Life has been full of change for us over the past few months. Part of the change has included a move from Butte, Montana to Bend, Oregon. Moves themselves are often stressful but as with everything else regarding our 4 year sentence in Butte, this moving process would also prove to be more exciting than we had anticipated....the actual move had its own excitement but the following is part of the pre-move fun.....
Long story short of it is that the garage in Butte got broken into while the wifer was at home asleep. The most concerning part of this was that I had moved to Bend early and the wife was home alone when this happened. We had a detached garage in Butte and so with no dogs and one less person, the garage was ripe for the picking.
We had our Butte house for sale and I think someone cased the house during an open house and saw the garage contents. They then saw my truck was not around for a couple of weeks and proceeded to plan out their crime. My 2c is that is was a local (as in someone who lived within 1 block) job. Reason being they knew my truck was not there, the dogs were gone, and here is the topper.....2 days later, the Po' Po' found one of our old computers (fortunately we had removed the hard drive) that were stolen in the alley, 2 doors down from our house!!!! Of course the fine investigators that are the Butte Po Po did not think that was worth following up on.
The burglars must have been in the garage for quite a while as they cleaned us out. The tally included 7 bikes, all power tools, all camping gear, all climbing gear, electronics....It was really disturbing for many a reason. The wife went out and learned how to shoot a shot gun and made the wise move of buying a shot gun to have in the bedroom as she slept. There was many a restless night after that and we are thankful that no additional craziness happened until the tickie tockie of the Butte clock came to a stop.
This last episode in Butte was just the cherry on top of our 4 years of collective experiences in Butte. At this point it was about survival and trying to get our family out of that shit-hole before anything happened to jeopardize our physical safety. This is not to say it was ALL bad in the Butte, but let's just say we had lots of whacky, crazy, tweaker-ness happen such that we will have plenty of good stories to tell for years to come. One of the redeeming qualities of the Butte is the mountain biking. It is top notch and many a town / rider would be thrilled with the access, quality, and quantity of trail. The mountain biking is truly spectacular - the road riding is a 'ride at your own risk' proposition. I quit riding my road bike due to having things thrown at me, being buzzed way too closely, way too many times for comfort. I would rather deal with the red necks (yes, paintballin' freak families included) in the woods than the red necks on the pavement.
Fast forward about 3 months and our time in Butte is done. We are thrilled to be laying down roots in central Oregon and are super excited about the possibilities the area has to offer.
Last week was the start of the bike-replacement-effort for the Reis family! Woohoo! The first bike on the list was to replace my cross bike. I had initially gotten a hold of a cross bike while in Montana thinking it would be a great way to supplement the riding in the spring until the trails thawed out. The cyclocross subculture in Oregon is akin to cheese in Wisconsin, grits in the South, the metro-sexual in New York, or the surfer wannabe on the Cali coast....Seriously though, cross is HUGE in the O to the R so having a cross bike to partake in said craziness is a must!
more to come on the cross bike replacement on the following blogaroo post.
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