I guess I'm a Friday poster now

Hello followers of the drivel (yes Karl, the drivel. Thank you for thinking its more than that by the way).

Let me try to get you all caught up on things here in the Gallatin Valley.  Last Sunday I left for Williston, ND.  Spent the night in Miles City.  Every creek (we prounounce that word "crick" for the record) was out of it's banks. Every little stream that flowed water was swelled.  Bismark, ND is flooding as we speak. So is the town of Roundup, MT. My heart breaks for those people.  I've driven through Roundup more times than I can count. The Musselshell is a soft slow moving river, much like the Milk River.  To see this small town get hit this hard, is honestly breaking my heart.  Joplin, MO has me down as well.  I've often wondered why tornadoes have never hit towns of any sigficant size and when they have, have been so brief in reality compared to what Joplin suffered.  Still over 1200 people missing.  So sad.  Montana has never in my lifetime had the flooding we are enduring now.  It brings things into perspective.  We here in Montana have watched many, many times as other places have been hit with this disaster but have been fortunate to not have to feel the pain.  We do now.

The Grizwagon "Dash Cam"

Well here's a little slice of life from southwest Montana.  We had a pretty nice storm blow in yesterday afternoon so I took four videos with my old Kodak.  Two of a couple of legs of my journey home last night and then two of my trip in this morning. I just set the camera on the dash and let it do the work.  I even have some commentary along the way.  Proof positive that I have a voice for blogging. This first video is right after I turned onto Love Lane.  It really looks like I'm going fast than I am.  Travel speed on the first two videos is 30-35 mph.

How win a global warming argument

Plowing with spite.

Buzz's comments in my previous post reminded me of a story.  It again is about being a good neighbor.

The street I live on is all tract housing.  Duplexes (legal description is townhouse and it sounds so much more elegant). I told Buzz that I usually plow a lot of sidewalks when I have my four-wheeler running.  I like to do it and ever since I started wearing my snowmobile helmet and goggles, the only thing that ever gets cold is my toes.  I just drop the blade at one corner, push the snow into the street and then go to the next corner and do it again.  I only know a couple of my neighbors by name but I know more than a couple by sight and usually get a nice wave if someone is doing their driveway when I go by.

A couple of years ago I happened to be in Belgrade at lunch so I went to my little townhouse.  Had a sandwich watched some TV and probably took a 45 minute nap. It had snowed the day previous and I had done my plowing of sidewalks. Anyway, I jump in the grizwagon and head back to work. I live on the north end of the block. As I get to the south end, I see a little old lady who had just finsihed shoveling a path to her car. The driveways on both sides of her were neatly shovelled.

Back to the salt mine.

This is the route I travelled this weekend. The blue line is the road to Malta. 42 miles from town it was 30 degrees on my truck thermometer. When I pulled into town, it was -1. The red line is the return trip. Drove to Big Sandy on Sunday afternoon to play cards with Skeets and his family. Played pinochle and crib till midnight. Drove the rest of the way home yesterday. Total distance is around 670 miles.

This is the view from my sister's place in New Jersey. I think she lives about 75 miles north of Buzz. That's a lot of snow I don't care who you are.

Its warmer than it looks

Here are some photos I took at the playoff game last week. The battery in my camera died so I took these with my phone. Enjoy.  It was 10 degrees F at kickoff but did warm up to 12 degrees by the 3rd quarter.

This is before the end of the first half. I had to leave early to get the food out for the halftime festivities.  Double T and his crew got there early to put down the straw which really helped in keeping your feet warm.

This is not quite 5 minutes later.  Poor boy sandwiches, chicken gumbo, cold shrimp, cold cuts, cheese, beer, Crown, Alpines, Irish coffee.  What's your pleasure?

Digging out and throwing it in neutral.

After my celebration on Saturday night, Sunday brough much rest as the Lord intended.  I awoke at 6 AM so that I could clean up and go have breakfast with the football team and watch the playoff selection.  MSU received a #4 seed and at least one home game.  The grizzlies were left out of the playoffs for the first time in like 15 years.  That's the way it goes.

After breakfast I hooked up the plow to my four-wheeler and decided to plow my driveway after the 8 inches of snow that dropped Friday night.  Did my driveway and the neighbors and hit my part of the subdivision's sidewalks as it was cold and not a lot of people wanted to shovel evidently.  5.1 miles of sidewalk later I called it a day of plowing.

