First bike ride of 2011

I decided to go on my first bike ride of 2011 since the snow has all melted in town for the time being. This was a job for the old Schwinn Traveler with its chrome fenders and big tires. And this was what it looked like as I rode in the bike lane.

I've been wanting ride my bike since the snow melted in town and it was very nice. I rode past the golf course and ended up at a park across from a school. I sat on a park bench and watched the kids play while I listened to the radio in my ear buds. Some of the kids were playing football and some were playing soccer.. Various groups around the field all running in different directions. Their motions as they ran reminded me of birds flying around somewhat at random but following a lead. A bell must of rang and they all started to run away, to line up in the distance and go back to class.

Then I realized that I'm the old dude in this picture with an old bike sitting alone on a park bench watching the children play. Hmm.. I thought.. I guess that's not so bad.. Now if I just didn't have to go back to work..

Live to ski

Here's a picture of me on the lift last week. It was clear out and the snow was pretty much frozen solid. It doesn't look like it under the chairlift but the snow really was rock hard. I like it like that. You can really go fast on a week day with race skis. I live for days like that as there's nothing else quite like it. Fast cars don't do it, fast motorcycles come close, but there's nothing like a pair of race skis on a sunny day like that. It's raining outside right now. I suspect it will freeze the mountains again. That's good. Some people like powder, but I like the snow firm. I like the speed and you're less likely to get hurt on firm snow.

There's something about coming up out of the valley fog as you drive up and into the sunshine that does your soul some good. This is a picture of the road up to the resort as I came out of the fog and into the sunshine. I was talking to a guy on the chairlift about this the the other day. The gloom in the valley is totally broken when you rise up and out of the fog and into the light of day. It's really an amazing transformation and it's one of the reasons I love to ski and why I feel so sorry for those who don't who live in ski country. They hate winter as they are always stuck down there in the valley fog half of the time. I know so many people like that and it's really sad..

I guess the sticker in the window of this truck says it best.. Live to ski.. I want one of those!

I'm back

I'm back,.. I couldn't log in for a while. I don't know what it is with me.. First I lost my cell phone. Then I lost my battery charger to my camera.. And then I couldn't log in to blogger...

I can't think of anything else to say about this so I'll post a wierd dream I had.

Weird dream

Ok, so I had a weird dream..

I dreamed that I went to my ex-girlfriend's place to stop in and see how she was doing. She hates me (for no reason) BTW, so when I got there she was less than pleased to see me. She was like,. What are you doing here?.. she said with a less than happy look on her face. Oh I just stopped in to see how you are doing. I said.

I looked around her small apartment. She had a dresser crammed full of shoes. Next to the dresser was an old green sofa, and in the corner of the sofa was a small yellow lizard that looked just like the Geico gecko except it was yellow and it had red shorts on, and a white T-shirt. It was standing there on its hind legs just like the Geico lizard.

What's this? I asked her. Oh that's my baby, she said. Really? I didn't know you were pregnant.. When did you have this? I asked as she went into the bathroom. Last Wednesday, she responded. His name's Sammy, would you mind watching him while I change. And then she shut the door.

I'm thinking,. my ex-girlf (who hates me for no reason) had a yellow lizard for a baby last Wednesday and put red shorts on him and named him Sammy?... No wonder we didn't get along..

Well there I was with Sammy, so I reached down and grabbed him around the waist with his arms arms sticking out above my fist. He just looked at me with that lizard smile. He was kind of slimy, so I put him back down on the sofa.

Then he jumped off of the sofa, ran across the room and went down the heat vent! Oh crap! I thought. She's going to kill me! I'll have to find him before she comes back. So I got my flashlight and was looking down the heat vent. Finally I saw him but it wasn't good. There were some birds down there eating him and all that was left were the red shorts and some leg bones sticking out.

That's how my dream ended.

A warmer time

As the winter weather outside chills us to the bone and dampens our spirits, I think back to a warmer time, and recent trip to Radium Hot Springs in British Columbia. We'll return soon.

It seems to be a place where nothing changes... except the people who go swiming. It's exactly like it was when I was young, and I think I'm getting better at understanding the how the lockers work, and which doors to go in and out of. I'm getting better at reading the signs too, some of which are in French and some are those international picture signs. There's one sign in there that says you can't wear boots. (it had a picture of a boot with a line going through it..)

