Road Trip!

My roommate Eric and I are heading out on the road tonight. Towards the beautiful state of Minnesota. Before he moved to Missoula last year we decided we'd make a road trip to Minneapolis to see my Gophers play his Penn State Nittany Lions. I'm really looking forward to seeing a Gophs game in person for the first time in a long while and also to see my family and maybe a few friends. My parents are coming up from Chicago for the weekend as well, so it will be a fun time. Hopefully Eric won't be too uncomfortable.

We'll leave soon after I leave work early today. The drive is just about 1000 miles and takes between 14 and 15 hours. We'll probably pull over at a rest stop tonight some time and try to catch a few Zs. We'll be staying at my brother's house but my parent's will be staying at my godparents' abode, so I'm sure we'll visit there as well.

I don't know what we'll listen to on the way out. Steph and I have listened to Stephen King's The Dark Tower series on our two trips to MN. I think Eric has "Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption", the Stephen King novella that inspired "The Shawshank Redemption", one of my favorite movies. The problem is that he has it on tape and my car only has a CD player. I might see if there is some way we can hookup a walkman and some speakers, but if not, oh well.

The trip is just for the football game, which is Saturday night, so we'll be heading back to Bozeman on Sunday and I'll be back at work on Monday.

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A completely wonderful day

(I didn't have to leave right away)

Every morning working in Big Sky begins with an hour drive out of Bozeman and then down the Gallatin Canyon. The first part is just driving in the country towards the mountains, but the Canyon is something else. Many people say they have gotten sick of this part of the drive after doing it a lot, I certainly haven't. I used to drive it a lot when I worked in the field every day but I never got tired of it. It is a windy (as in "to wind" not "the wind") road following the Gallatin River through a pretty thin canyon. The sky yesterday was super blue, as opposed to the overcast-ness of last week. A couple of whispy clouds floated by, not not much of anything.

As we get closer to Big Sky we start climbing in elevation and all of a sudden there are clouds hanging over the mountains--no blue sky! Hmmm, I hope this isn't a bad sign. As we drive through the Meadow Village of Big Sky the clouds are sticking around and we're thinking we might be driving through fog soon. After taking the turnoff towards where we were working and climbing a little more we are driving through fog and we were a little worried.

But before too long we busted out of the clouds and came out over them and could see nothing but blue sky. The first job we had to do was in a fairly remote spot next to a valley. The valley was completely filled with clouds and fog which we were looking down on. I really wish I had had my camera yesterday. The sun was starting to warm things up and the first job consisted of a mile and half walk while pounding wood stakes in the ground for the center line of a planned road. It was awesome.

The rest of the day went pretty much like that. The sun was shining out of a blue sky all day, our jobs were many and varied, but none were too hard. We spent time walking through forests looking for old survey markers and investigating areas for future jobs.

Like I said, it didn't feel like I should have been being paid for it (but I'll take the money). People go on vacation to do things like I did for my job yesterday. It is days like yesterday that make me miss going to the field everyday like I used to. Of course, there are days like the last couple of weeks that remind me that a day in the office every once in a while is pretty nice too.

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Quick note

I have to head to the field today. I had a long day yesterday, 12 hours. So I was tired when I got home, that, in addition to a squeeky space bar meant that I just couldn't write a whole post last night.

My summary of the day was that it was awesome. The day was so beautiful up in the mountains I couldn't believe they were paying me all day long. Plus, the sun set and the moon rise were a couple of the coolest ones I'd ever seen last night.

Also, if anyone watched the Monday Night Football halftime feature "You've Been Sacked" really closely you would have seen my brother Brian holding a boom mic as Torry Holt rushed by him in a ballerina's tutu. I'll post more about that later, too.

Anyway, have a wonderful day all, I know I will.

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Pictures!

Here are a bunch of pictures you might like. I'll only put the first picture here on the home page so that the download isn't huge for anyone who doesn't want to look at them. Click on "Read the whole post" for more pictures. And as always, click on the pics here to see a larger version.


Here is the gang at the bowling alley. Starting in the back row on the left is Emily, Heidi, Scott, Jason. Then dropping down to the front row there is Sean, Garrett, Stephanie, Ricarda, and Jesse. The only one missing is Matt, who is probably out buying me a drink.




This is at the BBQ before bowling. I just closed my eyes to make a wish and Laurence Maroney scored the first touchdown for the Gophers. This is my reaction. In the background is Jesse's hand and beer, then Ricarda, Matt, and Jason.



Here is photographic evidence that I blew out every candle on my cake this year. Though as you can see I only had two to worry about. You can tell I was serious by the fact that I got out of my seat and as close as I could to the candles to accomplish my mission. In the back are Matt, Jason, Emily, and Garrett.



I've always thought of myself as the Michael Jordan of bowling. (hint: notice the tongue)



Check out the perfect form delivering the ball down the alley. The extended arm, the kicked back leg, the intence look on the face...



Here are a few people taking a load off. I believe that is Garrett's leg, then me, Stephanie, Scott, and Ricarda.



Since I promised Ricarda, during the race (I think she had just asked me when I took this picture), that I would post a couple pictures of her and Steph running, here they are. The first is early in the race probably between the 1 and 2K mark.



Here are Steph and Ricarda on the home strech, only about 50 meters to go!

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On to the night

Finally...

So we left the BBQ and headed for the bowling alley. Everyone seemed to be in a big hurry to get out of there (I wasn't worried and the Gophs were on TV, so I was content) so we all headed into town. Steph and I didn't race over there, we even stopped by my house first, but when we got to the alley, none of our friends were there yet. Well, that was worth it!

