Trent's Blog

Who knew Hyrum could be so rad

March 20, 2008

The weather has been pretty off-and-on lately. This week we have had snow, sunshine, and rain. Today has been windy and a bit chilly but the sun, for the most part, has been trying to melt the snow that still covers any north facing piece of ground. I took my bike out today at around 1:30 and headed south. I took 165 state hwy, or county rd, or something, out towards Hyrum. I had on full leathers plus a sweat shirt underneath my jacket and a full-face helmet. The wind was blowing very steadily and made me feel like I should have been traveling at least 90 mph rather than 50 mph. As I came into Hyrum I went West on East Main Street. I continued on this road until it ended. At the, T I saw a sign that said Hyrum State Park. So I took a left and went south on 400 W. This road went up and around the Hyrum Reservoir. It was a great ride. There were some fun and really easy corners that bended around the high banks above the water’s edge. It was awesome to be looking out across the mostly frozen body of water and see a few groups of people out fishing through the ice. Keeping course on the road I continued south and met some really gradual fun 90’s that eventually spit me out on Mt. Sterling Road. This continues west until it heads up with Hwy 89/91. At this point I stopped and rubbed my hands to get some blood flowing again and turned back. I stopped on Main Street in Hyrum and hot a cup of Mexican Hot Chocolate at the Sinclair station. As I continued home, I took an alternate route via 200 W that passes right through the Miller/Swift plant. This was a fun road that had little traffic and only one residence at the very end. I opened up the bike and it was running great, despite the pounding head wind I was fighting. As it T’ed I came on to 3200 S and went back to 165. It was a great day! The sun was bright, the air crisp, and my bike was running like Pegasus.

Hot, Steamy, and Salty Water

February 28, 2008

Yesterday afternoon I was at work at Saddleback Harley-Davidson and I got a text from my girl friend Katie. She said that she had talked to one of my room mates, Danny, and he had told her that he was getting a group to go to Crystal Hot Springs.

Crystal Hot Springs is a natural hot spring that is about a half hour due west from Logan near Honeyville. It has several hot pools that range from luke warm to OUCH this is way too hot! The only down fall (at least for me) is that the spring is a mineral spring, which means that is full of minerals. Now, I'm not sure of the exact minerals, but I am almost posite sulfer and salt are in there. Why? There is a slight sent of sulfer... Yeah I know... and if you get water in your mouth or if you lick your lips, you taste salt.

I knew I had a ton of homework to do: a full book to read, online readings, two short papers to write. But I haven't been to the hot springs in two years, and it sure sounded like a good time. So I texted back and told Katie we should totally go!

My room mates, Danny, Blaze (yes that's his real name), Kent, and Kent's brother Chad (who I've blogged about earlier) all came plus everyone (but kent) brought lady friends.

It was a Blast! We would soak in the hot pools and then go and jump in the cold pulls. Back and forth, back and forth. Plus it was kind of fun splashing salty water in everyones mouth. There were quite a few older people soaking in the "medicinal" waters, but they just added to the ambience.

Sure I was up until 3:30 this morining and got up at 7 to finish it all, but that's what being in college is all about: Good freinds, Great times, and lots of Mountain Dew to keep yourself awake while studying.

Muddin' in the Lawn

February 26, 2008

Wow, I can't belive that we've only got a week and a half until spring break! We've had a ton of snow this year, and the past couple of days it's been melting quickly. So quickly in fact, that the ground is super saturated.

My room mate's brother frequents our house daily. Now, before I go any farther into my story i need to tell ya about our drive-way at the house. The drive-way is single file, meaning that there are two long strips of concrete just big enough for a car to drive on. It goes back along side the house deep into the back yard, with engough room for four cars to fit tightly stacked. Chad, my roomie's brother, was backing his huge ford into the drive-way and only had one tire on the concrete. The other tire was on the lawn....spinning.

As spring is just around the corner and the snow melting rapidly, needless to say, I now have some awesome ruts in my lawn. Chad felt horrible about it though, and tried filling it back in the best he could, but I think we'll just have to wait for spring to set so I can get elbow deep in yard work.

Laptops and Cream Cheese

February 14, 2008

So there I was...

It's 7:30am and I'm in the library working on a group project. I was hungry before I got there, so I stopped by the Quad Side Cafe along the way and got donuts and bagels for the whole group (there are just three of us).

As we go on discussing our project on ESL (English as a Second Language), I get excited about some fact that I had found and go to point at it on my laptop screen. In my enthusiasim, I dropped my plane bagel smeared with strawberry cream cheese face down across the upper part left part of my keyboard. From Esc to V was covered in pinky goo.

