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Although we’ve seen plenty of bears roaming our property, they’ve always been in the forest or munching on our cherries. But tonight, they walked right up the stairs to our front door!

That’s the view from the security camera right above the door. They wandered around the courtyard for a bit and then ambled back down the stairs. Pepper was home at the time, although she didn’t know they were there (our security cameras chime all the time, including when the sun is particularly bright, so we often ignore them). Here’s the video:

I guess we’ll need to be a little more cautious when we go out to lay in the courtyard grass and watch the stars…

Today was our last day of seminary for the school year. That means we won’t have to go to bed so early, when it’s still light outside. Here’s the view from the courtyard last night at 10pm, when we were turning in:

We’ve had a good time, but it’ll be nice to have a “summer break”. It was a little sad to walk out of the classroom for the last time this morning.

But hey, we’ll be back in the fall, refreshed and ready to tackle another group of high school yahoos at 6:30 every morning…

Kyra randomly sends text messages with memes she finds on the internet. Sometimes they’re pretty odd, like the one I just received:

After seeing this, I felt like I had to respond in kind. A few minutes of graphic design shenanigans, and here we are:

It’s… kind of horrifying. That’ll show Kyra!

It’s official: I’m a working man again. Well, it’s not quite what it sounds like. I’ll explain.

A few months ago, I was looking at the web site for the local high school (long story) and noticed there was a page for their speech and debate team. It looks like they had a good group of kids, and a good program. It reminded me of my days at Francis Howell North, participating in speech and debate… which, at the time, was called forensics. I’d been thinking about how I might volunteer more in the community, particularly in the schools. It could be a great opportunity for me to help the debate team! I contacted the activities director at the school and asked how I might jump in as a volunteer. I was envisioning showing up to practices now and then to give some guidance, and maybe accompanying the team to a few meets through the season.

As it turns out, Bigfork High School had no debate team! Their former coach, who’d been managing things for over a decade, had left in 2019 because he became the principal of the middle school (fair excuse). The school district had advertised a position for a new coach, but a year later no one had applied. With the craziness of covid, it would’ve been a strange year for speech and debate anyway, so in the words of the activities director, “it wasn’t really much of a loss”. But they didn’t need a volunteer like me, because they didn’t have a team! Or a coach. Would I be interested in becoming the new coach?

I thought about it for a while. I mean, this wasn’t really what I’d planned to sign up for: I’d be required to attend all practices and go to all the meets. I’d build– or rather rebuild– the speech program at the school. I’d have to learn all the new events and rules, because it’s been 30+ years since I participated in forensics. Heck, it’s not even called “forensics” any more… apparently that died sometime in the early 2000’s and just became “speech and debate”. And the last time I checked a map, Montana was a huge state, which means that traveling to Saturday morning meets will often involve getting on a bus around 4am, riding for 4-6 hours, and not returning home until after midnight.

In the end, I think it’ll be fun. So I asked what the process would be. To start, I had to submit a resume and some work references. That was interesting– I literally haven’t put together a resume since 1999. And what kind of work references can you provide when you’re retired? Or when you own the company? Well, I slapped something together and submitted all the paperwork, then waited.

Today I received word that I’d been hired as the new coach. I’d figured there would at least be an interview with the principal or the school board or someone, but nope, I guess after a year of searching and getting no candidates, they figured they should just take the one guy who’d applied. And that was that.

This summer I’ll need to brush up on everything related to speech and debate, and once the fall semester starts I’ll need to recruit a team, host practices, and head off to meets around the state. It’s a little strange to think I have a job again, but I’m looking forward to the chance to help a handful of high-school kids develop a love for the stuff I loved as a kid.

It’s been cold and rainy all day, but just after noon I caught the sun peeking through the clouds across the lake and highlighting the forest. I grabbed my camera.

It’s hard to see, but the lake water is actually two-toned. Most of it is a greenish teal color (glacier water and all) but along the shoreline is a massive area that’s a deep dark blue. You can see the two shades in the lower left near the trees, if you look closely enough.

Colors aside, a few hours later the lighting had changed and become different shades of grey. The photo below hasn’t been altered– these are the actual colors (or lack of colors, to be precise):

I like the “moody” black and white look, but at the same time I’m looking forward to some sunshine again. Come on, it’s late May… when can I get on the water again?

Zaque just sent me this message:

So now we’re playing Coup
And I’m getting STOMPED
None of these clowns have the GUTS to call anyone out
So I do all of them

Man, I feel that. Whenever I play Coup, there’s always That One Guy who sits quietly, egging on the others to call out the lies, and then winning because he was a coward.

Back in October we dropped a down payment on a solar power installation. At the time, I thought we’d have a fully operational system in “a few weeks”.

Boy was I wrong. Seven months later, almost to the day, was the next time we saw the contractor. Although he had some legitimate excuses over the course of the winter– Montana weather and all– there have been plenty of days when I felt like he could’ve been on the roof installing solar panels. I realize that contractors are busy, but sheesh, seven months? It’s been pretty frustrating. Finally, after hounding him for the past few months (“Uhh, it’s spring now, and it sure seems like you could be working on our house…”) he actually came back and started mounting the panels.

This is about a third of the system, and I imagine it’ll be a few weeks (sigh) until the rest of the panels are mounted and hooked into the electrical system. If we’re lucky we’ll be generating electricity by the solstice…

It’s been almost a year since I last biked Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier. I love that the highway is closed to car traffic at the start of the summer season, so there are tons of hikers and bikers using it. The weather was gorgeous, so Pepper and I loaded up our bikes and kayaks, and headed north.

We’re driving quite the little adventure wagon! When we arrived in Glacier in the late morning, the weather was perfectly still. That made for some amazing reflections in Lake McDonald:

It was still pretty chilly– maybe 50 degrees– so we opted to bike first and kayak later. We were surprised to find the road open all the way to Avalanche Creek, which basically saved about five miles on our ride. We hopped on our bikes and started the climb. Not surprisingly, the scenery was amazing.

The thing about biking Going-to-the-Sun Road is that once it starts climbing, it doesn’t stop. At all. It’s a relatively easy 6% grade up to Logan Pass, but when you don’t get a break from the uphill slog, it can get pretty tiring. We just geared down and kept going.

Eventually we found ourselves at The Loop, which is a good portion of the way up to Logan Pass. The road was closed beyond that point due to avalanche danger– there’s still quite a bit of snow in the upper reaches. We had to turn around, which led to the best part of the trip: coasting downhill at breakneck speed. What a blast.

After we arrived back at the car, we drove down to the lake and got ready to put in our kayaks, but the wind had picked up considerably and the water was choppy. It’s not a lot of fun to fight wind and waves in a yak, so we regretfully climbed back into the car and went out for a good pizza dinner instead. We’ll get on the water next time…

My friend Bob shot a bear in Alaska and turned it into a rug in his Montana home. So of course I had to lay on it.

70 degrees? Check. Sunny? Check. That’s plenty of checks to get us out on the lake. Bonus: the water was really calm, so it was like shooting across a piece of wavy glass at 40mph.

… Right up to the point where Pepper’s jet ski died. It just stopped working. We were miles from home (Flathead Lake is big) and couldn’t figure out how to get it running again. So we tied it to mine and towed it back.

It was slow going… these things aren’t made to pull that kind of weight. At 5mph it took about 45 minutes to get back to Yellow Bay and the dock. Luckily the sun stays up late these days. We were treated to an amazing sunset over the western shore:

It turns out the battery was the culprit. We’ll have a new battery in a few days, and should be ready to head out again.