Now I told you about the frustrating experience of riding the alpine slide for the first time. Now I want to tell you about yesterdays experience.

My whole family was at Park City yesterday to ride the alpine slide. My older brother, now married, was there and we reminisced of our first time down the slide when the old lady made us go super slow the whole way down. We were determined to now make the same mistake again this time. Now the slide costs $11 instead of only $5, so obviously we weren't going to waste it.

We got on the lift and headed up just like we did years ago. We grabbed our sleds and walked off to get in the line to go down. We looked at everyone in line and tried to pick the one with the faster people in them. I got in line behind a middle aged man who seemed like the type of guy who would be a fast rider. We sat down in our sleds and inched our way to the starting gate. Suddenly I noticed that he had a little toddler on his lap. He all of a sudden became a potential slow guy. I couldn't believe it. I thought, "Its not that bad. Ill just wait for a few minutes at the top and give him plenty of time to get to the bottom."

So I sat there and waited for about four or five minutes. Finally I decided to go, assuming the guy in front of me had enough time to get down the hill. I pushed forward on that lever to make me go as fast as I could. I zoomed down the slide not holding back at all. I had even decided before hand that I would go as fast as I could even if I went so fast that I fell off the track and go hurt. I flew off the drop off and caught a little air. I was having a blast.

Then, about three fourths of the way down, I caught up to the guy in front of me, and sure enough, he was going slower than molasses on a witches lip on a cold night. I couldn't believe it. Both times I try to go down this stupid slide, someone has to be slow and ruin it for me. I just stopped and waited for him to get down the hill. I was going to wait so I could enjoy the end of my ride.

I only waited a few seconds when I could hear my brother coming down behind me. I didn't want to make him wait so I took off again. In no time I was caught up with Mr. Slowman and was now sandwiched in between him and my brother. There was no going fast, and there was no waiting so I could go fast. I had to just take it.

So once again I was doomed to endure a partially slow alpine slide ride and will have to continue to imagine what it must be like to ride fast down the whole thing.

My family has been out here visiting for the last couple days. We've been getting together and doing things almost everyday. Yesterday was a holiday for pioneer day and we decided to go up to Park City and go down the alpine slide. The last time I went down the alpine slide was when I was like 8 years old. I can clearly remember it. That was back when it only cost $5 to go down. My brother and I went the first time and we were a little hesitant to go very fast, but we still had a lot of fun. When we got down to the bottom we both wanted to go again. My parents weren't the wealthiest of people and our mom told us that if we wanted to go again, we would have to spend our own money. Well after some careful consideration, both my brother and I decided to use our own money to go down the slide again. Now $5 back then was also like a months worth of money to an 8 year old, so we really thought it was worth it.

All the way up the lift we talked about our plan to go super fast down the slide. We were even going to try to get some air off of the little drop offs that were on the track. To say the least we were excited and determined to get our moneys worth.

We got our sleds and stood in the line at the top to wait our turn to go down. In front of me was a nice little old lady. When she took off she didn't seem very excited to go fast. I thought, "Man, I'm gonna go SO much faster than her, and I'm only eight." The slide attendant made me wait for a few minutes and then gave me the okay to go.

I took off and started to pick up some real speed. I was going much faster now than I was the first time. I took the corners so fast and thought about how worth it it was to have paid my own $5 to go down one more time. As I was thinking this I was about one third of the way down the track. And suddenly I came up really fast on the little old lady who was going at a snails pace. I didn't know what to do. I was only eight and wasn't sure if it was appropriate to tell the lady to hurry up. I just followed her the rest of the way down at her sluggish pace. I was upset and confused at the same time. I didn't know what to do. My hard earned $5 was practically wasted because of some overly cautious granny. What made it worse was that my older brother caught up to us about half of the way down and was yelling at me to go faster when I couldn't.

We got down to the end of the track where our parents were waiting smiling at us. They asked how it was, and I couldn't help but cry as I explained my frustration caused by the little old slow lady who apparently cared nothing about my huge sacrifice of money to ride the coveted alpine slide.

A mission is a wonderful thing. For two years you have the chance to go to another place and teach people who you would have never met had you not served a mission. You get to work with a companion and have wonderful experiences with them. You also get to associate with many many other young missionaries like yourself. Two years go by quickly and you soon find yourself back in the real world. You go about your business for a while, and then sooner or later, especially when you live in Utah, you have the chance to go to a mission reunion.

This weekend I had the chance to drive up to Rexburg, Idaho to our mission reunion. We had part of the reunion in a little neighboring town called Rigby. What was ironic was that I served in Rigby for two months while waiting for my visa to go to Venezuela. It was so much fun to drive up the highway seeing all the little towns that I recognized and then going around Rigby to all the places that were familiar to me. Although I couldn't remember a single person who lived there, I still had fun just seeing the town.

