2010 A Retrospectus...

Before I get to far lets deal with your biggest Christmas fear... not knowing what to get me, the man who has everything. Well in the spirit of Christmas here are some guidelines to ask yourself while Christmas shopping for yours truly.

Is it awesome? If yes than buy it.

Will this help Ryan cover up his nerditude? If yes go directly to check out.

Will this help Ryan proudly display his nerditude? If yes you have a winner.

Is this AVATAR? If Yes place back on shelf and wash your hands before you next see me... then never speak of it again

If you are still confused here is my list.

1. Call of duty Black ops
2.Halo reach
3.Season 1 of community
4.A time machine
5.Anything about zombies
6.A freeze ray..(tell your friends)
7.A Hat
8.Some kind of vest
9.i tunes gift card
10.Anything that says "awesome"

Good Luck I am sure that you will do fine.

2010 a retrospectus;

Well my beloved sojourners, 2010 was a truly amazing year. I was able to cross a few items off my list. I met new friends and reunited with old friends, sang in public, shaved my head, lost a dodgeball tournamnet, got a gun, had a food fight and somehow managed to fool Danyell into staying my wife for another year..sucker!

I want to thank all my friends who were helped my cross off items from my list... I also want to publicly shame all my "friends" that were too cowardly to go skydiving..for shame!

The Year 2010 was a pretty epic year. Here is my list of the top 10 awesomest things of 2010.

10.The dodgeball tournament I was in...actually that sucked because we came in last place :(
9.Getting a new TV
8.The Halloween Party
7.The Expendables.
6.Danyells big 30 party
5.Left 4 dead 2
4.Halo Reach
3.Reagan's first trip to New York
2.Eating New York pizza everyday for a week
1.Skydiving

2010 did have some lows...
My own brother publicly admitted that he doesn't like laser tag...wtf Kyle? I don't know how we are even related. Maybe you are just jealous of my mad laser tag skills...yeah I bet that's it. Besides the laser tag incident, I don't think 2010 had a single unawesome moment.

I want to thank all my friends for putting up with me for so long. All of the awesome stuff I had done this year would have been totally lame with out my dearly beloved reprobate friends who can turn even the most mundane activities into death defying experiences of varying legality.

So as we say goodbye to 2010 here is wishing you all a great 2011...May your days be filled with laughter and your nights filled with Halo Reach.


Your Guide for Life,
-Ryan

P.S. Stay tuned for my news years resolutions...spoiler alert...they are awesome.

Gone In Sixty Seconds

(Okay, not gone but 2 miles lower elevation than where I was.)

First a few “thank yous” are in order.

My beautiful wife Danyell (my spelling not hers) who gave me the Second Greatest birthday gift ever (the first being a time machine/being bitten by a radioactive spider) the gift of awesome.

I also have to thank my Bro, and James Tidwell who accepted the charges when awesomeness called.

Of course the awesome staff at Skydive Utah.

Well I have officially skydove. For those of you who don’t speak awesome that means "skydived” ( I like my way better). It really wasn’t very hard: I let gravity do most the work. In fact, there’s no trick to it, it’s just a simple trick. Belly, Breathe, Banana and you’re a pro. If I was making the rules I would have put breathe first but it seemed to work out alright.

While 60 Seconds may not sound like a very long time, I was surprised by the range of emotions I felt in such a brief time.

I felt the following emotions; fear, confusion, panic, awesome,wonder and awesome.

While you are hurdling towards the ground at over 130 mph you really get to know what is important to you. While I was falling, I kept thinking there is no way superman or other super heroes could possibly breathe while they are flying. Seriously, it is really, really hard to breathe and most super heroes go even faster than I was going! Other than that my thoughts were along the lines of booooo yaaaahhhh!

Here is my advice. If you are ever given the opportunity to Skydive; do it. There will always be a thousand reasons not too, but none of them are any good. I have done a lot of awesome stuff in my life, but there is nothing that compares to skydiving.

Thanks again to my wife who always makes my life an adventure.

Your Guide for Life,

-Ryan

What IF I was deranged?

10 points for anyone who got the reference.


