Here are a couple of shots from the climb Joe and I did Monday afternoon. The climb is called the Gallatin Tower and is located down Gallatin Canyon as you go towards Yellowstone NP and Big Sky ski resort. It was a great way to spend a relatively warm afternoon in Bozeman. I recognize the beard is getting a little out of hand. I’m going to do someting about that one of these days.
Its been a good week. Busy, but good. On Thursday I went rock climbing at one of the closest local areas, Practice Rock, with Joe and Luke. I had been there before but not since winter had arrived. I was quite proud of myself as I did my first 2 lead climbs using “traditional” protection. (You climb up with the rope trailing you, place protection in the rock, clip yourself to it, and keep climbing ) Leading a climb is more difficult (and scary) than being the 2nd person up. And trad climbing is another level of difficulty above just sport climbing (sport is where there are pre-placed bolts that you the clip the rope to as you climb)
It was a lot of fun and makes me look that much forward to summer where hopefully I’ll become familiar with all the local areas around here. I found out that the class I’m teaching is only 3 days a week. I did a fair amount of climbing when I was going to school in Chapel Hill, and not much since then. It has been a good to return to something I enjoyed so much.
There was also a “Pow Wow” here at MSU this weekend, about a block from my house in the basketball complex. I’d never been to one but I believe they are much more frequent in the western part of the country. It was really interesting, and I could go on for awhile about that as well. However, for the sake of brevity here are a couple of low-quality films shot by my camera and then sent through You Tube to make sure they end up looking extra cruddy.
Enjoy!
This is from the Onion and I thought the headline and illustrative picture were pretty funny. Hard to imagine we’ve had 6 years of this dolt being our president.
Bush Refuses To Set Timetable For Withdrawal Of Head From White House Banister
I recently found out that I will I have a job for the first summer school session here teaching Statistics 216. It is the introductory statistics class and what I’m currently teaching. I really enjoy the material and feel like I’m learning a lot to get to the level where I feel comfortable lecturing on it.
It also pays fairly good money (especially for Bozeman). Hopefully it will be all the work I have to do in the summer. I’m also looking forward to having the opportunity to teach this material again so soon, I feel like it will be easier than if I waited a whole summer. Furthermore, the 1st summer sessions ends on June 29th and school doesn’t start again until August 27th! Now I can make definite plans for the summer.
p.s. We have about 7 inches on new snow on the ground as of right now and Bridger is reporting 15 new inches in the last 24 hours. Reminds me I’m living in Montana and it is not quite springtime yet.
Every spring and fall some roads in Yellowstone are closed to cars but open to bikers as they get ready for the changing of the seasons. Yesterday I experienced this for the first time with a 42 mile trip from Mammoth Hot Springs to Norris Geyser Basin and back. I bought a new bike last week, a Giant OCR 1. It is a road bike. I’m excited about it. Yellowstone without any cars is rather grand. The weather was fairly warm (despite there being an abundance of snow that hadn’t melted yet). The 42 miles went by quite quickly. Riding a bike made for the roads is a lot faster than riding a mountain bike with some slick tires on it.
The 3rd picture is the Boiling River. It is a lot of water that emerges from underground after being heated inside the earth. It is quite warm and swimming directly in it is illegal. However, right after the spot where the picture was taken it meets with the very cold Gardiner River, and that is where you can swim.
The really hot water meeting the cold water makes for a very good temperature. Its like a giant outdoor hottub that is continually flowing past you. I’d driven past it many times, but never actaully checked it out. It is quite awesome, I’ve never seen anything like it. You just hang out in this warm water and watch the elk around you, (we actually saw a bald eagle as well). Pretty classic stuff, I was feeling very spoiled by my surroundings yesterday.
The last one is Luke pondering. When I learn how to put text inbetween these pictures I will, but its not really that easy to do if you don’t know how.
Got back into town Friday evening and have spent the weekend adjusting to being back. It has been warm in Bozeman, about 65-70F for the weekend. Most of the snow that was on the ground before Spring Break has melted. Its pretty spring-like here although I’m not getting my spring pants on just yet because I expect more snow.