So I sat down in the bar area and continued to watch the football game until my friend Emily got there and bought me my first drink of the night. I had to order my drink of choice, Southern Comfort and Coke. I learned this drink kind of from my brother (he had a bottle of Southern in the apartment when I moved in two and a half years ago) but mostly from my roommate Matt. I'm not a huge drinker and I don't like cola, but the combo tastes good to me. Southern has a little sweetness in it that appeals to my sweet-tooth and also is very smooth for a 100 proof drink, when mixed with Coke. (I was given a shot of it at one point in the night--that wasn't cool at all. I don't like it plain all that much, but it's a sippin' drink if anything.) My point earlier about having a beer at Matt's house comes in now because I didn't have any more beer for the rest of the night.

I continued watching the game and during commercials started looking for a bowling ball. Finally people started rolling in and got a couple lanes setup and we all got shoes and the bowling began. Most of the actually bowling is a little hazy for me. My drink never got close to being finished before being replaced with another. But I did horrible the first game, broke a hundred my second game (always my goal) and then did horrible again the final game. I must put forth however that I was trying to practice throwing curve balls for that final game--I'm *sure* it wasn't the alcohol and if I had been throwing straight I would have done much better.

My final present was given during the course of bowling. My friends Sean and Heidi came by after church and presented me with a bowling ball in a bowling bag from them (and I think a couple other people). It was pretty awesome. The ball didn't fit my hand but it was an awesome gesture for the evening. I am hoping that they hadn't spent that much on it and it didn't hold sentimental value because I ended up trading the ball I got for the ball I had been using all night which fit my fingers way better. I feel a little guilty about that.

My streak of Southern and Coke was broken during the night. My friend Garrett presented me with a sip of his drink, Jagermeister and rootbeer! I had never heard of such a drink. At one point when I ran up into the bar to check the Gopher's game I saw him at the pop machine buying something, I had no clue why. But I found out later--the bar must not have rootbeer so he had to get his own. After my approval he got me one of my own. A tasty drink indeed. I remember that I was double fisting it at one point during the night, I'm pretty sure with two Southern and Cokes, though one could have been a Jager and rootbeer:



That's Jason beside me, he is one of Matt's new roommates. He is also from Wisconsin, but isn't as fanatical about the Packers as Matt is.

Before we left the bowling alley, Scott wanted to get me another drink. Hearing that I liked the Jager and rootbeer he wanted me to try a Jagerbomb. You may (or may not) have heard of an Irish Carbomb, which is a shot of Baileys in a glass of Guiness. This is the same principle, but it is a shot of Jager in a glass of Red Bull. I hate Red Bull, (I think I mentioned that a while ago, actually, that I don't like energy drinks in general) so I was a little leery of it, but at this point in the night I could have been convinced of about anything.

On a side note, I wasn't so drunk that I didn't know what was going on with the Gophers and that they had won. I was able to collect my $10 from Scott with little trouble.

(Un)fortunately they had run out of Red Bull at the bowling alley bar! Unthinkable! So that would have to wait. All of my wonderful friends settled the bill with the alley and we all piled out. Matt and Jason had left a little earlier to go see another buddy playing in a band at another bar. They came back before too long since their friend's band wasn't going to be playing for a long time. We all headed over to Mixers which turned out to be a pretty cool bar.

The inside and outside are all completely new and clean and nice. They have a steel dancefloor which is definitely way out for Bozeman. The no cover charge and no smoking are the two coolest things to me. We all mainly hung out on the dance floor, bustin' a move. Scott did take this opportunity to buy me that Jager bomb. I must say, I was pleasantly surprised. It's funny how things mix together to make completely different things. It was a tasty drink. That was my last drink of the night. My wonderful girlfriend kept getting me water for the remainder of our time out. After a while people started tapering off and Steph, Emily and I finally left last. We thought about heading to the Pita Pit to complete the night but we were all really tired and just decided to end it there.

As I had said, I didn't throw up that night at all and didn't have a hangover the next morning. Wow did that feel good. I found out later that Matt and Jason felt horrible for all day Saturday. Matt was mad at himself for forgetting to buy me any more drinks while at Mixers. I must say though, I was okay with it.

So that was the night. Maybe not as exciting to read as I had hyped it up to be, but it was a great time while it lasted. Everyone had fun and we all finally got out bowling.

The pictures from the night aren't all that great, but I'll post a few more later.

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Slackin'

Wow, I haven't written a lot lately, have I? I still haven't even finished my birthday party story. I hope that everyone's weekend went well. Mine was pretty good, the Gophers won, the Vikings won, the Packers lost. So sports was good, I am losing big in Fantasy Football, so that's no good. Steph and another friend ran in a 5K yesterday, and I went along to watch. I had planned on running it but my legs have not held up to hard work very well lately.

I will hopefully have some pictures to post today, we'll see how they look.

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Sloppy

While you're all sitting in your comfortable office chairs or even more comfortable couches at home I've been out in the mountains. It was snowing yesterday morning and the mud was horrible all day. We got our truck so stuck we had to get an excavator to pull us out. And it's raining in town today, you know what that means...snow in the mountains.

later all.

