Yard art

I think I've finally figured out why dogs always chase me while I'm riding my bike. They want to take it!

Well this is kind of a nice piece of yard art.. lawn art,.. outside of the bubble/ bicycle log yard art. My friend was telling me that when I get old I'll make yard art... with my power tools... Something I can stick in the lawn. It's just one of those quirky things that old guys do.

I haven't come to that yet, but I'm starting to show interest.

Remove your hat

I decided to delete the cowboy church post. I'm sure it's a decent place. I was talking this over with a friend of mine and he was telling me about a church he went to. Lots of cowboys there, or at least guys wearing cowboy hats. He said that many of the men didn't take off their hats when they went inside. "Not even in a church?" I asked. "Well I know one person who would have had a problem with that..." My old man.

More snow

Here is what it looks like this morning. I guess I won't be riding my my bike anytime soon.

Snow

It continues to snow here in the pacific northwest. I'm loving it. The only thing bad about it is that it it snowing so much that it makes it hard to get up on the mountain. I usually like to ski after it has snowed and the sun comes out. They are saying that they will keep the resorts open longer than usual now. I'm good with that for sure. Plus I've decided that if they close down the alpine skiing I'll switch over to nordic skiing, (cross country) something I haven't done enough of this year.

Above is a picture of my car after work tonight. It will snow an inch or two here in the valley at night and then it will melt off during the day. I guess it snowed 6 inches in the mountains last night, and more tonight. It's crazy!

Hillary Clinton

I have a real problem with Hillary Clinton's memory. No doubt she was in a dangerous situation, and for that matter she is probably always in a somewhat dangerous situation, but still... I think she's in real trouble now. You just can't say that you were running from sniper fire when you weren't if you want to be president. Game over.

Big Mountain

After spending Easter with my mom I hooked up with my friend Curt and I went skiing at the ski resort formerly known as BIG MOUNTAIN . It's now known as Whitefish Mountain Resort, or something like that, but I'll always know it as Big Mountain.

Then after another hearty breakfast at the lake this morning we parted ways and I made my way back into north Idaho for another day of skiing at Schweitzer. Despite what they were predicting, I had three nice days of skiing at three different places. Lookout Pass was the best on Saturday, as winter has made a returned to the northwest. It was darn cold both today and yesterday in the mountains.

Above is a picture of Curt at the north end of Flathead Lake Montana on our way to Big Mountain.

You can see the north end of Flathead Lake where Curt was standing in the center of this photo from the top of Big Mountain. It's that blue spot on the horizon in the center of the photo. Glacier Park is out of view to the left of this picture.

Happy Easter!

Here is a picture of my mom's deviled Easter eggs.

Lookout Pass

I Skied at Lookout Pass today on the boarder of Idaho and Montana. It snowed most of the day yesterday, but today was enough to put a smile on everyone's face.

The view from the old chair at LOOKOUT PASS . That's also the Hiawatha bike path link. It's a bike path built on an old train track that goes through these long train tunnels in the mountains and over these really high tressels. I've done it once on my mountain bike and it's really cool, especially when you are inside the tunnels. Be advised, you really need a bright headlight on your bike if you go on that ride. (I'm not kidding) I had a pretty good one and it really wasn't bright enough.

It was a beautiful drive this morning. This is Coeur d Alene Lake.

The verb to friend

I friend, you friend, he she and it friends. We friend, you friend, they friend. It's the verb to friend.

We were talking the other day. "It's such a me thing." I said. You see it in traffic. People talking on cell phones and ignoring others around them. The in your face deal with my great big vehicle, but don't touch it, and get out of my way,...

The other day I was at the grocery store, and this guy was having an argument with someone on his cell phone. At first it kind of freaked me out as it did the produce manager. As my shopping went along I couldn't seem to get away from this guy. It started in the produce section and then we went through the meat department, all through the store and on to the checkout. I only heard his side of the argument. It had me wanting to know the other person's point of view. I wanted to say, "Excuse me, do you mind if I talk to him and get his side of the story?"

"I guess I could hole up." I said. I guess my blog is about self-promotion even though I'm not really telling anyone who I am. I just want to express myself,... "But still." he said. I guess he's right. "It's the thing that always bothered me about artists and musicians." I said. "It's this constant self-promotion that I find distasteful." Come to my show,.. buy my CD. Get into ME!

But don't get too close...

