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This guy always walks or rides a bike to work. During the summer he rides a cheap mountain bike, the kind that only costs $100, not that much for a bike these days, but his bike is in perfect condition. I often pass him when I ride my bike to work but he never takes the bike path, he always goes along this road. The bike path has a hill on it at one point and I suspect that's why he stays on the road. I think this guy is an engineer and works in the light industrial area where I work, but I'm guessing. He has engineer written all over him, but I have to give him credit. He walks or rides to work no matter what the weather and all year around. He walks at least 4 miles each way. An 8 mile hike each day isn't nothing. One time it was pouring down rain and I pulled over to offer him a ride home and he politely refused. Today it had snowed. I took this picture through my windshield. One thing however, he was going to be late for work as I was running late and had about 2 miles left to go.

I have no idea what his motivation for not driving is. It might be for excercise. It might be because there is no transit where we are coming from in this direction. Who knows, but I totally respect this guy. I've been thinking about walking to work in the winter also. I'm not quite there yet. But I'll probably at least try it by doing a "test walk/ hike". I expect the walk to take over an hour each direction.

Cancer

My mom was diagnosed with cancer a few weeks ago. I've been avoiding this subject. But since I probably don't have that many readers, I thought I'd share in this now. Thankfully it hasn't spread but she will be operated on next week. At first I didn't want to say anything for various reasons, but it's having an impact on my life as I know it is on Courtney's life also, as her dad got cancer recently. One Day At A Time on my side bar.

So there is that. I'll confront it on my blog instead of avoiding it. To be honest, I didn't know how to deal with this.

The promise of snow

They promised it would snow tonight. It finally did. There was nothing after work and it was dark when I drove home. So I covered up my wood pile with a tarp, I put the canopy on the truck and then I hunkered down. There is about an inch of snow on the ground now and they say there will be about 5 inches over night. There is something about the snow. It changes everything. It hides imperfections.
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Here is my car as seen out of my office window this morning, and my lovely view of the street. My car says, "I want to take you skiing don!"

Think bighorn

If you live in my neighborhood and you don't have Christmas lights up yet you are slacking!...I'm slacking. The people here are over the top with Christmas lights. I'll post some photos soon.

It's been cold and grey here. They say it will snow soon. I haven't taken any photos lately so I've been looking through photos I took during the summer. I took a whole bunch of photos in Glacier Park on a couple of different trips. I took lots of bighorn photos at two different times. This one wasn't too bad as the ram was standing there frozen and I had my little Nikon cool pix on maximum zoom. This guy has almost a full curl. Notice how his horns go all the way around. That is a pretty much a full curl but not quite. It isn't that easy to get a photo of a bighorn BTW. Normally you only see them from a distance even in Glacier Park. They don't just stand around like mountain goats do.

You can see the other Glacier bighorn photo I posted HERE. These are not the same animal. Notice that the curl of the ram in the photo above is almost, if not full. The curl on the ram in the link photo is only about 3/4 or so. And on the subject of bighorn sheep photos, HERE is another bighorn photo I took not far from the cabin last year.

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I might be wrong about the curl on the bighorn in the first link. I'm looking down on it and when I click on the photo to make it bigger I can see he has about the same curl as the one above but the animal looks bigger or older. They were in different places however and aren't the same animal.

Black Friday night

I got up at about 5:00 am yesterday and turned on the hall light and, POOF the light fixture exploded sending sparks down to the floor. That woke me up! So I got out my flashlight and removed the fixture from the ceiling and inspected the electrical box up there to make sure the house wasn't going to burn down before I went back to bed. The fixture hand shorted out. Of course it was Thanksgiving and so I coudln't go to Home Depot to get a new fixture. But today is Black Friday and my sister reported that all of the parking lots are jammed full of people. Crazy. So I think I'll wait until tomorrow to get a new light fixture. It will be Black Friday night in the hall at my house without it.

Happy Thanksgiving

I deleted the chainsaw art post. It was kind of crude, so it's gone now. Not sure I want it with my cyber trees. Not sure what to do with it actually.

It's cold here tonight. It will get down to 16 degrees F. so I'm thinking about making a fire in the basement. There's a wood stove down there. It looks like winter is here.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the blogville. (We don't have blogosphere here, we have blogville,.. blogcounty... blogtown) Safe travel, and don't eat too much.

Photo by Don

Turkey cartoon by Stan

Mountain bike hunting

I found this article interesting since this is bicycle log and I also like to hunt. I've ridden my mountain bike in the Rattlesnake where the guys in this story are now hunting from bikes.

MOUNTAIN BIKE HUNTING
only in Missoula,...

Before it got dark

I spent a few days up in the woods at hunting camp. It would rain during the day and then clear off and freeze at night. I left camp tonight as I have to go back to work in the morning. The guys are still up there, and it is going to snow tonight. I'm sure they are all bedded down right now and sawing logs as I write this. The sky was always grey the whole weekend and it was cold and damp. The moon and stars came out but the sun never did. I took this picture tonight before it got dark.

My hunting season is over.

Beer can chicken

I came home Saturday and found a package behind my screen door. It was a beer can chicken pan made by Weber. A friend of mine and his wife sent it to me. They had come up to the cabin this summer and a pan like this with them and made dinner on our gas BBQ. It's better than the wire things as it has it's own beer can thing that is removable in the center and it's non-stick. So you just put the chicken on it with beer in the can part and then close the lid on the BBQ and an hour later it's done. The pan part catches the juice and you can baste it a few times. It's great. But I couldn't find one here. Only the wire deal. So it was a very nice surprise when I found this on my doorstep.