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The Continuing Story of a Day

After the football game Steph and I rode over to her house. I just chilled out on the couch with ice on my knee (which was hurting from basketball and hockey) and watched football. Steph was in the kitchen fixing a few things that I was not allowed to see. Thankfully I am lazy enough to appreciate that situation. After she was done with her stuff she gave me the last part of my birthday present, which was a bag of M&Ms candies. The special part was that she had ordered them online in custom colors: maroon and gold. (for those of you who don't know the significance, those are the colors of my alma mater)

Finally, after she had finished making her surprise she also made some garlic potatoes and we went to a friend's house for a barbeque get together. A bunch of people were there and my buddy had cooked up some steaks and burgers. We all just chilled out while watching the Notre Dame/Michigan State game (a friend's brother played at Notre Dame, so she's a big fan). When 8pm rolled around we turned to the Minnesota/Colorado State, which was the first Gopher football I've been able to watch this year. The Gophs scored pretty quickly in the first quarter, so the night started off pretty well.

I got a couple of presents at the party. A couple of friends gave me two books. They are the Worst Case Survival books. Some of the situations that they describe are pretty outrageous, but fun to read about. Another guy gave me a "fake ID" that he had found while hunting that morning. It's a Montana drivers license of a guy that looks kind of like me at a quick glance. We all had a good laugh about it. My friend from Wisconsin gave me a "present" of not burning my gold Minnesota Gopher hat. What a guy. Plus a couple of bday cards. I have great friends.

After dinner the singing of "Happy Birthday" commenced as Steph brought over the cake that I had no idea she had made. My dad had suggested that my friends put on a ton of candles and then laugh at me when I can't blow them all out. It's true, ever since I was probably two years old I have never gotten all of my candles out. Sometimes I just don't blow right, or don't have the breath, but usually it's because I'm laughing too much. Luckily Steph only put in two candles, one shaped like a "2" and another like an "8". I made sure to get both of them out. Of course, right when I closed my eyes to make a wish the Gophers scored a touchdown--what great timing.

I did have a couple of beers while at the party, so I made sure to fulfill that requirement of the BBBBB. You'll see why that's an interesting fact later. The night was still young, we all had full bellies and were looking forward to bowling.

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Ahhh, presents

Before I continue on with the narrative, I suppose I should interject with a few of the nice things people did for or bought for me.

On Friday night Steph took me out to MacKenzie River Pizza downtown. It is a really nice pizza place that I don't often go to because of the price. So Steph and I each got our own deepdish pizzas. I got mine with Italian sausage, green peppers, and sun-dried tomatoes, she had a pizza called the Sequoia with basil pesto, sun-dried tomatoes, avocado (instead of artichoke hearts) and sliced toasted almonds. It was quite good.

After dinner we headed to the crappy movie theater in town, Campus Square 8, to see Hero. Wow, what a film. You just never know what to expect when it isn't some cookie cutter American director behind the camera. The movie was beautiful, completely different than what I expected, and surprised me a few times. If you liked Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon at all I am quite confident that you will like this as well. It isn't as much action, but still so good and just different than films we're used to seeing here.

One thing that surprised me was the role they had for Ziyi Zhang. We (in the West) have really only seen her in Crouching Tiger, where she had a major role. (and to a lesser extent as a bad-gal in Rush Hour 2) From my experience with CTHD and what I consider her powerful performance I think of her as a nearly-leading lady with crazy kung-fu skills. It was odd to see her in a minor role with only a tiny bit of action.

So tasty dinner was my first present (I took Steph to the movie), along with a couple of bday cards I had received that day but didn't open until Saturday. Then when I woke up on Saturday I walked out of my bedroom and on the main room table was a wrapped box with a card on it. Wow, what could that be? It turned out to be from Eric, my roommate. He had gotten two bottles of BBQ sauce from my favorite BBQ restuarant in town. The place is called Bar 3 BBQ and is owned and run by a guy on my hockey team. My favorite menu item is the pulled pork slathered in the house BBQ sauce. I have often thought about buying some bottles (they sell them, obviously) but they are a bit more expensive than stuff at the grocery store. So now I have two bottles, it was a great present.

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The Story of a Day

When last we heard I was sore from hockey and heading towards a tailgate party before the MSU Bobcat's football game. Well, it didn't quite work out the way I wanted it.

First I was running late from hockey and trying to take a quick shower. Then I got a phone call (a wonderful birthday wish from my parents), then some people we were meeing to go to the game with weren't ready. Rrrr, it all added up to not even making the kickoff or first touchdown of the game, let alone the tailgating before hand. Oh well.

The game itself was mostly fun, as are most football games in an outdoor stadium. Though we actually missed the best plays of the game while heading to the game. The defence made an interception and then the offense turned the opportunity into a touchdown. That's pretty much the only thing that went right the whole game for the Bobcats. They missed at least 2 short field goals and really couldn't get anything done. I was pretty happy that I don't have anything invested (emotionally) in this team, it could be a long season. Since we missed the tailgating Steph and I had to pony up for some overpriced, not-that-good concessions food. Even my old standby, the big soft pretzel, wasn't that good, it wasn't all that soft!

I said that the game was mostly fun. It would have gone a long way towards "completely fun" had the weather cooperated or had I actually brought appropriate clothing. Before too long the sun started dissappearing behind gigantic clouds and the wind started to pick up. It had been a beautiful morning so I had stupidly only prepared for a beautiful day: I was wearing shorts, a t-shirt, and open toed sandals. When the rain started falling in the 4th quarter, Steph and I decided we had had enough of watching a football team we really didn't care about and headed for home.

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Blech!

You ever have one of those days? Of course you have. I am in the middle of a post about my fabulous birthday party but I just don't feel like writing or anything. It's just been a crappy morning. No particular reason, everything just feels a little off today.