Hummus and a bear dream

I made my first batch of hummus the other morning. It turned out good except that I think next time I'll leave out the garlic. I put the smallest little piece in but I guess in the morning I'm not really in the mood for garlic. I had a poached egg on hummus. I learned how to make a poached egg by watching Julia Child and Jacques Pepin on TV. Here's a picture of my breakfast. The lemon is just for color in the photo, but I did put lemon in the hummus. I had fresh ground coffee but I think a reisling would have been pretty good with this.

I had a bear dream again last night. I dreamt that I took a road that went up a canyon towards a mountain pass. It started to snow so much that I didn't go very far before I pulled off the road and took shelter in a vacant house. The snow plows couldn't keep up with all of the snow as it got so deep. I looked outside from in the house and and watched as the snow got deeper and deeper. Then I noticed that a bear was sniffing around out by my car and looking in the direction of the house. Soon it was trying to get into the house by standing up on its hind legs and pushing on the door with its front legs. That's when I woke up.

English only hand cleaner

I noticed today while I was using a porta-potty at the ski resort that someone took the time to scratch out all of the spanish instruction on this on this antiseptic dispenser.

No escape

I rode today on the bike path along the river. The sky was dark. As I rode it started to rain and I could see my breath. It was cold and damp and I was the only one. I thought I'd warm up the more I rode but the moisture and the cold crept it's way in. There was no escape from it. Perhaps tomorrow will be a better day.

Sharing pictures

Here is today's train tracks and powerline shot. That's a train track on the right by the way. The road leads to my house if you make all of the right turns. Sometimes at night I can hear the train on this track in the distance.

I know,.. powerlines... Everytime I go and see my mom we always look at eachother's picutres. So I plug my camera in to her TV and start clicking trough. Power lines, power lines, power lines, click click click. More power lines, click click click click, "I kind of like that one",... (I can tell she's just patronizing me.) "And here are some shots of Irrigation pipe,.." click click click. And I know what she's thinking. I wish Donald would take pictures of weddings or something,.. My mom has always been a shutter bug and I think that's were I got it from.

Then she shows me her pictures,.. Film prints, and two of each one,..She looks at each one and then hands it to me, Here is Aunt and Uncle so and so, and that is their nephew, and that's their daughter and that's her baby, and this is us all together, and this is just them, and this is us in their back yard, and this is just me in their back yard,.. I'm starting to focus on their choice in clothing and what their back yard might be like. And here's one of you the last time you were here, you can have that one as I have two of them.

For some reason she always thinks I want a picture of myself. I do like getting pictures of her though.

Spunky and the snooze bar

Each time I hit the snooze button on the alarm clock today I had a little mini dream. Time had different values. The first time I hit the button it was like two minutes, and the second time it was like two or more minutes, and the last time I hit the button it was like fifty minutes. Good deal, and a great value.

I got out of bed and my cat, Sphincter, which one of my friends calls her, I mean SPUNKY, (she has a few names actually,. but my ex-girlfriend named her Spunky) started to make demands on me. She's pretty cool and lets me sleep in, but when I come out of my bedroom she starts in on me. Well I have to admit that I did turn the heat off last night so she had to hunker down all night, but she has her own sleeping bag. It's not like she's homeless or anything, plus she has pretty much unlimited medical including dental...

I take her to the vet and there are all these people standing around, "And you have an appointment for SPUNKY,.." Everyone looks at me like, he named his cat Spunky :) Ha ha ha... Sphincter is looking at me like she is ready to rip my head off,... and she probably would if she were just a little bigger.

So I'm staggering around the place this morning trying to get the coffee on, but first I've got to get Spunky some hot water. Yes she only likes hot water now in the morning. She'd probably drink the coffee if I gave it to her...

So our morning went... And now our day is at it's end and Spunky is once again hunkered down in her sleeping bag. We'll do it all over again tomorrow.

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Thought I'd better change the name of this post...

Two kinds of people

"There are two kinds of people," I said. She started to laugh at me before I could finish. What? I asked. Dude, there are more than two kinds of people. Well I know that, I wasn't suggesting that there are only two kinds of people. There are numerous kinds of people, but if I started out by saying, "There are numerous kinds of people," it wouldn't help you focus in on my point. So what is your point? My point... Is.. Well it dosn't matter now... There are those who would subscirbe to my point and those who wouldn't.

And this is the thing that divides us!