It was very nice to see all the old mission buddies of mine at the reunion. Some of them were married and had brought their wives, and others were just recently returned from the field. We spent the whole weekend catching up and filling each other in on what we were doing with our lives. Most of us were going to school. Others were perusing a career, while others weren't doing anything yet. It made me feel good to see all those people in real life situations where they weren't missionaries. I felt like we were really friends.

Sometimes I really regret staying up all night and having to get up early to do real things. Its so hard sometimes to just go to bed. Its especially hard when everyone around you is up and doing fun things. Last night our apartment complex had a movie at the pool night. My roommate Josh was in charge of the sound system. I could tell that he wanted me to be there to help him if he needed it. I knew I needed to do some homework first, so I went inside to do it. I started working, and just then my friend Shawn came over wanting to do something. I was already getting some pressure from Josh to come hang out, and now Shawn wanted me to come chill. It was more than I could bare. I put my things to the side and went out to watch Pirates of the Carabean with all my friends. It was fun, but because I knew I would have to stay up and finish my homework still, I didn't enjoy it as much as I would have liked to.

When the movie was finished, I helped Josh clean up all his sound equiptment. After it was all taken down and put in the house, I resumed my homework. Josh came in a few minutes later and told me that he was going to invite a girl over to watch a movie and that she was going to bring a friend. He said that he would appreciate it if I could sort of be the date of the friend so that she didn't feel uncomfortable. I told him to go get them and I would hurry and finish my homework.

I had finished most of it when they showed up. The friend was pretty cute, so naturally I was inclined to stay up and keep her company. I knew I should just go to bed but I couldn't just leave. Knowing that I would regret this decision in the morning, I decided to stay up with all of them. We watch the Incredibles. It was a good wholesome movie. I good one to watch if you are going to watch a movie late at night. When it was over I looked at the clock and sure enough, I was only going to get a couple of hours of sleep before I had to wake up the next morning. We wished I wouldn't have stayed up.

Some things are not worth the effort. Last night I was invited to a bonfire by one of my friends. She supposedly had everything taken care of or so I thought. I told her to come over to our house whenever they were ready and we would go from there. They came over like 20 min later, which was a lot sooner than I thought, but it was okay. It was 9:00. My roommate and I were eating some dinner. We ate and I was ready to go. When we were done, we sat around for a little bit waiting for our other friend Chad to come. In the mean time I went outside and taught one of the girls how to longboard. When we came back my roommate Josh was just leaving. He had invited some other girls to come with us and was going to pick them up. My young student and I continued to skate. We assumed that things were getting taken care of in our absence. After a while, we noticed that we had been skating for a long time. We went back into the house and saw that everyone was still there and no one seemed to be hustling things along. Josh was still gone. I knew I had some homework to do still and didn't want to be out all night. I wondered who was in charge of this bonfire. I asked my friend who had invited me to it in the first place and she didn't know what was going on. I thought there were people already up in the canyon having it and we just had to show up. I was wrong. We were the only ones who were going up and we still had to get firewood and everything. By the time I realized this it was already 11:30. "Alright," I said. "Lets go. Josh is taking too long. He'll have to just come up on his own."

Slowly everyone started taking me seriously and got up and followed me outside to the parking lot. I called Josh, and he said he was on his way. He got there, but then all of a sudden the girls who invited me had to wait for one of their friends. When they got there all of a sudden no one wanted to go up there and have a bonfire. I wasn't going to let this gathering go to waste, so I suggested that we go up to Rock Canyon Park and play some night games. After some debate, that's what we decided to do.

Once we got up there it was already 12:00. We got out of the cars, and everyone seemed to just stand there. "Okay, lets go," I said.

"We're waiting for another friend," one of the girls said.

"Well they can just come down and find us when they get here. Let's go," I replied.

"No, we want to wait for her."

I had had it. Everyone was being a bunch of wieners. This wasn't even my show, and I was bustin my butt trying to hustle everyone into doing something; anything. Finally I sat down and just enjoyed the view from the canyon. I wasn't going to do anymore. As I suspected everyone just lost interest and wanted to go home. I was okay with that, because I had homework to do.

So we went home and the whole activity was a flop. I did my homework and went to bed. As I lay there, I thought, "some things are just not worth the effort."

So last night we had a long discussion on the booting process of Provo. We all disagreed about the way that they did it. Here are our main arguments:

1. We are poor college students and really can't afford a $50-$75 fine to take off a boot so we can go home.
2. Especially in the Spring/Summer terms at BYU there is more than enough parking space for every complex. Booting because of not having a parking sticker in a lot that has more than enough space to park in seems very unethical.
3. The appeals process is ridiculous. You have to appeal to the same company who gave you the boot. They are obviously not going to void any fine because they themselves would loose money. The appeals should be taken care of by a third party.