Sometimes the best things in life are dangerously explosive. Case in point Spud guns. In fact spud guns are so awesome that they may replace cake batter ice cream as the greatest non-sentient things on the planet. The jury is still out though.

How can a few pieces of PVC pipe, a BBQ lighter and a potato be so awesome? Well you can't really explain the joy and fulfillment in life when, after a surprising loud BOOM, a potato flies off into the sunset. At that moment in time you know that life is good.

Since spud guns are a right of passage into to boyhood, I think that an already awesome adolescence is at long last complete.

Even though a spud gun is an incredibly simple contraption I still owe a lot of thank yous.

Danyell; Who went to Home Depot while I was at work and bought all the parts I needed.

The Home Depot Guy; Who helped Danyell get all the parts.

Jon and Lenzi Van Wagoner; With out their lawn and various flammable liquids the spud gun would still be only a dream.

Thanks Guys!

In conclusion, spud guns are freakin awesome! Everyone should at one time or another shoot a spud gun.

Your Guide for life,

-Ryan Mahoney

Are you there Karaoke? It's me, Ryan.

Here's to defeating stage fright. Long able (3 weeks) to be content as a mere spectator in the game of karaoke. (public karaoke anyway, I am not counting the karaoke done at my Halloween party in front of my closest friends and family.) I finally joined the halls of the greatest people who have ever walked the planet! That's right I sang karaoke in public. Whhaaaaat!!! This is kind of a big deal for me. If any of you have seen the painstakingly, slow motion, train wrecks that are my public speaking engagements, you would be right to assume that my public singing is even worse. In fact, even though I haven't checked recently, I think that it has actually been classified as a crime against humanity. Despite the threat of being hunted down by Interpol I persevered and answered my call to fame.

Let me set the picture. An unusually strong blizzard is raging outside of the local Applebee's (even though it's April) at 11:38 pm and the DJ calls out for Ryan..... A hush falls over the dozens of happy eaters, as I climb up the stage. I look out the crowd, wearing my Spiderman shirt that I stole from my brother, and they go nuts. I then tell them that my song is about the greatest year in the history of the world. I then begin to sing 1985 by bowling for soup. It actually changed lives. I was literally lifted off the stage by adoring fans as they demanded that I become their king. Karaoke was changed forever. Okay only like 1/4th of that happened. I was wearing my Spiderman shirt stolen from my bro, I did tell them that I was singing about the greatest year in the history of the world, and I did sing 1985. Other than that I mostly made it up. Oh, and there was a blizzard outside.

But it was still fun. My voice was terrible, but my dance moves more than made up for it. Anyway, here is the point if you are ever scared to do something just remember that the only people who remember my singing were the people who liked it, in alphabetical order; Mahoney, Danyell that is all. Everyone who knew that I had no right to sing in front of others, have already moved on with their lives and forgot about my offensively bad rendition of a song that isn't really that good to begin with. So there really isn't any reason to be scared of what people think. Besides you should do something that scares you everyday.

Take Care Fellow Adventurers!!!!

Your Guide for life,
-Ryan "The Ryan" Mahoney

Murder....Death.....Tennis?!?!?!?

Hello Fellow Adventurers!

So I got some friends (Kyle, Mike, and Chase) together to play a game I invented years ago while avoiding studying for finals. The game is simple enough and is the natural evolution of 3 sports. First, is Calvin Ball the favorite game from the beloved Calvin and Hobbes comics. Second, Murder Death Frisbee which was invented by my dear friend Jess Long. This game was essentially a friendly game of Frisbee with the added excitement of slide tackling. The last sport thrown into the mix is plain tennis.

So how do you play Murder Death Tennis? You ask. It is simple enough. All you need is a butt load of tennis courts, either 4 or 6 with a specific layout. There need to be at least 2 full courts next to each other, then at least a 10 ft tall fence with 2 courts next to each other on the other side. Then you simple ignore the "pansy nets" and use the much taller and dangerous, therefore awesomer 10 ft fence as the net.

After theses basic qualifications are met there is fierce debate among MD tennis scholars over how to properly play the game. Purists, like myself, insist that there is no right way to play it, as long as it is never played exactly the same way twice. Some of the more radical scholars insist that certain rules and boundaries must be enforced to preserve the games true nature. There are a few guidelines that the two schools of thought typically agree on though. For example, both believe that the first rule of MD tennis in that you don't talk about MD tennis. Okay, that isn't actually a rule but it is really fun to say. The real rules are; there are no rules.

