Bridger's Blog

This is another blog about a learning experience I had on my bike ride last summer. The bike ride is demanding and tough on the human body given that you ride on average 75 miles a day. That average is a little misleading considering some days you ride up to 125 miles a day with over 10,000 feet of elevation gain. The ride started on June 1st, but the sign up date was at least 6 months earlier. Some guys even signed up a year in advance. That being said, we all had 6 months to a year to train for this demanding task. The Ability Experience even hired professional trainers to help us get ready for the journey. They set up different exercises for us to do and held webinars every Sunday. These exercises varied from riding 15 miles on an indoor bike to doing 3 sets of 15 squats on a squat rack. We even had to track our workouts through an app. We would have to go on the app start our workout, record our heart rate, calories burned, then stop the workout when we were finished. If we didn...

I learned how to write a limerick last class, and I really enjoyed it. Here is one I made: We all have to hop on zoom We wish we were just in the room School is winding down Yet nobody wears a frown We hope this isn't our doom Her are some of my favorites I found online: There was a small boy from Quebec Who was buried in snow to his neck When they said, 'Are you friz?' He Replied, 'Yes, I is- But we don't call this cold in Quebec God's plan made a hopeful beginning But man Spoiled his chances by sinning We trust that the story Will end in God's glory But at present the other side's winning I found these entertaining, and I have even found myself looking for limericks in songs that I listen to. This was a fun activity and it was even cool to use the zoom capabilities to break off into small groups.

It was tough to choose which were the most relevant 5 things I've learned this semester. There was a lot that I learned about laughter that I never knew, and we ended up covering quite a bit of material. In any case, here is my list in no particular ranking order:   1. Animals laugh. I feel like I should've known this before taking the class, but I didn't and it was quite interesting to learn about it. I knew about hyenas laughing from various animal TV shows, but I didn't know that different animals such as apes and rats actually laugh when they are tickled.  2. Laughter is incredibly contagious. I know I have experienced laughter being contagious in my life, but it was fascinating to read some of the stories we read in class. I'm talking about the schools in Africa that we talked about who couldn't get their students to stop laughing for days on end. This is incredible to me, and I gotta think it would be exhausting to laugh for that long.  3. Differ...

Through the COVID 19 chaos, I learned that Zoom and streaming into class actually has a lot more pros than cons. Pros: - Don't even have to get out of bed to go to class - You can go to class wherever you want (beach or library, nobody's judging) - You don't even have to show your face in some classes - No walking to class - Don't have to try to find a parking spot - Stay inside, don't get COVID Cons: - No real, face-to-face interaction - Sometimes very awkward - You can speak over people on accident - Can't gauge the room when giving presentations Looking at that quick list, a lot more pros might be an overstatement. That being said,  going to school online went a lot smoother than I thought. I didn't think I would ever be able to learn anything through zoom, and I kind of felt I was overpaying for an online education. I don't feel that I overpaid at all, and I owe a big thank you to all my professors (including you Dr. Williams!). They ...

Arguably, I think the most important thing I've learned the last couple months is to take COVID 19 seriously. At the start of the quarantine, a lot of younger people thought they were invincible and were still hanging out with each other. By doing this, they were endangering their own lives and the lives of the older generation. I am thankful I headed the warnings of my parents and social distanced when I was recommended to do so. I would never forgive myself if I ended up coming home with the virus and gave it to one of my family members. I obviously spent a lot of time with my family since I went to class online, so I tried to do my part in keeping us safe and healthy. I think even just learning to wash my hands correctly went along way in taking COVID seriously. Previously, I would go out to the store or some other public location and come back without even washing my hands. If you do that now, you might have the virus on your hands and you could infect yourself or someone els...

This hilarious experience came a couple months ago before we were all in quarantine. I was back in Colorado for the last couple days of Spring Break, and we had a get together at one of my high school friend's house. There was quite a few of us because a lot of the guys were also back for the last few days of break. Anyway, one of my friends (we call him Q) had a little too much beer to drink and was feeling a little nauseous. By nauseous, I mean Q was laying on his stomach on my friends trampoline with his head over the side. He hadn't thrown up yet, but he was making some strange groaning sounds. One of my other friends (we call him Biz) was completely oblivious of the situation and didn't know how Q was feeling, so he started jumping on the trampoline. Q was getting tossed around from the jumping, and the gyration was all Q's body needed to start throwing up. He started throwing up off the side of the trampoline while my friends and I tackled Biz and made him stop ju...

