Going home for Christmas

I've been really looking forward to this Christmas break. No school, no work, just time to relax and enjoy myself. It's also cool that I'd get to go see my good friend Tyler Jones get married. Now usually I would just fly home and have my Dad pick me up in LA or something like that but this time I needed to go to San Diego first for the wedding. The plan was for Jake Lee and myself to caravan down to Mission Viejo with our good friend Bryce Mosley. We were going to stay the night at his place then drive to the wedding Saturday morning. After the wedding, Jake and I were going to drive back to Bakersfield. Sounds like a good plan right? It didn't quite work out that way.

We were supposed to leave about 2:30. Bryce had a final that got out at 2 then we'd be on our way. 2:30 came around and I didn't hear from Bryce. It also started to snow a little after 2. I got a text from Bryce at 3 saying they were a little late. We finally left at around 3:30. It was snowing pretty hard by then but we figured it would clear up a few miles down the road. That's usually what happens anyway. So we're driving down the freeway and it's really snowy and really slick. I'm going like 30 miles per hour and hating every second of it. We're almost to a little town called Nephi when things started to get really fun. I was driving in the slow lane going about 45 mph. People are passing me pretty frequently when all of a sudden a semi comes blowing by me. It's pretty much driving in both lanes and it kicks up a huge cloud of snow that had settled on the pavement. It was hard for me to see and I'm not really sure if I swerved or what happened but I'm now fish tailing. We fish tail for a few seconds and then I start to spin. My tail spins to the right and I'm completely perpendicular with the road. At this time I start to yell all sorts of fun expletives and Jake Lee also woke up. He had been asleep and got to wake up to me yelling and driving sideways on the freeway. Probably wishes he would have just stayed asleep. All of a sudden a huge white blur smashes by me and clips my bumper and I spin some more. That blur turned out to be a white '99 GMC suburban. I hadn't fully stopped in the middle of the road though so that was lucky. I spin some more and end up on the side of the road. The other car is driving in the median but made it out okay. My airbag did not deploy and neither Jake or myself were hurt.

So now I'm sitting in my car trying to figure out what just happened when I see some guy has already pulled over and he's holding my bumper or something. Not sure how he pulled over so quickly and was able to grab random parts of my car but whoever you are, thank you. I walk over to the other car to see if the other guy is okay and he's walking towards me. Pretty much in the same sentence he asks if 1. we're okay and 2. am I insured. He did ask if I was OK first, just for the record. And his family was okay too. The only damage to their car was minimal. Mine looked pretty bad but if I'm lucky it'll just be some body work that needs to be replaced.

The police and tow truck come and take us to a truck stop in Nephi where we take care of all that paperwork and fun stuff. Turns out my registration card and my insurance card are expired along with my tags. I have a sticker that was supposed to be replaced in June. Didn't quite get to it though. So I fill out my report and talk to the highway patrolman and all that stuff. He told me he should give me three tickets for having all my stuff expired but he had another accident to attend to. Whoever got in that wreck, I truly hope you're okay but thank you for getting me out of a couple of tickets.

We called Bryce Lee and he drove down to come get us. Luckily we crashed right by a Wendy's so we got ourselves some Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers. At least I picked a good place to crash, right? Bryce Lee came in this awesome jeep and took us home. So now we're back in Provo but we found some good flight deals and will be home on Sunday. Sorry Tones, we won't be making it to your wedding but we tried.

Now that I think about it, things could have been a lot worse. Had my car rotated just a bit more, we would have been in a head on collision. If I drifted a little bit more into the left lane, that big '99 GMC suburban would have crashed directly into my door at about 60 mph, which possibly could have been fatal. So yeah it sucks that I wrecked and possibly totaled my car, but we're very lucky that things did not turn out to be a lot lot worse.

I also didn't have a chance to take any pictures except for one on my cell phone so if you want one I can send it to you through text or just come be my friend and I'll show you.

Finals Victory!

Finals have come and gone and I managed to do pretty well this time around. I actually got my first "word by my score" in the testing center. For those of you that do not go to BYU, allow me to explain. BYU has a big building called the testing center. As you probably have figured out, it's where you take all your tests. You turn in your test to the office place then walk down some stairs and you'll see a TV monitor with the last 4 digits of student ID numbers and the correlating score. If you do well (90% or above) you get a word like "congratulations or awesome!" next to your score. Well this time I managed a "way to go!". After 3.5 years of BYU, I finally got one. To be honest with you, I never thought it would happen. The testing center pretty much destroys my life every time I go there but this time I managed a victory. Ben: 1 Testing Center: a lot. I'm making a comeback

T-Givin

So I just got back from Bakersfield CA, the center of the universe, for thanksgiving break and I had a wonderful time. I drove back last Tuesday and came back to Utah on Sunday. I pretty much just ate and slept all week. It was great. And my parents bought a Wii so that took most of my time. I definitely didn't do much homework so that'll be fun to catch up on.

