we weren’t going to make it back. We made it about 100 yards then camped out under a tree.

Charity called the park services and they said they were sending someone up who would be there in about an hour. We were expecting someone to come up with a real stretcher so we could carry Donald down the mountain. An hour and forty minutes later a sheriff (I think that’s who he said he was) showed up with a medic. The medic hung an IV bag from the tree were sitting under and gave Donald some morphine. And then he said that a helicopter would be coming soon to pick him up and take him to the hospital. Now, you’ve got to understand that it’s pretty hard to break the spirits of 13 Mormons and even though we were in the midst of a tragedy we had a pretty good time hanging out under that tree (except for Donald, of course, who was in excruciating pain). And when we saw a helicopter show up, circle around us, and then land on hill close to us you’d think it was Christmas morning.  It was pretty cool.

Christmas morning

They loaded Donald up on the chopper and whisked him off to safety.  The helicopter wasn't super-wide and we could see Donald's legs hanging out the door as they flew away.  As soon as Donald was gone Charity bolted off down the hill so she could meet him at the hospital. That left the 11 of us with nothing to whisk us away and we had some problems of our own. We had planned on a three hour hike and had now been gone for nearly seven hours. I thought I had been smart taking two liters of water, but my water and everyone else’s was gone. As we started to trek down the mountain we encountered volunteers with backpacks full of cold water and Gatorade who were there just to help us. I quickly downed a few bottles of water and felt very refreshed, but then more and more volunteers showed up offering us water. I started to politely decline the water only to be told, “Don’t make me carry this back down the mountain!” So I took the water with a grateful smile and just stuffed it in my backpack. I ended up drinking six or seven bottles and had four in my backpack. They brought A LOT of water.

"Let's pretend like we're friends." -Amy Flood

When we got to the trail head we saw a news truck, ambulances, and fire trucks, all for us. It was a bit overwhelming and a little unnecessary, but they just wanted to make sure we were all okay. They took everyone’s vitals and I had low blood pressure (97 over 70), but I felt fine. They told me to drink more water. Mostly, I was just hungry. I had expected to be home at noon at it was now 5pm and all I’d eaten that day was a bowl of cereal and a granola bar. I counted over 50 people including medics, parks service people, and volunteers who had helped us that day. I had not realized that we were such a big deal. There was even a story about us on the news.  Here's a link to the news story.  However, in classic news fashion the story had one glaring error.  The reporter said that Donald jumped into shallow water, but he had fallen not jumped and he didn't even land in water.  The story makes us seem like careless people when in reality we are carefree people.

Also, after four years of blogging I just learned how to add captions to my photos.  Yes, I'm that tech-savy.