But for any of you novices who think they have what it takes to enter the realm of MD tennis here are some of the ways I have played in the past. Typically we play till all of the tennis balls are no longer in the court. We then gather them up and laugh and brag about the what happened. Last time we brought six tennis balls one was stolen by a kid at the park with left us with just five. So we only had about thirty seconds before we had to gather them all up again. One time we played and you had to take a drink of Mt. Dew after ever hit, I don't recommend this for people with weak stomachs though. Another rule that was a lot of fun is having to name your swings everytime you hit the ball. This adds mental stimulation to the game as well.

The best thing about MD tennis is that if something isn't working just do something different. I generally don't keep score. Real tennis scoring is so stupid that I couldn't come up with a stupider one. Although since a tie in tennis is called love, sometimes while serving I will say that the score is 1,000,000 hate. You are welcome to try to keep score but with a game with no rules it is slightly difficult. Although there are awards.

The MVP of this last MD tennis match went to my friend Chase. This award was earned when he hit the ball as hard as he could at the fence and the ball hit a cross bar and came back and nailed him in the gut. It was so awesome that we had to take an official five minute, roll on the ground, point and laugh break

In closing remember there is always a more fun way to do even the stupidest of activities, like tennis. Just joking don't get all offended real tennis players. Real tennis has no excitement for me but add in a couple extra courts and I'm happy as a pig in slop. The real point of MD tennis is just trying to find new ways to make things fun. Doing that keeps life interesting.

Your Guide for Life,
-Ryan

P.S. I will try to post some pictures to help visualize the game.

A new year to be awesome.

Hello Fellow Adventurers,

Sorry for the delay in posting but when my beautiful wife set up this blog she didn’t write down the password and used an email address that doesn’t exist so it is not very easy to log in to this blog.

But out of sheer force of awesomeness, I managed to get into the blog to provide you with a brief update.

Awesome, took two pretty severe blows early in 2010 when both Jeremy Webb and Michael Lameoureux, abandoned me for awesomer pastures. While I wish them luck, I hope they know that their betrayal will be punished.... and I will have my sweet, sweet vengance. (Bwa ha ha ha)

While the loss of two of my comrades in awesomesness is definitely a set back and has certainly decreased my chances for numerous halo nights, I still think 2010 can be mind blowingly awesome.

"How"? you ask.

Here are some things I am planning for 2010.

1. Some kind of American Idol type competition to fill Mike and Jers, vacancies.
2. Food fight.
3. Water fight.
4. A food and water fight
5. Climbing Mt. Timpanogos
6. Possibly hitting a golf ball off of the aforementioned Mountain
7. Singing Karaoke in public
8. Getting my soda fountain operational

not to mention finally crossing off some more items from my list.

As we part, here are some awesome things that have happened since we last spoke.

1. Got an X-box 360 elite and ODST
2. Got a dart board
3. Put a picture of Jer on the dart board.
4. Got a blu-ray player
5. Watched seasons 1-4 of lost on Blu-ray
6. Done like infinity of donuts in parking lots during snow storms.
7. Taught Reagan to say “Weeeee” when doing donuts.
8. Finally ate at P.F. Changs. (So, I haven’t done it before you wanna fight about it)
9. Taught Reagan to say awesome.
10. Went night boarding
11. Totally wrecked myself while snow boarding.
12. Got Reagan addicted to The Simpsons.
13. Learned that even though I haven’t played it for a long time, I am still awesomely unstoppable at Mario Kart
14. Sneak attacked Danyell (how my brother and I spell Danielle) with a water gun, for back talking me = )

Well I hope that you all made a resolution to make 2010 the awesomest year ever, because it is going to be…wait for it….. LEDGENDARY!!!

Awesomely yours

Your Guide for life,
-Ryan

P.S. Here is a free awesome tip

If you want to know if you are telling an awesome story, ask yourself does it end with me saying "then I drove off without anyone seeing my license plate." If it does you are telling an awesome story.