"Nerding Out"

For the last year and a half I have lived in the Leroy Cowles Building. Today I took my first final in stochastic processes and kicked its butt! Now just two more finals and I can pack up my figurative belongings and move out of the math building.

Me and my math buddies have developed a good repoir and have taken to calling it 'nerding out' when we start talking excitedly about things like geometric brownian motion, vector spaces, markov chains, stochastic matrices, martingales or the chapman-kolmogorov equation. Part of me will be a little bit sad when I forget what all of this stuff is in a couple weeks.

They Didn't Even Mention the Beaverhead High School Gymnasium

T-Mo called to spread the good news: Dillon was named on Forbes' list of "America's Prettiest Towns." It was first on the list, I might add:

"The southwest enclave of Dillon, Mont., . . . its conventional main street, independently owned businesses (and absence of big-box stores). . . . it's where Lewis and Clark found the Shoshone natives and negotiated supplies for their crossing of the Rocky Mountains. Today Dillon offers close proximity to world-class fly-fishing."

I hear mom wasn't so impressed. Somebody's forgotten where they came from.

I LOVE DILLON. Meet us at the demolition derby there in July.

Billups, You'll Have to Win Without Me

Mom e-mailed at about noon today to say Gaylen got four tickets to the Nuggets-Jazz game tonight, and that Jace and Holly opted not to go. I almost got in my car and started driving. I understand the tickets are now going to the Marshalls. Boo.

Direct quote from Coco:"Look for us on t.v. G will be the one with the disgusted look on his face when the Nuggets lose!"

Jace and Holly, bad form.

GM and GP Karford are coming to our ward . . .

on May 2—a fast Sunday. Brace yourselves. :)

Naming Rights

Just heard that a colleague's daughter was having a baby today, and said unborn baby was given my future unborn child's name. Why does it feel so tainted now?

"Thank for All"

An e-mail, with the above title, along with the attached pictures, came from Napoleon Quispe, director of the LDS Employment Resource Center in Lima, Peru. He is a neat, neat man. He grew up in Quillabamba, a small Andes town on the backside of a mountain just beyond Macchu Picchu, without shoes to wear to school. Now he has his own swimming pool. He has one of the best perspectives on leadership and perserverance I've ever heard. He also helped translate the Book of Mormon and Temple ordinances into Quechua, and, tolerated us singing a Quechua song about Quillabamba at the top of our lungs.

I love his English. Almost as much as I love our Utah bishop's English.

New Magazine Day

The spring issue is here.

"Back in the Saddle" (watch the Web extra here) and "Kearl's Currencies" are some of my prouder story finds, and the Jimmer and Hiking visuals are also cool.

As for my (other) personal recommendations, this issue's must-read is "Face-to-Face Leadership," by business prof Curtis LeBaron.

And the freshman series is finally over—note the Obama Lied sign in the background of the picture of Mitch. It's garnered some fun responses.

For Grandma T, the only thing I wrote in this issue was the bit on Sini.

How to Fatten up a Missioinary

This is Niels.



He is serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in California. In addition to riding tricycles, he is teaching the gospel and serving Californians. And gaining weight.

And this is what I mailed him today.

iPad, iPod Touch, or iPhone?

I'm torn. My boss told me to pick out one of the three, and I just can't commit.

The iPhone's a bit spendy—I have no use for all those features when the AT&T plan is $50-plus each month. But, to quote my colleague, choosing between the iPod Touch and the iPad is like trying to choose your favorite child.

Peru Part One: HUACACHINA

After a long flight (six hours from Houston to Lima), we arrived in Peru late and caught a taxi to the Wasihpy Hostel to get five hours of sleep. The place was good enough for five hours—though it was my first introduction to a Latin American showerhead . . . all you get is a drizzle, and the temperature mysteriously vacillates from scalding hot to freezing cold on a whim.

The next morning featured a near three-car pileup, a bus terminal with a curious customer-service strategy, then a five-hour ride on a double-decker bus through Lima's nondescript desert (marked by the bus breaking down not once, but thrice). Alas, we made it to Ica and caught a ride to oasis town of Huacachina, where the true beginning of our Peru recap begins . . .