An uncontrollable fit of laughter came just recently in quarantine. I came upstairs one night to find my dad's hair smoking. Apparently, my dad was getting ready to cook dinner, and he had put quite a bit of oil in a pan. He got a phone call, went outside, and left the oil on the pan for too long. By the time my dad got off the phone and came inside, there was a big grease fire in the pan. My dad ran over to the pan, picked it up, and started running around the house not knowing what to do. He knew he couldn't put it out with water because water would just make the grease fire bigger. Eventually, my dad decided to go outside with the pan. As soon as he opened up the door to go outside, a gust of wind blew the grease fire right into his face and hair. My dads hair on his forehead and even a some of his eyebrows were torched. He drooped the pan outside, and started yelling which is when I came upstairs. I found him with his hair smoking and a panicked look on his face. Needless ...

The only time I really watched cartoons was when I was really young. As I grew up, I never really watched too many cartoons. That being said, Tom and Jerry was definitely one of my favorite childhood cartoons. My mom didn't want me to watch SpongeBob for whatever reason, so I settled for Tom and Jerry. We weren't allowed to watch TV during the week either. My sister and I would wake up in the morning on the weekends and turn on Tom and Jerry. I think I like Tom and Jerry even more because I wasn't allowed to watch that much TV in the first place. My favorite character out of the two was Jerry. Tom was great with all his tricks, but I always rooted for the underdog in Jerry. Jerry was just this little mouse and Tom was a big cat, but Jerry always got the best of Tom. My sister would pick on me because she was four years older, so I guess I pictured myself as Jerry standing up against Tom, aka my sister. In any case, Jerry was my guy, and I'm still surprised he was so in...

1. Laugh at yourself / Make yourself the target of the humor - It is important not to take yourself so seriously when trying to create humor. Making jokes about yourself can show you have a sense of humor, and it can help push people to laugh since you are already laughing at yourself. 2. Misdirection - Many instances of laughter come when someone says something that is completely unexpected. When you go against expectations, it catches the listener off guard and they are able to laugh about it. 3. Practice Impersonations - I thought of this tip when watching clips of Robin Williams. Robin Williams' impersonations are so funny because of his ability to emphasize incongruity. When he opens his mouth to do an impersonation, it is totally not what the listener expects, so it is funny. 4. Call Back (Vorhaus) - Going back to something that was talked about previously in the conversation can be a very good comedic technique. It can show your ability to think on your feet and create...

I enjoyed the scenes from the twenties by the four actors/comedians. I grew up watching the three stooges on TV and the four actors' stunts reminded me a lot of the stooges stunts. I am a fan of the kind of ridiculous acts they pull, and it seems no matter what happens nothing can really hurt any of them. Houses fall down on them and they go right through a window unharmed, they constantly get hit in the head and aren't severely hurt, and they are involved with all kinds of vehicles that should really injure them. Each of them have mastered the art of doing things that the audience doesn't think they'll do which is why I think they are so funny. The audience is expecting them to do what any normal person would do, but the comedians usually do something completely outrageous which catches people off guard and is funny. I liked Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton more than the other two because they were the craziest, and I thought Lloyd and Chaplin were a little more obscur...

The five best comedy movies in my opinion are as follows: Caddyshack, Anchorman, Step Brothers, Tommy Boy, and the Pink Panther with Steve Martin. These five are not in any particular order, and I feel I might be missing one obvious one. In any case, I have laughed the most while watching these movies.

This is my dog named Lily. We got her from a shelter about 7 years ago. 

Well, we started our drive to Breckenridge, Colorado for spring break today. I hopped in my buddy’s car at the last second after my New York City trip was cancelled (which is a story for a whole different blog), and we hit the road. We were about 3.5 hours into the trip when we started to hit several small towns in north Texas. These small towns come out of nowhere and are a real test to see if the person driving is paying attention to the speed limit. Needless to say, my buddy was not paying attention to the speed limit and was cooking about 80 when the speed limit dropped from 70 to 50. As far as we knew, there was no warning sign about the drop in speed limit, and by the time my buddy asked—"wait did that sign just say 45”— there were sirens right on our tail. The Police officer introduced himself as Chief Michael Hopkins of the Chillicothe police department. He was wearing a polo shirt with a badge on it which looked like one that someone might purchase at a Halloween costum...

