The King Wedding Vacation: Day 6 (Salt Lake & Home)

So, now our adventure has come to an end. Our final day vacationing before we start heading home. At this point, Karen's crew and DeLorne, Trina & Kids have already left. They left before dinner yesterday. The only people who remain is Anton, Mom, and myself ... along with Aunty Dianne & Uncle Lionel. Michelle flew out early, early, that morning.

After packing our stuff and checking out. We make our way to Salt Lake City. We wanted to go hang out with Cayson & Amanda before we left. They had invited us to come walk their version of Edmonton's river valley. My god was it gorgeous.

Before we got to do that ... we wanted to watch the Wedding Video from Cayson & Amanda in Vegas. To get the paperwork started when they got told they had 90 days to get married back at the start of the year. Now that was comical. I could see how some of the Mormon's could have gotten offended by it. They were kinda tipsy and having a good old time ... almost making a mockery of it. But, Amanda's family just know ... they aren't mocking it. They are just having a good time. Asking random strangers to come watch the wedding and Amanda walking down the aisle with their limo driver.

Amanda and I will get that posted so everyone else can see it. It's pretty epic. USA! USA! Haha.

We started at the top where we got to see the State Building amongst the valley. It was quite breathtaking. Next on the list is posting the rest of the photos onto facebook so you can all see.

Not much to say about it as it was just a gorgeous walk. We drove by the state building and made our way to downtown SLC. Cayson wanted to show us the Temple.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints more-or-less founded Salt Lake City. This is where they made their roots and the core of the Mormon faith. When you're walking around the temple grounds ... all I could remember is those Sunday morning commercials where they're raising money. Well, let me tell you ... this is where their money went. Holy crap.

The temple grounds were lavish and gorgeous. Waterfalls and extravagant flower beds as far as the eye can see ... or to the edge of the temple grounds ...

Cayson gave us a bit of a history lesson regarding this temple. It was the first one to be started and the third to be finished. The only people allowed in the actual temple proper are people with a written recommendation from another bishop. Just being a Mormon does not allow you entrance into this particular temple. Take a look at the pictures. The place is massive.

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves but take a gander. It's a pretty sight!

Afterwards, we started the drive home around 2pm. I drove until shortly before the border ... at 11pm. Anton was getting car sick. So we swapped, I was good to go for a while still. But I started getting car sick ... because. anton. can't. stop. jerking. the. wheel. Didn't bode well when I was trying to sleep. We made it through the border without any fuss. DeLorne's exhaust in the back of the truck that we had picked up the night before after having dinner with everyone.

We tried to play a prank on DeLorne. It didn't go well. The joke was that Canada Customs wanted him to call with a bill of sale. The number we were giving him? A RickRoll Phone number. However, Anton sent the text message indicating to him that Customs had confiscated his exhaust. DeLorne wasn't a happy camper. That's for sure.

Eventually we got home at around 7ish and I made my way into Edmonton. Getting to my apartment at about 8. Promptly crashing and enjoying a wonderful sleep on my bed.

The vacation was a great time. I want to go back. It's a gorgeous area and much more to explore. I want to go check out the Olympic Village next time. But, now I need to get back to work ... make me some money so I can go do this again.

I will say this. The US has their highway system down. 75 mph for cars and 65 mph for trucks? Goddamn that was a smooth ride!

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King Wedding Vacation: Day 5 (Day After)

So, the wedding happened. It was a great time and lots of liquor was consumed. The quote of the day that I heard from everyone: 'How are you not hung over?'. While this is probably not true ... I just tell everyone that my liver died many years ago. But, I really don't get hung over anymore ... but then again, I don't really get drunk. I'm a bigger guy, takes quite a bit to get me drunk. A good buzz is usually what I go for.

 

Let this serve as a warning to you iPhone/iDevice users. SET UP YOUR GODDAMN ICLOUD.

 

Quite a few people lost their iPhone's that night and each of them remember dismissing the iCloud setup that it asks you to do when you first turn on the iPhone. Only one person's iPhone remains missing ... but none of them had the ability to use the beautiful feature called 'Find my Device'.

 

It's a hard lesson to learn when you got to go buy a new phone. They aren't cheap. That's for sure.

 

Anyways, the family and I went back to the Park City Downtown Adventure place-thingy. Our goal this time around was to hit up the Alpine Coaster. A roller coaster that goes down the side of the Foothills-on-the-mountain? Sounds like fun, right?

 

Cayson & Amanda were supposed to join us but they were unable to do so. It's no surprise, the day after the wedding and people are leaving. They were too busy saying their goodbyes to everyone. It is fair, eventhough it's your wedding ... you don't get any time to yourself. You're just catering to your guests.

 

Back to the roller coaster -- Before we went on that ... we decided that we (my family) wanted to play mini golf. Now, that was a mistake. My brother's and I are incredibly competitive. That being said, when one of us isn't being competitive ... we all become shitheads. Granted, we mostly behaved ourselves as Trina's kids were with us. The course was alright. The metal gremlins or whatever they were called were pretty cool but there wasn't anything special about the course.

 

About the time we finished the game, Aunty Karen and her gang had come to join us. They were sitting in the restaraunt with Cayson, Amanda, and the other drunk Lethbridge/Edmonton crew. They had left as they had much more things to accomplish today.

