Reparative therapy for the acrophobic.

After Church today, two of my roommates wanted to take a "leisurely stroll" down Rock Canyon park.

We ended up climbing this thing:



...until we were about 1000 feet above our apartment (my watch has an altimeter!)

I'm afraid of heights, so I was a little freaked out by the whole thing. Here's our triumphant hero, perched atop the hill with Rock Canyon in the background:



Yeehaw!

Meow!

Once again, I'm working as a physics TA. This time, I'm the sole non-physics major on the crew. True physicists are an elite few.

While chilling with my physics friends, I noticed a book that I've seen before in the BYU bookstore:



I always wondered why they put a picture of a cat on a physics textbook. Then I saw the other side, and it clicked:



Aha!

It's...Schrödinger's cat. We've all heard about the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger from the short "history of chemistry" of our high school chemistry class...but, among physicists, he's well known for this "thought experiment" used to describe quantum mechanics.

In the theoretical experiment, Schrödinger puts his unfortunate feline friend in a box with a flask of a poison, a small amount of radioactive substance and a Geiger counter. The box is closed, and (in theory) sealed off from any outside interference. If one atom of this radioactive substance decays (a completely random event), it's detected by the Geiger counter and the flask of poison is smashed...killing the cat. Since such an event would be completely random, as long as the box is closed and isolated, we must assume that the cat is both alive and dead at the same time...and apparently that's an important concept in the world of quantum mechanics.

Interesting.

"How are we feelin', cadets!?", "Wet, sir!"

As I've mentioned before, I'm taking Ranger Challenge, a 2-credit class that entails strenuous physical training five days a week from 5:30AM to 7:00AM. We also have three "labs" per week. Each lab lasts three hours and includes rope bridge practice, weapons assembly and grenade tossing. Fun stuff...well, fun for some people.

During our early morning work-outs, we usually run for miles. We do about 3 miles on "easy days" and 6-7 miles on "long run days."

This is me after a long run of about seven miles:



Notice the small patch of dry on my elbow (I guess elbows don't sweat as much.) I was raining by the time I got back.

Ranger Challenge is an intercollegiate competition. As one of the slower cadets, I probably won't compete on the actual team. But hey, it's two credits of easy A...and I'm getting buff doing it.

Inspiring the next generation of soldiers!

Every semester, local elementary schools invite BYU cadets to visit classrooms and teach kids about things like flag etiquette and the pledge of allegiance, etc. Afterwords, the company receives letters from the grateful youngsters.

This one is tacked prominently on our whiteboard:



What a cool kid!

Sunday Evening

Today was fast-testimony meeting. I confess I didn't really fast (if I did, I'd dehydrate), but I did skip breakfast and dinner for the sake of solidarity with my roommates. This new ward is interesting. The two counselors in the bishopric are about the same age as me. They're both married (of course) and one has a baby girl. It might seem odd to pick such young guys for that kind of responsibility, but often we receive callings not because we're the most qualified to do them, but because we need that kind of preparation for the future.

After Church I went back to sleep. I guess ten hours wasn't enough. I woke up feeling groggy and sore, as I often do when I oversleep (is that a word?)

I wanted to do something fun today, so I opted for a regal bike ride down the trail from my apartment to Utah Lake (according to Google Maps, it's a little over five miles total.) Along the trail I passed by numerous families and couples. I saw plenty of Provo's four main demographics: college students, normal LDS people, rednecks (for some reason the non-LDS and non-practicing members go out of their way to ensure they're not confused with Utah's Church-going majority...so you often see tattooed people smoking and walking around in wife-beaters) and Hispanic people. Despite cultural differences among the different ethnic groups, everyone was having a good time.

The path led through vast pastoral land:



...thought it was too dark to get a good shot.

I finally arrived to the shores of Utah Lake just after sunset, at around 8:00 pm. It was a great scene:

One thousand feet of fun!

For a fun group date, Brian and I decided to invite two girls to come and hike the Y with us...but, after a week of asking, we found no takers. So we went anyways, along with Brian's little sister Kim:



It was a great climb. Funny thing about the Y is that it seems endless the first time you go, but successive climbs are much easier.

We looked up the time for sunset online (7:50pm) and scheduled our hike accordingly. Provo looks lovely at sunset:



...and shiny at night:



Even up on the Y, we could hear the raucous hollering and hooting from below (turned out BYU won its first football game!)

Once we reached the top, we took some funny pics:



Siblings! And, of course:




Roommates. Brian and I first lived together five years ago in Deseret Towers. You get to know someone quite well when you share a tiny living quarters.

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood!

So I'm all moved into my new apartment. University Park. 700N 225E (which is just south of campus.) It's a nice place:



It features a modest kitchen and living room, as well as three two-man bedrooms. The place is small, but it suits my purposes. It gives me a place to sleep, shower, store my stuff, and surf:



The internet here is amazing by off-campus standards.

Perhaps the best part of this new place is that our ward (which consists of University Park and three adjacent complexes) meets in an actual meetinghouse, and not a classroom! It's great! Check out our chapel:



It's one of those old-school red-brick LDS chapels.

Today also wraps up my first week of school. Not bad so far. I only have five actual engineering classes left in my major, and I'm taking three of them this semester. It's a great feeling to have come this far. Nevertheless, thanks to a few GE's and a bunch of ROTC classes, I can't finish my degree until next December. Among the classes I'm taking now is concrete design, a graduate-level course. My friend warned me the class would be "death and a half", but so far it seems okay. Our professor is an old Brazilian guy with a...unique sense of humor.

Best of all, our class meets in this newly-renovated lab:



I love those colorful chairs.

I'm also taking the ROTC Ranger Challenge class. RC is an intercollegiate athletic team within Army ROTC. I'm not in the best shape ever, so I probably will not make the actual team. Still, as long as I come and work out with them, I'll get credit for the class. I figured it's a good work-out, and good practice. We meet every morning at 5:30am at the Smith Field House (located conveniently within walking distance of my apartment!) This morning we took the APFT (Army Physical Fitness Test), it consisted of two minutes of push-ups, two minutes of sit-ups, and a two-mile run. I did better than I thought I would, but not as good as I hoped. My goal is to get a perfect score by the end of the semester. This morning, after the last cadet crossed the finish line for the two mile run, the colonel had us immediately form up again to repeat the whole test. Ugh. It was brutal, but invigorating.