Them changes

I woke up this morning and walked out the door and there it was, flat tire on the Hyundai. Plan B, drive the Ford to work. No excuse if you are late on the first day back to work arter the time changes. Are we saving light now or were we saving light in the winter? I can never remember. Are we saving the light for the next dark ages?

What,.. It's no longer the time it was, it's now a different time?.. It's hard enough for me to understand the world without this and I'd like to have a physicist explain it to me. Who says time travel isn't possible?... Well I think I understand one thing. I understand the people who don't wear watches.

Tonight I had extra time and light to change the wheels on my car before the Gonzaga basketball game started. And the other thing is that this marks the start of my cycling season, but I have to say that I'd prefer that time just went on as usual. I'm against this time change twice a year. It's bad enough that Montana is in a different time zone than Idaho.

Favorite photos

Here are some of my favorite photos from this blog
I reserve all rights to my photos.  Please ask before using.

The sun goes down behind Wild Horse Island

Rainbow Lake Montana

Camas Prairie Montana

This is the bike path I ride to work on.

Logan Pass in Glacier Park Montana.

Nirada Montana with forest fire smoke in the background.

Rock Lake in Washington State.

State Line Idaho.

Train tracks and a power line in Missoula Montana

Snow ghosts in Northern Idaho where I ski.

A morning merganser on Flathead Lake.

The Flathead River in summer.

Flathead lake in fall / winter

Columbia Lake BC

Mountain Goats in Glacier Park Montana

Trees along the Spokane River

The high cost of hummus

Due to high hummus prices, I've decided to try and make my own. How hard can it be right? MY FIRST ATTEMPT at dill pickles went well,.. I usually have just about everything needed on hand to make hummus and I think I can make it for at least 1/3 the cost. Not really a huge savings, but I like it so much I might as well make it myself, then I can get it exactly the way I want it. The only downside to this is that I have to buy a can of chickpeas, I haven't looked to see if I can get them frozen. In the can they have lots of sodium.

Not that I don't like salt,.. The salt food group is one of my favorites. Well it's right up there with the cheese food group anyway!

Sick and epic pow day

"It's a sick day man!" said the snowboarder who jumped on the chair with us at the last minute. At first I thought he meant it was a good day, or a rad day, or something like that. "Yes it's very nice out today,..very sick,.." I responded. This guy reminded me of Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High except his blonde hair was in dreadlocks. But I think he might have meant it was a good day to call in sick,.. "It's epic man!" He went on to say...

I took yesterday off as I knew the sun was going to come out. What I didn't realize was that it had snowed so much in the mountains. So it was a "pow" day, and that's something I still understand. I skied in Idaho but it also got dumped on where I grew up skiing at Montana Snowbowl, and there is an ARTICLE about it in the Missoulian and a video you can check out. They didn't get the sun that we did but none the less, we all shared in a sick and epic pow day. I spent most of my time in the "steep and deep", but here is a photo from the top at the end of the day.

Shoot my house

This is like painting three targets on your house when you live in North Idaho, but it gets my award for best wildlife graphics on a single family dwelling in the deer, elk and moose categories.

Smiley face

I took this picture on my way skiing today. That's Mt. Spokane ski area in the background and not where I usually go as there are several places to ski here, but this picture captures how I felt this morning when I went skiing on such a beautiful blue bird day. (after I've had my Postum of course! :)

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"A tank full of propane is is just about as good as a jar full of dill pickles! " so says don...

Post Postum post

I heard on NPR today that Kraft has stopped making POSTUM. So this is a post Postum post...(sorry, I couldn't resist the alliteration) I knew this stuff as "mormon coffee" as we always had a jar around while I was growing up to serve instead of coffee when our momron friends and relatives came over. I noticed a jar of it out on the kitchen table the last time I was home, and I know there's still a jar of it up at the cabin. Of course I've had it. To me it tastes like liquid burnt plant, but I guess it has quite a following in Utah and other such parts. HERE is an article about it in the Deseret Morning News, a Utah based newspaper with an LDS persuasion.

It's windy and cold here today even though the sun is out for the moment. I can tell it is nasty in the mountains so I'll go skiing tomorrow. Today I wish I were up at the cabin, I'd sit down by the shore of the lake, watch the big waves roll in and enjoy a hot cup of Postum. And there's an opportunity here to make some bucks... Move to Utah and come out with a micro-postum-brew. Couldn't be that hard to knock it off... You heard it hear first.
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Have you ever just put corn on the cob right on the BBQ to cook with the husk on? When the husk burns, that's kind of how Postum tastes.