American Idols

Jensen graduated from Murray High School on Friday. Her GPA for this term was 3.7 probably her lowest in High School. Her overall High School GPA was higher I think.

This picture is with her good friend Diana Madrian, Sterling scholar in Art from Murray.


She has 4 more classes to take at SLCC to graduate at the end of the summer. Only 49 other students at Murray were completing this.

In the fall she is planning on one big lollapalooza, no classes. May go to England.

The graduation ceremony wasn't too grueling. It seemed like they were reading the names rather slow. But, still it took only about an hour. I've been to worse.

The funniest thing in the world happened to Jensen as she was approaching the podium to receive her diploma. A stranger woman in the audience leaned out and reached toward her with her arm and asked her where she got her shoes!

Poor David Archuleta was in the audience and people wouldn't leave him alone.

Afterward we went to eat at TGIFriday's and we kinda decided that they have better hamburgers than Red Robin. Their brownie fudge sundae dessert thingy was really good too.

In UnremarkableMemoriam

Memorial Day was somewhat unremarkable. It was very rainy almost all of the day. We managed to finish our yard cleanup project involving a huge green waste trailer from Murray City. We did this yard work during the one major break in the rain. For a short while I thought I might go for a bike ride. But, within a half hour it was pouring again. I'm glad my lazy self prevented me from getting caught in a downpour. Laney and I found that on the Science Channel they were running back to back episodes of “How it's Made.” This kept us entertained for a couple of hours while I chewed on sunflower seeds.

We went to Leslie's for dinner and spent a good amount of time in the hot tub. Here you can see the girls showing how “hot” they are. If you look closely there is steam billowing from them.


After dinner literally about 10 of us ended up in Leslie's room on her bed watching the first disc of Arrested Development. It's a good thing I work full time. I seem to be unable to stop eating when I am at home. At work I can control how much food I have access to.

My talk on Sunday went pretty well I think. Lenore and I also sang with Brenda Christensen. Boyd Jensen says that Beverly is not doing well. He had a number of grandchildren there visiting. Ruth Palmer has cancer and is not planning on treating it. I probably will be doing both their funerals soon.

There Can Only Be One

We had a great time the other night when we realized that one of the baddest characters in cinematic history, "the Kurgan":



is none other than:



Eugene H. Krabs

Day 18358

The Cycle Salt Lake City Century ride was last Saturday. I have been kinda planning on doing the ride for some time. When it came right down to it, I didn't have anyone really to ride it with me. But, Cliff Lillywhite had registered and then his son was getting married that day. So, he offered me his registration.
A goal I've had for some time is doing 100 miles in under 5 hours. So I decided to try. This might have been easier if I had a fast group of friends to do it with. Anyway, probably within the first 5 miles or so I managed to get in with a fairly big group for the next 30 miles. The leader was a husband and wife on a co-motion tandem. I spent most of the time right on their tail and there were many riders behind us. I took a couple of turns pulling for them. But, they did most of the work and seemed happy to do it.
After the first feed station, I got a flat right away. So, I lost the small group I was with. It didn't take too long to fix it and luckily I had no more problems. It took another little while to hook up with some other people. One of the guys was on a Titanium Torelli. I passed him and then he passed me and I stayed on his tail.
Usually, the Antelope Island Causeway is just horrible. Headwinds both ways. But, you couldn't have asked for better weather for this ride. If there was any wind it was only a whiff. At the 50 mile point just before the causeway, my average speed was 21.7. By the time I had gone the next 20 miles it dropped to 21.4. I stayed with groups across the causeway and then we broke up going around the island because of the climbing. Then coming down the last hill leaving the island I hooked up with 2 other guys and soon a fourth joined us crossing back to the mainland.
I saw Jeff Barton and Teal Buchi at the Syracuse feed station at the 70 mile point. I left that point pretty much on my own and started to suffer. After a while, I noticed a guy on my tail for about 5 miles. He eventually pulled forward and we started taking turns pulling. It was just us two for the last leg. We began chatting a little. He was also 50 years old and was trying to make the same goal of better than 20 mph average. His name was Dave from Kaysville and he was on a Litespeed Tuscany. I'm glad I hooked up with this guy because on my own for the last leg, I'm not sure I would have made it. For the last 25 miles I just wanted to get off the bike. I finished 106 miles in 5:11 at an average speed of 20.45.

It's Dog Eat Dog in the Concrete Jungle....

...and I'm tiring of the taste of dog.

Dancing Fool

The Salt Lake City Marathon Bike Tour

Craig and Teal Buchi told me about this ride a couple of years ago and Beth Johnson also recommended it.

It is a little early in the year and they want to get the cyclists out of the way before the marathon starts, so they start the ride at 6am when it is still pretty dark. Thankfully the temperature was pretty nice. There was some fairly strong wind. But, the course is generally downhill with a loss of 575 feet over 25 miles, so I figured it would be fast.

I tried to get together with the Buchis and Jeff Barton to do this ride. But, we didn't hook up. Either way I was going to have to get up early. So I took an ambien and went to bed about 9:30pm. I woke up pretty alert at about 4am out of the blue. After thinking for a while and not feeling very sleepy. I decided to get up and ride up to the U instead of drive.