So I'll keep working on the birthday post, maybe I'll put it up in shorter anecdotes.

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Let it...

Snow?

I wake up this morning to a clock blinking 12:17 AM at me. Great, what time is it really? I got up into the chill morning air and went to the clock in the kitchen. 6:30. Dang! Already time to get up. At least I got up in time. I had to be to work early to go to the field again. But surprise of surprise as I look out at my car, it's snowing! In town! I can't wait to get up into the mountains.

Oh, the party was fun, I didn't throw up and I didn't even have a hangover. I'll write more later.

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10-3!

Ouch. Hockey is fun but losing 10 to 3 hurts. Especially when you're out of shape and sucking wind the whole time. Especially when you have a stiff knee and sore groin from basketball the morning before. But I did get an assist. A puck was drawn back to the point (I'm a defenceman) on a face off in our offensive zone. A defender was coming to cover me so I had to get a shot off quick. I turned and fired a pretty hard shot in the direction of the net. It was way off target and heading for a teammate. He wasn't fast enough to get out of the way or to get his stick on it. All he had time to do was turn his body a little bit as the puck hit him in the hip. His turn deflected the puck right into the open net! I was pretty excited.

Now I am going to a tailgate party before heading to the Bobcat football game, my first one. The party day has begun.

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Work

I suppose I could say a few things about actually getting back into the field this week. The experience was overall very good.

Last Friday was a sunny day spent pounding wooden stakes (lath) into the center of a road to let construction crews know where the real center of the road should be. It was a beautiful day and I just rode on a 4-wheeler down a road pounding in lath. I got a little sunburned and got to hang out with a friend of mine. Definitely a good day.

Then on Monday I went up to Big Sky again. This day was spent not really working as hard, but the weather was getting pretty crappy. There had been rain over the weekend and it was raining throughout the day as well. All of the roads we were working on were soon-to-be-roads and were just mud. The little Ford Ranger we were in handled it admirably--we never got stuck, though we did slide a few times. My boots picked up giant gobs of mud with each step as we walked along the roads, but most of our work happened off the side of the road and wasn't too bad. Plus, we seemed to get lucky and always had to drive to a different place when it rained.

On Tuesday I went up to work on some roads again but it was a little chillier. The weather report was saying that there would be snow above 9000 feet so we felt a little safe considering that we'd be down in the 7000-7500 foot range. When we actually got to the job site though, it was a different story. There was snow on the ground at probably 7400 feet and it was snowing all the way down at 6500 feet. So it was extra muddy all day and cold to boot. It was never too bad as I was bundled up but the wind could be pretty biting sometimes. One other thing that I got to stand around and watch was a concrete pour. My co-worker had to do some tests on the concrete to make sure everything was alright. The tests went through fine and I just stood there and watched her do it (in the snow and the cold). After the tests we went to see the guy who was actually mixing all of the concrete (they were pouring all day long, they needed something like 170 yards of concrete for this huge wall of a parking garage) to talk to him and he offered us some hot chocolate, wasn't that a nice surprise? The day stayed wet and cold and muddy until we left. Quite a time!

Then yesterday (Thursday) I went up with a different guy and we had a not too bad day either. The only bummer was that we had to leave the office at about 6:45am to meet a pipe laying crew at 8am. So it was an early one. The day turned out beautiful, got a little sunburned and didn't have to work all that hard.

So it was an up and down, but not bad, week in the field.

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Why do foreign countries hate us?

Maybe because of things like this.

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Easy open U-Locks

This is a public service announcement

I've been reading a thread over at BikeForums.net about how easy it is to open up those U shaped bike locks (specifically Kryptonite brand) with a cheap Bic pen. If you go and try to read the forums keep in mind that it may be really slow as there are lots and lots of people trying to read them right now. There are even a few videos posted showing how easy it can be.

I haven't caught up to what's being said today (I'm about a third through all of the posts) but lots of the people are thinking about going to chains and keyed Masterlocks. Just thought that my bike riding and locking friends could use a heads up.

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What with a what now?

On my way home from work for lunch I saw a guy on a bike carrying another bike across his handle bars. It struck me as a little funny.

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An office pasttime

People who like sports and sit at desks all day love Fantasy Football. For the last few years I've been in an online league with Steve and a bunch of his friends from back in MN. Week one of the NFL season brought the opening of the Fantasy Football season as well.

For those of you who may not know what it actually is here is a brief overview:
Players from every team in the league are selected by each fantasy team owner to make up a team comprising of (in my league) one quarterback, three wide receivers, two running backs, an extra player--either WR or RB, a tight end, a kicker and a team defense, with 4 backup players consisting of any position the fantasy team owner wants to have extras of.
Each week your team of players is pitted against another owner's team.
Each player's statistics are tabulated from their real game each week and are added up with the rest of the players on a fantasy team.
The owner with the highest point total is the winner.

I am in a free league that we all do just for fun and bragging rights but there are leagues out there that have 100's or 1000's of dollars on the line. It is a way to make the whole season and every game interesting instead of just watching and hoping for your hometown team. Normally I'd be watching the Vikings game and rooting for the opponent of the Packers, but now I care about more that's going on and while I may not watch every game (some people do) I defintely am interested in watching highlights from other games to see if any of my guys scored a touchdown.

