Natural Bridge and Falls

One of my favorite spots in Montana is the Natural Bridge and Falls.  I love going there in the spring, trying to catch the high water and see the falls in all their glory.  We timed it very well this year, nobody else there, and there was a flood warning.  Still is.  And the weather was perfect.  What a great day!

I think the State must have finally had enough of people scrambling down to the bowl, realized there was no fighting it, and now there is an official trail down into the rain bowl.  It's a great addition to the park.

We couldn't stay long down there, because of the water and temp, but it was invigorating, like being in an Irish Spring commercial.

Where's Yokie?

On the way out, I stayed behind and enjoyed all the spring flowers.

Caught back up with the fam. . . . . . . 

 . . . . and went to the hot springs, White Sulphur style.  One of our best days.

Springtime

Bunny McTrouble

Home Alone
Yesterday, Rose and Yokie left me at home in Absarokee while they went to Billings.  I promised to do a bunch of housework while they were gone, I had a list and everything.  Honestly though, video games and a couple of beers were the real plan.
As I sat down my favorite chair hugged me like a best friend.  And there was biking on: The Giro d'Italia.  In snow.  Raging snow.  Doesn't get any better than that!!
Something was off though.  I couldn't quite relax.  I had that feeling you get when somebody is watching you.  I was home alone though, right?  "Hello?" I called out tentatively.  Nothing.

The Real Bunny
Hmm. . . Oh well.  I tried to watch TV, but then I saw Bunny.  Bunny McBunns.  When Rose is around, Bunny is a sweetheart, just the perfect little Bunnster.  "Oh hi Bunny!"  I said nicely.  "Shut your nacho-eating mohawk face you tall stinky monkey!!" Bunny said, leaping off the floor onto my new bike.  I was shocked.  I had never seen Bunny like this.
"Now listen up fruitcake," McBunns was looking at with a piercing gaze, all Alpha Bunny now, "you're gonna take me on a bike ride with this new fat-footed tin can of yours.  We can do it the easy way, or the hard way, what's it gonna be?"
"Bunny, what got into-"
"Answer the monkey-scratching question!!!"
"Geez, geez ok ok!!  Got it.  Calm down.  What's the easy way?"
"Put on your helmet, and take me where I tell you."
"The hard way?"
"Let's just say it involves carrots.  Carrots and counseling."
"You are a dark, dark soul for a bunny."
Bunny tossed me my helmet. "You have no idea big head."
I got ready to go.  Quickly.  Bunny watched the whole time.  "You ready?"  I asked.
"What do you think baba ganoush?"  The only thing McBunns had was bear spray.  Pointed right at me.

 "Where do you want to go?"  I asked as we pedaled out onto Willow Street.  "The only difference between you and an Ape is that you wear Old Spice!  What color am I you big brute?"
"Purple!  You're purple!"
"WRONG!!" McBunns slapped me in the back of the helmet.  "Easter eggs are purple.  Skittles are purple.  Prince is purple.  I hate being called purple!"
We rode in silence for a minute.  
"Stop the Tin Can!!"  Bunny screamed in my ear suddenly.  I slammed on the brakes.
Bunny leapt off my backpack, into a nearby bush.

"I'm lilac.  Lilac colored!!"  Bunny rolled around and climbed in the gigantic stands of lilac.

I hadn't seen such cavorting from a member of the Lepus Curpaeums species since I walked in on Roger, Jessica, Peter and Harvey at a Souper Salad in North Vegas in '95.  

More like Lupus CurPlaya if you ask me.

Finally, after about ten minutes of lilac romping, Bunny politely asked to come onto my backpack.  It was like a new Bunny McBunns: all politeness and gentility.  I guess the Bunnster just needs a little lilac when it's in season.  I get that.

The Ride
"Can we go play at the school?"

"May I please go see the Rosebud River?"
"Of course."
"And sorry I called your bike a tin can."
"It's OK Bunny."
"But you do have a big head."
"I know, thanks Buns."
"And also, about the way you smell-"
"You know Bunny, let's quit while we're ahead, ride in silence for a bit."
"OK.  Good call."
The Rosebud is relatively stable, because of the dam, but it was still going strong.  Bunny loved it.

"Is Johnson Bridge too far to go?"

"Of course not Buns.  Let's do it!"

"AGGHH!!  It's so high!!"
Bunny was super hyper now, so crazy and full of ideas.
"Can we got to Paris?  Please please please I want to go to Paris.  Did you know that in France Lilacs are-"
"Whoa whoa whoa Bunny.  Calm down.  I can't ride to Paris.  Not tonight.  What do you want to do here.?"
"Oooh.  Oooohh.  Ooohh. Oh Boy.  I want a picnic!!"

