Rise All Loyal Cougars...

I was able to participate in two pretty cool BYU-related events this week. The first one I discovered with a little help from facebook. On Wednesday morning while I was eating breakfast I was perusing facebook, and saw something in someones status about www.smootwaswrong.com. I was curious, so I went to it. Abraham Smoot is a famous name here at BYU. He was the first president of BYU, back when it was Brigham Young Academy. He also contributed a lot of money to the school. Well, at this website there was a short article-note deal that talked about a fire that happened on campus... like pre-1900... and Smoot had said to another famous BYU-an Karl Maeser that the spirit of BYU had left with the fire. It was a bit bizarre, but a very cool looking page. At the bottom there was a spot that looked like it took a code, with a button next to it that said 'Unlock'. Luckily I had just read a book about breaking codes, and I entered the code and unlocked the page. It took me to another page, and all it said was 'Lavell Edwards Stadium, North Portals, 9:00 pm October, 8 2008.' That really weirded me out and I wasn't sure if someone was setting a bunch of people up or what. So I thought about it throughout the day and that evening I received an email from BYU that included a link to the same page.
So at 9:00 pm that night, Elisse and I went up to the stadium, entered inconspicuously through the north portals and were directed to the south stands. Everything was dark. Even in the tunnels. Once we got there, we found ourselves in the lower-most section of the south end zone with about 200 other slightly creeped out students. After waiting for a bit, they ran a highlight reel of the football team on the jumbotrons and then some of the players came out to talk. Max Hall, Dennis Pitta, Fui Vakapuna, David Nixon, the works. They did the whole pep-talk thing, then took questions... some wanted tickets to the game, some wanted hugs, and some just wanted to know what the game plan was, to which Fui (our bruiser of a fullback) responded, "Run 'em over...". Then the marching band came in, we sang the fight song, were entertained by another highlight reel, then they shot off fireworks. It was ridiculous... and we were two of precious few to get to go. Well, after that we thought it was over... but then we a few of us (maybe 50?) got ushered into the locker room. Very cool. Elisse has pics that I will get from that... Everything was empty, but it was fun to see the lockers, names, numbers, pictures, etc of all the greats that have come through BYU. Good times.
The next cool deal I got to do was on Thursday. I got a text message from a friend that they were doing a video for the BYU visitors center and they needed some people to go up to the Y on the mountain to wave at a helicopter as it flew by. Deal. They drove us up to the Y on four-wheelers, which made the experience much more enjoyable... the hike is not long, but very steep. So we just hung out on the Y until they radioed and said they were coming, made sure out BYU shirts were showing and then waved away as the helicopter made sweeping passes. It got a bit cold towards the end as the sun hid behind the clouds and mountains on the west side of the valley, but a very memorable experience.