Man tracks

What kind of beast made those tracks?!... I wondered as I looked at the line of tracks in my yard. Every morning there are different sets of tracks crossing my yard. Cat, dog, rabbit, bird,.. Oh,. wait a minute,. I made that one. I'd gone out to the car the other night and didn't bother to put my shoes on.

I'd blame the tracks on my ex-neighbor woman who I named Sasquatch Woman but she moved out long ago. I named her that because one night I came home in my car and caught her in the headlights and she looked just like a female bigfoot, her arms dragging with her ape like stride as she crossed the road. Only her cigarette betrayed her as a human, but I can understand why people think they've seen bigfoot.

Continental Divide Canada

I brought in the new year in Canada this year and I had a really nice time. It was beautiful today on my return. Here's a picture I took on the continental divide near Banff. I kept trying to get a decent picture of the ubiquitous Candadian flag, and finally got this one one. I'm guessing the other flags are BC on the left and Alberta on the right. Jules,.. you're going to have to help me out on this.

Here's a picture in Koontenay National Park of some of the forest fire burned trees. It will enlarge if you click on it. I wish I'd had more time to just take pictures as it was really beautiful up there today.

Idaho skiing pictures

It has been a pretty good ski season so far. Winter can be pretty long in the northwest so you might as well take up skiing or snowboarding if you live in snow country and make the best of it. If you can't get out, you can come here to my blog and see what it's been like. Here are some of my latest skiing pictures.

It often looks cool and I'm always getting my camera out to take pictures while I ski or ride the chairlift. Everyone enjoys the views even if they stay on the easy trails.

And everyone gets a good workout and lots of fresh air.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! I don't have a real Christmas Tree, but here's my Christmas Cyber tree/ trees from Lookout Pass on Christmas Eve.

I took my mom to church and she pointed out a little white angel way at the very top of the tree they had in the church. "Gertrude made that Angel." she said. (my dear old Aunt Gertrude who is no longer with us.) That was so cool to have her there in spirit like that!

I hope everyone has a great holiday season.

Chairlift photo

I have a lot of photos of chairlifts. I don't really know why I take them other than they freak me out so much. I figured out that I spent over 8 hours on just one chairlift a few ski seasons ago. I'm not kidding. Plus it was only one chairlift that I rode that ski season. So I'm thinking I'm going to put my chairlift photos on my side bar. It's something to do anyway..

Last weekend I rode a chairlift exactly like this one with a little ski school kid who was only four years old. He was so small that they had to lift him up and put him on the chair. His legs stuck straight out and his skis straight up off of the end of the seat. So I put my ski poles infront of him as a restraint and I reached around and grabbed his hood with my hand. There was no way he was going to fall off of my chair while he was in my care!

I've ridden that chair with a lot of little ski school kids. Some of them will talk your ear off and some of them won't say a peep, and usually they all wiggle around. This little guy talked a little and I had a hard time hearing him because I had my helmet on and my ear buds in my ears under it. When we got to the top I asked him if he could get off by himself and he said yes, but when the moment came he seemd to say on. so I reached around and grabbed him by the hood and lifted him up and off of the chair and put him down on the snow.

When I started this blog it was going to be about conversations on the ski lift with strangers. It became clear that there wasn't going to be enough material for just that so I blogged about other things. But I still love getting on the chair with someone I don't know and having a conversation with them. It really is like a box of candy in that you never know what you're going to get.

Block heater in my ski car

I read quite a few blogs as I'm sure lots of you do. Some people really have a gift for letting you know what they are doing and thinking and it draws you in. I wish I could be more like that, without totally letting the whole world know what I'm doing..

I really would love to blog about work. There's so much material there. Honestly. I could go on and on about each person, but I made a few rules when I started this blog, and one of them is to not talk about work.. stupid rule.., but a rule none the less..

And I have other blog rules, I won't go into them all. It's more of a formula actually but I guess you'd never know. Another rule is to not talk about my private life. Like my relationships with my friends and such. So I pretty much don't talk about the people in my life except for when my mom had cancer. It doesn't leave a whole lot to talk about.

Having said that, I'm going up to the far north to see my queen. It gets so cold up there that I decided to install a heater in my ski car so I could plug it in at night to keep it warm so it will start in sub whatever temps. They have a different scale to measure temperature up there and nobody can tell really how cold it is. It's sort of like the thermometer on my camper. The numbers all faded off of it so I wrote hot on the top and cold on the bottom. I still use it,.. I just look at it and think,.. well I can see that it's pretty cold.. Anyway I had to try and hunt down a heater that would work in my car. I ordered in a lower radiator hose heater, and tonight put the thing in. It took a couple of hours. So far so good but who knows how cold it will get?

