A Pig Is Just A Pig

Most of the time, when you put lipstick, or pretty bows, or clothes on a pig, it might look different...but it is still a pig - unless of course it is a fat bike pig, in which case that is a GOOD kind of pig.  99.99% of the time there is no such thing is a good pig though...

I have come to the realization that my pig is called 'Butte'.  My recent adventure of getting shot in the mug by a paintball fat farm while mountain biking gave me a bit of clarity.  I have been putting lipstick on Butte since the 'bastards took our omelets day' (our second weekend in town).  As some of you might know, we have had several crazy episodes since then and we have continued to apply lipstick on said piggie....Granted, the lipstick has gone from being applied with a lipstick stick, to being applied with a paint brush, to being applied with a broom, and now being applied with a full on paint sprayer (urggh, again with the damn paint).  Each whacky unique experience has required more and more lipstick to the point where the paint sprayer has just sprayed the whole piggie such that it looks like a cartoon jalapeno piggie.

Unfortunately that has been a disservice to ourselves as we have continued to hold out hope that perhaps our experiences were just unique and that our experiences would get better as we plugged along during our sentence here.  

The money move would have been to just realize that it was one big giant piggie and that a piggie is a piggie is a piggie is a piggie.  If we would have embraced our inner piggie early on, there is a chance we could have seen the piggie for what it is.  A pig.  We should not have sugar coated the piggie, we should not have made the piggie into a mensa piggie, or foodie piggie, or a friendly piggie.  The reality is this pig is a wild boar!  So much for the money move huh? 

If we would have recognized the wild boar it would perhaps better prepared and better have managed our expectations but alas, the wild boar had to run us over a few times for us to come to terms with accepting the wild boar for being the wild piggie that it is.  Yes yes yes, we are ssssllllooooowwww learners but I prefer to look at it as being stupidly optimistic.  

So as our tenure in Butte starts to wind down, I raise my glass and toast the wild piggie and will make a concerted effort to no longer be fired up about piggie feces as it is flung around and happens to hit me.  Just remember if you live in piggie-ville, there is a good chance you will get hit with flying piggie dookie - it might be intentionally flung your way, or it could just be collateral dookie...either way, you gotta' learn to live with the 'eau de piggie'

I encourage you all to embrace your inner piggie....

da' Whiskey fiddie

The Whiskey is now officially 'on the books' for me and it is time to spend the next 3 weeks deliberating over what ratio to run on the single speed...I am debating on whether to run a 32:19 or 32:20.  The course looks like a 32:19 would be a good choice but considering it is early season and I am just not sure how much 'leg' is in me at this point, there could be a good argument for running an easier gear for a little extra cushion.  Ahhh, I am sure to agonize over the upcoming weeks on the gear ratio although I am leaning towards the harder gear ratio as most of the climbing looks like it is reasonable.

Based on the profile, it looks like the climbs are gradual which should theoretically be OK, even early season.  Such is the challenge of living in an area where the riding season is short due to a long winter.  It makes the early season events a bit of a gamble when it comes to fitness and the anticipated level of suffering and noodle legs.

I am looking at it as more of a training ride and a good way to get some high intensity riding as the High Cascades hundie looms.

Dog Ballet

As we took the dogs out for a walk, we realized just how much it had snowed up in the hills.  There were some areas that looked to have about a foot of fresh snow!  It made for a fun walk and the dogs were all sorts of fired up since there schnozes were working overtime.  It was super peaceful as we were the first group to go up and disturb the fresh blanket of white stuff.

Pix from the walk and snowball catch session:

DOH! Chinese Tofu

We often head out to dinner on Friday nights as a way to decompress from the work week and get ready for the weekend.  Part of the challenge of living in a smaller community is the lack of options for dining.  There are about 3-4 places that we have on the rotation that are reliably consistent in regards to decent options and OK food.  There is one restaurant that we really like and occasionally treat ourselves to,

The one restaurant has its limitations too - it has had the same 'specials' page for over 8 yrs!  When we first arrived to town the wifer would often order a specific dish because it was a 'special' and thought it would not be offered for much longer...well here we are 3 1/2 yrs later and the specials menu is the same and her favorite dish has become 'old reliable'.  We then heard from another patron that the track record of the same specials menu actually dates further back to at least 8 yrs.  Since it is our favorite place to eat at in town, we view it as a funny quirk since the food is usually pretty good.