When I rode last Saturday I went partway up Suncrest. I am such a wimp I didn't even make it to the hardest part. Still farther than I have gone. All the way down I was on my brakes. I guess that wasn't good because last night the cables pulled and loosened the binding screws. I am so glad that didn't happen while descending Suncrest. I tried to repair by rerouting the cables counterclockwise around the screws so it would have a tendency to tighten rather than loosen the screws. However, this severely changes the pulling angle and greatly affects the leverage. I figured this out only shortly into the ride to the Bike Tour start. So I stopped to re-fix. So, I arrived at the start of the ride with about five minutes to spare.

I tried not to push too hard. most of the way there I had a tailwind. I didn't want to start at the back of the pack so I pushed my way into the middle. I wanted to try to call Craig or Jeff. But, didn't feel I had the time. As it was they were late and just exiting the LDS Institute parking lot as we came by. When the ride started, I had about 1:40 or almost a quarter of a mile before I was able to get up to a decent speed because of the crowd and slow riders. I should have arrived earlier and gotten closer to the front of the pack. They said there were about 1900 riders.

Once we got going I felt good and picked out a guy to tail. This was "not a race" and we weren't supposed to draft. But it became apparent pretty quick that a lot of us were racing and drafting. I lost my lead rider when we turned off Foothill to get over to 21st East because he just bombed the downhill. I took it a little easy. We couldn't really see the road well for the first 30 minutes or so. I caught up to him again and really for the most of the rest of the ride he and another guy were in the group I was with.

I would get a little tired but then regain my strength, and just kept thinking I only had to make it to Cotton Bottom because then the wind was at our backs. And boy was I right. After we turned north, we just flew, probably going 27-28 most of the time. Occasionally I felt our group should be going faster. But, then I couldn't even take the lead let alone go off the front. Amateur. I hit one pothole hard that made my handlebars rotate to a lower position. One fellow got slightly stuck in a groove in the road. He didn't get into too much trouble. Another guy right in front of me hit a pothole and went this way and that before regaining control. A few moments later I said, "I'm sure glad you pulled that out." Everyone around me readily agreed.

I lost my group and thereby about 30 seconds off my final time because my cyclocomputer almost fell off and I spent a little time and attention trying to do something about it. As it was, my "official" time was around 1:07:20. To get a better sense of the true speed, I lopped off most of the beginning before I could get up to a normal speed. So, it really ended up to be my fastest ride ever. Even though it was downhill and we had a good tailwind for half of the ride, it is very early in the season. So, I was very pleased with the speed.

I found Craig and Jeff et al at the finish and they offered me a ride home from the U. We had to ride back to the Campus and Craig wanted to take the scenic route which included going up City Creek a ways and doing a lot more work than I had planned on.

CSI

Quick trip to Las Vegas for Brandon and Kelli's wedding.

The drive wasn't too horrible considering we were only there in the city for about 28 hours.

All of us (Mom and Dad, the Porters, us) had much strife about getting lost and following directions.

We stayed at a nice Hotel and Laney got to swim some in their pool.

We had a very nice time at the Groom's dinner. I got to see Tom Grassley for the first time in probably 31 years and meet his wife. We had fun speaking with them and Steve Andreason.

Jensen watched the little kids at Kelli's house during the dinner. It was hectic because there were a lot of kids. But, she made $$$$ and said she still wants to have lots of kids.

Once we actually found it and arrived, the temple was very nice. The sealer was Pres. Bruce Stucki. I recognized his voice right away from his April 2006 conference talk. Joey stole the show when he came in to be sealed to them. He was looking around and waving, not paying attention at all to the ceremony. But, it was very touching to contemplate the great blessing this is to him.

Gioacchino Rossini

Laney had a "great day" on Wednesday. To celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday they had a green eggs and ham breakfast at school. It was a little bit of a fiasco because they found out late that they didn't have authorization to deal with raw eggs in their cafeteria. They soon got someone on sight who was duly trained in the proper handling of all things ovoid and able to spot salmonella bacteria with the naked eye at ten paces and the kids were adequately pleased.
I know the Health department has to worry about making people ill. But, how many lame brains handle eggs every day? Besides I'll bet the green dye kills all germs:)
In the evening all three girls went to a dress rehearsal of "Cenerentola." That's Italian for "little girl who sits in the cinders and goes to dances in glass slippers." Laney was especially excited. I am just glad she was able to sit through almost three hours of it without really being able to understand what was going on. She couldn't read the subtitles very fast, I'm sure. But, then young imaginations are probably pretty good at filling in the blanks when they don't have all the information. All three girls loved it and especially enjoyed seeing Lenore's brother, Dan in the chorus.
Late last night I was switching channels on the tube and came across the first "three Tenors" performance from 1990. I remember Ed showing this to us when they visited once. (He's not really into Opera. But, had really enjoyed watching the interaction of the singers and the conductor.) I watched it again simply for this aspect. I will have to make the big kids watch it for kicks. The setting at the Baths in Caracalla is magnificent.

Jensen Morp (Prom) Picture - Alice and the Mad Hatter

So Jensen's date shows up to get her for the dance and I'm getting acquainted. It turns out to be one of the Young Men in our ward whom I have never met before. We invited him and his family to Church.