Hiatus is a good word

So following my recent resolution to not be a bum, life has been great.  I'm on track to get A's in all my classes.  I read the unabridged Count of Monte Cristo, sleep has improved slightly (although I definitely stayed up until 2:30 one night finishing my book when I had to wake up at 9), I bought a piano, I've even been writing in my journal consistently, which is wonderful but has a noticeable negative impact on my blogging; this is sad, because a lot of noteworthy things have happened to me over the past month or so.  For example:

I got stitches.  I've recently commented several times on how, despite my best efforts, I've never seriously injured myself while on a bike.  This is surprising not just because of how much time I spend on bikes, but more how often I've injured myself doing other reasonably safe things things (i.e. - snowboarding, playing hide-and-seek, jumping on couches, going in the backyard, jumping off of playground equipment, playing baseball in the backyard, all of these together have accounted for three broken bones, two lost teeth, a few stitches, and a nail in my foot.)  So I've decided that biking is the right outlet for adventure.  Incidentally, Provo's winter has been surprisingly mild so far, with mostly warm sunny days and still no real snow, but the friday before thanksgiving it finally snowed.  I walked out from work with the whole friday night ahead of me to find beautiful, picturesque snow flakes falling gently on the MTC.  Some of the missionaries around were running around playing in it and taking pictures, and I thought I ought to go home, find some people, and go sledding or something like that.  So I hop on my bike as I'm leaving I think, "This could be dangerous, maybe i should take my mountain bike [which was coincidentally at the MTC also] so as to avoid slipping"  But then I figured the roads would be fine, they're only wet, and my road bike does fine on wet roads.  So I head off, and as I start heading down hill I realize that snow, while beautiful, is sort of a hassle when it flies into your eyes at twenty miles an hour.  So I decided the best thing to do would be to keep my head down, glancing up occasionally to make sure I was on track.  There's a nice bike lane all the way down the hill, and there was really no reason to worry, so off I went.  As I was cruising down the hill, I noticed I was gathering a comical amount of snow on the front of my jacket and pants.  It was about this moment that I hit something surprisingly solid.  As I was flying over the handle bars of my bike I thought to myself, "Why is there a car in the bike lane??  How dare they!?" I might have had other thoughts as I was sailing over the car, but they didn't quite stick, and very shortly after I was picking myself up off the road, slightly dazed.  I looked back to see some cars coming, so I grabbed my bike and pulled it to the side of the road, noticing the my front tire was still back by the car, and I was worried it was going to get run over.  Some people ran over and asked me if I was ok.  As far as I could tell I was, although I was having a little trouble standing, so I leaned on the guy for support.  They told me I was bleeding a lot, and my mouth hurt, but I was happy to discover that I still had all my teeth and nothing was broken.  The first thing I asked was if my bike was ok, and they said the fork was broken.  A guy had me sit down in his car, while he called 911.  A little bit afterwards I saw a firetruck pull up, I remember saying that that was lucky, in case my bike caught on fire (I said this sarcastically, not deliriously).  Anyway, so then I hopped into the ambulance and the guy was checking that I was ok.  Everyone I talked to had about the same conversation with me,

My bike(s), the day after

"How's it going?"
"So you're coming down from the MTC?  What do you teach there?"
"That's cool, I know so and so who is somehow related to missionary work"

The ambulance guy also asked me some concussion related questions, like "do you know what the date is?"  I didn't, but I'm pretty sure I couldn't have told him the date before crashing either, I did know it was friday, and I was still planning to swing by the hospital, grab some stitches, and get on with my life.   So eventually we got to the hospital, they checked me out, gave me a cat scan (turns out my now was broken too) and cleaned me up.  They put some lidocane on me to numb it up a bit, and then gave me shots to numb it some more in preparation for stitches.  Then I waited for two hours.  Then the doctor finally was free, and so he came by, but by then I was no longer numb, so they had to give me some more shots of lidocane. I'm not sure if you've ever had a needle in your lip (I hadn't) but it is quite possibly one of the most painful experiences possible.  Easily the most painful thing that's ever happened to me.  So then i got stitches and then I went home.