"Awesome!!  Flood picnic!  Bunnys love picnics.  We love salad.  Of course it's not usually flooding when I picnic, but I like it."
"Yeah, when it floods at a picnic, you know what they say. . ."
"Yep.  No ants."
"Good one."
"Now I want to blow dandelion seeds and make wishes!"

"And I want to go see a wild plum tree!"

"Oooh. Ooooohh.  Oooh.  I want to get shot out of a canon like in a circus!"
"Wait.   What?  A canon?"
"Yeah!"
"I don't know where to get a canon."
"Shut up and ride.  I wished for it.  I got this.  Go upstream."
I had learned not to argue with McBunns.  We rode upstream.  I'll be darned if, around the bend, there wasn't a canon waiting for us.
Bunny climbed in.

"Point me home James."  Bunny said, even though I didn't see anybody there.  Then Bunny whipped out some matches, I have no idea from where, struck a match on the barbed wire fence, blew me a kiss, lit the fuse, and took off like a flare into the night sky.
I watched, and the arc did indeed seem to go towards Absarokee.  I got on and pedaled like a sprinter, up Johnson road, onto CR 420, into town.  I was sick with worry.  What would I find when I got home?  Did McBunns survive?  Would I see a smoldering wreck where my house used to be?
I flew down Main, onto Willow.  Tossed my bike onto a rose bush.  Leapt through the front door.
I  don't know how the landing went, but it must have been either really good or really bad, because when I got into the living room I heard loud snoring, and found Bunny passed out, just like this:

Yin Yang Rides

Yin

Crazy busy this past week, so I've only been on two rides, and they couldn't have been more different.

First I went for a new local loop: from Absarokee downstream two miles, then up to Huntley Butte, over the square of state land, and onto Jack Stone Road, down the Stillwater, back home on 420.  It started so well, with a surprisingly sustained climb from the Stillwater River up around Huntley Butte.  Found the State Land, and it was all going well, with classic Beartooth Front views:

View back south, over the Stillwater valley, to the Beartooths.

Looking West, over the Yellowstone Valley, to the Crazies.

Then, the State land was a tangle of overgrazed and abused land.  It was getting late, so I tried to cross it, because going forward was way shorter than going back at this point in the loop.  After a kilometer or so, I started to hear a terrible sound: the telltale crunch of cacti under tires.  I stopped.  This area is so overgrazed, by the time I stopped, it was tough to find a safe spot to stand, much less ride.  Cacti have absolutely dislodged the native grasses as the dominant plant.  

Kip didn't have any trouble at all, so that was good.   But I had one flat already, and nowhere to go.  Nearby, a fenceline provided a point of reference, and the cattle pacing the line had worn a track through the cacti.  I got off the state land, and changed my tube.  Probably two dozen punctures.

I carefully cleaned my rim and tire, and put in  a Surly Toob, the gigantic 26"x3.8" tube.  Now, why the *&^% Surly makes these w/o slime I don't know.  Probably because they are already 450grams + w/o  the slime, but still.  A tube for a bike with this intended application needs slime.  It's that simple.  

Sure enough, I had missed one little cactus thorn when cleaning the rim, and this new $20 tube never did inflate.  I removed it, found the leak, patched it, and inflated the tire.  It inflated this time, and lasted all of 100 meters or so before completely deflating.  Worst tubes ever.  Dunked it in a creek nearby and inflated the tire, there were quite a few little teeny leaks, including two a the junction of the nipple and the tube.  Very disappointed in Surly Toobs.  

Ended up being a 20 mile ride, followed by a five mile hike-a-bike in the dark.

Yang

Good news from that ride: it came at the same time as my new Hed Big Deal carbon fat rims arrived.  

Installing them was a six hour ordeal.  Seriously.  They are meant to be tubeless, but the tubeless system they use relies on the tire sitting just right in this channel during the inflation process.  Surly Knards 3.8" do not sit there.  Not at all.  Hed's solution is a gigantic rubber band.  They give you four of them.   I used all four on one wheel, and needed every one of them.  In fact, I needed four bands, tons of luck, persistence, and two different air compressors to finally get it to work.  

That left me with the second wheel, and no bands.  Mind you, this wheelset was almost two thousand dollars, and they gave me four rubber bands.  I could see somebody using eight on one wheel.   For 2k, they should have thrown about 20 of them in there.  Make it $2005, and give me fifty of them.  Just in case.  

Anyway, I ended up slicing 1cm wide strips out of a 20" BMX tube, folding them in half and securing them with Gorilla Tape.  This left me with the opposite problem as the first wheel: wouldn't seat because it was too tight, not too loose.  And you can't use tire levers on these rims.  Lots of elbow grease and creative Yoga positions got the tire on the rim, and this one did make the loud "BAM" when seating, as advertised.

After four hours of sleep, I was at Phipps Park trailhead in Billings.  The bike dropped almost three pounds, about 1.5lbs from each wheel.  It's now about 29.5lbs.  So even taking the bike out of the car, it feels so much faster with the Hed wheels.

