Snow Canyon Half Marathon

A few weekends ago I ran the Snow Canyon Half Marathon in St. George. Despite being a fairly avid runner since intermediate school I've never ran a half marathon. It's really the first time I really had something to train for since high school, so it was really good for me. There was perfect weather that day and the run was just beautiful. The first 9 miles were through Snow Canyon State Park and it was really pretty. Lots of cool red rock formations and stuff. This is me at mile 9 and feeling pretty good. Tim was a pal and came down with me. I was actually hurting a little here so I had him fill up my waist water holder thing I borrowed from Kelii and meet me down the road with it so I wouldn't have to stop at the aid stations.


I finished in 2:03:01, which was a lot faster than I anticipated. I was very satisfied for it being my first race ever. During the whole race I felt pretty bad about myself because there were all these old ladies that passed me. I guess I'm not in as great shape as I thought.


Despite the look on my face in the next picture I was not feeling very good when I finished. My lungs were fine, but my legs were not. The first 3 miles were really steep downhill and really killed my legs. I knew it was going to be downhill going in, but I didn't realize a 7% grade was that steep. That and the fact that I ran it 15 minutes faster than I did when I trained probably killed my legs.


It was a lot of fun though and I think I'll run 1 or 2 more next summer. I'm already running the Wasatch Back next summer, a 12 man 188 mile relay from Logan to Park City, with a group of people from work. That should put me in pretty good shape for another half!

Fall Update

At the rate I'm going, there's only going to be a post every season. We've actually been up to a lot of things over the last few months, but I never seem to get around to blogging about them. Here are some of the highlights.

Tim is finishing his last semester of his bachelor's degree and got accepted to graduate school.
This has turned out to be a nice semester for Tim. He's taking 3 engineering classes and a gymnastics class, so it's one of the lightest semesters he's had in a long time. 2 of his classes are counting toward his master's degree as well. He's also working at a structural engineering firm in Bluffdale and doing research toward his master's degree. His master's will be in Civil Engineering with an emphasis in Structural Engineering. As his research he is helping to develop structural engineering software for Sandia National Labs.

I'm working.
Work is a lot better now that I'm not working on shift. I'm working on 2 main projects right now and really enjoy it. It's always a challenge, sometimes a little overwhelming, but I'm learning a lot and will hopefully have some good results to show for it soon.

We've been rock climbing a lot.
It's our new thing to do together. Sometimes I feel bad for Tim because he's really good and I'm not and he has to do easier routes so that I can do it, but we have a lot of fun together. We really like being so close to Rock Canyon in Provo because there are tons of routes up there. We just went climbing this last weekend and the leaves were so pretty in so many vibrant colors. Mom was visiting us a few weekends ago so we took her, Kevin, and Cea and had a lot of fun. We'll have to go again during the summer! Here are some pictures of our recent climbing adventures.

Tim near the mouth of rock canyon.

Tim the expert.

Mom and I.

Me climbing. Who is taking the picture you ask? Why the person belaying me! I always give Tim a hard time that we have a ton of pictures of him climbing, but none of me because he doesn't think to take pictures, but he remembered this time. His warning, "Don't fall, I'm taking a picture."

BYU football games.
We really enjoy football games and the cheap tickets we can get since Tim is still a student. This was at the FSU game. Not the best game, but it's still fun to be in the stadium and in all the excitement.

Christmas card pictures
My sister-in-law is photographer so we had her take pictures of us for our Christmas cards. Ev is so talented! This was one of my favorites.

That's most of the big stuff. We also went to a Real Salt Lake game earlier this week. The game started late, so we were going to leave early since I have to be at work early. We left in the 75th minute with a 0-0 score. RSL scored in the 78th and 88th minute to win 2-0. Bummer.

Summer Update

I thought it's about time I posted our happenings this summer. While Tim was in China I went to Washington state with Mom, Dad, Kelii, and his family because my youngest cousin was graduating from high school. We had a great time. Kelii, Ev, and I went on runs over the Tacoma Narrows bridge most days and we all went sight seeing and stuff. The Tacoma/Seattle area is so pretty. Here's a picture of my Mom and I at Gig Harbor just outside of Tacoma.