Luckily I was able to use a plastic knife and napkin to clean the keys, like a surgeon cleaning up after surgery. Today was the day that I really learned why the library says no food or drink at computers.....

The Hub - Just as Good Study'n as Good Eat'n

January 15, 2008

My Tuesdays and Thursdays are killers! I start class at 9:00 am and go straight through until 3:00 pm. I then work from 3 - 5 at the Office of Admissions. That gives me from 5 - 9 to study, because at 9 I have Student Alumni Meetings.

It's the 5-9 time I'd like to BLOG about right now. Since I am an English Major, a good chunk of my homework is reading. However, when I read in a super quite place, and the book that I am reading isn't the most engaging, I fall asleep quicker than my uncle in church. On the other hand, if I try and read in somewhere as busy as say the Quad Side Cafe, I find myself more interested in the conversations that I can hear all around me than the book in front of my face.

I've found the perfect medium: The Hub. This advice is to be taken with a grain of salt as well. On campus, The Hub is an eatery if you will, that has several different places you can get food (Taco Time, Hazel's Bread, Pizza & Pasta, etc.) and then eat at a booth or table. But you may hear it called Club Hub. That is because during the hours that the food places are open, The Hub is a super popular place to hang out with friends and munch some grub.

By 5 o'clock, the food places have all shut down and The Hub is left vacant. Well, I can't say vacant, there are a few, like myself who find it's wide open seating very appealing for studying. For me it is perfect because there are just enough people studying or working on a group project to keep it not compeley silent, but I can sit far enough away from them that I am not haning on their conversations or thinking about their projects rather than mine.

It's really interesting. If you walk by during lunch time, it is the closest thing I can think of to a high school cafeteria post high school, but after 5 it's prime to get my study on.

These Pretzels Are Making Me Thirsty

January 7, 2008

I'm sitting here writing this BLOG and eating pretzels. These pretzels are making me thirsty!

Today was the first day of the new semester. Lucky for me I only had one class, Ethnic Literacy. I've had the teacher before and she rocks! I love the firs day of class. I like to call it "Go over syllabus" day. It's the one day I can just sit there before class starts and have no anxieties at all if there was homework that had been assigned that I didn't do.

THESE pretzels are making ME thirsty.

My fiance's dad called me up a couple of days before Christmas and told me that he bought be tickets to Costa Rica and I would be joining the "family" on their Christmas vacation. If you just look down to my earier BLOG you'll notice that I did have surgery on my knee just a few days before I got the phone call from my future father-in-law. But I, being the sucker that I am for 85 degree weather and maragrita's on the beach, I ended up going to Costa Rica. Sure I was on crutches. Sure I just sat there on the beach, mildly drugged. But I loved it. However, on the way home I misplaced a crutch. Somewhere between Salt Lake International airport and Logan. But that's the price you pay for enjoying the Pura Vida.

These PRETZELS are making me THIRSTY!

Christmas on the Couch

December 19, 2007

I had surgery on my left knee yesterday. The doctor did a stellar job. So I'm just laid up here in my house in Logan. My mom made the trip down from Star Valley, Wyoming to help me home, as did my finace. My mom went back home to get the Hunsaker house in Christas order and Katie (my finace) had to go back to Provo because this week is their finals week. (BTW Katie will be here at USU next semester) So I'm on the couch just enjoying having a laptop, space heater, and remote control for the television.

Finals were really intense. I had finals for all but one class. My first final was Monday and my last was on Friday. That made for one long week. But I got through it and I am just enjoying the time on the couch with no anxieties of reading Charles Dickens or writing a creative paper about nature. I've enjoyed some costa vida that my mom left in my fridge and I've also watched everyting from the Cartoon Network to th History Channel. And let me tell you it has been nice to not have any worries about school.

But it is only been just over 24 hours since I've been home from the Cache Valley Specialty Hospital, and I start physical therapy tomorrow. I'm sure by the end of the break I am going to be breaking down the doors of the TSC to get back into the swing of a new semester (or maybe not).

Finals under way

December 10, 2007

It's here. The apocolypse of the semester. Some of my classes, well one, didn't have a final. So I have four finals. I really can't complain though because only two of the four had elemnts of being comprehensive, but even those two weren't full blown "apply what you learned all semester long" tests.

To relax a bit and prepare for myself for an intense week of cramming, I went to Salt Lake over the weekend. I didn't really do a whole lot: Walked around the gateway mall and ate at The Pie.