As of right now, I don't know all that much about Coronavirus, and I'm not really sure what to believe. All I've really learned in the past couple of days is the following: the virus scares people. The Neeley Fellows Program was supposed to go to New York City and visit companies for spring break this year. The virus scared those companies so bad that they cancelled on us. Almost every company out of the 10 companies we were supposed to visit cancelled on us. The companies even went so far as to restrict their employees from traveling. Some are even having employees work from home and self-quarantine themselves. Is this an irrational decision? I don’t know yet, but I certainly can’t blame the companies for looking out for the health and safety of their employees. I'm just glad the companies said they were cancelling before we all flew to New York.  We'll see what new developments come out in the next few days. There are several misconceptions about the virus tha...

Recently, I learned that I am friends with way too many Chiefs fans. The Chiefs mighty be a great team that just won the Super Bowl, but as I like to remind my friends, it has not always been this way. During the 2000's, the Chiefs could not even make a playoff spot or even hold a winning record. This all changed two years ago when the Chiefs starting quarterback, Alex Smith, was traded to the Redskins. The trade allowed Patrick Mahomes to step in and take the starting spot. The city of Kansas City and Chiefs fans around the world think that Mahomes is the chosen one. As great as he is, Mahomes is a big reason why KC fans have been getting on my nerves recently. For example, Mahomes makes some spectacular plays, but Chiefs fans don't shut up about these plays for a good week. I'm a Packers fan, and we obviously have a great quarterback named Aaron Rodgers. Is he the greatest of all time? Probably, but that's beside the point. I can admit that Mahomes is a great player, ...

The last couple of years, my buddies and I have been doing a ski trip in Beaver Creek, Colorado during winter break. My buddies come from all around the country and we stay just about a week on the mountain. One of my close friends from home has a house in Beaver Creek and he is extremely generous to let all of us come out and trash his house for a week. We have a great time on the mountain and apres ski, but that's beside the point of this blog. Anyway, all of my buddies ski at different levels. Some of my buddies are better than others. You would think that my buddies from Texas would be the worst skiers. This was not the case the first year we were there. One of my friends, Steve, was actually from Colorado just like I am, and he is the focus of this blog. We realized after the first green, groomed run Steve was a little further back than the rest of the group. He had only skied once in his life, and he had fallen a good twenty times before we even got down the first run. Once...

There have been multiple occurrences in the past few weeks where my friends and I have had uncontrollable bursts of laughter listening to the comedian, Chris D'Elia. In my opinion, he is the funniest comedian out there. Kevin Hart is also great, but that's besides the point. D'Elia does stand-up and has a podcast on YouTube. I first started listening to D'Elia when I was driving down to Fort Worth from Colorado. It was a 12 hour drive and we obviously didn't listen to his jokes for the entire time, but he really did keep us entertained. More recently, I have just been listening to his podcast on YouTube with all my buddies. He has made us all laugh out loud which shows how laughter is a social event and even contagious. The specific occurrence of us bursting out in laughter was when D'Elia made a joke about his success when talking to his best friend, Bryan Callen. D'Elia sometimes comes on as a guest to Callen's podcast, and the relationship they have ...

I have learned so much about the importance and power of volunteering your time. In high school, I was a part of a couple community service clubs, but I never really put a ton of time into any of the community service events. My freshman year at TCU, I volunteered every week at Kinderfrogs on campus, and I had a blast working with kids with disabilities. I also joined the Pi Kappa Phi Fraternity which is when I found out about the Journey of Hope (JOH). JOH is a 64 day bike ride across the country which raises money and awareness for people with disabilities. I thought it was a perfect undertaking after volunteering at Kinderfrogs, so I signed up. I ended up raising over $7,000 through emailing my friends and family to participate in the event. My network of people made the journey across the United States possible, and I am extremely grateful for everyone that made it possible.  During the Journey, I cycled over 4,000 miles from San Francisco to Washington D.C.. We averaged abo...