Happy New Year

Happy New Year!

Alison and I spent New Year’s Eve at Spencer’s house with her family. We played a few games, Alison and I tried to defend our title as Trivial Pursuit Champions. Unfortunately, we were unable to win the game. We usually do pretty well as a team, but tonite just wasn’t our night.

Before we went to Spencer and Korrin’s house, Alison and I went to the Jazz game. They played the Philadelphia 76ers. We didn’t think that the Jazz would be able to win but they were able to pull it our in the end. It was an awesome game, and we had great seats. One of the fellows that I home teach was able to get tickets from his work. He’s not really a sports fan so he offered them to us. We’re both glad that he did. J

The other big news from this week is the trip that I took with my parents to San Francisco to watch the Utes play in the Emerald Bowl. We left early Wednesday morning and made the long drive to Sacramento. When we got to Reno we had planned to take I-80 over Donner’s Summit, but after calling Scott he advised us to take highway 50 through South Lake Tahoe. It was snowing pretty hard over the top and it took us quite a while to get over the summit. When we got to the Rees’ we saw on the news that it was good that we had taken highway 50. The top story on the Sacramento news was the bad weather on I-80. A plane had crashed right off the interstate and they had mudslides all over the place and the interstate was down to 1 lane.

That night at the Rees’ we watched the movie Fantastic 4. It was ok. Pretty much like all of the rest of the comic book movies.

The next day we left for San Francisco and got there in about 2 hours. We parked the cars at the San Francisco Marriott Hotel and then just walked to the game – stopping at an Italian restaurant on the way. The game was at SBC Park – which is where the Giants normally play. The Utes were slated to play Georgia Tech (#24 in the nation). Nobody expected the Utes to do very well, and we were going to the game to have fun – definitely not expecting a win. Nonetheless, the Utes put on a show we will not soon forget. They ran all over the Yellowjackets and won 38-10. Here is a press release on the game.

Of course we were thrilled to see a great game (in our opinions). After the game, I will admit, I “stormed” the field to celebrate with the team (the real reason was to find out if the turf was “spongy” like Fenway Park… see Fever Pitch).

After the game we walked back to the hotel to celebrate by eating at a crappy Chinese restaurant. We stopped by the Cheesecake Factory to get some cheesecake for dessert. We walked through a few stores – but no major shopping for us.

The next day we spent the morning at the hotel (ate a wonderful buffet breakfast – normally $18) and then went to Pier 39 for an hour. While there I browsed a couple of stores and then watched the Sea Lions for a bit. After the adventures at Pier 39 we got on the road. We had originally planned to stay in Sacramento tonite (Friday), but the weather was stormy the whole drive and we were afraid that it would only get worse. We decided to try and go over the top on I-80 so we had to buy chains. We had heard all sorts of things about how bad it would be, but it turned out to not be that bad. It was rainy and a little snowy the whole way until we got to Reno. We decided to drive as far as we could and we made it to Elko before we felt that we should stop.

It turns out that we were very blessed to have gone over the pass on Friday, rather than waiting until Saturday. There was a 1000 foot mudslide at Truckee (near Donner pass) which shut down I-80. Added to that the interstate was underwater at Vacaville (between San Francisco and Sacramento). Northern California has had record flooding from the storms that have been coming through.

All in all it was a great trip. We didn’t expect the Utes to win but they did so that was exciting. It was a fun night with the Dickson’s to celebrate the new year. 2006 looks good. I’ll let you know!