Thanks Mother Nature

     What can be a better Christmas present than snow?  We have been so lucky this last week because we have gotten more snow than we have in years.  As I woke up on Tuesday morning, I looked out my bedroom window with a massive smile upon my face. I mean who wouldn't smile to this?

I took this gorgeous picture myself.

     I immediately knew I had to get onto that mountain as fast as humanly possible.  The women in my family were off to Salt Lake to shop for the holidays. This prevented any of them to join me on what was going to be one of the best adventures I will ever have. My father, the best skier of us, was restricted by his work and was forced to me teased by the view of the mountain from his office window.  I made a few quick calls to my best friends that skied, but none of them were able to go out that day.  At the time, I thought it would suck going out alone, but looking back, I am happy I went by myself. 

     Imagine this, you are in a ski lift line with a few of your friends. The line doesn't seem to be moving as you and the people around you that are equally anxious are bumping shoulders as you try to squeeze ahead. This long and uncomfortable experience can easily be avoided if you ditch said friends for the glorious single's line. This doesn't mean single relationship wise (well, it can I guess?), but it means people who are riding by themselves. This is the golden ticket to quickly breeze pass the funnel of people that Vail tricks into thinking they are each somehow going to get to the top within a good amount of time (as my sister would say, fucking Vail). I probably saved about forty five minutes at least by riding with the singles line.

     This process lead me to "flop" my ski to lift time ratio. I started my day by going to the Orange Bubble lift (btw I am at the Canyons). This part of the mountain contains some of the runs I know best. This allowed be to scout out my powder "stashes." I lapped that a few times, getting knee high snow. I thought I should explore more of the mountain so I headed towards the base. As skiing past Red Pine Lodge, I noticed how absurdly long Saddleback's line was. I decided to abandon this plan and head towards Tombstone. Anyone who has made that journey can sympathize with this next part. As I was skiing down the earlier skied out powder that is now what us locals call "mashed potatoes," I had to deal with all the tourists that make the extremely unpredictable turns. Sean Lydon and I have agreed that if we were ever to commit genocide (not that we will), we would first kill these tourists. 

     I finally reached Tombstone with a welcoming of a predicted twenty five minute line. As explained earlier, I hopped in the singles line and It took roughly three minutes. With the immense amount of people, I thought I should get out of there as quickly as possible. But as I rode up that first chair, I looked down into the aspens to see some of the best powder we have had in years. I figured the line only took a few minutes and started lapping Tombstone. I ended up lapping Tombstone for the rest of my day. 

     This was the first of the best three days of skiing I have ever had. More on that later.

     

More Fencing

     So today actually went okay. We fenced cadet and I was extremely nervous.  Usually men’s foil events are the first event and are super early. BUT NOT TODAY!!!! Our event started at noon and I am so happy. But, we didn’t sleep in because our teammate Alexander was fencing Y10 so we went to support him. I am actually extremely jealous of this child. He bought a blue blade. I have always wanted a blue blade but my teammates said they would make fun of me.

     Anyway, today we fenced cadet and it was pretty hard. My head wasn’t in pools at all and I went 3-3. Out of all the fencers in our event, our bracket end up working out that I was gonna fence Sean and whoever won fenced Cole. Sean hurt his leg in pools and took a medical withdrawal. This means I was forced to fence my teammate Cole. We have been back and forth for years and I hate fencing him.

     He got up like 9-3 and I thought I was screwed. But then I just got my shit together and brought it back 15-9 and won. After that I won another bout that wasn’t that bad. Last weekend i was in Kansas City and fenced cadet. I lost to this guy 5-0 in pools and today he beat me 12-11 in over time. I am very bitter. He was 17 so I think I did fairly well. So that was the round of 16 so I think I got 9th again…ugh.

     Us boys are so sore that we just came home ordered a pizza and all just laid down. We are now in the basement listening to music as Cole and Sean play Pokemon on Cole’s Gameboy color. I think they have homework too, but screw that right? We are all in so much pain, as I said before. We all have attempted to go back up stairs but failed. This shouldn’t be surprising. Sean can barely move his leg. To be honest, I am also completely half-assing this assignment. I probably need more sleep. But guess who does’t get to sleep in? ME1 This is due to the fact that I have to get a plane tomorrow in time to make it to fourth period.

     I don’t think I have mentioned Dima on my blog. Dina is a really good friend of mine who is a badass fencer. Just so you know, his name comes from his real name, Daniel Makogan. My sisters want to have kids and name them Dimu for Daniel Murrin. Whenever I fence, my sister tells me to release my inner Dimu..so thats interesting. Speaking of my sisters, Bree called me this week and gave me a two hour rant about terrorists. I am assuming this was triggered by the recent incident with Paris. I apologize, this blog post is literally all over the place, but I am half asleep so whatever.

