Ryan's Thoughts

Against their better judgment, my employer will sometimes let me out of the building to see clients. If it weren't for the travel part, traveling would be really fun! Being in a new place is awesome. When I travel and my work is done, I get my tourist self on and try and see everything! I will hunt down any cool site, place of historic significance or local food! Especially the food.  Philadelphia has been a place where I've been able to visit a few times. Obviously, when I'm in the City of Brotherly Love, I will visit the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, the Rocky steps and a myriad of other amazing sites. And of course, I try and eat tons of Philly Cheesesteak sandwiches! They are magical. These sandwich making magicians will use a combination of varying types of  steak, cheese (usually Cheez Whiz. No joke. It's delicious), fresh bread and grilled onions to create their version of the Philly Cheesesteak. The results can be incredible! Many will even venture on an

My oldest daughter just turned 15, which is crazy!! This is super weird for a dad who doesn't feel much older than a teenager himself. Now, she is driving with her learner's permit! I'm not sure how it works in other states, but in the great State of Utah, you can have a learner's permit at age 15, after passing a written test. Then, it is just the new driver and the parents hitting the road! She'll take driver's ed later, but now she can start driving if she has a parent in the front seat with her.  This got me thinking about my days as a firefighter. In this profession, you see tons of automobile accidents, especially ones with teenagers. Matter of fact, my first 19 automobile accidents that I responded to as a firefighter, a teenage girl was involved as a driver in one of the vehicles. 19!!!   Now, it wasn't always like that in my career. Teenage boys definitely had their share of accidents too. In my experience, I witnessed far more accidents in

I have always been impressed when hearing of people who get up early, read several different newspapers, exercise, grab breakfast and then attack the day better prepared and well-informed.  Being up to date on world events and politics has always been somewhat of a goal for me. Today with free news apps, it is extremely easy to devour the news in the morning and throughout the day. In my attempt to become well-informed, and perhaps become more like people I look up to, I decided to do an experiment. I was going to download 20 different news apps, get up early and read through as many of the main stories as I could before leaving for work.  My experiment started by reading news apps ranging from NPR to Flipboard (the swiping feature makes this is nice if you are on the treadmill or elliptical!) to BBC, CNN, Fox, Yahoo!, BuzzFeed, Al Jazeera etc etc. I would do a few random ones in Europe or the Middle East or the South Pacific. Some were local, some national, some internatio