To Provo

I'm a student at Brigham Young University. Owned by the LDS church, BYU is tucked away at the feet of the Wasatch Mountains 50 miles south of Salt Lake City in a little college town called Provo. BYU is Provo. 99 out of 100 people you meet here are mormon. Most of which are BYU students or BYU alum. There are hundreds of congregations that meet for Sunday worship while the rest of the town is dead and even fast food chains are closed for the day.

Now you might think, being a college town, that Provo might have a lot to offer in the way of things to do for a college student (us crazy mormons!). Well, believe it or not you're wrong. It pretty much sucks living here 99% of the time because all there is to do is watch TV or movies and try to escape the fact that we are actually living in the nexus of the boredom universe. A crazy night on the town is usually topped off with bowling up on State street's famous Miracle Bowl.

But somehow, tonight, I love Provo. This fall has started no different than any, with the town holding its breath as the long awaited college football season begins and we all wonder... "how are the cougs gonna hold up this year?" We opened our season tonight ranked #20 facing off against the Heisman winning Sam Bradford and the #3 Sooners at the "neutral stadium" of the Dallas Cowboys in Arlington, Texas, and somehow we won. This isn't necessarily why I love Provo tonight, because we win often nowadays. I love Provo right now because the town went absolutely crazy after the win.

2 hours after the final whistle traffic was backed up on all the streets, crazy mormon college kids were running around the streets jumping on cars driven by old ladies and screaming in victory. Honking cars crowded the parking lot of the stadium as thousands did nothing but yell into the night. I couldn't have imagined anything close to that happening here, even if BYU had won the national championship or Obama had been shot.

The time is now 10:32, and the crowds are starting to die down. Any other college town and we would be off drinking our livers to hell and probably getting laid. None of that here. We have church in the morning.