Why Hike Y? Try, Eric, Try

It’s time for another installment in the popular feature, “Eric’s Wacky First Dates.” To re-cap the previous Wacky First Dates that Eric has been on:

– He went to Mullboons restaurant in Salt Lake City with Michelle and another couple, and between the four of them, they spent $75 on dinner, and Eric and the other guy barely had enough money.

– He wandered around the Harris Fine Arts Center at BYU with Brittney and fell into a 6-foot shaft.

– He went with Susannah to Deseret Industries, where they purchased hideous clothing for one another and then put it on and went to the mall in order to get funny looks from people.

Which brings us to his latest Wacky First Date, which consisted of him and Eliza hiking up to the Y with Bret and Emily. This was during Y Week, so the Y was lit up, which made it pretty cool-looking. Also, Eric and Bret felt that it would be a nice, romantic, secluded spot at which they and their dates could eat the picnic dinner they had prepared, which consisted of pretzels and root beer (and of course they brought some romantic candles along, too, although they sort of forgot to bring matches).

There is a trail, entitled “The Y Trail,” which goes up to the Y in a fairly simple, non-steep fashion, but the four adventurers decided that they would rather ignore the trail and climb straight up the mountain. This is because they are stupid.

They climbed up the mountain, and it only took five gazillion hours, because Eliza kept insisting that they needed to stop and rest because she was tired. Bret and Emily, who are not from the immediate solar system, kept going, claiming they were not tired, but Eric would always stay behind with Eliza, because she was, after all, his date, and plus, he was, after all, usually as tired as she was.

So they finally reached the Y, where they found approximately fifteen thousand other couples, sitting on blankets and alternating their activities between making out and looking down at the picturesque layer of fog that covered what was probably Provo. Our heroes walked around the Y for awhile, and they even stopped to chat with Ben Eggleston, who was, at the moment, Keeper of the Y. Ben Eggleston is an Intercollegiate Knight (whatever that may be), and it was his turn to keep an eye on the Y, apparently to make sure that no one stole it, or moved it, or anything. He told Eric and Eliza and Bret and Emily that he mainly just stood around and kept people from screwing around with the lights. He said people always want to move the lights so that they make a U instead of a Y. Our heroes laughed at that for a while, and then they tried to think of how they could do it.

(It was at this point, by the way, that Eliza asked a brilliant question. She noticed the large generator sitting next to the Y, which, you’ll recall was fully lit, and she asked Ben Eggleston, “What’s the generator for?” Ben Eggleston then pointed out that the generator was used to light up the Y. Eliza had apparently thought that the generator was to power Ben Eggleston’s blow dryer and that the Y was simply plugged into the mountain.)

Anyway, everyone had a swell time, and the whole experience made for a quite a Wacky First Date. We just hope nobody tried to steal the Y, because Ben Eggleston was working hard enough already, standing there, watching people make out on their blankets.

(Eric D. Snider is a freshman at BYU from Lake Elsinore, Calif. He enjoyed hiking to the Y, especially the part where Emily almost stepped on a mouse.)