Unicycling

Okay, so I don't normally post many blogs when I'm just in St. George, but I want you guys to know that I do actually do stuff here, and I also try to document it when I remember. 

I went unicycling!! I haven't been in years but I had been meaning to (to improve my balance), plus my friend Melanie wanted to try it so it worked out perfectly

When you're first learning it really helps to use canes to assist you in balancing. 

But pretty soon I was just riding without them!! : D

I seriously couldn't believe it!! I guess riding a unicycle is just like riding a bike. haha. Except I don't remember even being this good. haha. Okay, maybe, but seriously, it was a way long time ago. 

Melanie was doing great too, although she was unable to ride without anything this time. I'm sure we'll go again some other time and I'll add a photo of her riding without assistance right here:

[insert photo of Melanie bunny-hopping a unicycle here]

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner

I've been meaning to blog about this because we actually went and saw the dreamliner a long time ago, way back when it was being developed and we were visiting seattle.

That's so far back that I don't even think we were on facebook yet (which I guess really isn't that far since I can't find much before 2008 on our facebook profiles).

I finally got a chance to ride a 787 Dreamliner on my last flight to China!

Boeing describes the 787 as being a "superefficient" airplane with "exceptional performance" a "suite of new technologies" and a "revolutionary design."

I'm the first one in my family to fly on a 787, and probably the first of nearly all my friends to fly on one, so here's my take on it:

Pros
It's brand new - everything is clean and works!

Windows - 65% larger, and they have a "dimmer" which is awesome. Basically you can dim your window so it's dark, but you can still see out of it. I thought this was really cool at first because you actually have the feeling that you're on a plane (because you can see the clouds outside) and you're flying the whole time, instead of just during takeoff and landing (after which you usually close your window shade).

Humidity and altitude - The cabin is pressurized to 6,000 feet, over 2,000 feet lower than any other commercial plane. That's just a few hundred feet higher altitude than Denver.
Humidity is almost twice as high as a normal plane.

Cons
Window dimmer - even though it seemed cool at first, if the sun is directly in your eyes it's still annoying. On a flight to China you are basically chasing the sun, so I had it in my eyes for enough of the flight to make it a nuisance.

Overall, I loved it! I didn't really realize how much of a difference the altitude and humidity made until my next time on a normal plane and could notice that I was considerably more uncomfortable.

I was in United's "businessfirst" cabin, so I didn't get a chance to check out the cool new seats in coach...but I'm okay with that.

As a bonus, I got two free souvenirs! A 787 deck of cards and a 787 passport holder. Pretty cool.

General Conference (Fall 2013)

I flew home from China just in time to go to Vanessa's wedding!! It was spectacular. 

The luncheon was suuuper nice. (Free valet parking, ACTUAL candles - not the battery powered ones). Of course the wedding was great and the reception was very nice too.

Vanessa and Shane are a super cool couple that I look forward to hanging out with more in the future.

Nick!!! He's getting his MPA at BYU-Provo now. He says he's been super busy so I think he's been slacking off on the dating up there. So if you're a single girl in Provo you should hunt him down. 

This was so great. We got together as much of our MTC district as we could to have lunch. Okay, so only three of us actually made it. But, Anziano Kramer was invited and bailed last minute, and everyone else was out of the country, which I think just shows how cool our MTC district is. 

I don't know how I didn't manage to get more photos with people at the reunion, but here is me with the Kelly's! Actually, I guess I do know why it was so hard - because there were like 100 people I love all put into a room together and I wanted to talk to each one for an hour, but I just didn't have enough time for that! So instead I just caught up more in depth with a few people, and tried to at least say hi to most people. It was so great and I loved having so many of us Italian missionaries together!

Josh and his wife taking off with the pizza!*

*they may have been cleaning up the empty boxes, unlike me who ended up scoring a couple boxes of pizza AND crazy bread. 

General Conference. This was the first time I have ever watched it live, and now I don't think I can ever just watch it on TV again!

just kidding. But it was awesome and I will definitely try and watch it live whenever I'm in the area. 

There's nothing like watching conference with some of your best friends! Kevin Steck came down from Logan so we could watch conference together, and my old friend from BYUH, Lauren Hally also came! Kevin and I ended up watching the afternoon and the priesthood sessions. 

We didn't have tickets beforehand so we had to ask for them. We saw a couple girls holding a sign while we were walking, and someone gave them two tickets! So we asked them if they were done with their sign and it ended up working for us too!

I'm not sure who came up with the idea - I think it was Lauren - but we thought it would be funny for Lauren to hold up this sign. The cool thing about Lauren is that she actually did it!!! hahaha. She seemed pretty unsure about it when she was writing it, but then she totally pulled it off. 

She basically only held it up for the photo, but even in that short time there were passerby expressing interest. I think if she had actually held it up for five minutes we could all be going to a wedding this December!

This is a photo my cousin drew of me. ..

Since Ben (Anziano Kramer) didn't make it to the lunch, I had to go and visit him. He's doing really well, but I guess he stays pretty busy. 

Jeff Sadler!! He was my second companion. 

He was feeling under the weather, but it was still fun to visit him and catch up a little. 

This is the group I rode home to St. George with. Clay Lacey (next to me) was a missionary that came into the mission around the end of mine. We had a lot of fun going on splits together and I understand that he had a really great rest of his mission. He was driving down to California. 

That's it!! It was basically the perfect weekend. I should have taken a ton more photos, but sometimes you forget when you're just having a great time!

I didn't get photos with them, but I also visited: 

Austin Foster, my old buddy from BYUH

Ben Savio, one of my oldest friends (since 4th grade)

Ana-lisa Clark (hiked Mt. Fuji together last year)

And probably others that aren't coming to mind as I'm typing this. 

So, life is going great for me. I'm thankful that I have an abundance of wonderful friends and I am continuing to enjoy every moment of my life. 

Hangzhou 杭州 - September visit (part 2)

My entire trip to Hangzhou was fantastic. I should probably go back again soon! 

Here's the rest of the trip: 

Doraemon! Spotted him after church. 

Going for a nice afternoon ride (I LOVE THE WEATHER IN HANGZHOU)

Mike, pulling a MacGyver. 

His rear fender lost a bolt, so he used Liz's hair thing to reattach it to his bike. 

I guess you could see him as MacGyver, or Tony Stark. 

Personally, I think of him as being more of a MacGyver.

We had a pizza party and then dance party over at the Phillips!! It was so fun!

Liz doing girl pushups, or maybe "doing the worm". 

Liz and I trying to do the mini person thing. haha. 

We started playing the ninja game. oh mY!

This was probably the most fun game of lightning I have ever played. The hoop was short so we could dunk it like crazy!!

Mike going for a shot!

Stumbled across this and we had to play. 

Mike is a great chess player. 

It made me pretty frustrated at first. 

Until I started DOMINATING!! hahaha. 

CHECK!

CHECK

MATE!

WHAAAA??????

I had only ever beaten Mike once at chess, and it was on our flight to Italy when we hit turbulence and he accidentally sacrificed his queen. 

Here we had another beautiful moment playing on a giant chessboard in China. 

We've decided that we will only play each other at chess if it's somewhere epic. 

This was awesome. Four person chess. 

I promise I'm not that much of a chess nerd, but this game was seriously a blast. 

Well, that's it for my China trip! I never get enough photos.

It was a ton of fun and I was also able to get a lot accomplished. I didn't put photos here, but I also visited the factory where the bikes are being made for Baseline Bicycles, and I went out to lunch with Dennis and Ellen and had a great time. 

China is a wonderful place and I'm sure I'll be spending lots of time there in the future.