Blog-Journal Entry 1

     As I was at the dinner table with Kelsey here on Sunday I was thinking that it has been a long time since I wrote in my journal. I wasn't sure about the best way to start writing because I am not a big fan of clutter, so I thought that an online journal may be a great choice for me.
     The last several months have flown by but I will try to recap a little from the time I graduated from BYU-Hawaii... Kels and I had to sell pretty much everything we had in Hawaii before heading back to the mainland. I remember having a tarp full of stuff that, by the end, we were just giving away. Its amazing how much stuff we accumulated within the year or so we were there living in Temple View Apartments. Anyways, I remember looking/running at the amazing trails the last week I was in Hawaii and realized how much I'm going to miss the good loops; Pine Forest, Ha'aula Loop and Gunstock were  some of my favorites. I also missed the beach, not that we went there excessively--perhaps once a week on average (once every two weeks to actually spend time there) but it was nice to wake up in the morning and go on a good run and have the beautiful horizon of the Hawaiian islands right there. I loved living in Laie, I am so grateful that things worked out so perfectly.
      After Kels and I graduated we headed back to the deserts from where we were raised. We stayed the first 3-4 months with Kelsey's family. It was nice, really nice... Almost too nice because we were pampered excessively. YMCA passes given, free food, free movies, free pretty much everything. We attempted to pay for our costs but would be denied by Kels' parents. They would tell us that we would need the money for the future. There we faced the challenge of basically not having any challenges. What does that mean? Sleeping in was a usual occurrence, laziness became more and more a compromising outcome throughout the day, and ironically with everything we could possibly ask for right at our fingertips my personal training seemed to be more and more difficult to manage. Not to say that we didn't have anything to do during the day. I had an online Pre-Calc class through Central College, my sister came out and stayed with us for some time so that she could work out issues in her life which took a fair amount of time and energy, and walks for Beta and Cedric were fairly common.
      Towards the end of our stay in Lancaster things became a little more adventurous. I finished up my math class earning a B+ (due to a 55% test 2 which killed my grade). Online classes can be challenging, I knew how to perform the tasks, but without any consideration for my work, if I were even one-tenth off on a final answer the problem was completely wrong. I don't think I will attempt any math classes online for a while. For those who may be asking why I am taking math classes when I have already graduated, I didn't know that I wanted to be a physical therapist until a little less than 2 years ago. Though I have my bachelor's I will still need several more classes before applying to PT schools. I actually start school again tomorrow with a class-load of physics, anatomy & physiology, and psychology. I am excited to take on these classes and am most excited for anatomy & physiology. I have already taken these courses at BYUH, but they were taught from an exercise science perspective rather than from a biology perspective (which is required for Grad school).
       One of the reasons I am excited for school is the fact that I will be biking to and from school. The reason this is a good thing is because of the bike I get to ride. I have never had a road bike before. Though I have biked for a long time starting way back in the days with Juse, Nathan, Matt and Jason when I was about 13, I was always riding a fairly clunky full-suspension off-road bike, which was nice, but the only problem was I rarely went off-road and would wear out my bikes by miles and miles of distance. This is if they weren't stolen first. I had 3 bikes stolen from ages 13-18. I just figured it was karma from stealing candy and basketball cards from when I was young, but nonetheless it was annoying. My newest bike is pretty nice it is actually made by GMC, who would have thought that the same company that makes cars would make road bikes. When I bought it, it was between itself and a blue Schwinn, but though the schwinn was a little lighter i didn't think the half pound was worth 100 bucks. Besides, my yellow bike had more gears anyway.