My team (at the current moment--you can trade players with other teams and pick up un drafted players as well) is not too bad, the star is definitely Priest Holmes of the Kansas City Chiefs (who came through with 3 touchdowns last weekend) and the over all strength is my running back corps. I have high hopes for my QB, Michael Vick, of the Atlanta Falcons, after a disappointing first week, and my TE, rookie Kellen Winslow (from the U of Miami) of the Cleveland Browns is supposed to be pretty darn good.

I did win this last week 126.15 to 86.32. You may not care but I'll keep posting how I do throughout the season. I'm sure every single one of my readers will be rooting for me!

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The 3rd Annual BBBBB

That would be the third annual Brenden's Birthday Beer and Bowling Bash, happening this Saturday, my birthday, the 18th of September, at various locations around Bozeman, MT. Everyone is invited!

Two years ago on my birthday a few friends, my brother, and I went to a bar for a couple of drinks on my birthday. We ended up finishing a few pitchers of beer pretty quickly and decided to head to the bowling alley just a few blocks away and a tradition was born.

We took up two lanes and the beer flowed like wine all night long. People started heading to the bar to get beer and kept coming back with two pitchers every single time. I don't think that some came back with a single pitch even once all night. I was gently encouraged to drink my share of beer and had to have at least a pitcher over the course of the night, probably into the one-and-a-half to two range. After a few games we all stumbled back to Brian's and my (is that proper grammer? I have never figured that construct out) apartment for a big surprise. Brian had bought me an ice cream cake! Everyone shared and had a piece while crammed into the kitchen/my bedroom (those were the same room--our apartment was exceedingly tiny).

I think I threw up a bunch after everyone left, but that meant I didn't have a hangover the next day, even though I think I called in sick to work. Ha Ha!

Last year we did about the same thing but went to a bowling alley a ways out of town. It was fun, I got really drunk and people had a good time, but it wasn't quite the same as the first year.

I'm hoping that we will have an upswing this year, but it will be difficult to live up to the spontaneous great party from the first year. There are some points in my favor for this weekend though. First is that there will be a bunch of people who hadn't been able to make it to the first two coming this year. Second, it is on a Saturday night so no one has to worry about work in the morning. Third (and this could be a pro or con) we have a great plan for the night. Though the festivities (for me) actually start that morning at a hockey game out at the Valley Ice Gardens at 10am. Hooray. The season is only a month and a half away or so. After that I will probably be taking a nap or just doing nothing. Sometime that night we will all try to get together for dinner, maybe grilling or pizza or something. After that we will head to the in-town bowling alley. Many drinks and a few thrown balls later I think we are planning to head over to a new bar in town called Mixers. It used to be called Little John's where I had seen the Clumsy Lovers the first couple times. It has been totally redone and is supposed to be pretty cool. Then I think after closing down Mixers (2am) we will head downtown to a new restaurant that is open until 4am(!) called The Pita Pit. I understand it gets a little crazy after the bars close down, so that should be exciting.

Anyway, that's the plan. I will certainly report on it after the fact.

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A Tale of Two Talks

So I was at Glacier a couple of weekends ago. Steph and I stayed in two different campgrounds: Fish Creek, on the banks of Lake McDonald, the first night, and Two Medicine, on Two Medicine Lake, the second night. At most of the campgrounds there they have a campfire or amphitheater area where park rangers give talks on various subjects.

At the first campground we walked over to the amphitheater where a bunch of people were sitting on benches waiting for the ranger to start talking. The first thing that struck us was that it was a multimedia presentation! He had a microphone on and his voice was coming over speakers and there was a large screen in front of the seats with a projected computer screen on it.

Well, the talk started out about the park and how the glaciers were all shrinking at fairly rapid rates. I began feeling a little trepidation as I sensed where the talk might be going.

Basically I had been expecting a talk on the eco-system of the park, or something about the plants or wildlife, or something like that. But no, we were all given an environmental talk about global warming and how horrible our culture is for helping kill the planet and ruining our national park. He loosely tied the talk with the park by mentioning the rapidly melting glaciers but mainly it was about the contast between weather (local) and climate (global) and how the climate is warming more rapidly than it should and all sorts of things are going wrong.

I suppose my mind set was helped by my more conservative point of view on the subject but when I went to the talk I was expecting animals and plants in the park, not seals covered with oil from the Exxon Valdez; or mountains and glaciers moving and forming, not CO2 counts and alternative energy solutions. One guy even asked in the middle of the presentation "When are you going to relate this to the park?" and the ranger replied with a laugh "This relates to the park and the whole world." Ugh. The guy got up and left. We stayed politely for the whole talk. I suppose it was alright, but he didn't say one thing I hadn't heard before and I'm just not sure that it was appropriate for the setting. When we talks about telling politicians to change the energy policy and makes the blanket claim that we're all part of a "grassroots" effort, I really had to question the whole thing.

So that was that. On the second night, at Two Medicine, we got to the talk a little late--we were very hungry and decided to make our second box of Velveeta noodles and cheese before leaving for the talk. The man speaking was the same ranger that Steph got to listen to when she went to Glacier the year before, who she said was very entertaining.

He was all dressed up as a mountain goat and gave a talk from the perspective of a male mountain goat about growing up and living in the moutains as a goat. It was very informative and very entertaining. We learned about what they eat, how they interact with other goats, how their hooves work to help with climbing the crazy terrain they climb, and how they relate to other animals in the park.In other words, this was exactly the kind of talk I was expecting and hoping for in a national park. It was so much different and such a different atmosphere than the night before. Steph and I thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, along with everyone else there.

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Field man!