Clothesline

My dryer konked out last week. I only found out about it when I went to get some sheets out of it the other day.

When I was growing up we never had a dryer, just a clothesline. I'd actually been thinking about building one on my back yard for summer use. We also had one in our basment for winter use. So I decided to build one in my basement. I was amazed at how well it worked. You have to plan a little better but it takes way less energy. I like that.

A guy at work gave me an old dryer, but I'm still going to use this clothesline now. Especially for some of my bicycle kits. Some of those you ave to hand wash and air dry.

Dressed to ski

I love a woman in a dress. I wish they'd wear them more often..

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Woops,.. I didn't publish comments on this post because I didn't explain the picture well enough. Sometimes things get lost in the translation. This girl wears a dress for religious reasons. It looks kind of funny for skiing but I think it's pretty awesome.

Flathead Lake canoe

Here's a lonely picture of my canoe at Flathead Lake

counting petals

counting petals is a nice place to go on my sidebar, and a very nice place for my blog to be listed.

Canoe on Flathead Lake

Thanksgiving is over. A snow storm decended on the northwest with winter storm warnings, bad roads and all fo that. I was thinking,.. good time to go out on the canoe.. The white spots are snowflakes caught by my flash. not going to let a little snow keep me off of the lake.

Here's a picture of Chief Cliff in the winter mist.

Good thing I don't have a cedar strip canoe,.. I need to be able to run the thing up on the rocks.

Frosty trees

It was a nice drive to work today along the river with all of the frost on the trees, so I got out and took a few pictures until my fingers got cold. I guess it's going to warm up and snow again.

I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving... Or at least a well fed one. Or at least a roof over your head and a warm bed.. And a cold beer.. plenty of gas in the tank, and a few bucks in your pocket.

..and at least one old guitar..

International Scout

It has gotten pretty wintery around here the past few days so I decided to fire up my old International Scout. I've been snowed into my neighborhood in past years but I can get around in this here Scout.

It's my redneck side.. Well part of my redneck side anyway...

To turn the heat on you have to turn a valve under the hood that allows coolant into the heater core. You close the valve for summer use or you'll get really hot.

When I was young my Dad had a Scout just like this one. He took my mom and me in it on a trip across Wyoming to South Dakota in the heat of the summer pulling a small travel trailer. I sat in the back of the Scout. My mom wouldn't let us roll the windows down because she didn't want to get her hair messed up.. Gosh it was a hot box in there. Old Scouts are all metal with no insulation. So every morning I'd get up early and ride as far as I could get on my bike. That was the best part of my day. Then they'd catch me up and I'd have to ride in the hot box the rest of the day.

They did let me ride my bike through the center of Yellowstone Park though and that was the highlight of my trip. That and riding along the Gallitan River. I don't know what cycling is like in Yellowstone Park these days. There's probably too much traffic for it now.

If you want to take the slow boat to South Dakota, drive there in an International Scout pulling a travel trailer across Wyoming in the heat of the summer with the windows rolled up... Did I tell you how well you could hear the motor running?.. I liked it so much that when I grew up I bought my own Scout!

Montana pickup truck

This is what I looked like the last time I drove my pickup back from Montana. I wonder if they could give me a ticket for taking pictures while driving. It might take a while to find someone to ask.

One time I was outside of the truck taking pictures along this stretch of highway. You could see for miles down the road in both directions and not another soul in sight. Finally along came a guy in a pickup. I could see him coming for along way. He pulled up beside me and stopped. "Just taking pictures." I said. "You'd better pull it off of the highway.. Trucks come along here pretty fast and you'll get hit." He said with urgency. I looked up and down the road,. Nothing.. "Ok, Thanks." Then he drove off into the distance and out of sight and I was alone again.

I'd better move my truck off the road I thought. Maybe when I get done taking pictures..

Butte Creek

Here's another picture of the old road that goes along Butte Creek. At least once a year I like to walk up this road. There are cedars along the creek and it's just a beautiful walk. You can sort of see the coyote tracks in the pic and there's a cedar bow haning down. The rust color on the road is a coating of tamarack needles that has fallen from the trees. It covers everything on the forest floor here.