Heres a photo from today :)

Denver!

     “I hate the tags on clothes, they should just stamp their products,” -Elaine.  I am currently in Denver for an SYC event for fencing. Shocker right? Anyways,I am writing this on Saturday night and today we had Y14.  I think I may have briefly explain this before, but I am going to do it again. Fencing is based on age and skill. So there are Y08, Y10, Y12, Y14, Cadet and junior. Cadet is 17 year olds and younger. Junior is 19 year olds and younger. Then there are Div 1, Div 2, and Div 3. These events are based on rating. In the world of fencing you are ranked with a letter. So A-E and then unrated. It is very difficult to get rated, especially in Utah. To put things in perspective, only ten percent of fencers are rated and only one percent are A’s.

     Being this as it may, I am an E. To most people that is pretty good, but I have been so close to my D so many times that it has become frustrating. (insert Sean’s bitch face here) So ANYWAYS, today i fenced Y14, It went actually really well. I was 5-1 after pools and then ended up getting 9th over all. I just remembered as I typed that that most people don’t know how these tournaments work.

     The first part of the event is pools. Basically, you are put in a group of people. This group is usually anywhere from 4-9 people depending on how ny people are in the event. This group is called your pool. You fence everyone in your pool, each to 5 points. Each match, or bout, has a 3 minute limit. So today in Y14 I went 5-1. This means I got 5 wins and 1 loss. This section of the tournament helps set up an elimination bracket. This is your standard single elimination bracket. These bouts go to 15 points.These matches have three three minute sections. In between each section is a minute break where coaches can talk with the fencer, and the fencer can get water, eat, wipe sweat, etc. We call these matches Direct Eliminations or DE’s. It may not seem so, but a lot can change within 15 touches. The match evolves so much in that amount of time.

     Tomorrow I am fencing Cadet and to be honest, I am extremely nervous. Thes guys will be smarter, and faster. Besides that, they stop pulling bullshit that younger kids pull. For example, today, I hit a kid and ran into hi and he pulled what I call a soccer player. This means he acts like he’s in  lot of pain. when in all reality he can fence fine. They do this in order to make their opponent feel bad and make them unfocused. My coach told me to kept fencing. “No mercy, he’s faking it,” as she said. Anyway, I am super tired and super nervous for tomorrows fencing. I will upload a post tomorrow to let you know what happens in cadet.

I will update soon.

And btw, heres a picture of us today waiting for DE’s to start.

First Part of the Trip

     I am currently in Kansas City, Missouri.  There are only a few things that draw me to the South. Those are barbecue, sweet tea, and of course, fencing. So as I said, I am in Kansas City at a national event. Fencing is very weird compared to other sports for many reasons. But one of the biggest reasons has to be the tournament structure. In football, track, or soccer, winning State may be a huge deal. In fencing, its like ehh, go when nationals and then you will be good.  This means that most people assume you are super good when you say you are going to nationals. But, this doesn't always have to be the case.

     Ir is currently 8:30 on Thursday night. Before tournaments, we have to have our gear checked. For those of you who are not aware, fencing gear consists of many wires and circuits that allow us to know when a person hits on target.  The unfortunate part about this system is that it breaks....often.  Before competition, you have to have your gear inspected to make sure everything is working properly. This process doesn't take very long but usually the lines are horrendous. Knowing that tomorrow morning my event starts at 8, I will get there at 7 as to allow time for warming up. If I was going to check gear I would have to go even earlier. So instead, Dean and I decided to try to go tonight before it closes (6:00). Our flight landed at about 4:10, and we left the airport in a Super Shuttle at about 4:45. Believe it or not, we did in fact make it to the venue at 5:55 and I successfully had everything pass. Thank god!

     It is kinda strange how this system works, coaches and students cannot sleep in the same room together if they are of the opposite sex. Being that my coach is a woman, I cannot share a hotel room with her. My teammate Cole has family in Kansas City who have offered to\ let people stay at their house.  Their house is about forty five minutes away from the venus and I do not wanna leave the house at six before I fence. This means I had to get a hotel room near the venue, but couldn’t share a room with Elaine. Conveniently, my friend Marissa and her coach Dean were also going to Kansas City. after a while we decided to have Marissa’ stay with Cole, his family, and Elaine at their friends house while Dean and I shared a room in the city.  This ended up working perfectly because the Marriot we picked was literally three minute walking distance from my hotel room. This, with trust from Dean, allowed me to pretty much go to the venue whenever I wanted.  An come back and shower whenever I wanted also.

