Newton's First Law

So... I just read my last post and realized how much it kind of stunk, therefore I'm aiming to redeem myself a little with this. Don't get your hopes up.

In Sunday school the other day the teacher asked for examples when we required assistance. It made me think of a couple amusing (in retrospect) times when I needed a life preserver thrown my way. Ironically, like 9 out of 10 jams I thought of involved Mark Evans being there. You'd think I would learn.

Last summer I was working on a house with my construction company (the rare pinch without Mark as accomplice). It was crane day and Christian, Gary and I were working on removing the roof of this 2 story Orem home. It went like this: get on top of the roof and cut the roof into strips which ran the same way as the roof trusses. Then attach the crane to each section and remove the roof piece by piece- truss, sheeting, shingles and all. So I'm up on the last section to be craned, about 25 or 30 feet above the concrete garage floor, but Gary had it all braced so I had no reason to worry about it falling. Mistake 1: trust Gary, the guy who almost falls through the roof himself about every other day and uses words like "sidewards" and "slonch wall." (sp?) My boss Blake would later that day tell me what a blockhead (or something similar) I was for relying on Gary for something like safety. Duly noted.

So I'm up there chillin, ready for the crane cable to come my way so I can hook up the roof and crane it. And then the roof started to fall. But what was kind of cool is that it didn't give way by falling straight down, but toppled sidewards like how a dining room table with 4 very wobbly legs might go. So anyways, roof started going, falling away from the existing wing of the house and so I started running for that. I felt like a cartoon when the character starts running really fast on a rug but instead of going anywhere the rug just bunches up behind him while Wile E. Coyote stays stationary. Yeah, it was something like that. Fortunately I got enough speed to jump off and grab the existing roof and hang on to the side of the house, pretty much double fisting a rain gutter 2 1/2 stories up.

That's when I got myself into the predicament where I needed some help. About 2 seconds later after the dust had settled below and Gary and Christian realized they weren't crushed I called down, "hey! I kinda need a ladder here!" It was quite the scramble to get a ladder over that heap of roof which had suddenly appeared in the garage, but Christian managed it somehow, and I was pretty glad for that. Oh, and the crane guy- the only one to witness the spectacle- thought I was just about superman after that, which made me feel a little less stupid for falling off a roof.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Wipeout

My weekend sort of starts Wednesday night when I get through my obscenely long art class and back home from campus at 10:30 p.m. So, starting Thursday, kind of a lot transpired hence.

Thursday: Reverted to the single life, once again.

Friday: Ditched school and went snowboarding with Christian Wagner and James Schramm at the Canyons. Canyons got dumped on about 1 foot plus on Wednesday night, so the ideal day to hit it would have been Thursday. Nevertheless, we were determined to hike 45 minutes up past the lift Ninety-nine 90 and make our mark on the fresh pow. It was worth doing once. I've hiked the Grand Canyon twice with these guys and the company of this hike was just as enjoyable. The descent was 5 minutes of fluffy Utah powder heaven. The rest of the day was pretty standard- searching for last shreds of powder and finishing up in the board park.

There was one noteworthy occurrence that happened while in the board park. So... first boardpark run- check out the jumps. Second run- hit all 5 jumps and stick 'em pretty well. Third run- I catch my heel edge at the top of the first kicker, go sideways, and land square on my back about halfway down the landing. James asked what I was thinking in the air and I specifically recall being pretty calm but thinking, "I am dang glad I have a helmet." He also said that the crowd waiting at the drop point collectively watched me go sideways in the air, disappear behind the tabletop nearly upside-down, and exclaim in unison, "oh F---!" I'm guessing it was about a 10-12 foot fall. So, that was my Friday. I feel pretty lucky to have walked away with only a slight headache and a good story.

Saturday: Fafard 5k in the morning for my friend Brett Fafard, who has testicular cancer. James told him the day before that we were boycotting the race because we didn't believe that he actually had testicular cancer. He agreed with us and said he was waiting for Ashton Kutcher to pop out and say "Ha! You got punked! You don't have testicular cancer... and yeah, we took your nut." In the end James and I decided to go anyways so our friends wouldn't hate us, even though this whole chemotherapy thing we're pretty sure is a facade.

Later that day, on top of snowboarding, falling ten feet onto my back, running a 5k, we all went to progressive power tumbling gym for some more self-mutilation. Here I successfully gainered off a trampoline directly onto my head. James and I have already named that trick "half-flip to retard," so don't even try to copy that. It has been patented. Oh, and my friend Mike got 8 stitches in his foot after doing something similar. Following the tumbling gym I did absolutely nothing for the rest of the day. And it was great.

Sunday: I guess the weekend has finally wound down because the most startling thing that happened today was when I flinched awake during my mid-church nap and almost kicked over the folding chair in front of me. That's why I sit in the back. Less people ask to share my Cheerios that way too.

My Contributions to the Esoteric Community of Public Internet Journalism

I don't really expect anyone to read or follow this. Therefore I really don't have anyone to impress. So a warning to those who do (probably by accident) read these posts, they may not be interesting or funny. I'm writing for myself and if you want to read them that's fine too. Kind of a backwards blog strategy, eh? Write autobiographical anecdotes from my life in a public forum, with the intent of nobody ever reading them. Like broadcasting the Truman Show with no viewership.

An explanation of my blog's subtitle:

Argentine cock fights: My friend Eddie from high school is endearingly off-kilter, most likely due to crack binges, dubious ethanol business dealings from across the border, and who knows what else. As I was hanging out with some friends from high school one day somebody mentioned that we should call up Eddie. As we all debated whether to call or not, James Grayot summed up our hesitations: "Maybe we'd better not. With Eddie you never know what you're gonna get; we'll probably end up at a cock fight in Argentina by the end of the night." I thought that was pretty apt, and since then I've always thought of Eddie along with illegal gambling rings in South America.

Lightning strikes: I went to the Boy Scout National Jamboree when I was 16 (2001) in Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia. (A sidenote: we visited the twin towers of the WTC in August of 2001- roughly a month before they were relegated to the past tense) At the Jamboree Mark and I were assigned together to take the wheelbarrow to the mess tent and bring back dinner supplies for our camp. I didn't feel like going because it was storming really bad, and as a result Mark took off pushing the metal wheelbarrow without me through a raging Virginia storm and resultantly got struck by lightning before he even made it out of our campsite. He was in cardiac arrest for about 5 minutes as our leaders gave him CPR and a priesthood blessing. Fortunately he was back on his feet with no side effects whatsoever the next day, which permits me to laugh now that I was such a terrible friend not to have been alongside, where I should have been, that one time he got knocked dead by lightning.

Other Remotely Exaggerated Tales: I take pride, actually, in the fact that my stories are true, exactly how my dad's aren't. The only remote exaggerations come in the embellishment of trivial details, leaving the real substance raw. Which is not lying, just plain good storytelling. And I like my stories, so, I'm going to write about them here. Basically this is where all my noteworthy narratives will go that are above level of Facebook status post.

To whomever is still reading this far: read on if you like, but its just going to be more stories about me.