I hate this not-writing thing. I have too much to do at home (I used to sit in front of my computer for hours--now nothing) and I'm going out in to the field again, this all means no posts. Sorry. But it is cool that I am going to be getting out of the office on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Though today it isn't very nice out, cold and rainy, and maybe snowy up high.

I'll write more later.

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It can't be!

Miracle of miracles (for me) and horror of horrors (for you)!

I'm actually going to be in the field tomorrow. That's right, when I was hired by this company over two years ago I was hired to be a field surveyor, not the broken shell of a desk jockey who types before you. Just kidding--I certainly enjoy being inside, though I miss surveying from time to time.

I will be up in the mountains, hiking around, and wheezing for air. Supposedly it is going to be a beautiful day tomorrow with no chance of rain. Hooray. It's unfortunate (for this reason only) that is was a holiday on Monday, even if I work 10 or 12 hours tomorrow I can't get overtime because you need at least 40 hours of actual work, not work plus holiday time. The story doesn't end tomorrow! I'm actually going to be in the field on Monday as well. Holy cow, what planets aligned last night?

But, not all is lost, the internet should be finally hooked up in my house tomorrow and I will be able to make any posts I desire from the comfort of my basement.

Until then loyal readers!

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Disappointment

I think I had mentioned that the weather wasn't all that cooperative with us at Glacier last weekend. While we started heading over Going-to-the-Sun Road the clouds started hanging over all of the mountains. When we had almost made it to the top, at Logan Pass, when we noticed a cloud rushing up the side of the mountain below us towards the road. I have video of it and haven't seen it yet but right as we got to the spot the cloud/fog was heading for it hit the road and we were immersed.

When we got to the top it was completely white out and quite cold. We both put on down jackets just to walk around. There is a visitor center at the top and a few hikes that start out near there.

One hike, the Highline Trail, we had been told about was a 12 mile hike (one way) that started off near the top and basically hiked along the continental divide and gave awesome views of mountains on all sides. The story with the 12 miles is that you hike it from the top and then you come out 12 miles back down on the road and have to either pay for a shuttle or hitchhike back to the top. We had decided that we weren't energetic enough and wouldn't have had enough to do that hike anyway so we had planned on doing another hike.

The other hike was to Hidden Lake and was 1.5 miles one way, 3 mile round trip to an alpine lake and what I'm sure were beautiful views of surrounding mountains. We were going to do that hike but when we got to the top we knew the hike would be cold, devoid of any views and quite possibly wet, so we skipped that one. I guess that some of the best views are when you're up on the pass and we didn't get to see any.

We were disappointed but that's the way things go with weather in the mountains, you never know what's going to happen.

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So cozy

The sleeping accommodations that Steph and I had for our trip to Glacier were definitely first class. Steph had just gotten a new bed at her house so she had a twin matress (which, ironically enough is the bed I slept on in high school! I'll tell that story later) lying around not being used. Drawing on the experience I gained on my first trip to the Beartooths (this was my 3rd trip) I figured we could fit the matress in the back of Steph's truck. Hmmm.

My idea involved taking Steph's truck with the matress in the back and slinging my tent's rainfly and my tarp over the topper and then lay our sleeping bags on the matress. Let me tell you, it lived up to my expectations. I have some pics.

The first is of the roofing arrangments. This is the first night; on the second night it got even better. I used some of my tent poles to hold the door part out a bit from the truck. The way it was the first night the ends of our bags were actually touching the fly and got a little wet.



This is just a view inside. Steph's sleeping bag is on the left, with a big down blanket on top--she gets chilly kind of easily.



We were very comfortable and slept very well. I don't fall asleep very easily in the best of conditions, and when camping I often toss and turn for much of the night trying to fall asleep. I was out pretty quickly those two nights, which just made the trip that much more pleasant. No one likes to be around a tired, cranky Brenden.

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So tasty and yet so handy

I learned a new camping trick from my girlfriend this weekend at Glacier. It involves Quaker instant oatmeal packs. I can't really fault my dad, an Eagle Scout, for not teaching us this one when we were younger--I'm not sure instant oatmeal was around when we were kids. Though even if it was around we certainly weren't going to eat that crap while camping! My dad was often a cook (which reminds me of a story about "soaping" the oatmeal pot before cooking to help with cleanup) in the Scouts and usually had a feast ready for us every morning. So many pancakes and sausage links, mmmm.

What I am surprised about is that none of my friends, or my brother, out here knew about this trick, or at least told me about it.

It's really simple: you can use the packet itself as the bowl for your oatmeal. You don't need to dirty another dish to eat instant oatmeal. Just heat up your water and carefully pour it into an open packet, mix it up, and you're ready to eat. Make sure you mix it really well though--all the way to the corners. Steph and I didn't do it well enough with our first packets and there was unmixed stuff in the bottom. The packet even acts as kind of a hand warmer, it isn't too hot and it feels nice holding it in your hand on a crisp morning.

Anyway, I had been excited to try this out when Steph told me about it and it exceeded my expectations. I hate washing dishes, especially while camping, and this just made eating tasty oatmeal so easy.

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What the...?

(note: I have been trying to post this all day but blogger has not been working--this has prevented further Glacier posts as well)

I had a couple things pop into my mind on my ride to work this morning(it's only 5 minutes long, so that's pretty good), but I forgot one of them (that's not as good.

The first thing that popped into my head was "What the...?" when I saw this little kid going to school. It was a preppie gangsta skater. Wrap your mind around that.