          Anyway I am really nervous for tomorrow because I am fencing Cadet. some fencing events are based on age and Cadet is the same as 16 year olds and younger. This is one age group above mine, 14 year olds and younger. These guys will be extremely good and I am proud to be killed by them.

Heres a picture I took on the plane :)

Gay Marriage

     Gay marriage was legalized in the United States on June 27, 2015.  This blog post will be one where I explain my thoughts on something.  So, if you are curious to hear my opinions about this, stick around.  It was actually really interesting that day for me.  This is because I found out that gay marriage was legalized while at a kitchen table with my very religious and old-school grandmother (you can assume her opinion) and my twenty two year old sister who lives in San Fransisco (once again, take a guess). Right once my dad told us the good news, my grandmother went into a huge rant about basically how the world was ending.  This lead to a three day debate between my grandmother and my sister. But today, I am not going to talk about that debate, I am going to discuss my own opinions.

Just so we are clear, I personally support gay marriage

     In my opinion, and many others' as well, a problem will be solved when everyone is happy.  And from that perspective, some could consider gay marriage to be a problem due to the lack of satisfaction from everyone.  When I say this, I am talking about older people (usually above 65), religious people, and some times both (like my grandmother). I am looking for a solution for the future, and considering older people's "state", I am basically going to disregard them. This means that the biggest population of people that consider gay marriage a problem are those who are religious. My dad and I have found what we believe to be a pretty good solution.

     Correct me if I am wrong, but the word "marriage" originally was a religious term that was defined as two people being joined together under god. In our modern day, most people do not think of it that way.  Most people are getting married whether they are religious or not.  To those people, "marriage" is not much more than a word to describe there love for their counterpart. But for those who are strictly religious, marriage still means by the church and under god. This raises some problems. I would bet that MOST homosexuals are either not religious or are very lightly religious. But, for those who are, this solution will not be applicable.

     I know people that have been together for as long as I can remember, but have not gotten married because they do not want to be joined under god.  This gave me an idea. What if those wanted to be joined under the church could be and those who didn't want to be joined by the church could still do so.  I call it civil unionization.  Those who do not want to be "married" by the church can be joined through the government and can have the same legal benefits as modern day marriage. Those who are religious can be both be joined by the government and the church.  The religious part of the joining should still be called marriage to maintain the original definition

     This is a similar system to the one they have in Mexico and I believe it could easily be applied to the United States. Let me know in the comments what you think.

.                                       This picture was taken by my sister in San Fransisco.

I'll keep you updated.

     I often find myself questioning why I spend all my time with the same five people. For those of you who haven't looked at my about page or aren't close to me personally, I am a fencer and I am always traveling with my team.  In the last two years we have traveled all over the United States. This allows for a ton of weird experiences. Once, we were in Pocatello, Idaho, and my friend Cole made a brilliant decision. Now, I will not mention his last name, but if you know who I'm talking about, then you will not be surprised with what I am about to tell you.

     In his defense, this was after a very long day of fencing.  So after our tournament we decided to go back to the hotel and relax for a bit.  When a group of teenagers says "relax" they usually mean go screw around in the hotel and pool.  But, for some reason, we were all super tired and sore (wonder why) and we made the decision to go sit in the hot tub and actually relax for once. This small choice that may have seemed like nothing quickly became the highlight of the night as I saw Cole's eyes widen a few seconds after getting in the hot tub. He then quickly jumped out of the tub.  Of course, in confusion, we all asked if everything was okay. Turns out he had forgotten to take his phone out of his pocket which resulted in his phone's appearance resembling that of a piece of fried chicken.  The chemical reaction that caused this mess also caused a slight burn mark on Cole's thigh.  Let's just say he needed to hit up the Verizon store.

Some of you may be worried he ruined his brand new iphone 6, but don't worry.  Cole is incapable of possessing anything nice without breaking it. So his parents let him use this brick.

I got this picture from here.

    Not all my fencing traveling is with my team.  This last summer I spent part of my time training in San Fransisco at a very prestigious club. While training, I became friends with an odd fellow named Sebastian. We didn't spend much of the training time together because he fences epee (ewww epee).  This caused us to spend a majority of our time together during lunch.  One day, we were both craving tacos.  Sebastian was from San Fransisco so he knew the route the taco truck took.  After a few miles of running, we finally found the truck.  But as we walked up they had packed up and were moving to a new location, so we ran after it a few more miles.  I guess you just do what you got to do for tacos.

     Throughout this blog I will be talking about my experiences with fencing. (I mean I am doing it all the time) If you want more fencing stories, traveling stories or just general thoughts, let me know. I also have a very bad habit of ranting about everything and I have been told it is entertaining. So also let me know if there's anything in particular you want me to rant about.