Huacachina is full of quaint doors like this. And colorful buildings, too.

We all took a dip in the waters of Huacachina, which are rumored to hold curing powers (or a small percentage of the town's sewage. Maybe both).
It was a nice little swim, except for all the attention we got from the locals. Apparently foreigners are rarely seen in the water. Some teenaged boys made fun of Spencer for his scientific depth estimate, but he won them back with a back flip off a palm-tree stump. Cue GOOD Magazine's back-flip video—"We are all part of a team—a back-flip team . . ."

Peruvians ROCK the fanny pack—only there it's called a Kangaroo. This guy was sort of one of our waiters . . . though for the most part, he was sneaking spiked Chicha from the restaurant's punch bowl. He was thrilled to learn we were from Utah—like all those "religious guys" they have walking around in suits. :) Every time he passed our table, or saw us later in the day, he'd yell "Utah, Utah, USA!"
The restaurant's menu, fittingly titled.

Soccer canchas abound in Peru, from rudimentary sticks for goals set up in the middle of the desert to cement fields to real grass. This one was right next to our hotel. Lots of graffiti, real metal posts. Huacachinans mean business.


Our hotel. Charming. I would love to go back. Freshly blended smoothies in the morning, a cool pool, a working shower, a pet macaw, a bumpin' restaurant—all backing up to a monstrous sand dune. Lovely.

I mentioned dunes—picture the Sahara desert. And Huacachina has capitalized on this sprawling sea of sand. The town comes alive at 5 p.m. with the rip-roar of V-8 engine dune buggies, equipped with roll cages. You drive to the edge of town, pay a buck in taxes, and the driver FLYS up the side of the dune and off into no-man's land.

The tourists are all strapped in with full-body harnesses. Our driver didn't buckle his once—and he was wearing flip flops. WE CAUGHT AIR. I don't think you could find a rollercoaster that could rival the ride we had—two solid hours of fun for $15.

They stop in a scenic spot for pictures.


Then stop again atop multiple peaks for sandboarding. It was almost incomparable to snowboarding. We all had sand in every crevice by the end. It's a free-for-all out there, with 20 or so buggies buzzing around, all of them convening together at the top of each peak. With all the tourists careening down the hill on boards at once, a couple people almost got taken out. It was pretty wild. Going on your stomach, we found, is the preferred way to ride the board, and we had a few belly-skiing races.


The passengers in our buggy. At center is our driver, Rufino—which also sounds like Rufio, which naturally led to us chanting lines from Hook: "Rufio, Rufio, RU-FI-O!" To our delight, Rufino liked this and drove faster.

The ride ended with an unbeatable view of an indescribable sunset. Before retiring for the evening, we laughed until our abdominals were pained over ice cream (I was tempted to order the restaurant's 60-ounce milkshake—my family would understand. Really, who wouldn't be?)

The next day, we trecked it back up to Ica, the three of us riding in the back of one of these little moto-taxis, packed like sardines. It made for a slow go uphill. All the motos are emblazoned with handpainted Reebok, Nike, or Puma insignia. As you can see, our driver was part of the Reebok team.

He took us to Ica's museum, where we saw the Nasca mummies that were featured in the March National Geographic. We also saw trophy heads—the lips were sealed with two small stakes driven through the lips—and the purposely deformed skulls of the Nasca elite. We didn't make it to the Nasca lines . . . maybe on our next Peruvian adventure.

Sheri Dew Stare Down

I had to give a presentation to the Alumni Board today. It went surprisingly well—I think—aside from the fact that I may have gone a little long. It wouldn't be a big deal, except for the fact that the next speaker was President Samuelson . . .

Thinking about the presentation vexed me all week, but it was totally worth it in the end. They thanked me for coming with a tub of BYU mint truffles, to which I now say, no, thank you.

Thanks, Claire

Brad's Photo intern Claire, who took these, is fun to smile for.

By the way, this is Brad, our Peru buddy.