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?
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…
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.
Everyone remembers those cute little teddy bears from Return of the Jedi. They were clever and resourceful, helping Luke and his Rebel friends take down (as the Emperor bragged) an entire garrison of the best Imperial stormtroopers. Who didn’t see these plucky little guys and think “Aww, I’d love to take one home”?
Because of their undeniable charm, Ewoks became a marketing powerhouse too. Dress up your toddler as a furry resistance fighter!
Heck, even pets got in on the action:
But today, that happy little fantasy came crashing down in my world when I saw a comment on the internet about Leia’s dress when she was among the Ewoks in their village.
Remember, she’d been wearing camouflage battle gear earlier as she crept through the trees of Endor. So where did the Ewoks get that dress? It’s certainly too big for any of them! Wait a minute… didn’t they grab Han and his buddies in a giant trap? And once they’d captured the gang of our heroes, they promptly tied all of them to sticks. Han was the lucky first pick, stretched out over some firewood and about to become dinner.
Luke and Chewbacca are in the background, also tied to sticks, presumably awaiting their turn. Maybe they’re breakfast and lunch the next day or something. My point is, the Ewoks are clearly very fond of cooked human flesh. Leia’s dress must have come from… some other hapless woman they’d captured in their infernal traps. Whoa.
Luckily C-3PO convinced the Ewoks to set Luke, Han, and Chewie free. Whew! Maybe those furballs aren’t so horrible after all. But wait. After the climactic battle where the Imperial ground forces were wiped out, the Ewoks threw a huge party that featured a sweet bongo band hammering out a beat on… the empty helmets of Imperial soldiers!
I guess they needed enough meat to feed the entire Rebel fleet, who apparently came down to the surface for the rave. I hope Wedge and Nien Nunb and Admiral Ackbar enjoyed their dinners! “Hmm, tastes a bit like chicken…”
With spring come the cherry blossoms! Our orchard looks stunning right now.
After last year’s disastrous non-harvest, we’re taking some precautions this year. On the top of the list: an electric fence to keep the bears out. And now that the blossoms are here, it’s reminding me I need to get cracking on that project…
The problem: we have some cobwebs in our skylights. They keep growing, because the spiders are hard at work, and they catch the light on a sunny day. I’d love to remove them, and generally you’d think taking down some cobwebs would be easy. But when the skylight is forty feet above the floor, things get a little more tricky.
I thought about PVC tubing, metal pipes, even those cleaning tools with “extensions”. But even from the upstairs, it would take about thirty feet of some kind of rod to reach that high. No dice. I threw socks and towels at the cobwebs, but that didn’t work very well.
Then Pepper suggested a solution: buy a drone and fly it up to the skylight, then buzz around the cobwebs for a bit. Brilliant! So I bought a cheap drone, and this afternoon it took its maiden flight.
You get what you pay for, of course, so it wasn’t entirely surprising when the drone kind of drifted and wobbled. Eventually, though, I was able to maneuver it into the skylight and sweep through the cobwebs. Mission accomplished!