Funny story: The Gap in Kahului closed, so now my mom doesn't have a lot of places to get casual clothes on Maui. Now whenever I go shopping and find a shirt I like I'll usually buy 2 and send one to my mom. For awhile I was buying the exact same colors for her that I was getting for myself. Recently I've been buying us different colors because it makes it really hard for us to wear different things when we're together because our wardrobes are the same. When we were in Tacoma my mom wanted new jeans and I was telling her that I just found a pair of jeans that actually fit me (since I'm a little out of proportion) and she should try it. She did, liked them, and bought them so now we really have the same wardrobe, shirts and pants. That outfit she's wearing in the picture above, I have the exact same one. I guess when I go back to Maui I don't have to pack any clothes. My mommy is so cool!

I've started working and am working on a rotating shift. I have an 8 day work week, not a 7 day work week, so I work different days every week. It's been kind of rough the last few weeks because I've been working weekends and Tim works Monday through Friday, so we don't get to spend very much time together, especially since it's summer time. We have been able to do a few things though.

Earlier in the summer we hiked the Slate Canyon trail the goes out Rock Canyon Park, though Slate Canyon, and comes out on the Y trail. It was a really cool hike. The trail was a little overgrown going through Slate Canyon, probably because of all the rain we were getting the the beginning of the summer, but once it opened up and you could see the valley, it so was pretty. A little more intense then I was anticipating, but still fun. Here's a few pictures of us from the hike.



I have a friend from Maui that is going to be a Senior in high school that came up to BYU for a few camps so she spent 2 weekends with us. We had a lot of fun with Sala and hopes she decides to come to BYU next year. We took her to the Oquirrh Mountain Open House. It is a really beautiful temple, the inside especially.


Ray and his family were in Utah for the 4th of July. My dad recently came across a lot of family history on his dad's side so we took a bunch of names to the temple and did a session of baptisms for about 120 names, including his father, grandparents on that side, and one of my mom's aunts that we were close to. It was such a special experience to do baptisms for family names with all of us there and some close friends. Here's a picture of us at the temple.


This year the MLS All-Star game was at the new Rio Tinto stadium. No, I didn't get free tickets, those seem to go out in minutes when they're available. We did go with Kelii, Ev, and Emi. It's the first professional soccer game I've been to and I'm hoping since I work for Rio Tinto that I'll be able to get free tickets some times. They played Everton and it was a really good, exciting game. Everton won in penalty kicks. I was amazed at how fast some of the players are, especially Landon Donovan. Here's a picture of us at the game. We want to go to the US vs. El Salvador World Cup Qualifying game in September, but the cheapest tickets are over $100. Maybe somehow I'll sneak free tickets to that one...


Even though we don't get to see each other as much as we'd like to this summer, we've been enjoying it and doing a lot of fun things. We're going to see Cirques de Soleil in a few days (yet another perk of working for Rio Tinto). Tim went on a backpacking trip earlier in the summer with Ben and Austin (his brother and nephew) one of the weeks I was working my 12 hour days. I want to run a half marathon in November so I've been running a lot more to build up my mileage. We've also been rock climbing pretty often. I'm starting to get into it so we just got me a harness and shoes. It's still a little scary for me, but I trust Tim belaying me so I don't worry about it. It's nice to have something that we can do together.

That's our summer so far!

China

After I got back from Ghana Tim went to China for one of his classes. It was a China Megastructures class and they studied about some of the big skyscrapers, bridges, and dams in China and went to see them and meet with engineers, architects, etc. Here's some pictures from his trip. I don't know where they are (and Tim won't write a post) so here's just the pictures.

Great Wall of China.

Three Gorges DamProbably the only time in his life Tim will wear a hard hat. Ironic that I wear one everyday and he probably never will after this trip. This is some big bridge that is both a suspension bridge and cable-stayed bridge.
On some cable car going up a steap hill.
Okay, maybe he wore a hard hat twice. This is on the 100th floor of an unfinished building, around 490 meters up.
Hong Kong Temple. It was closed for cleaning.
Beijing I think.

Bird's nest (stadium for the 2008 Olympics).

Forbidden City. Tiananmen Square.

Ghana - Lydia and Kweku

In preparation for this trip we have been working with an engineer in Ghana named Kweku. He and his wife Lydia are two of the most amazing people you could ever meet. Kweku is in real estate in Ghana but owns his own engineering company that mainly does humanitarian engineering. He doesn't make much of a profit from his engineering company but runs it to help people less fortunate than himself.