So I bought a chicken. It was so windy tonight that I knew the Q would blow out so I'll wait until tomorrow to cook it. The wind is coming from a bad direction too. It's blowing the leaves off of my neighbors tree and into my yard! That just isn't fair. (It's not the same trees I wrote about in Bigfoot woman post) Usually it's their garbage that blows into my yard. Now I have their leaves too. What really sucks is that my good, neighbor who is a neat freak is down wind of me. And the messy neighbors are all up wind. When it's windy here it is DARN windy! The only other places I've seen it this windy were Great Falls Montana, and Hood River Oregon. At least at Hood River I can windsurf. I'd say that the wind is over 30 mph and probably gusting to over 40 or more. Perhaps 50. I like it at night when I sleep though.

November cyber tree

I spent most of the day wandering around in the forest. Here is November cyber tree.

Bigfoot woman

It's rainy and windy today. All of the remaining leaves are getting blown off of the trees. I like that because now I can see the mountain ridge that is across the river out of my front window. The neighbors that used to live across the street planted some birch trees that blocks most of my view during the summer. These people were dysfunctional I thought. Not long after they planted the trees they split up and sold the house. They had a good kid however. He used to get picked on by some of the other neighborhood kids. I used to feel sorry for him.

The woman always reminded me of a female bigfoot. A female bigfoot that smoked cigarettes. I only saw her at dusk. That was the only time she ever came out of the house. She had dark curly hair, and she always had a cigarette in her mouth. (Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against people who smoke.) One time I came home at night and I caught her in the headlights of my car. She looked right at me. She swung her arms as she walked and she looked just like that classic video of the bigfoot walking in the woods.

Her man, I don't think they were married, also always had a cigarette in his mouth. When I say in his mouth, I mean he never used his hands to deal with it. He just lit it and then it stayed in his mouth. I never saw him without one. (The female bigfoot woman also used this smoking technique.) He had a mullet and always wore a baseball cap. He had an old four wheel drive with a snow plow on the front and during the winter that was what he did for money I guess. Their house is in a col de sac just down from me. One time it snowed quite a bit and when I came home this guy had plowed all of the snow out of his place and left it in a big pile in front of my mail box. We have to keep our mail boxes clear of snow or they won't deliver the mail. After he did that, I felt no resonsibility to be kind to them. He knew what he was doing.

Like I said, their family pod broke up. He moved out. Not long after that she sold the house. A nice old couple moved in. I still feel sorry for the kid, but I wish they hadn't planted those trees.

Viewpoints

While I was staying with my mom in Montana last weekend, I watched a lecture on her basic cable TV given at the University of Montana, and broadcast by the local public broadcasting by BARNETT RUBIN who spoke the week before there on the situation in Pakistan, Afghanistan and the admin's present sabre rattling with regard to Iran.

HERE is something from his blog on the subject of Iran as it relates to war with Iraq, and I guess people like me who link to him.

I try not to get political on this blog, but I want you to know that I feel very strongly on the subjects of war and politics. It's impossible for me to ignore as much as I try. I honestly don't want to loose anyone based on my political viewpoints. My viewpoints aren't that important.

So don't worry, my blog will continue to be about what I know best, cycling, skiing, Montana and the northwest.

A Star from Mosul

I read a number of blogs that aren't all on my sidebar. HNK on my side bar is a girl going to school in Mosul Iraq. She is just getting into college. I've been reading her blog for a few years. Her sister Najma is a little older and in college. Her blog is called A STAR FROM MOSUL.

THIS POST broke my heart today.

New socks

I wanted something to make me feel good. What makes you feel better than new socks?.. So I bought some new socks.

New socks are like a drug. They make you feel really good at first. But the more you use them the less good they feel. So you need more and more new socks to feel good.

If I were president, instead of bombing people, I'd drop new socks on them. They would be so happy that they would sit down and cross their legs. Then I'd hit them with the dill pickles.

This is the answer to world peace.

Sh** going on

One time, on another blog, someone complained about someone else saying they couldn't or didn't write because they had some sh** going on in their life and they didn't explain what it was. I can understand someone having a problem with someone else saying that. I wouldn't do that but I want you to know that I do have some sh** going on. I'm going to leave it at that at least for now. If my blog doesn't seem the same then just know that this is why. I have some sh** going on.

We all have sh** going on from time to time. I think it's normal. And sh** for the most part isn't good. It's some bad sh** man. But we'll work through it. Wish us well.

Gate

Here's another photo from Montana. I've been wanting to photograph this gate for a long time. I'm not very happy with the results so I'll probably do this a million more times until I get burned out on it. I think it's a very honest gate.

How many leaves have fallen?

Almost all of the leaves are on the ground in my home town. People rake them into the street for the city to come by and sweep up. It makes great big piles of leaves. I don't have big piles of leaves like that where I live now. I remember as a kid jumping into these big piles of leaves and how much fun it was. You could hide under them and get them down the back of your shirt. They have a smell that you don't forget. It was nice to smell that smell again.

I went for a walk Saturday afternoon with my mom. Some people would rake the leaves into the street and others would not. Some places the sidewalk was clear of leaves and other places it wasn't. Mom would drag her feat through the piles of leaves as she walked. It made a sound, whoosh whoosh whoosh, as she walked along, and it left a trail in the leaves. I could smell the leaves as she walked.

I looked down at a clear spot on the sidwalk and saw the footprint of a dog in the concrete. It reminded me of those dinosaur footprints in the river bed that later turned to stone. The leaves reminded me of a distant time too. My childhood.

Someone's dog left its foot prints in this sidewalk in 1918. There's a date stamp in the concrete on the corner.

I wonder how many leaves have fallen since then?