Firetower..........almost.

Well, today was spectacularily lame. After planning for months to spend the night in a firetower with our friend Tomas, who is visiting from Chicago, we failed to reach the summit. The deep snow proved too much for our expidition specific, wide track, wide ski, monster torque snowmobile. I am guessing that most of the fault lies with the operators of said vehicle. After making it 9 out of 10 miles, dumping and recovering the sled 6 times and totally digging out twice we were turned back by the untracked, deep last quarter mile. The last time the sled bogged we spent almost 45 minutes just turning the thing around in waist deep snow.

I am not really sure what we were thinking when we set out on the adventure. The plan was to load down the sled and Tomas and I would ride up first with the dog and drop off the supplies. I would then head back down, pick up Mulv and head back up for the evening. Needless to say Mulv was a little shocked to see us both return two hours later. We should have known better seeing as 1) I have never used a snowmobile; 2) Tomas used one ten years ago in his Grandpas yard; 3) Our destination was high in the remote back country; 4) Mulv has never used a snowmobile; 5) It had been dumping snow for the last week and all good trails had been buried under new snow.

This could have been a cheesy montage in a Sledneck movie about the idiots who want to go snowmobiling in the backcountry and think it's as easy as watching a video. I was a little embarrassed about calling the rental place back three hours later and telling them they could come pick up the sled. The nice thing is that the guys were super nice and made us feel better by telling stories of their past failures (I think they were lying). They refunded our second day and the owner even said to call back if we got the tower again and he said he would get us up there on the shops dime. Something he didn't have to do and he will definately get my business again.

I think the next attempt at the tower will be in the summer with ATVs.

Check out the shot of the overly optomistic idiots with their dog on the snowmobile. (We were also running over our water supply for the weekend. IDIOTS.)

New Dog Owners........Sappy and Pathetic

This update is to let everyone know....again....that we love our new dog and he continues to show a little more personality each day. I promise that I won't make dog pictures and poop talk the only thing I blog about in the future.

New Family Member

Picked up Mario from the animal shelter today. Mario is his kennel name and we are not yet sure of a new name. Mario is a border collie / Lab mix and is about three years old. He is super calm, wags his tail a lot and is really interested in checking out every corner of his new home. I will check back in in a few days once I am over my shock at actually committing to taking care of a dog (besides me).

Old News

Two sixteen hour days to end the work week means that I didn't do anything yesterday. Today I woke up at quarter to 8, called the Big Sky snow phone and packed the car for a day on the slopes. Mulv is in Jackson so I figured some time on the snow with my good friend shuffle would be just the thing to shake off a rough week at work.

The new snow was awesome; the snow under that was terrible. Took five bomber runs and called it a day (you can do that guilt free when you have a free season pass). Headed home and filled a bucket of water to clean off the Strong from last weekends adventures.

Two weeks ago Ryan, Tomas and I headed out from Bozeman to ride to Three Forks and back. Being that it was 15 degrees my toes were a little chilly by the end. I managed to get a pretty good icicle hanging from my soul patch. Not a great temp but the roads were stellar.

Cyclocross bikes are the golden ticket in Montana. I spent 2.5 out of 4 hours on gravel roads, min. maintenance roads and straight up farm fields last saturday. I was on the high plains west of Bozeman with 360 views of mountain ranges. Not one vehicle passed me for over two hours. I am pretty sure I was tresspassing for at least part of the ride; Some parts of the ride were little more than cow paths. Good fun. The temp was a balmy 45 and I was firing on all cylinders.

Sunday was great too and I took the road bike out since almost all the snow was gone. By the end of the ride I was kind of wet from snow melt but the kicker was that 3 miles before home some jack a** in a big truck put his wheels right on the centerline where all the slush is and just covered me with a long, slow Montana Slushy. This of course happened just 50ft before I turned off that road. I signaled my appreciation with one of my fingers and rode the last three miles fast to stay warm.

Work continues to amaze me. We keep getting dream projects that will keep us busy for years to come. High rise mixed use developments in Bozeman, ski resorts and two new projects on Lake Tahoe should keep things fun for the foreseeable future.

The weather here has been really, really warm. We have had five days about 50 in the last couple of weeks. The past couple of days have seen snow in the Bridgers but the Madison and Gallatin ranges are melting fast.

Until next time.......................