I'm going to start by explaining what we're doing in Choteau. And the more I think about, and am asked about it, or told "what the hell were you thinking" the harder it becomes to explain. I'll just say it simply, using the motto of the local Choteau Community Bank - "If you're lucky enough to live here, you're lucky enough". You'd have to come out and experience July 4th and some of the other stuff before you would start to get it. Most people that have, do.Beth didn't go into great detail on how we got here this summer, but she probably explained enough. We spent the entire year, since last September 4, looking forward to a nice train trip out this summer, including sleepers - the works. It didn't occur to me there might be any problem with that idea until about 2 weeks ago, when the Empire Builder, which is the train from Chicago to Seattle, started being cancelled due to flooding in the mid-west, especially Minnesota, North Dakota, and believe it or not, Montana. There's a lot of stuff that is supposed to happen in Montana, most of which never occured to me before we started coming out here, but flooding, fires, tornadoes, are not examples of what I originally expected. But they all happen. And like other stuff in Montana, when they do, it is big.
I'll not go through the gorey details of getting here, but suffice it to say the Empire Builder finally got dumped, along with my myriad of backup plans, last Thursday. I was lucky enough to jump on two frequent flyer tickets for Friday, so rather than starting on the train and getting here 3 days later, we bopped into the Roanoke airport and started flying on Friday. United is not yet quite good enough at their trade to get us here in one day, so they dumped us in Denver for Friday night, then got us on a nice flight to Great Falls on Saturday. So it was a 2-day trip.
One of those things you don't expect in Montana - it's flooding. I took the little antique Honda trail bike I have out to the west side of town on Saturday after I got here, and saw that the Teton River is flooding. Normally, all the irrigators west of town have sucked the Teton almost dry by the time it gets the 25 miles from the Rocky Mountains to town, and it looks like a creek. This time, it is 100 of yards wide north, west, and south of Choteau. It about has us surrounded. As a matter of fact, the local authorities are advising the citizens, which probably includes us, to be ready for flooding. Most aren't concerned, and unless it rains some more and gets hot, which would make the unusually large snow pack in the mountains come dumping down, we should be OK. At least that's what the ole timer's around here are saying. Hopefully, not famous last words.
On Sunday (after going to church, Ma), I took a nice Harley ride out the Teton Canyon Road, which is being re-built this summer and is presenting some great pot-hole challenges to the motorcyclist. Out there, I took a bike picture.Today, we got into the usual early Choteau summer mode, and worked our butts off around the house. Beth in the flower beds, me cleaning gutters and mowing the yards. A new wrinkle this year seems to be that not only am I mowing my substantial yard with a push mower, but my neighbor beside me and a new neighbor behind me. That's supposed to change, but we'll have to wait on that.
At this point, it is about 7:00 PM out here. Beth is supposed to return from her Yoga class at 7:30, and because we've worked so hard today, even though we're supposed to be trying to lose weight, I'm proposing that we walk a block down the street to the ice cream parlor, and get a great Wilcoxens ice cream cone.
Now, see what you might be in for with Beth bringing me in to the blog?
I hope you got some ice cream! Nice bike pic, too!
ReplyDelete