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For several years, Kyra’s been thinking about moving to New Zealand. There’s always been a reason why it didn’t work out– mostly because of her jobs– but she finally has a job that’s remote so she has the flexibility to do it from anywhere. Why not work from New Zealand?

So she applied for a one-year visa (a special program offered to young adults), received it in January, and started looking for the best time to leave. Sometime around April she bought an airline ticket from Los Angeles to Auckland, and then it “became real”. She’s spent the last few months researching, planning, and packing. She came up to Montana one last time so she could leave her car here, we had a grand time playing games and watching shows and biking and coloring our hair, and then we got to today.

Today we drove down to the Missoula Airport and said goodbye in the lounge.

She went through the security line (with maybe two other people in it!) and was off on her grand adventure. I’m excited for her and looking forward to all the cool stuff she does and cool people she meets…

Kyra’s heading to New Zealand in a few days, so she’s purging all sorts of things she won’t be taking with her. Amongst those things were a few almost-empty tubes of hair dye (technically “hair makeup” according to her), and she felt like we might as well use them up. So we did. Then we all went out for pizza.

We got a few looks, and had a conversation with Nate at Rosa’s, who knows us well and definitely noticed the change. I explained that you’ll hear stories of dads whose little girls want to play dress-up together, and do hair or nails, and of course the dads do it. Well, my little girl isn’t so little any more, but I’m still willing to play dress-up with her now and then.

It’s been almost three years since I complained about Montana’s state flag, and in that blog post I wrote quite a bit about Minnesota: they had a flag almost as bad as Montana’s, and the state legislature decided it was time for a change. They solicited design suggestions from the general public, the predictable craziness of internet submissions commenced, and eventually they settled on a new design.

In 2024 their new flag was announced. It’s not bad… certainly orders of magnitude better than the previous one.

I wonder what it would take for Montana to reconsider theirs? I happen to be friends with a state senator… maybe I should bend his ear. Hmm…

Back in El Centro, we learned the word Magnicephopolis from Marilyn, and we proudly drive around with our license-plate frame. Well, today I received a surprise package from her: a t-shirt!

Apparently she ordered a batch of them for the people who regularly attend her Roots class, and she didn’t forget me. Thanks, Marilyn!

Out in California, east of San Diego, is a little community called Manzanita. We’d drive by it on the 8 many times during our mission, and I always thought it was a fun name: “little apple”.

We have an unsightly, weird, twisted tree in our yard that I’ve thought often of just cutting down. But today while I was working in the yard, I noticed it’s heavily laden with a lot of little apples!

We’ve noticed these before, of course, but for some reason this year’s “harvest” seems unusually bountiful. I have no idea what sort of apples they are, but I grabbed one and took a big bite. They’re very tart. I suppose with enough sugar they’d make a decent cobbler or something, but I’m not about to sit around and eat out of a bowl of them.

Still, it’s kind of fun to have a manzanita tree in our yard. I won’t cut it down just yet.

Over the years I’ve tackled a lot of house projects. It’s a foregone conclusion that no matter how simple a project may seem, I inevitably end up running into something that makes it much more complicated, and take much longer. It’s like some twisted rule of the universe, and it’s incredibly frustrating for me.

We installed some new can lights into the guest bedroom in our house, because it had pretty dim lighting. No longer! These new lights are blindingly bright, and at night it’s kind of overwhelming. Clearly a dimmer switch was needed. I bought one and grabbed a couple of screwdrivers to install it. It’s a three-way, which of course is a little more complicated, but I’ve worked on a handful of them before so it doesn’t intimidate me.

Well, I removed the old switch, installed the new one, and flipped the breaker back on.

To my shock, surprise, and great pleasure, it worked. For the first time in my history of house projects, something worked the first time!

Grinning from ear to ear, I shoved the wires back into the outlet box and screwed on the faceplate. Maybe I’ve finally turned a corner…

We rode the Hiawatha Trail a few weeks ago with Dave and Jeanele, and now Kyra is visiting us and asked if we could ride it again. She loved our trip there last summer, and we figured it would be a good way to exercise our e-bikes. Instead of the “normal” route, where we basically coast downhill for fifteen miles, we decided we’d do that and then bike back uphill over the same fifteen. We borrowed an e-bike from a friend so Kyra would have one to ride.

It was an amazing day: not too hot, not too cool. We stopped for a snack on one of the trestles.

On the way down, we didn’t even use the motors– we just switched off the bikes. After reaching the bottom of the trail, we turned around, engaged the lowest setting (it’s not a very steep trail), and headed up.

Thirty miles later, we’d crossed fourteen trestles and gone through eighteen tunnels. It was great.

About two years ago, we went to Brickhouse Deli in El Centro for the first time and fell in love. Their sandwiches are really good. A few months later, Jerry (the owner) added French fries to the menu. They had a special seasoning on them and were amazing. No matter how many people were in our group for a particular lunch, we’d always split a tray of fries. Pepper and I asked if we could take some of the seasoning home, and they were happy to give us a little cup of it.

Fast forward to today, when I noticed that jar of seasoning in our spice cupboard. I decided then and there to have some fries. I sliced up a couple of potatoes, threw them in the Fry Daddy, and then doused them with Brickhouse seasoning.

They weren’t quite as good, but it was a fun reminder of fun times there.

Today at Rosa’s I noticed a blue Mini Cooper S with an S CAR GO license plate. It reminded me of an ancient joke, and I snapped a picture. It seemed familiar somehow.

Sure enough, I saw this exact car almost six years ago in Kalispell. I guess they’re still driving around the area, sporting their clever license plate…

These days it seems like everyone has an e-bike. Pepper and I have always enjoyed biking, although we don’t really get out as much as we’d like. Something we’ve been wanting to do for years is the spring Going-to-the-Sun Road ride, which is a few days in (usually) June when the road in Glacier National Park is open from base to summit for bikers and hikers, but not cars. Back in 2020 I rode it with Dave and Luke, and we made it most of the way before stopping because we were exhausted. Pepper and I rode a few years ago but had to stop at The Loop because of avalanche danger. We decided that we’d love to give it another go on e-bikes.

After a bit of research and conversations with friends and family who own e-bikes, we opted to buy Urtopia Carbon Classic bikes. I was specifically looking for a lightweight bike, and these use a carbon-fiber frame to weigh in around thirty-five pounds. Compare that with a typical e-bike, tipping the scales at roughly seventy-five! The lighter material, coupled with a more traditional frame design, makes these feel more like a “regular” bike.

Well, they arrived and we assembled them. Today we loaded them on the back of the car and headed to Somers.

There’s a bike trail from Somers up to Kila, roughly twenty miles each way. We figured it would be a good exercise to see how these bikes perform. After riding parallel to the highway for a bit (not fun), we turned west toward Kila and the rails-to-trails portion of the route.

Up near Kila, the city fades behind and we were biking more in the “countryside”. It was a gorgeous day.

We went to the end of the line, paused for a snack, and then turned and rode back. All told we covered just shy of forty miles, and our bikes were champs. Although we don’t really need the motors, they sure make the ride more enjoyable! We can go faster and farther than we might otherwise.

Now we’re thinking of other trails to ride, and contemplating how we might bring these bikes on our road trips so we can explore some other places. More to come.