On the trail, it feels like cheating.  I did almost 25 miles (24.999 miles), all of it on classic, fairly technical desert singletrack.  I cleaned two sections of the trail I hadn't cleaned in dozens of previous attempts.  Not only does the light weight make them super fast, the stiffness is off the charts compared to the Holy Rolling Darryls.  Fast corners, hard braking, technical off camber sections, all of these type of situations the improvement to the bike's handling is pronounced.

So, apart from the name (still working on it), the bike is now just the way I want it, a true dream bike.  Eventually, I could upgrade the brakes to drop some weight, but there is not much else I'd ever want to do to the bike.  It's perfect!  See you out there. . . . .

   

Felt Cafe 24

Yesterday Rose and I gave Yokie a new bike: a Felt Cafe 24.

This is the second bike in a row we bought from Red Rover Bicycle Shop in Billings.  It's downtown, off of 30th and 1st I think.  It's the perfect addition to the local bike shop scene.  The atmosphere is laid back, not pretentious, and Chad and Mr. Clean (forget his name, bald guy) are super smart and helpful.  Right when you walk in you see a tap setup, and some snacks lying around, and the bikes on the shop floor are a cool diverse and smartly assembled group of bikes.
The first time I heard about the shop was on a ride when I ran into a fellow fatbiker and he said that it wasn't his bike, it was a loaner from a new shop in town.  A loaner, remember those?  I don't even get a loaner from VW, Nissan, or Toyota anymore.
As for this bike in particular, for well under a grand the bike is really light (30.2lbs as pic'd) and has a great cruiser feel to it.  The 700cc wheels spin up to speed well, and then the bike seems to roll really efficiently.  Nice tire spec, and brandless but nice looking hubs and wheels  help that a lot, as does the gearing.  The 3x8 system shifts and pedals well.
With the low top tube, laid back seat post angle, and swept back moustache bars, the geometry is comfortable, upright, and easy to steer.
Shimano running gear and Tecktro brakes with a really cool modulated feel make for solid components.
Then there are some great finishing touches: white leather seat and matching grips, high quality metallic orange paint w/ a touch up bottle included, perfect little seat bag, great luggage rack, really nice fenders.
It's a classic, great bike.
My only complaints:
1) The bell is worthless, and so poorly constructed it causes frustration and would have been better left off completely, or raise the price by $5 and include a good one.
2) The fenders came a touch warped and there is so little tolerance they rub the tires sometimes.  No big deal to correct, if I'm there.  If it happens to Yokie alone I could see her mistaking the loud noise for a serious mechanical failure and not wanting to ride.
Small complaints.
Overall I'd give this bike an A+.
That's three bikes bought this year, and three huge successes!
Time to go ride. . .
Thanks again Red Rover Bicycles!!

Happy Anniversary

Married 12 years!!

I am too busy cooking sushi and cleaning the house to write much, 

but let's just say I can't wait for the next twelve!!

Anniversary presents:

A new wardrobe. 

And a new bike.

Kind of went overboard this year, but what we have as a family is due to Yokie's work, and we're so lucky.

Her sister (seated) is now about to graduate from university.
Yen Nee (blue scarf blue dress) ended up being a good friend of Rose and mine.
Life rocks.  You rock Yokie! I love you!

New Semester of Homeschool

Year Round 

One great thing about homeschool: you can set the schedule to coincide with events in your life.  Rose had a one or two month break earlier this year when Po Po (Her M'sian Grandma) visited.  We just took it off so they could hang out.
Then we got back to work, and for a month or so we made a lot of progress.  Her reading, writing, and math skills are all solid.  Yesterday at various points she correctly used the words phenomenal, catastrophe, and intrigued.  And for Mother's day she wrote a book about a Kingdom with a Queen and Princess as the stars, and the Queen gave the Princess a bracelet in the story.  We bought a bracelet to go with the book and she built a replica of the Kingdom's castle out of Legos.  This was all 100% her idea and execution.
Given her progress, the break in the weather, and our new bikes and house projects, we started a new semester yesterday: our summer semester.  We had two frisbee sessions, two bike rides, and a big play session in Hawkins Park.
Hawkins park is a teeny little park between our house and the Rosebud River.  When it comes to a little park for neighborhood kids, we are so lucky to have it.  It's like Calvin's little backyard.  There are creeks, tons of trees, a river, tennis courts, and lots of little coves to explore.  What a great first summer day!

At only 4 miles, from the Junction of E & W Rosebud Creeks, to the confluence of the Stillwater, Rosebud River is one of the shorter rivers in the world.  Some maps, and most signs, label it as a creek.  USGS has conflicting designations.
All my friends and fam who have ever seen it agree: it's a river.
Try to cross it.  Go ahead.  Don't want to?  It's a river then in my book.