First, he had to have been around 10 years old or so. I guess I don't know much about kids these days but I don't think I had a *ton* of fashion sense when I was 10 years old or so, I mostly trusted my mom with what I was wearing. So he was wearing some khaki pants and a button down long sleeve shirt. Oh, that's nice, and that would be the preppie part. But, he had the top couple buttons on his shirt unbuttoned. Uh oh. Then he had a couple (yes, more than one) chains, possibly gold chains, hanging on his neck swinging around. Yikes. And he had a baseball hat on cocked to the right even more than Torii Hunter of the Minnesota Twins. Scary. Plus he was skateboarding to school, which isn't all that bad, but with the rest of the ensamble, it just struck me as funny. He did try to ollie when going from the street to sidewalk, but I had to turn my head to look for other cars so I didn't see how well he did.

This is BOZEMAN! What's going on here?

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It's already *what* time?

There you are, my loyal readers, with your browsers open, clicking the refresh button, waiting all day for the post. What post? The Glacier post!

That's right, we did go to Glacier this weekend and had a wonderful time of it. I have many astonishing stories to tell that will amuse and delight. Well...I at least have have a few anecdotes about a couple things that happened.

But I will not be able to relate them all today. Time has passed swiftly here at work after the long weekend. It's definitely nice in that the day didn't drag by but I missed out on posting any stories since I don't yet have internet at my new house.

I took a bunch of pictures but I have to be honest and say that most of them didn't turn out all that well. I was quite disappointed with them. I am starting to wonder if my camera is going on the fritz. It has a few peculiarities and I am hoping that the quality doesn't start to suffer. I will say though, the lighting was very difficult this weekend and I am not a very good photographer. I point and click. My camera isn't the most customizable as far as settings go but I hardly use any of them. Usually the auto settings work fine but when things aren't perfect the quality can suffer.

The problem with lighting was that for much of the time it was completely overcast. There were clouds hanging over much of the park in many of the more beautiful places. The picture I will post is a picture of Jackson Glacier, which can be seen from Going-to-the-Sun Road, which crosses the park from West Glacier to St. Mary. I will post other pictures later, but not as many as I had wanted to, they just aren't that good.

So here's Jackson Glacier:



Of course, what this all means is that I'll have to go back one day. To see the sites covered by clouds and to take more pictures.

One thing that I will mention was that I actually had a dream on Sunday night that I got back into town and saw in a newspaper that the Gophers got shutout by Toledo 31-0. It was quite disturbing. Well, when I got back to Steph's house and finally got on the internet (after unpacking everything) I found out that it didn't happen that way, much to my relief.

I'll try to put more up tomorrow. Until then!

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Slowly winding down

The office is dead quiet right now. I may even leave a little early myself. There are probably less than 10 people here out of 60 or 70. That's a Friday before a holiday though.

I hope that everyone can survive with out my witty discourse for a few days. Steph and I will be heading to Glacier tomorrow morning. I can't wait, though it will be positively arctic up there. I wouldn't be surprised if it dipped below freezing at night. It's been abnormally cold here lately and Glacier is northerly and high in elevation. It's pretty nice here now, the sun has been shining since around noon, but the temp will dip I know.

We have our trusty bear spray to ward off Grizzlies and we may even sleep in the bed of Steph's truck on a matress. Why rough it more than you have to, right? Especially if it gets really cold, I sleep poorly enough while camping to not want to be awake and cold all night.

I'll definitely give the full report next week and hopefully post lots of good pictures as well. Have a great Labor Day weekend!

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Mmmm, waffles

One has to have tasty lunches in the middle of the day to keep one going.

One of the things I like to have most when I go home for lunch are Belgian waffles. I make half a batch of Bisquick waffles and bake them in my waffle iron. Most of the time the amount is just right though sometimes it is a little too much. I eat my waffles with creamy peanut butter and maple syrup (usually Golden Griddle syrup). The peanut butter part was learned from my dad at a very young age when we camped a lot all over Minnesota. I believe he learned it in Boy Scouts, and what I'm thinking is that it came with a desire for more protein and calories at breakfast before a hard day. Me, I just love the taste and consistency, stemming from the facts that I love creamy peanut butter and I love maple syrup (since I don't really need the extra calories for certain).

What this sometimes does is affords me a chance to partake in one of the simple pleasures of my life. For no apparent reason I love opening a new jar of peanut butter and taking that first swipe out with a knife. It's just one of those things. I remember when I was little I always wanted to be the one to finish the peanut butter and then open up the next one.

That's your random Brenden tidbit for the day.

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Spinners

My last post just reminded me: on the way to pick up a friend for lunch today a coworker and I were sitting in my car at a light. In my peripheral vision I saw an SUV that looked like it was rolling foward. I thought "What is that guy doing, the light is still red." So I looked over and saw that he was not in fact starting forward but that his rims were spinning.

Yes, there is an SUV with spinner rims in Bozeman, Montana. Yikes. The license plate holder on the back said "Follow me to Justus Hiphop Emporium" and my coworker said that it must be the owner of the hiphop fashion store, a former MSU Bobcat football player.

I suppose if his idea was to stick out at every moment he was in his car, he succeded admirably. It just doesn't necessarily fit in with the whole Bozeman motif. I haven't even seen these in real life in Minneapolis or Chicago.

Ooo, crazy car modifications just reminded me of Bubb Rubb and Lil' Sis. If you haven't heard of those two and their whistle tips you may want to check this out. It's definitely not for everyone though, so be warned.

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Newsflash: I'm a P.I.M.P.

What? Just wait, there's an explanation...

