Storm

I was outside for a good hour last night watching the most amazing storm ever. It started with the most perfect anvil cloud ive ever seen hovering over the mountains, then some virga over the valley. Then the coolest brightest rainbows! There were 3 all at once, but my crappy cell camera didnt catch the 3rd one. Then the lightning started. All of this happened at once as the sun was setting, so there was an orange glow on the mountains.

Heres some video I took of the valley and the lightning.

That wasnt so bad...

Ok, I survived the hard week. It was actually easier than I thought itd be. Either I overestimated it or I just became used to the pain, lol. We go on bike rides almost every saturday, and yesterday we rode Big Cottonwood Canyon. Its about 14 miles to the top, 4584 feet of vertical gain. As soon as I woke up and saw the evil black clouds of doom hovering over the mountains I knew it wasnt gonna be a good ride, haha. It was freezing outside. About a quarter of the way up it started raining on us, then soon after it sleeted then slowed. Im proud of myself though, I finished with the guys in about 1 hour and 25-30 minutes. Apparently Jae Su said whoever doesnt keep up will get attacked by wolves and bears, which is kinda funny....because Gabi, who was towards the back almost got attacked by a moose on the way up HAHA! Anyways, it was too cold and we were too tired to ride down so we piled our bikes into Eddys truck and rode down in Jae's van with the heat blasted. There were a couple insane ones who decided to ride down, it was the first time on this ride for one of them so he obviously didnt know any better, haha.

I just hope next week we dont do Little Cottonwood, dont let the name or distance deceive you. Its only 8 miles to the top but the elevation is 3472 feet, a 9.2% grade... ever heard of the Alp D' Huez climb in the Tour de France? I read that Little Cottonwood is pretty much the same as that but without the switchbacks...Snowbird and Alta ski resorts are at the top, about a mile apart. I remember last year, getting to Snowbird and almost passing out I was so dead. After a short break though, I did make it to Alta (which is at the top).

Bring on the easy week.

PS: My moms going to VT to visit my grandma, aunt and uncle. Kinda jealous, I havent seen them in a while and I love Burlington (especially Dobra Tea which has the best tea ever). But I think Ill be going home for a week in July sometime and to the ADKs, so I might get to visit then!

PPS: We might get our new coach this week, Im excited but not, because if the coach comes that means we have to stop training with the national team! Oh well, if its who I think it will be, well have an awesome coach.

New place, new pics!

Me Gabi and Jun are all moved into our new townhouse! Its only 5 min from the oval and its really nice. Ill take some pics later and post them. Right now we have no furniture in the livingroom except a small Ikea coffee table and a tiny chair Gabi had, it looks kinda funny cuz the room is so big, haha. I want to fill it with cool retro stuff from garage sales and thrift shops, give it a coffee shop feel. Then I need to get a coffee maker to give it the coffee shop smell too :)

We just finished a medium training week, which is the hardest Ive ever experienced. Next week is a hard week...if there are no more posts after this one, assume the worst, lol.

A few weeks ago I went hiking in north salt lake with Nick, 4 hrs, i forget how many vert feet, but there were nice views of the city and the snow covered Uintas to the east.






About a week after that, Gabi, Mikey, Britt, Andrea and me went to a Bees game. They won and we took our tickets to Sonic to get FREE SLUSHIES! Yessss.






This is the Aerobar Andrea got me for my birthday, they sell these in Utah now!!

Update.

Soooo its been kinda crazy lately. Ill list off the new unusual occurrences:

- I got a job at bath and body with Gabi
- Jun came back from korea
- Gabi me and Jun are in the process of looking for an apartment
- Jun is now the assistant national team coach
- We are still waiting to see who our new coach will be but we have a couple hunches...
- Since we dont have a coach yet we get to train with the national team!
- Since half our team (mainly the girls) are now on the national team along with our coach, training doesnt seem any different, lol
- Speaking of training we started up again a few days ago. We are in pain. We cant walk normally on stairs anymore. :P
- I went to Ikea a few weeks ago and got some really cool cacti.
- I like cherry cupcakes
- Were going for a bike ride saturday and im super pumped.
- Im making a mix 90's music CD as we speak.
- I just went to get my hair trimmed and she gave me this really cool braid:

- Jun has not once since hes been back "said" I was fat. But Im pretty sure thats what pinching my arm fat and making a sound of disgust means. But he hasnt SAID it!! lol.
- Today was our first day on the ice and Jae-su is very helpful and didnt make us feel bad about our skating at all. Jun on the other hand was amused and laughed at our pathetic failure the whole time. Hahaha!
- The Sharks are in the playoffs so that means whenever a game is on dont try to call me, I wont be able to hear you over the screaming and chaos Gabi will be creating.
- My parents sent me the old school nintendo!!!! I now feel complete. :D

AND LAST...