We are supposed to have lovely weather this week.  High's in the teens.  Low's below zero and more snow.  Fortunately, work will be slow and the need for me to leave the confines of my office for anything more than to drive my truck home will keep me warm and dry.  MCW theme is up.  It's lame I know, but it's a short week and while the Bobcats are winning I went with an easy one.  It's all part of my master plan.

Haiku Thursday is back as well.  Go to Troll's place if you want to know how everything works.

Now it's to work for me.  Take care all.

CAT/griz 2010

This Saturday, the 9th oldest rivalry in all of college football will be held in The Pits of Mount Doom Missoula. It's hard to win there. Period.  A very loud place to play. Rowdy fans. Referees who are afraid to make a call against the home team and dominance by the griz over the Cats the last 25 years.  I like the Cats chances but in a rivalry, anything can happen.

Am I going to Missoula?  The answer is simply "no".  More completely though it is "Hell no".  Missoula is a shithole.  It's full of smog and hippies. Their rivers are dirty, their infrastructure was designed by retards u of m grads.  The list is endless. OK, the infrastructure thing, it wasn't designed by u of m grads.  They don't have engineering there.  MSU does, but no grads from here designed Enemaville. This is how stupid the citizens of Missoula and the surrounding area are.  There are a couple of lumber mills in Missoula and of course they are union.  So the union members all vote democrat and when the environmentalists put almost a comlete halt to the timber industry, thereby causing layoffs and closures, the union blamed Bush.  Wait, what?  Like I said.  Morons. The point is that Missoula sucks to get around in because it's a dump.  Plain and simple.  Besides, why would I want to sit with 25,000 assholes dressed in dark pink when I can sit with 100 of the finest people on God's green earth and have my glass constantly full.

Here's a little something to get the juices flowing at mid-week.  THE BRAWL OF THE WILD!! Amanda's dad and the rest of the griz better have their "A" game.



It's not that Missoula doesn't have some nice people and a couple of decent fans, it's just that in comparison to ANY other major town in Montana, it's swampland.  Get it?

Al Roker........YOU DA MAN!!!!!

Al Roker was in my fair city yesterday to do the weather and show what a great guy he is by donating more than $1.2 MILLION DOLLARS in items to one of the best charities around Eagle Mount.  I've linked an article in the local rag here.  Thank you Al. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I tried finding a video on youtube but I guess no one in Montana recorded it.  It is hard to put up a youtube with VHS.

Tornado in Billings, MT

I'm sure most of you are aware that Montana was hit by an F-2 tornado yesterday.  My brother watched it from Pioneer Park and said it was pretty incredible.  I had this link sent to me with some great footage and lots of stills.  The first video is the best.  Brother is safe and Billings will survive.  No one was killed and one man was injured from baseball sized hail.  Pretty lucky.  Click here.

The Final Countdown!!

So a friend of BG's is getting married tomorrow in Washington, DC.  I sent this video to BG to show to her friend Nik as I thought the title was very appropriate but I had to share it with you all as well.  The hair, the blinding white teeth, the tight pants.  What a great video.  Epic 80's.  These guys are still rockin.  You can check out their website here. 

Happy Friday loyal readers.  Heading into a three day.  I'm excited. It's supposed to be 60 degrees  here this weekend.  Maybe.  If the sunshines.  40 and raining right now which is very different for here *dripping sarcasm.  Doesn't matter though.  Its Friday.  I'm playing golf at some point, riding my four-wheeler.  Who knows, I might even have a beer or some imported Canadian whiskey.  Yes, I would say the chances of all of that happening are relatively high. 

I think golf league is cancelled for the night.

 Yes, these are pictures from my office windows.  Yes, they are from today May 6th, 2010.   Yes, golf league is cancelled.  Yes, I am going to have Crowns after work.  Yes, I am hammering my keys right through my keyboard. No, I am not happy.  Bring those global warming MoFo's up here for some spring time excitement.  Like my old friend Dick Rolfe used to say "Chipper, Bozeman is 9 months of winter and 3 months of poor sledding."  RIP Dick.  You went far too soon.