Sublime and Ridiculous

Michelle has reminded me several times to record my two recent man-trips.

A few weekends ago I went down to St. George with Mike, a friend from the ward. We met up with my longtime fellow canyoneering adventurer, Dustin, and his sister Melanie, and did Pine Creek. This is the first canyon me, Dustin, and Roland ever did, and things went much better this time. It took us longer than expected because we had to wait for other groups in front of us - including families with 4 and 6-year-olds. Crazy to take kids that young on a canyon like that.

Mike in one of many long swims. The slot flash-flooded a week before, so it was FULL of water.

Dustin rappelling into "The Cathedral" - a beautiful area with a double arch.

Full of water, and also quite dark.

Here you see me sporting the purple monstrosity Weber State calls a rental wetsuit.

The next-to-last rappel.

The final rappel, 110-foot freefall into a grotto. Just awesome.

After about an hour hike, you get to the part where you bushwhack up to the road. Luckily, the people in front of us told us to hike a bit further down to this swimming hole, with about a 10-foot cliff to jump off.

Two weeks later, I went back down with the family to St. George because Dad got tickets for him, me, my brother Aaron, and my brother-in-law Micah to go to a Weird Al concert in Las Vegas. Heck yeah! Dad and Aaron are pretty much rabid fans. Me and Micah don't know much of his stuff, but luckily Dad had an hour and a half worth of footage for us to watch on his smartphone on the ride down to Vegas. Then we went to a buffet and headed to the concert.

You can't take yourself very seriously at a Weird Al concert, but it was actually really good. He's a complete weirdo, but really talented, and his band's covers of all kinds of genres - classic rock, hip-hop, country, polka - was spot-on. He changed costumes several times, coming out in a fat suit, Amish costume, giant peacock thing (making fun of Lady Gaga), and for his encore, a Jedi, with Darth Vader, R2D2, and a bunch of storm troopers as sidekicks.

And did I mention we were on the third row? Oh yeah.