The rest of the conversation was all about how we hated the system and that it was so unethical. We pointed out that the city of Provo said about six months ago that they were going to change the policy but then never did, and that it was a shady thing because the city makes money off of the boots too.

We talked about the different things that we could do to change the way things work. Someone suggested that we find out who all the workers are who give the boots and exploit them by taking pictures of them and posting their info on the internet or something. Then someone pointed out that it had already been done and the company sued the person for violation of privacy. We also talked about buying a boot and when we saw a booting guy booting, we would run up and boot his car and tell him to pay us to take it off. We talked about petitioning at city hall and getting some celebrities to come endorse our efforts, but that would require a lot of angry people and most people just don't care that much.

We talked about a lot of other ways we could get back at the booting industry, but all of our ideas were not realistic. It seems like our only hope is one man who lives in Provo, but is suing the companies up in northern Utah in a federal court. If he wins then he will sue down here and will win here. If that happens then we may see a change of policy on booting.

Im going to vent a little right now.

I have a friend who is involved with this girl. They met, and hit it off really well so they started to date a litte. They were both on the rebound but they still liked eachother. My friend very quickly wanted to take the relationship to the next step and become an exclusive item. She on the other hand wanted to take it really slow. Well my friend still wanted to move forward so, his idea was to show her that he was a real man, and was everything she would ever want in a guy. He would bring her flowers and leave notes on her car, and do all kinds of other "nice" things for her. He basicly threw himself at her and would be at her beckon call.

She on the other hand still wanted to take things slow, and didn't want to commit to a relationship. She wanted to date other people. My friend couln't figure out why she wanted that when she would say that she liked him.

It seemed like every time they were together they were having a DTR (define the relationship) talk and when he would tell me about what they talked about, it seemed to me to be the same thing each time.

After weeks of this I finally started to tell him that it wasn't worth all the trouble to deal with this girl that gave him nothing but grief. He would agree and think about it, but then he would say things like, "I just don't want to be the dick."

I would tell him that there is nothing wrong with telling a girl that its just not working out and leaving her. I don't know. Hes out there right now talking with her, and Im sure I could tell you what they're saying and its rediculous.

So this weekend was the 4th of July. All weekend my friends and I just did patriotic craziness. On Friday we started the weekend with dinner at Joes Crab Shack. There we just rocked out to music that they played. When we were done there we went to the carnival that was going on in downtown prove. There we got in touch with our hippie roots as we danced to the band that was playing. We also looked at some quality swords that were being sold at a very fair price. Unfortunately I didn't have any money, or I would have bought a pirate sword to go pillaging with.

The carnival ended and we were the last ones to leave. We headed home to take a break. When we got there we found that someone had come into our house and decorated it with toilet paper and oreo cookies all over the walls and countertops. That didn't ruin the night at all. Instead of getting mad like we would have done, we turned up some good ole' Neal Diamond and rocked out to 'Coming to America' while we had a cereal fight. After that was done, we cleaned up everything. The funny thing was that later we found out that the people who decorated the apartment did it for our other room mates that weren't there. They didn't even get to see what was done. Instead we saw it and cleaned it all up.

Neal got us in the patriotic crazy mood, so we all dressed up in red white and blue, and went to a hip-hop club where there were a lot of gangsters. We mixed and mingled with the best of them. We turned it into hip-hop hippie dancing. It was original. That concluded our fantastic Friday night.

Saturday was fun too. I played sand volleyball for a couple of hours and then went longboarding down the prove canyon. Despite the road rash I got, I had a lot of fun.

Our plan that night was to set up a bunch of blankets and watch the Stadium of Fire fireworks show. We invited everyone we knew and bought a bunch of drinks and snacks, got the love sack and the PA system and set up shop on the grassy corner. All night we blasted patriotic music and danced. No one really held back. We all had a good time. For a while I manned the video camera and got some good footage of passer-by-ers dancing to our music. I even filmed the cop who came over to tell us to turn our music up. He wanted to hear it. That was fun.

This went on all night. Even after we cleaned up everything and went home, the party continued.

On Sunday, we enjoyed a little worship service. That night we camped out downtown so we could get a good seat for the parade the next day. That night was long. No one went to bed. Instead they let off fireworks and an occasional bomb that would wake any sleeping campers up. I got maybe one hour of sleep. In the morning we watched the parade and enjoyed all the "famous" who floated by and waved at us.

That afternoon was filled up with a nice nap. In the evening I went up to Sugarhouse park to watch the firework show with my little sister and older brother and sister-in-law. That was nice. I was quite impressed. It was a nice way to end the patriotic celebration.