Lydia is the human resources manager for the Africa West Area for the church. She recently started her own school (preschool to 6th grade). She bought a big house on a very large plot of land and completely renovated it for her school. Although it is a private school and most students pay tuition, it isn't nearly money enough to sustain the school. Until she can find benefactors who will help make up the money for the school she pays for the expenses out of her own pocket. She started the school because she sees how bad many of the schools are and wanted to start a good, affordable school where children can get a good education.

She had about 40 chairs and 20 tables for the school she ordered from Ikea months ago but hadn't had the time to put them together. We spent a Sunday afternoon putting them all together. Them we carried as much as we could from their house to the school.

Kweku and Lydia are very wealthy in Ghana, but do all they can to help others. It's really admirable the things they do to help others. The world really needs more people like them.

Ghana - Minya

About a year ago a Capstone group from BYU designed a merry-go-round that charges electric lanterns for schools in Ghana so children can use them to do their school work at night. Our EWB group went to one of these schools in a little village called Minya to implement the windmill project. This windmill will supplement the lanterns that are charged when the children use the merry-go-round. The windmill was a huge success and will work very well because it doesn't require human effort and can charge lanterns at all times of the day (when it is windy of course).
It was really sobering when we went to Minya. The people there have no electricity and live in mud huts with thatch roofs. Many of the children didn't have a lot of clothes and none had shoes. It was obvious that they wore their clothes until they couldn't wear them anymore. The school was really tiny and you could tell they crammed as many kids as possible into each classroom. Here's a picture of a typical home and one of the 3 classrooms at the school.
The children were on vacation from school that week, but a group of them saw us coming down the road in our van and came to see what the excitement was about. They watched us put up the windmill and we talked to the older ones about how it works. We wanted to play soccer with them, but no one in the village owned a soccer ball, so I got 2 empty concrete bags, rolled them into a ball and tapped it together with masking tape and we challenged them to a game. It was so much fun! The kids were really good too, and it kind of broke the ice between us and them. They were a little reserved before we started playing but after we started they were really friendly and open with us and showed us some of their games they play for fun. While we were playing Dr. Lewis drove back to the nearest village and bought 3 soccer balls to give them. They were so happy, it was like they received the best present ever. Here's a few pictures from our soccer game.
They also loved our cameras. At first they didn't really know what to do when we'd take a picture, but after we started showing them the pictures they would pose and act it up for the cameras. I was trying to teach a group of small kids how to take pictures. I would take a picture of them, then they would swarm me to see it, want to take another picture, and it would keep on going. Real cute kids though, there were two little boys that I just wanted to take home with me, they were so cute.

Being in Ghana, but Minya especially really made me appreciate the things we have. In Minya they don't have anything except the bare neccesities. The kids have no toys, there's no electricity, and not much food or water either. There was a big water tank near the school that had a small leak and there were some kids trying to lick up all the water they could from the concrete pad underneath. When we ate lunch they all looked at us longingly because they probably hadn't eaten anything all day. We all shared our lunches with them. It really pulls at your heart when you see things like that, and makes you wish there were more things you could do to help.

Ghana - Kakum National Forest

On our way to Tarkwa (about a 6 hours outside of Accra) we stopped at Kakum National Forest to do some sight seeing. It's a preserve for wild African jungle animals. I really wanted to see an elephant, but we didn't. However, after we left I made friends with an aligator when we stopped for lunch. Apparently they are very tame when they are full. But how do you know if they are full? That is the question...


The big attraction at Kakum is a canopy walk that they have through the huge trees. It consists of 7 ropes swings that are at least 100 ft above the ground that connect lookout platforms on the trees. It was really high, the pictures do not do it justice.

For those of you who don't know, I'm really scared of heights, but I did really well on the canopy walk! Except for the last platform. A bunch of us were on it and the weight was unbalanced so the platform tilted down about 6 inches on the side we were standing on. I just about freaked. Imagine, you are 100 ft up on a platform and it starts tilting down on one side... not the most confortable feeling. After that I practically ran over the last bridge to get back on solid ground. Here's a picture of our whole group (minus Wendy) on one the platforms. We were supposed to make scared faces. Some of us seem more scared than others.