This is a Bakersfield winter. No snow, no ice, just fog. Beautiful grey fog. When it got really foggy we'd have fog delays. Early morning seminary got canceled and school started 2 hours later. It was epic.

I got up at 3:30 friday morning to get in line at best buy. I bought a laptop and got a really good deal so it was worth it. It was nuts, so many people were there. Luckily no one pushed to get in and it was pretty calm, just really crowded. I also waited in line at best buy with a rapper from bakersfield named Lil' Heat.

The line went from best buy, past two other big stores and around the building.

My brother Brad observing the table. And apparently casting a spell on it.

My Dad cuttin the turkey, which was delicious.

Ultimate Frisbee

My freshman year at BYU I joined an intramural ultimate frisbee team with some guys in my ward. By mistake, we signed up for the top division. We didn't think it would be that big of a deal though since we thought we were all pretty good at frisbee. Our first game freshman year we threw off to start the game. We sprinted down the field to get our defense going and were able to knock down one of their first passes. I saw the frisbee get knocked down and headed to the endzone where someone hit me wide open for an easy score. 1 - 0. We were feeling pretty confident. Unfortanetly we that was our only score of the night and we lost 12-1. We then preceeded to get outscored 60-4 or something like that in the next few games. And so began my ultimate frisbee career.

We all went on our missions, returned, and formed the same team. We sucked again our sophomore year but we managed to win a regular season game and 2 playoff games. Hey, we're getting better.

This season started off as every other season. Signs of greatness but mostly just crappy defence and getting owned. We didn't win a game all season but since we didn't forfeit any, we made the playoffs. We were placed in the last (worst) division and I'm not sure what our seeding was but it was probably pretty low.

We won our first game by about 8 points and were really excited about the way we played. Good defense, good hustle, and lots of effective quick short passes. Our other strategy was to throw a hail marry. Didn't work too well but it was fun. Well with our new confidence and this great new strategy we dominated the playoffs and made it to the final four. The semi-finals were classic because it was freezing cold and snowing. Epic. We called it the Snow Bowl or something like that and we played great. To make a long story short, we lost in the semi finals, won the finals of the losers bracket and advanced to the final game where we lost 11-4. Despite the score, we matched up pretty well against the other team. The big factor was they had about 3 guys that were faster than all of us, and in a lot better shape than we were. They out ran us bigtime. Our cinderella run was over but we were pretty excited about our season and just like the Dodgers, BYU, Lakers, (basically all my favorite sports teams) there's always next year.

Team "Bronco for President"

Work in progress

This week has been pretty busy for me. I had a midterm for my political science class and a lot going on in BYUSA. We're just wrapping up all the homecoming activities that went on. I'll write about that later and put some pictures up. I'm working on making this blog look awesome and what better way to do it than by putting up a picture of Jack Bauer. There is no better way. Now I've got to make an awesome title thing with some pics and put some of those little side bar things on there.

Oh yeah. Here's the part of Jaws where it talks about Ben Gardner. Watch from about the 2 minute mark to about 5 minutes.

New blog and Sucky Sports Teams

I've got a midterm to study for so I figured it'd be a perfect time to make a blog. I've been wanting to make one for awhile now. I think my first desire to join the blogging world was during the Olympics. I really wanted to let the world know that I hate the Chinese gymnastics team. And the entire sport of synchronized diving. I'll probably post about that later. Anywho, here's my blog planet earth, enjoy.

This has been a crappy week in BG's sport life. First the Dodger's were eliminated from the playoffs. They had a pretty good year and I'm not too upset about it except for the part that they just rolled over and died the last two games of the series. Not much of a fight. BYU also lost tonight. TCU was the first team to figure out that our cornerbacks line up 10-15 yards off the line of scrimmage so they threw a bunch of short passes. And our defense is really slow. So we got killed. We went from being BCS National Champion hopefuls to maybe not even making the Las Vegas Bowl. Talk about a fall. Now my entire happiness is in the hands of the Los Angeles Lakers.

PS. A little trivia game for you, what movie does my blog title come from? And you can't Google it.