A few months ago, a local Chinese restaurant started to offer an 'Indian' menu on certain days of the week.  We were excited to check it out as it was the only Indian option in town.  Despite not being the best Indian food we had ever had, we were excited to add it into the rotation!

Fast forward a few months and we went back there yesterday to get some Indian food.  Unfortunately they are no longer offering the Indian menu at all on any day so we took our chances with the Chinese menu.  The red flag should have gone up when we heard a patron ask for chop sticks and we heard the waitress say they did not have any.  Mind you, the waitress was dressed in sweat pants and a sweat shirt.  At this point we should have known not to do what we did next....

We looked at the menu and thought it was pretty cool that the menu had tofu options.  Sweet!  So we both ordered tofu - I ordered the mandarin tofu and the wifer ordered the tofu version of the general tso's chicken.  The plates arrived and the mandarin tofu plate looked fake.  It came with a bunch of sqaured tofu pieces that had been deep fried and covered in some glazy orange syrup and 2 pieces of broccoli.  Nothing else....just a bunch of fried tofu squares floating in a fluorescent orange syrup with two token broccoli stems bobbing around.  I should have taken a picture because it just looked 'not right'.  We dug in and took a few bites of the flotilla and figured out it actually tasted worse than it looked!  We basically ate about 3 or 4 pieces of the drowning fried tofu mess and then decided to stick to rice only....even the fried rice did not have any veggies.  We ate up the rice and then promptly paid the bill and left with what was perhaps our most un-satisfying meal in the last few years.

word of caution - if you are thinking of tofu from a chinese menu, think long and hard about it....

Wing Wonderland

Winter made a quickie return to Southwest Montana to interrupt Spring's progress...hence 'Wing' - not to be confused with 'scwhiinngggg'.

The good news is we have snow bikes and this recent dump of snow means there should be additional opportunity to ride them!  They are forecasting 4-10 inches in town with more snow at elevation so it looks like this white stuff will be enough to make for a last push in a snow playground.  

Allzzz I gottzzz to say is 'bring it, bring it real good'

Post Paint-Gate

Paint-gate continued to twirl around in my noggin for a couple of days and the noggin just could not wrap itself around making any sense of it all and so the best course of action is to not make any sense of it since it is nonsensical.

The big picture was I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was very fortunate that it was only a paint gun and it did not hit my eye, etc.  So it will add to the collection of crazy stories that will at some point be able to be retold over a beer and a few laughs.

The day Post-Paint-Gate was spent digging out fluorescent yellow boogers and still tasting paint.  By mid-afternoon, most of the glow in the dark boogers were out of the system and it was time to think of riding - after all, it was the weekend and weekend means play time!

Below are some pix of the ride Pre-Paint-Gate:

reaching the pass via the abandoned RR tracks

 exploring 4 wheeler tracks up on the East Ridge - Steep!

 Steep n' Rocky!  Rideable if you gotssss the legs

 Nice view of the Tobacco's

 Tobacco's on the left, Highlands on the Right

 unsuspecting mug shot prior to the chaos that was about to unfold:

 great campsites along the road to Delmoe lake

Ride Info - a little under 4 hrs and decent elevation gain considering lack of real trail options:

Life's Stranger Than Fiction

Admittedly, there are times when you have to shake your head about just how absurd things can be.  Apparently April Fools arrived a little early in Butte, MT as yet another "I can't make this stuff up" episode unfolded on the last day of March.

The plan was to go out for a long training ride on the el Phattie.  I left from the house and rode up to Maude S where I caught the abandoned railroad bed and rode that up to the pass.  After reaching the pass, the dirt road was calling my name and so my trusty green el phattie sidekick 9zero7 dutifully complied and tolerated my cranking away on the dirt road.  After about 2 hours of ride time, the skies were getting ominously dark and it was time to turn around and head back.

On the way back I wanted to try to find the new road that the Forest Service had put in from the bottom of Blacktail to the Pass.  The course director for the Butte 50/100 was thinking of re-routing the start of the event down the new road.  As anyone who has ridden that erosion calamity can attest, it is SKETCH at best.  The prospect of a work around would be sweet especially since the descent is always ripe for some great wipeouts - and there is one area where it bottlenecks a little and there are some mean looking barbs on some wire fence...now that would make for a bad day!