I wish there was a way that students could be evaluated on how much they have learned and can apply their learning with out having to take tests. But unitl that day comes, I'll just keep on refilling my Xtreme Gulp mug with Mountain Dew and continue staying up late, desperately trying to cram as much information as my 7 and one quarter inch head can handle.

Pink Flamingos

November 19, 2007

I have this class, Creative Non-Fiction Writing, and it is awesome! I really like it. Not to mention that it is the first upper level English class that I feel I am really doing well in. I thought I'd just give y'all a sample of some of the stuff we write in there.



“Pink Flamingo”
With her fist tightly fitted around the crayon, my niece rubs the bright pink stick of wax against her college ruled canvas. “If she only knew the history that she was pushing across the 10.5 x 8 inch page,” I think to myself. Sure pink flamingos do exist in nature, but the color that my five-year-old niece has clasped in her tiny little paw is the product of 50 years of bad taste.
Don Featherstone, ironically enough, is the man behind the pop culture icon simply known as the pink flamingo. Just as Don was the artistic talent underneath these birds which were modeled from pictures out of a National Geographic, his signature is found under the tails of all authentic pink flamingos post 1987 (to differentiate from knock offs) , which, since their beginning in 1957, were always sold in pairs. It was the pink flamingo that eventually flew Featherstone in to the presidential seat of the company that was responsible for producing the plastic birds for almost 50 years, Union Products. Not to mention Featherstone’s 1996 Ig Nobel Art Prize (it would be important to note that the Ig Nobel Prize is a parody of the Nobel Prize, to invoke both laughter and thought).
But now, Union Products have closed their doors in Leominster, Massachusetts forever, and with the shutting of their doors comes the end of this half a century American icon. In 1972 John Waters made the film titled, “Pink Flamingos, an Exercise in Bad Taste.” This film took the pink flamingos that had always been seen as bad taste in the front yards of trailer parks and houses across America, and used them as a mascot for everything aesthetically wrong and distasteful. From this time forward the hot-pink plastic birds could surely never be taken seriously (not that they ever were). But that was what made them so unique and so American. They were well known and loved for how atrocious and distasteful they were just like Andrew Dice Clay, Dennis Rodman, and the female impersonator “Divine.” Because the flamingos had no right to be in a well manicured lawn, they most certainly found a home in these lawns to the distaste of everyone’s neighbors.
So as my niece uses the Crayloa Crayon labeled “Pink Flamingo” to color in the horse that she has sketched among hills of “Jazzberry Jam” and trees of “Neon Carrot,” I think how fitting, how American, and nostalgic.

Beans and Rice

November 12, 2007

I've been standing infront of the shelves in the pantry at "the dude's house" for what seems like at least a half an hour. (The dudes house is the title that has been given to the house where the dudes (me and my roommates: Rick, Eric, and Eric) live.) I would like to think that there is a direct correlation to how empty the pantry is and how long it has been since I last visited home.

At home, my parents have a pantry that runneth over with canned goods and assorted foods that have an extremely long shelf life. Each trip home merrits a rummage through the food stuffs. It's quite a treat to be able to return back to Logan with a box and or sack full of food. I am sure it is the same feeling that hunter/gathers exhibit having returned from gathering a fresh batch of nuts in preperation for the long winter.

However, I haven't been home this semester. August was the last time I was at my parents house and the last time I partook of their bountious charity. So as I write this Blog and get back to my studies, I am enjoying some Minute Rice and canned black beans, flavored with Valentina Mexican Hot Sauce, and I am loving every minute of it.

Charles Dickens and Harley Davidsons

October 12, 2007

So, this is the first of many blogs to be posted on the Admissions' website, and I hope it is fun, shocking, helpful, and everything else that one looks for in a blog (this is assuming that more people than my mom read this) (shout out to you mom, HI!).

I'm not gonna lie; my classes are somewhat kicking my trash. They're nothing I can't handle, but talk about intense! This is my junior year and I am taking my first 4000 level course. It is a class on the novels of Charles Dickens, and for an English major, it's loads of fun. I've had this professor before. In fact, he is the reason that I took the class in the first place. I really love the way he teaches and gets all of us (his students) involved in the reading and class lectures, despite the frankness with which he grades our papers. I think that life will be easier if I will just plan my day better and expect to read 25-30 pages of Victorian literature a night.

Speaking of making time, I do need to make time for what is important; like motorcycles! I have two passions: snowboarding and motorcycling. Right now, I couldn't as for a better time to get on my bike and ride up Logan Canyon. The trees are on fire with color and the weather is perfect for a light riding jacket (not too hot and not too cold).

Shoot... The battery on my laptop is almost dead and I probably should get back to taking notes in this spanish class.

Best,
Trent