Ghana - Solar Water Purifier

The project I've been working on with 5 other students was a solar water purifier. Clean water is a huge problem in Ghana. Many people get water out of rivers that are polluted really bad. Apparently the law in Ghana that regulates dumping waste into waterways states that as long as you dump a lower concentration of waste than what is already in the water that is ok. So as long as you dump less that the person above you or dilute the waste, you are fine. Not a very good strategy if you ask me.

After about 5 versions of our project over 8 months, we designed a solar collector that can purify a fixed volume of water. The idea behind this method of purification is that if water is heated to a certain temperature for a certain amount of time, the water will be sterilized and free of bacteria. On a sunny day our project can sterilize 0.5 liter of water in about 20 minutes.


Basically it is a fiberglass dish lined with mylar (a very reflective material) that focuses the suns rays to a single point, the focal point, much like a satellite dish. A bottle of water is them suspended by a stand at the focal point where it is heated by the focused suns rays. In the picture above I'm trying to locate the focal point by feeling where the air is the hottest (trust me, it gets VERY hot at the focal point) and adjusting the bottle to that point. Another more artistic picture of me doing tests on our project.

It was interesting, when we were making the dish at the shop, many of the guys that work there had never seen fiberglass before. They were fascinated by these 3 girls that were making a fiberglass dish. It was pretty fun to see.

Our project is going to be used in a town called Tarkwa. There is a big gold mine there that does a lot of civil service projects for the surrounding village. They built a very nice school for the children there and want to use our project to provide clean water for the children. Our project was very well received. We took 2 units that we made and they want to make about 20 more! The good thing about implementing the project there is that our project was given to an engineer who is in charge of the civil service projects. He understands how it works and has the skills and resources to maintain and reproduce our project which helps make it sustainable.

At the end of the year we were really close to getting a constant flow purification system working. This would actually be a better system because no one has to change the water every 30 minutes, it would be able run on it's own all day. There's going to be another BYU group continuing our project next year, so hopefully they'll be able to get that up and running! Here's a picture of the portion of our team that went to Ghana: Jennifer, Wendy and I.

Ghana!

I've finally gotten around to blogging about my trip to Ghana now that I'm back from Washington and have all our pictures! I went to Ghana after graduation with an Engineers Without Borders group from BYU. I've been in a class for EWB where we've worked on humanitarian engineering projects for people in Ghana and Peru. The projects we took to Ghana were a windmill, a solar water purification unit (my project), and a biofilter toilet a group has been working on with an engineer there. I have a lot of cool pictures and stories from the trip, so to eliminate a really long post I'm going to put individual posts about different things over the next few days. I hope you all enjoy it!

Graduation

At the end of April I graduated from BYU with a Bachelor's Degree in Chemical Engineering and a minor in Business Management. I know this post is late but I've been in Ghana for the last 2 weeks (more about my trip to follow in the next few days). I graduated with honors (Cum Laude) and as a member of the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society. It is so weird to be done. Many times during my Freshman, Sophomore, and Junior years it seemed so long and never ending, I thought it would never end. Even after the graduation ceremony, I really didn't hit me that I had graduated because I still had to go to Ghana for Engineers Without Borders.

Graduation is as much an accomplishment for me as it is for Tim. He's had to put up with my stress, complaining, and frustration for 2.5 years. I couldn't have asked for a better support system, and to his credit I got my best grades after we got married!


My parents were also able to come to see me graduate and I am so thankful for their support as well. When I was growing up my parents always emphasized the importance of an education and encouraged us to do well in school. Without their support and encouragement I probably wouldn't be the studious individual I am today!


My older brother Kevin also graduated with a Bachelor's of Art's degree in Communications with an advertising emphasis. Kevin's mission put him a few years behind in school, which is why we graduated at the same time. It was so special to be able to share the day with him.


During my Senior year I guess I was in denial that I would actually be finishing college soon and leaving my surroundings at BYU that I had become so comfortable with. Chemical Engineering is a small major (about 50 graduates this year), so I've had all of my classes with the same people for the last 2.5 years. We've all become very close during that time and I'm sad to see us all going our separate ways, but am excited to see where life takes us all. There are some incredibly intelligent, talented, funny, and wonderful people, I am pleased to call them my friends. Here's the BYU Chemical Engineering Class of 2009.


Now that I'm graduated and in the real world, I'll be working as a Chemical Engineer for Rio Tinto at one of their Kennecott Utah Copper plants. I start on June 8.