      I skipped ahead, back to the time when we were leaving Lancaster... Kelsey and I would run with her old High School's XC team in the mornings for a while. So we got really interested in running again. As we sat down and were talking during breakfast we were thinking of what jobs we would want here in AZ when we would move back. We thought it would be cool to coach a xc team. We had both coached track and field earlier in the summer, which by the way our 7th grade boys owned the section. This was mainly due to one standout sprinter that got 40 points by himself (max of 10 points per event and each athlete could only participate in 4 events) having a perfect championship couple of days. Anyways, Kels found that there was a position for a Head Coach in Chandler, Arizona. At one point we ending up driving the 6 hours to Chandler just for the interview, and after finishing drove back to California. Our poor little car has made that trip a lot and luckily hasn't pooped out on us yet. We did have a tire blow out on one of the trips recently though. Kelsey was the one driving and reacted like a pro, even though afterwards she admitted that she didn't understand what was wrong and did not know that there was a blow-out.
      Kelsey's interview went well... very well. After about 30 minutes of talking with the athletic director Dave Shapiro, Dave told me that "she got the job". Needless to say the drive back to California was a happy one. Once we got back to Cali we spent a couple days out on the lake with Kelsey's family's friends Heather and Steve. Which was sweet, I got up to 58 MPH on a jet ski with Kels. I got a chance to wake-board as well, though I can tell that a lot of my strength was missing from the last time I did this a couple years ago. I think its from the consistently high mileage I had from the last couple years of training at BYUH. Skinny legs= less strength. After that trip we went straight into a week long xc trip up in Mammoth Lakes, California with Kelsey's old High School. I was really excited to do well but after a 10 mile trail run at the half way point my IT band seized up and I had to ride back in a vehicle. I would run occasionally throughout the week but it definitely wasn't as much of a health benefit as I was hoping for. As if our running spirits weren't focused enough we attended a Coaching clinic at Mt Sac. It was good to see Jeff Messer again. It had been a while since we had talked and it was a really good experience. Jeff was by far the best speaker there which is pretty impressive due to the caliber of coaches that teach and attend those meetings.
      That was pretty much the last major thing we did in California. As we left to go to Arizona we were hoping to stay at a resort for a couple days in Palm Springs but that got cut short due to not having Beta's shot record on hand. This was important because in order to have Beta stay with a kennel  we needed her paperwork. So ready or not, we headed back to the hot, hot valley of the Sun. Kels and her coaching and me and my school work. We both hope to substitute teach for a little more income and look forward to doing that shortly. We arrived in Casa Grande about 3 weeks ago. The memories of the home we stayed in for a couple months as newly weds flood back all the time. Things are great though, we love staying here. My grandma currently travels around a lot especially due to her husband passing away not too long ago. It's her house and we are pleased to stay here while we are taking on our challenges at this point in our lives. We hope to stay here for the school year and plan on moving out at the conclusion of this school year (hopefully as being an accepted student of NAU's PT program).
      I recently was able to go up to Flagstaff with my long-time friend Nathan for MCC's annual Summer Camp. This is a tradition that has stuck since my last year at MCC when I presented this idea to coach Condon and decided to give it a try. All of the credit goes to Brother Nelson-- the ranch is his. Kelsey meanwhile couldn't come up to the camp because she had her newly acquired responsibility as the coach of Chandler High. Kels recently had an extremely successful parent's meeting and the athlete's, assistant coaches and parents are all on route to have, I predict, a very successful season. At camp, it was fun to see Coach Condon again. Coach Condon is such a fun coach and I am so happy to have had him as a mentor for my early college-running life.
     Today Kels and I watched Tangled and we both got all emotional because within the movie is one of our many wedding songs. Turns out Tangled is a really good movie. I have my GRE test coming up on Saturday.(Who would have guessed that in my spare time I am studying for and spending 175 bucks for tests on weekends). I took a practice test and I got 145 verbal, 149 quantitative. For those who do not understand that, its slightly less than the average score participants get. Hopefully a week of studying can help me boost that score.
     There are a lot of things that I'm sure that I will forget about due to not writing about them now, but the last year or so has been overall so good. I have been so blessed. I have a wonderful wife that loves me, a little dog that looks up to me and friends and family that make life so wonderful. I hope to write in this Journal on a weekly basis, most likely future posts won't be as time consuming to read but I feel that if I don't start writing now, these memories will be lost. I will report back next week. Hopefully I can do well on that GRE.