-THE BACKSTREET BOYS ARE COMING TO SALT LAKE JUNE 23RD!!!!!! Whos going with me?!

Earth Day

Happy Earth Day everyone!! "Make sure you stick around and be on Earth today." ~Stephen Colbert

More Moab Pics...

Hiking to the arch.


Climbing to the top of the arch.


Waiting to repel the arch.


still waiting...


Me standing on the edge of the arch ready to go!!! Look at all the little people down there...

Rockin out in Moab

I went rock climbing this past weekend as part of a rock class I took through the U. It was soooo much fun! Never climbed anything like it in my life. They said climbing on sandstone would be different than the granite here in slc and now I believe them, lol. Its weird when you put all your weight on what you think is a good hold then it turns to sand right under your fingertips!

The first day we all got stuck in a traffic jam on the road to Moab because some guy going to the Jeep Safari also in Moab that weekend totaled his Jeep in the middle of the road somehow. We all got there late but that night we just went over basic skills so as not to kill each other the next day. Then we set up our tents in what looked like a beautiful weather. Clear skies, stars were out in force. We made a campfire and smores and a couple people brought guitars so we got some live music, it was fun. Then as soon as we went to bed the wind came in. It came in bursts and made it sound like the tent was gonna blow over. Super noisy that night so no one got any sleep.

Day 2 we climbed an area called Wall Street. It was SUPER fun. Got there early and climbed till about 3. I climbed the hardest route of my life there! Its the one in the picture with the overhang. As we all know, speedskaters do NOT have arm muscles. Also as we may all know, my arm muscles are worse than any speedskaters, therefore giving me negative arm muscles. Climbing an overhang requires arm muscles. Me+overhang= epic fail. LOL. Got some cool pictures trying to climb it though! One of my instructors totally killed it, he was doing splits and other crazy maneuvers and holding on in places where there was nothing to hold on to! Looked like he was hanging on by his fingernails at some points. Got back to camp, ate smores, went to bed early because it started raining on us (in the desert? what??!). We still got to listen to music though since the guys who brought their guitars were playing in their tents, haha. That night the wind was SUPER strong. even though we had our tents zipped and our rain flys up the wind would blow dirt through the tent onto us. I woke up at one point with my face completely covered in dirt and sand, it was all in my mouth and caked in my hair and in my sleeping bag! Every time a burst of wind would come through, we would have to hide our faces in the sleeping bags to keep from getting a face full. Dont think anyone got sleep that night, haha.

The last day we went and repelled Corona Arch, which is probably the most badass thing ive ever done in my life. Its about 140 feet tall. The craziest part about it was when you started at the top you would repel like on a normal rock wall, then suddenly the wall is gone and your out in the open with that view!! You could repel as fast or slow as you wanted, and what some of us thought was fun was to go super fast then completely stop right in the middle of the arch! It was like flying. What a rush!! I could do it all day! It was fun watching people repel from a bit of a distance because it looked like a spider coming down on a string.

This is ME REPELLING CORONA ARCH!!!!! so cool!




So that was my adventure. Got some souvenir sunburn to remember it by.

Wall Street.


This was taken at a weird angle, but you can see it better in the next pics, this wall is completely vertical!!
Also in this pic, my humungous skater butt hanging out the harness. Obviously spandex was not the right choice for this sport. The guys below me disagreed.





The overhang of death.






Setting up the ropes.


The canyon around the arches. Complete with cool railroad tracks!


The arch itself.


Bowtie Arch right next to Corona Arch.