A couple months ago I found out from a fellow blogger from Scotland that the situation surrounding names for soft drinks can be even more confusing over there. I mentioned this fact again on his blog and found out about Irn-Bru, which I saw on another site called "Scotland's other national drink". Well, that was very interesting. We (in the US and especially Montana) don't really hear all that often about beverages in other countries. When I lived in Germany we drank Fanta (which has a stupid Flash-y official site that has nothing to do with the drink, so I won't link that) all the time but never really saw it over here. Now they have commercials and all sorts of stuff.

Anyway, I had to keep browsing the site that had the review of the drink, The BevNET, and look at other drinks. They had a listing of the Top 10 Viewed Reviews. Predictably at the top was Red Bull, which they pandered as horribly tasting but gave it credit for starting the whole "energy drink" craze.

On a personal note, I really can't stand most energy drinks. I actually liked AMP Energy Drink the few times I've had it, though I suppose it doesn't hurt that it is made by sweet Mountain Dew. My old roommate out here would drink Monster Energy drink every day driving back from Big Sky after surveying. I couldn't stand the stuff, though the review does say that the taste has been redone.

Moving on, so what should be second on the viewed reviews list but PimpJuice. PimpJuice? Wow, that sounds like a winner of a drink. The review mentions that the drink actually tastes quite good and is made by a company headed up by rap star Nelly. With this fact in hand I had to find out more.

I went to the home page for the drink and the first news item is about how Nelly's charity, 4Sho4kids (gotta love the hip name), is creating a college scholarship program called "Positive. Intellectual. Motivated. Person.", or P.I.M.P. Classic.

In summary: I'm a P.I.M.P. and I didn't even know it.
That was a lot of buildup for not much excitement, but that's the way it goes sometimes.
P.I.M.P.in' ain't easy.

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Zzzz

I'm not sure that the world cares but boy am I tired.

Moving has taken a lot out of me, I can hardly believe how much. This afternoon has dragged on almost unbearingly. I usually go home for a late lunch maybe 12:30 or so, sometimes even 12:45 with the idea that I'll get back later and then the afternoon will be shorter. But today we had a picnic here at work for lunch. Not that I'm complaining about free bbq'd beef, brats, pop, chips (that's the snack kind like Cheetos and Doritos for my readers from the UK), and chocolate cake.

(As an aside, I was going to put a link to the Cheetos and Doritos webpages in the list above but they are both horrible Flash monstrocities. If you didn't have any experience with either snack you would have no clue what was being "advertised" by looking at the respective homepages.)

I am a huge fan of free food. Heck, I'm a huge fan of eating in general, but free food usually tastes that much better. The only problem was that the picnic started at noon, and with nothing to do but eat and chat (unlike at home where I have a TV or computer or book to occupy my lunch hour) I didn't spend a whole hour away from my desk. Even though it was only an extra 45 minutes or so added to the afternoon, in my current state it has been difficult to manage.

The weekend is a substantial 2 days away and when it arrives it won't even be that relaxing. I am sure I will feel like doing nothing but lay around and make sure to catch my beloved Gophers in their season opener on ESPN2. But with the Labor Day holiday on Monday this weekend is the best opportunity for Steph and I to go up to Glacier National Park. I know I'll have a good time, it is supposed to be absolutely beautiful and much different than Yellowstone, but I'll be tired.

Anyway, the day is almost done, I'm quite happy about that.

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Where does the time go?

Over at Stopdesign (a site I found when I was researching how css and blog templates work--the designer, Douglas Bowman, designed a bunch of templates for blogger.com, including the one I'm using now: Rounders 4) the author is talking about making a trip down to Australia and crossing the International Date Line. It's nothing new really, but something I've always found a little curious and can't wrap my mind around every time I think about it. The fourth comment after the story is kind of eerie (as the poster said) too.

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That Crazy Coach

A while ago I had the pleasure of seeing Bobby Knight at dinner. Now it looks as though the rest of you might be able to see him on a weekly basis.

According to this story a sitcom is in the works centering around a character based on Coach Knight.

Hey, if I start acting like a moron at my job and belittling my co-workers can I get my own sitcom?

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Ick

Unfortunately, I don't have much experience cleaning ovens. The only time I can remember having the chance it was cruelly taken away from me by my roommate at the time, Steve, that greedy bum. That is, until last night.

I finally got my chance. I think I've mentioned a couple of times that I'm moving. Well, one of the last things that had to be done was clean the oven and it was my job.

Unfortunately the oven is really old and the cleaning cycle didn't work. But fortunately my new roommate still had some oven cleaning solution from when he moved from Missoula a couple of months ago. So I grabbed that, sprayed it into the oven, and proceeded to clean other things for a couple of hours.

Around 9:30pm (I am super tired by this point, I've been moving for what seems like ever, though it's only 4 days straight) I opened the oven up to see what I could see. I grabbed a sponge and some paper towels and started wiping...and picked up gobs of the nastiest sludge I'd ever seen. Ranging from black as pitch to mostly translucent and differing in consistancy from runny jello(TM) to chunky peanut butter, I went through paper towels like I hated trees.

I can't remember exactly, but maybe I wiped for 10-15 minutes before I couldn't get any more up. I had missed a few spots and there were some black spots that were under other black spots I had wiped away. Since I know how much property management places like to screw people (especially in this town I'm finding out recently) I figured I better try for the rest. I sprayed it down again and went over before work this morning to wipe up the rest. I think I got it as clean as I could, but man, that was some nasty work.

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