This week at Police Academy we had quick-fire presentations from a hostage negotiator, S.W.A.T., and a guy who specializes in Tasers – he’s currently finishing up an undergrad research project on the subject, while he works on the force.

The Taser guy asked, up front, if we’d rather spend the whole hour on Tasers, or if we’d want to go over the basic rules of use-of-force. You can guess what I was interested in. Sadly, the vocal majority wanted to cover use-of-force, so that’s what we talked about.

We did have some time at the end to cover Tasers. The officer was aiming to make a strong case for why they’re one of the most impactful tools of police work to be invented in the past 50 years, due to the lives they save. He illustrated this by showing recordings of violent criminals being brought down non-lethally by Tasers. Unfortunately, for the elderly woman sitting next to me at least, people being Tasered do not go down silently. The videos were pretty hard to watch for her, with the screaming and yelling. It didn’t help that the officer presenting to us was cheering on the officers, laughing, saying how cool this all was. You’re not helping your case, bud. Of course, I was super into it, but it would’ve been nice to get the others on board as well. But it might’ve been a lost cause anyways; one video showed a violent dog attacking officers. One officer drew his gun, and would’ve been entirely within his rights to shoot the dog dead. But instead another officer Tasered the dog, who fell over whimpering for five or six seconds before getting up and scampering away. To which the old woman muttered, “Oh that poor dog.” And I’m thinking, well yeah, sad he got hurt, but at least he’s alive.

Anyways. Oh, I keep forgetting to mention, but the Kirkland Police Department is set up in basically a retrofitted Costco building. They carted out all the shelves, and built up walls for offices, and fit a jail in there as well. They’re currently working on putting ceilings on the conference rooms, since without them any loud conversations in the hallways or offices can be heard a long ways off.

So the big event of the week was McCall’s wedding! I flew in Thursday night, and headed down to Provo to check in with an old friend, and to see my old roommates.

In Washington I’ve taken up the habit of having Google Maps get me everywhere I need to be, except for places I frequent and have figured out how to get to. So I start whipping my phone out and calling up navigation directions down to Provo, bug I realize, Hey, this is my hometown, I know how to get around. Don’t need no new-fangled gee pee ess.

I want to reference this song, which accurately “illustrates” how I felt driving back in Utah, on familiar highways, where 80 mph is a perfectly acceptable average speed.

So I spent an hour or so catching up with a friend, cooking up popcorn and swapping stories. Darted from there to my old roommates, to catch up and watch some Battlestar Galactica.

Eventually got out of Provo at 2:00 am to head up to Alpine. Seeing as how I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night prior, I was especially tired. It was a weird feeling, barreling up the highway, trying to keep myself from crashing and burning. You know how when you’re driving normally, and you need to do something like change lanes to get around a slow driver, you don’t need to think about every individual action; your years of driving have burned in almost-automatic responses, so you can just decide to change lanes and do it without too much fuss. Well this evening (morning?) my autopilot was completely offline. Lessee, I think I’d better change lanes. Am I too close to the car ahead of me? Let’s check to the left… make sure my speed’s ok… turn… slowly turn… am I turning too fast? Better dial it back. Ok, I’m over enough, better straighten out… and increase speed… And not only did I have to think about each task, but they were all super hard. But I survived to crash another day.

The wedding was just great, made moreso by the bride’s siblings’ outfits.

Ended up helping set up at the reception afterwards. Which again, thanks in large part to Morgan, was a ball. Literally, there was a ball of disco spinning around up there.

The next day, Saturday, we spent on a family hike. The original plan was to do Donut Falls, then eat at the Silver Spoon afterwards, a nice little restaurant farther up the canyon. Unfortunately, when we arrived we realized that Scout was gonna be even more trouble than he usually is. The rivers up that canyon are routed into potable drinking systems, and dogs aren’t allowed anywhere in the canyon. We ended up heading to a neighboring canyon and hiking that instead, eating at Barbacoa on the way out.

Headed back, got a bit of shut-eye, then headed down south to Provo to see my roommates and watch a pivotal two-parter of Battlestar Galactica. I also was on a mission to check out The Worthing Saga from BYU’s library, which I’ll return when I’m back in town next.