Supplement to Earth Hour

My career goal is to someday make people realize that global warming is basically human action that is speeding up a natural cycle in the earths global average temperatures. An ice age and a warming period will happen with or without us, and the ecosystems can adapt to these natural changes. They always have. However, at the rate we are speeding it up, the ecosystems can NOT adapt, and will die. My goal is to beat sense into those who are trying to convince people otherwise, because its all politics and money for them. What they dont seem to get is that it doesnt matter how much money you have when you and most everything else on the planet is DEAD.
Just realize most people who are trying to convince you that global warming isnt happening are not scientists, never studied meteorology or any earth science, and probably have degrees in econ or political science. Take for example the founder of the weather channel. No meteorology degree. He made a youtube video against global warming, however he didnt not include all the facts, did not cite graphs and data, and to prove his point, he only took bits and pieces of the whole picture. What bugs me is he also said theres no way we can have global warming now because the global average temperature is decreasing, and showed this graph that only covered the past 20 years or so. It is true that the average global temperature is decreasing at this moment. But take a look at this graph that actually includes over 4000 years of temperature patterns, and youll see why we are still in trouble:



Here is a graph compiled by actual climatologists. I believe this is accurate, however I wish I could find one that went back a few million years like the one my teacher showed us in class. It looked like this, so just pretend it goes back farther. :) Notice if you will the gradual, GRADUAL increases and decreases in average global temperature. The sharp increases as you can see are all happening around major volcanic eruptions. HOWEVER take a look at the most current increase. There are no eruptions to cause this. Its happening around the industrial revolution. There is nothing else that could be causing that increase except human industrial activity. If you can think of a different reason that doesn't include human activity please tell me so I may inform my professor and the rest of the scientific community. Say we never went through the industrial revolution. Around 1900 where all of the eruptions stopped, that decrease would have continued into a deeper ice age, then temperature would have gradually increased again.
Now, seeing as how short lived and shallow that last ice age was thanks to our industrialization, how small do you think our next one will be? As you can see on the graph, temperatures are dropping again, as they would in this natural cycle. But at the rate at which the earth is warming, the next cooling period will not last long or be very cool compared to past cooling periods, and the preceding warming period will be even warmer and will come fast, as did the last one. Therefore, we have a rapidly warming earth. The end.

Im done with my rant. If you still don't get it, please, comment back with your arguments and I will prove you wrong with science and facts. I have many reliable resources.

EARTH HOUR TONIGHT

Dont forget to turn off your lights at 830 tonight! This is important.

Click here to see how cool this is.

Little buddy!

My new betta fish!! It was an impulse decision to get him, on the way back home from running I thought itd be cool to have one so I swung by petco. He was the prettiest one there! Cant see it in this pic but hes electric blue with white fins that look like flames. Still deciding on the name. Suggestions?

And I couldn't resist posting this, this is Jun at 7am, ready to start practice!!

Nationals- WI

Just got back today. Ive got mixed feelings about this meet. On one hand, I havent been skating well at all in practice or at the other am cup meets, and that was the best ive skated since before trials. I won the 500m and got 2nd in the 1000 and 1500. Looking at pictures, it looks like my form is better than it has been since the beginning of the season. On the other hand, I know that I can skate better, because I did at desert classic before trials. So even though I know I havent been training at my best or training hard enough so that I could reach my own expectations im still disappointed with the results. Marty talked to me about this middle of the road deal, if your only half in you have to be satisfied with whatever results you get, if you cant accept it then youll be frustrated and unhappy and thats not a good place to be. So all in or all out are the better choices. For next season I would like to be all in, although having full time school on the side doesnt help at all. 13 credit hours plus 6-8hrs of skating a day do not mix. Well see how things go...
Anyway I fell in the 1500m superfinal which lost me the possible 1st place overall. I wouldnt have had to worry about winning the superfinal if I had won the 1000, but I didnt pass up when I should have. Looking back on these races ill say next season ill definitely be paying more attention to strategy.

PS Gabi met a photographer on the plane that wanted to shoot us so her Andrea and me all went over to his studio and got a free photoshoot in our skates! He said hed send us the pics in a couple weeks. Ill post them when they come.

Jerry Search took this, I think its my 500. My first meet not wearing glasses, I look so mean without them, lol.



Annnd the traditional photobooth at the airport pics.

This is the most ridiculous picture ever, mostly because of Morgan, LOL.


Me and Jun as he pretends not to know me.


Gabi and me on the plane.


Morgan.


we couldnt rent any vans so we had to get 2 little cars, we fit 5 of us plus baggage in a honda civic, this is what that looked like. Mikey is buried on the right.





Our pink rejects relay team (all of us that werent on the pink ladies team, which was made up of 4 of the faster girls on our team)





Mikey was our alternate since we didnt have a 4th person...in case you dont know you have to have 4 people on a relay so we really were rejects. (you cant have guys on the team either, his title was just honorary, lol)


my 1500 silver.


This is Jun wherever we go. He sleeps 24/7. If I werent in front of him getting on the plane to prop him up he wouldnt have made it to his seat, LOL.