So far, it was just another normal day out and about on the phattie.  Just logging miles, saddle time, and scenery...take it all in - ahhh therapy for the soul.

Apparently the therapist had a little sum'n' sum'n' extra spicy special on the menu and I was just about to find out what it was.

I looked around for that road through a couple of intersections where I thought it should be and as I was climbing to the first T, I saw a family with a crew of kids getting ready for a good ole' paintball gun fight. I stopped, said hello, chatted the idle chatter that you do when you first see people.  There was something a little off about them - they were not very talkative and were not the most friendly bunch.  I did not think twice about it at the time and just chalked it up to not everyone being as nice as one would hope.  No biggie, certainly not a second thought crossed my el phattie mind.

I zigged and zagged through some intersections that all led to dead ends and decided to head back to the erosion trail mentioned above.  I was getting close to my turn off and then BAM!  My face exploded and my instinct told me immediately that my mug was the on the receiving end of one of those fully auto scary paintball guns.  I quickly dismounted and tried to assess the damage.  I yelled at the band of idiots to stop shooting because they apparently did not have the computing capacity to figure out that shooting a stranger in the face should warrant an interruption for them.  I reached up and did the check of the face....pat, pat, pat, pat...pat...OUCH....there it was.  The little turd family had nailed me right on my upper lip and inner septum of my nose.  No wonder that hurt!  ouchie mama.  Fortunately I am not much of a bleeder but my nose did remind me that with enough force, it too will bleed.

At about this time I was on my ace, next to my bike with a bit of a yard sale going on...glasses here, bike there, gloves off....and pretty much just stunned at the absurdity of all that had just unfolded.

One of the kids came up to me and said "Are you OK" to which a quickly responded "F NO, you guys just shot me int he face!"   He quickly tried to edumacate me with his twisted logic of how it was my fault that I was in the woods riding a bike and getting shot in the face.  As I assessed the situation it became apparent to me that I need to get off my butt and gather my stuff (and my mind).  About this time I was done trying to argue with a 10 yr old about the virtues of taking responsibility for your actions that was pretty much falling on deaf ears - not only falling on deaf ears but getting some lip service back about how I was the one at fault...like they say, arguing with insane people only brings you down to their level.

I got my stuff together, and told them I was going to their trucks to take pix of the license plates so I could have the info.  Bear in mind that UNTIL this point even the leader of the village idiots (the father) was telling me it was my fault.  Once I took pix of their license plates, they started to change their tune and the alpha idiot started to apologize - and it was 1/2 assed...one of this little twerps continued with his lip service at which point I glared at his father with a vicious enough look that he barked at his son to shut up and move away.

About this point the FAT COW that is mother bear showed up and wanted to escalate things again.  She kept yelling at me to calm down (which I was and she ironically was not).  She started with the 'let me give you my lawyer's #', and decided she needed to get real close to me to try and poke at my face and tell me I was OK....despite the lip & nose swelling and blood on my face....She too got in the "this is your fault" act by trying to insinuate that this was backwoods Montana, whaddya expect?  I was aware enough to realize that trying to talk to these people would be like trying to convince Hitler to take a Ghandi approach to winning the world over...it just was not gonna' happen.   I had to glare at the village alpha idiot again so he understood that he needed his monster hippo of a tub of lard wife to back off before she made things worse than they already were.

What totally blew me away (besides the absolute outlandish odds of something like this happening while riding a mountain bike on a dirt road) is that these jerks took NO responsibility for their actions.  The 1/2 assed apologies only came when I had their license plate info - and even then they were backhanded apologies.

We live in a world that we get further and further apart from taking responsibilities for our actions.  Guess what, if you look like an a-hole & act like an a-hole.....you ARE an a-hole.  Own your a-hole-ness.  If you don't own your actions then you are even more of a coward and less of a human being.  The sad thing is that there was a lesson to be learned for those kids and that opportunity will be completely missed.

If the family had originally come up and started to apologize as opposed to placate me, I would have probably looked past it and thought I was lucky not to be hit in the eye, or ear, or teeth, etc.  Unfortunately they did not act contrite at all, and it is just another whacky story of our stay in America's Butte.