My face, the day after

So that was exciting, I still feel fairly fortunate to be alive and without any serious, permanent damage (I wasn't wearing a helmet, although my beanie was fairly thick), my bike is in the shop and should be good as new on saturday.  I talked to the owner of the car and she's not making me pay for anything, and it turns out she's roommates with someone from my mission, that's provo for you.

Other than that, Thanksgiving happened, that was nice.   I got my stitches out and went up to Logan to Lisa and Vic's house, I learned to drive stick shift, one more step towards becoming a man, I did all sorts of school things, made all sorts of exciting foods, carved a turkey, dissected a pig, got lots off pity, and had an all around good time.


Now I need to stop putting off my school stuff so that I can make good grades so that next year I don't have to pay for college, so that I can support my extravagant lifestyle of wrecking bikes and buying pianos.

For Posterity

I just realized i completely forgot to write down one of the more interesting things that's happened to me recently. So I went cross country skiing with Lindsey, Kevin, and his then girlfriend Ann. We went up in Big Springs Hollow, which is advertised as a nice easy trek across a 'winter wonderland'. Having never been there before, and the directions being somewhat sketchy, I think we got there with an impressive lack of trouble. It was a beautiful day, but we were just a tiny bit late getting out. Between the four of us, I had the only cross country skiing experience, having been once before. So it definitely wasn't the most expert of adventures. However we were all in good spirits as we started skiing up hill. We got to a beautiful meadow just as the sun was getting behind the mountains, as as we continued our climb, it continued to get a bit darker. We finally reached the peak and started our descent, and some of us, notably lindsey, were starting to get concerned about the lack of light. As we arrived in the second meadow, it was getting pretty hard to see. By then, all of us had fallen down several times, and we were tired. We skiid across the meadow, and the trail sort of split up into a bunch of different trails, some disappearing into the bushes, others going across the meadow, in one direction, others heading the other direction. After skiing around quite a bit, we realized we were lost. in the dark. In the mountains. in the snow.

I say we were lost, that's not exactly accurate. I knew exactly where we were, and where we'd been, I just wasn't sure where we were going, or how to get there. The trail made a giant loop, so we decided we should just turn around and go back the way we came. I say we decided. It would be more accurate to say that everyone else decided and despite my obsessive desire to get us found, I had to concede that i didn't know which direction to go and it would be a lot safer to turn around.

So we began our climb back up hill, which wasn't so terrible, although it was, by then, pitch dark and freezing cold. Kevin and Ann got the worst of it, since they didn't have snow pants, and kevin had given his gloves to Ann. Things only got worse when we started going down hill. It turns out, without light, it's pretty difficult to not fall down, especially as you pick up speed. After falling down several times, we decided it would probably be best to walk. So our cross country skiing adventure ended with us carrying our skis across a snowy meadow, which by then felt a lot more like a freezing wasteland than a winter wonderland, and back to the car. Kevin's hands were basically completely frozen, and he and ann were understandably miserable.

I have to say, I had a great time. I don't think it counts as an adventure unless you get lost and have to end up walking home in the dark and several people leave with hurt feelings. The mountains at night in the winter are so absurdly quiet and peaceful, I honestly didn't mind staying a little longer than I'd planned.

Afterwards I looked at the map (that we had wisely not brought with us) and we were so close. I was about 15 feet away from the trail that would have gotten us home in about 15 minutes, before i missed it and we eventually turned back and soldiered on for another hour or so. I didn't know that at the time, of course, and actually thought we needed to go in a completely wrong direction. Someday i'd like to go back there and not get lost, but that'll have to wait, at least until i find more people who will unwisely trust my sense of direction.

So that was fun. In other news, life goes on. I officially switched to a biology major, it sort of feels like I changed who I am. when i introduce myself people will no longer say, "wow, you're good at math!" they'll say, "cool, so do you want to become a doctor?" and i'll kindly tell them "no, i'm going to be poor."