Adios... :)

     I feel that a reason you are reading this blog is to learn a bit about me.  Well, turns out, the biggest parts of my life aren't me at all, but my dear old friend Little Boy Pimp.  Just so we are clear, that nickname, that I developed over two years ago, has no legitimate origin and I have no idea where it came from. Anyway,  in this post I will not clearly state who this person is, but if you can guess than good for you.  This particular idiot and I have spent a fair amount of time together the last few years. But, I guess that is how it's supposed to be with best friends. Before I mention any stories, I want to tell you one of my favorite jokes mentioned to me by this person.

"What do you call a biker gang made up of norse bisexual monarchs?"
"What?"
"The Bikings"

     For who of you do not understand that joke, I am truly sorry because that is hands down the best joke on the face of this Earth.  Back to the point, I have had many strange memories with this person.  If it is four in the morning as we down approximately two pounds if Swedish Fish in my basement, or dancing with pizza in an apartment in NYC, we have very interesting experiences.  My particular favorite of these experiences was when we were doing construction on a house.  We were instructed to take the insulation out of the walls and take the drywall off the the walls and ceiling.  So I find myself in the garage of this house when I hear this person yell, "Brycceeeeee," considering how dangerous this job actually is, I quickly run to his location in the hope he hasn't accidentally impaled himself with a large axe.  When I had last seen him, he was taking off dry wall from the ceiling.  He was standing on some scaffolding with a pile of  insulation next to him.  When I finally got to him, I found him buried in the pile of insulation.  Turns out he had fallen off the scaffolding and thankfully landed in the pile.

     Weirdly that was not the closest we were to death while in that house. (We really should stop working there) Once we had to remove the dry wall from a ceiling in a stair well.  This became an issue... We needed to somehow reach the ceiling...which keep in mind was twenty feet above the stairs.  After a few minutes of debate, we concluded we were going to find a way to put the scaffolding in the stair well and somehow complete our task.  Because the legs of the scaffolding do not go at different heights, we had to put books between the stair and the leg of the scaffolding. After quite a bit of struggle, we found ourselves standing on a very unstable base,  with a twenty foot drop onto stairs.  We could feel the base shift as we passed each other the hammer (if you understand that reference, I love you).  Luckily, we somehow surpassed deaths attempt to meet us.

Got this from memecrunch.com

Another post will come soon.

     As it says on my about page, I travel a lot.  If it is traveling for competitions or just for the hell of it, traveling is one of the highlights of my life.  I am fourteen and i have already been to the six primary continents, and forty nine of the fifty United States.  Traveling is a very important part of one's life because it offers opportunities that usually, you would never experience.  Being this as it may, you often find yourself in a weird or funny situation that you cannot help but share later.  On this blog I will be constantly doing so.

     Last summer (2014), I went on a trip with my family to Spain.  For the previous year or so, whenever we went on a family hike (or any family-time type activity), we would talk about my sisters' dream trip.  For you who do not know, I have two older sisters.  At this time of the story, my oldest sister Kylie was 19 and my other sister was 18. Anyway, my sisters had always planned on traveling through Europe.  My parents decided that we were going to take a family trip, then my sisters could split off from us part of the way in.

     It is summer 2013, we are in Spain as a family and it is week of out month long trip.  At the end of this week my sisters were going to slit off and explore the rest of the wonders Europe has to offer.  At this point, we are in Pamplona for the running of the bulls.A few days before I find myself in my hotel room with my sisters.  Kylie tells us she is going to go take a shower.  The only towels we had were the travel towels.  Okay, a little backstory.  The previous Christmas, in preparation for their journey, each of my sisters had received a small towel for traveling.  What neither of my sisters knew was you are supposed to wash the towel at least once before use. This allows for some of the access dye to get released.

     So we are back in the hotel room as I mentioned before. My sister, Kylie, tells us she is going to take a shower and walks into the bathroom.  For the first fifteen minutes or so everything seems perfectly fine until we hear Kylie scream from the bathroom.  At this point, Bree and I are praying she didn't break something, or herself for that matter.  Kylie then came out, towel still wrapped around her body, and her skin is bright pink.And because of her skin tone (pretty dang white), the pink was very bright.  Here is an example of the color I am describing:

All of her skin, face, arms, body, etc, was dyed for a solid two days and on the third it started to fade.  Now keep in mind, we weren't gonna let her just stay in the hotel.  This means we dragged her around Pamplona as she was constantly being stared at by people.  At one point, she was dancing (probably to some Disney soundtrack) when a woman gave her some money. So that the story of how my sister was a street performer for a day! Hope you guys liked the story and I'll post again soon!