Before all that, I decided to stop in and see the Thomases. Turned out to be great timing, they showed up about 15 seconds after I arrived. Had a great little visit. Got to see John again, for the first time since he left on his mission. And got some great advice for things to do in Tokyo later this month.

After Provo, I made record time up to SLC to see Lauren and her husband Antony for dinner at a nice Italian place, as a thank-you for doing the work on her wedding website. After eating entirely too much there, I stopped by a friend in Holladay before getting back to Alpine just after midnight.

Last night I had a dream where I was at a family reunion, and a group of us got in a wagon-sort-of-thing that was actually an airplane, just to borrow it for the morning. We took off, and I noticed we were heading straight for a helicopter. I look over and Evan & Driel’s daughter, Moriah, is piloting us. “Hey, do you know how to fly this?” “I do not, and we’re going to have an adventure!” I reach over and take the controls, trying to avoid the helicopter ahead as well as the greenery overhead, as we’re in some kind of huge forest. I have no control over the throttle however, since the gas pedals are at the floor, where Moriah’s still sitting. Several arcs and dips later and I crash the plane, only a little bit. Morgan had lost consciousness for a bit during one of the maneuvers and had to be taken to a hospital, but other than that everyone was unharmed. Felt bad about the wagon-plane, though, the rest of the family had been looking forward to using it later on.

Sunday, today, was just great, relaxing with Conference on, Steve & Lauren over, along with Grandma. Played a great mystery game of Mattie’s choice. Had to leave for the airport just as I was wreaking havok on a group of intrepid explorers as an over-powered mummy.

On the way through security, my backpack was flagged by the X-ray technician. Oh boy, what is it this time. I made extra sure to leave any knives at home. At the examination table, the TSA agent pulled out a couple things I’d completely forgotten were in there.

The first was a Zippo-like lighter, that uses electrical arcs to ignite flames, instead of gas. “What’s this?” “Oh, it’s just an electric lighter, I use it to light fires.” Not helping your case there, pal. “…when I’m camping.” He set it aside.

The second thing he pulled out was a small tube of gallium. Gallium is a very neat metal that’s liquid at just-above-room-temperature. I got it for Christmas a couple years ago. Makes for a neat demonstration, putting it in warm water for a bit and coming out with something that behaves a bit like mercury.

Something else that makes gallium cool is what it does to aluminium. Aluminium soaks up gallium like a sponge, which then leaves the original aluminum extremely brittle and easy to tear apart. See this video for a demonstration of its effects on a soda can. The tube has a hazardous-material symbol, but it’s not corrosive to human skin, just aluminium.

So, given all that, when the agent pulled out the gallium and asked what it was, I wanted to put his mind at ease that I wasn’t carrying anything that was dangerous to handle. “Oh, it’s just gallium. It’s not corrosive to humans, just aluminium.”

…

It was one of those moments I knew immediately I’d want to have as a do-over. Needless to say, they weren’t letting it on the plane, the high-altitude high-speed machine with an aluminium airframe. At least they let me keep my lighter.

On the way to my gate, I ran into Jake Stucki, heading back to LA after a weekend in town for Conference. On the way to baggage claim in Seattle, I ran into a couple from the Redmond ward. She’d gone to BYU to study nursing back in the day, and he’d actually been my current bishop’s predecessor in the YSA ward. Small world.

Retrieved my baggage. Noticed that both of the zipper handles were missing. shrug Caught a shuttle to the parking lot, picked up my car, headed north to my apartment, took just under half an hour. Was looking forward to getting to bed before midnight. Pulled in, parked, thought to myself, It’s gonna be a pain dragging that luggage up the stairs. Huh, that’s funny, I can’t remember lifting it into the carohhhhhhssshhhhhoooooooootttt. And that’s the story of how I ended up making that half-hour trip three times tonight to go retrieve my luggage I’d left at the airport parking lot.

So, a lot of driving, a lot of visiting, darting all over the place, that pretty well describes my weekend. But it was a blast to be back in town for a while. Felt like I hadn’t even left, really. Can’t wait to head back for Thanksgiving.