There are some pictures on my Plogger gallery from the trip. Here’s the direct link to the new ones
Spring Break Pictures
The pictures from Zion have some captions located above the picture. None of the other’s do yet. I had done a bunch but I refreshed the page and they all went away. 🙁
Also, when you first come to a picture, you can click on it to get a bigger, nicer one. And depending on what browser you’re using, another click might make it even bigger! whoa!
It was an awesome trip. I’ll update more in a little while. Right now I’m back at school and there are some things I need to attend to.
The snow is melting and grass is coming out. This is a continuation of the pattern that has been relatively persistent over the past month or so of snowing quite a bit and then warming up. Its not all bad for us snow-sports enthusiasts because it makes me feel like I’m not missing as much as I spend my day off doing schoolwork in the office.
Spring Break is next week and I am planning to use it to travel down to the Grand Canyon and maybe Zion or the Moab area as well if there’s time. It will be my second time there and I’m extremely excited as it is one of my favorite places that I’ve ever been to. I’m hoping to be able to spend a couple days hiking and camping in it but that depends on the availability of permits. Either way it’ll be nice to have a week off and travel to a different climate.
Thats the report from their website. I was already planning on going today anyways and with the new snow it turned out to be pretty epic. I think that was the most snow I’ve ever been in. There would be times where you would be up to your waist going downhill and snow would be totally covering your face. You would be inhaling snow and just totally blinded. It was a little crazy. It’s like you’re floating, you move up and down as you turn but you don’t actually hit anything hard.
I was proud of myself today for getting myself in the position where sometimes I can go to school, teach my own class, and learn quite a bit in the process, and then other times I can drive 25 minutes to a mountain where I can have some of the best snowboarding of my life.
Here’s a little video I took on my very last run. I think I almost got frostbite trying to get this video. Ok, not really, but my hand was definitely in pain afterwords. You’ll notice that I’m basically following someone else’s path. This is because if it wasn’t quite steep, there was so much snow that it was quite difficult to make forward progress unless you were mostly following where someone else had already been .
Also, thanks for all the birthday well-wishes, I felt very loved.
Yes, its hard to believe folks but I am now 27 years young. (well, technically not until tomorrow but when you read this it’ll be true. Its akin to post-dating a check). A good age that is for sure. Its too bad I have schoolwork to do and can’t spend it at Bridger or something, but its not the end of the world.
I have to finish a take-home exam, meet my professor at 11, give out a couple of make-up quizzes at 12:30, and then proctor our first Stat 216 exam at 6. Not that much that has to get done really. So it should be a good day.
I rewarded myself with a new 250 GB external hard-drive (120 bucks from tigerdirect.com) and a new pair of clogs (I had a pair a long time ago that Davy managed to confiscate and wore out). So right now my computer is bleeping as it backs up 18 GB of photos from my harddrive and I’m wearing my wonderful, new-smelling shoes. As soon as I finish typing this I’m going to go to bed because its after 11 o’clock and that is past my bedtime.
Aren’t Friday’s the best? They are especially nice when you had 2 tests that week. One thing about a test is that you don’t necessarily know how you’ll do before you take it, but you do know that at least it will be over.
I had a pretty tough test today in Stat 424. Which is a math stat class. Its pretty interesting but it is a whole new type of material that takes a little bit to get used to. We have a take-home portion of it thats due next week that’ll be the other half of the grade. I felt like if I had a little more time the in-class part would’ve gone better, but that just means that I’ll need to have the material straight that much more for next time.
Also, Modest Mouse is going to play a concert in Bozeman the Saturday at the end of our spring break. NONE of the bands I’m familiar with ever come to this town. Some do stop by Missoula, which is a little larger and a few hours to the west. That’s the town that inspired me to come to school here actually. Modest Mouse is a band I tried to see about 3 years ago in Minneapolis but the show sold out before I was able to get tickets. So this is exciting. One of the things I miss about Asheville is the fairly regular supply of music they have coming through there.
Unlike Davy, there are no ziplines or gorillas in my possible future. I do think I’ll go down to Yellowstone tomorrow. Bridger can be a little hectic on the weekends and finding some peace will be nice. Thanks for reading about my little slice of the universe out here. Hope that whoever you are and and whatever you’re doing things are working out for you.