 

Now it is time for the Alpine Coaster.

 

That ride was worth the $22. It was so much fun. This coaster is just a simple rail coaster with a driver-style seatbelt and a lever on each side. That is the breaks. That's right kids, you controlled the breaks on this thing. Now, it doesn't do any crazy loop-de-loops or anything. But it sends you flying left to right and down the track. I took Mr. B with me and holy crap did we have fun. The girl who seated us said 'Speed is safest'. Now, I'm not sure the truth to that statement ... but it sure as hell was the funnest option. Got a great picture of B and I on the coaster. Him screaming his face off and me concentrating and leaning into the turns. Only hit the brakes once ... out of instinct ... because I thought we were about to fly off the rails. Silly dumb dumb, right?

 

We all went down ... we all laughed ... we all had fun. It's these moments that make you glad you have such a great family to share it all with.

 

So, afterwards we went back to the hotel. Karen and her crew went to go pack up their rooms ... and check on the drunks that remained behind and didn't get to experience the coaster. (Haha, Miranda).

 

That night was spent out with Uncle Lionel, Aunty Dianne, Michelle, Amanda and the remainder of Amanda's friends. Tried finding a nice place downtown Park City to go have dinner at. After a few attempts, we settled in at a mexican restaraunt. It was actually pretty damn tasty. I ended up sitting with Amanda's friends and got to chat with them a bit. Mostly, it was just Amanda and I chatting for a bit then listening as her friends chatted as well. Not much I can say to a group of girls that I had just met ... sober. Now, the guys ... the two guys that were there ... we chatted about my super-comfortable sandals that make me feel like I'm stepping on those clouds from Mario Bros ... betcha they aren't smiling now! Ha!

 

It was nice to finally meet some of the people that I've heard Amanda talk about ... however, it appears she's spoken to them about me more than I've heard about them. I guess Jill was happy to finally have met me.

 

She's cute ... I'll take it as a win. Apparently, she was the one asking my mom if she could be her aunt ... something about being impressed that she brought 250 jello shooters down with her for the stagette or something like that...

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The King Wedding Vacation: Day 4 pt 2 (Wedding!)

The wedding was a complete success. However, there was some moments of absolute stress involved. My cousins had better be damn glad that there eldest cousin loves the hell out of them all. But I'll get to that.

The wedding ceremony itself was pretty amazing. We started getting rained on but there's always got to be a few twists to a wedding, right? The outdoor arrangement was simple but elegant.

But this is where my duties started coming into play. I had been texting Amanda (bride) since I didn't have Cayson's (groom) number. Trying to get some questions answered. Obviously, they were busy and my messages went unanswered. So I just used the receiving line to get my questions answered.

The curve ball that my cousin's threw me? Sarah had a slide show ready to go on a USB drive. I guess they thought that they could plug it into the projector and everything would be tickity-boo. *BUZZ* Wrong! Haha.

The first problem that was discovered is that the projector needed a VGA connector to plug into so it can display something ... simple stuff. Sarah had a MacBook Air ... but no DisplayPort adapter. Had to go find a regular window's laptop that would have the VGA connector I required. Luckily, the Groom had the laptop I needed.

Hook it all up and plug in the USB drive. Sarah made the movie using iMovie. It's a good program to use. I enjoyed it on my laptop. However, she didn't convert it into a video file. It was just the iMovie project file ... At this point, it has been about 25 minutes ... I had already given Sarah's laptop to my Aunty Dianne (her mother) and I was in a need of it ... but she was no where to be found. Another MacBook was found and attempted to be used ... wrong version of iMovie so it wouldn't open the project file for whatever reason.

By this time, it was 10 minutes to the start of the program and Dianne had been found. She brought me the laptop and was starting to panic a little bit as the program was supposed to start. Told her to delay the wedding party and I'll just blame the Groom. (Yes, I'm evil. But no one will give the groom hell on his wedding day!)

My seat at the wedding was more like tech central. Projector and Cayson's laptop behind me. Sarah's laptop & my iPad (with my MC notes) infront of me. After converting the project file to QuickTime, we were ready to go once I had installed QuickTime on Cayson's laptop. (And updated his A/V since it was out of date).

The MC'ing went without a hitch. Everyone laughed at my jokes and it wasn't even the pity laugh. Got told a few times that I should join the Toastmasters in Edmonton.

The speech-of-the-evening award went to Jill. She did a parody rap of the Fresh Prince of Bel-air opening song detailing Cayson & Amanda's courtship and her little words of love. Second place went to Aunty Dianne's speech ... which may have caused my eyes to leak. Damn them.

The rest of the evening went down in true Canadian tradition. We got absolutely smashed. There was skinny dipping going on after 2am. That only happened because security was too busy following me and my crew around because we were keeping the party going. I was even out on the dance floor. Everyone was joking because I usually had 2 or 3 girls dancing with me or walking around with me while we keep the booze flowing. Pity they were all taken but, you know what, it was still a helluva lot of fun.

Between Cayson and I wandering to everyone elses room and drinking with them ... we only shut the party down because we started getting the 'We will kick you out and call the cops if you don't quiet down' phone calls.

Either way you look at it. It was a great night and a absolute blast.

 

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