Michael
Here are a couple of pictures from Vegas. I didn’t actually take that many. I wanted to really get some good shots of the lights but that didn’t happen. The city certainly does better at night when the dark takes over and the multitude of lights brings your eye away from the typical big city grunge. There is a pyramid there with a giant spotlight shooting up from the top of it that you can see when you are about 70 miles outside of town.
The area outside of Vegas is quite splendid. I really am fond of the southwest. Where we actually played was about 15 minutes from our hotel and had some very nice hills surrounding it. They seem painted with lines of red and tan. Almost like they are made out of sand, very fragile looking. That picture of the sunset is untouched by the way. Thats really what it looked like. I might almost use the term “reality”.
Back in Bozeman. Things are calming down as I catch up. Vegas was quite interesting.
Some highlights:
And much more!
Right now I’m trying to stay on top of my game so I can go to Bridger tomorrow, because it has snowed about 4 feet there in the month of February, including about 3 in the last week. So there is a lot of freshy pow-pow out there waiting for me.
I just decided just recently that I’m going to Las Vegas this weekend. There is an Ultimate Tournament (flat plastic discs) there and MSU is taking a team. Mapquest says its 850 miles from Bozeman. We’re leaving Thursday morning. It will be an interesting drive, through Utah and Nevada, basically all new ground for me, which is exciting and one of the main reasons why I’m going. I’ve been through Utah a couple times but have not traveled this route exactly. I believe I’ll be the first Sulock in Vegas. (At least in our immediate family).
I go to Vegas with a mixture of excitement and fear for what I’ll encounter there, other than some warmer weather. At the very least it will be a learning experience. Right now I associate Vegas with lights, buffets, and gambling (although not necessarily in that order). I have gotten a little ahead as far as school is concerned, but the beginning of next week will still be challenging. You can’t miss four days around here without paying the consequences. But I will deal with that Monday.
Hopefully when I come back I’ll have some interesting pictures and some insight into one of Elvis’ favorite cities. I hope everyone is doing well.
p.s. I’m glad that the Tar Heels managed to pull out that win against Coach K and the rest of his cronies.
According to their website. Bridger has gotten about 20″ of new snow since wednesday. Which has made for an excellent, tiring, and brief, weekend. There are so many places to explore out there. I feel like everytime I go I find something new. Its a seriously different mountain then Breckenridge was. Even though its a lot smaller I would say Bridger has a lot more varied terrain.
Something I have yet to do it hike to the top and ride down the ridge. Coming down from the ridge requires a mandatory hike because the lifts don’t go all the way. Also, you are required to to carry a shovel and avalanche tranceiver (to find others and be found, just in case). I was reading a book on hiking the ridge called “Steppin’ Up”, describing the different descending routes. I found it interesting that on more than a few, a 20-30 ft huck off a cliff was casually mentioned as required. Thankfully, not every thing is that crazy and I shall be seeking one of the more tame ways to be my introduction.
I took this picture of a cloud from my car window as I came into the parking lot this morning at Bridger. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen something like that. The cruddy cell phone picture does not do it justice, it was a spectacular cloud.
School tomorrow. I can handle that I believe. I’m going to start attending a professor’s Stat 216 class so I can see how someone else teaches the material (which can be a little tricky) and learn a few things while I’m at it. Its at 8 am but I’ve been going to bed early enough that its not really a big deal.
Things are going well here. I went to ultimate today for the first time in Bozeman since October or something like that. Since before it got cold and they moved it into a gym, which wasn’t too exciting to me. But I figure ultimate in a gym is better than no ultimate at all. School, snowboarding, and climbing have been running my life since I got back into town.
As I mentioned to Davy I watched this movie “Born into Brothels”. Its a very interesting movie, with a lot of information about India. And it has a very happy ending, which is quite nice. I’m a fan of the happy ending. It also has a lot about photography in it, and it won an Oscar in 2004 for best documentary. Which hopefully An Inconvienent Truth will win this year if people have any sense at all (I’m still debating on this…the people having sense thing).
Life is very good right now. A continuous amount of snowfall between now and April and it will be ridiculous.
Come and visit me in Bozeman. The End
