Guttiest job in the west

From www.newwest.net

I didn't even know this guy was following me?

I was just ripping down the trail and when I finally looked back there was a guy following me. Turns out he had a helmet cam and captured all my radness on video. Nah, just kidding. I think this is somewhere over in Europe (judging by the ultimate rudeness of both riders). Impressive none the less.

Mondial Du VTT Descente de Venosc caméra embarquée
Uploaded by 103TuRtLe

From the ocean to the rivers

I've been slacking a little bit on the bloggage lately and I'm sure you all are just chomping at the bit.....yeah right, I don't know if anyone even reads this thing? Hello, is this thing on....echo....echo. Don't be shy.....sign the little chat box thing there on the right eh and let me know what you think?

Anyway, we've been a whirl of activity it seems for the last month. T and I both flew down to Florida at the end of June and I spent a great week down there with her family. We survived the flight down with the wee ones, they were actually pretty darn good on the plane. Only having one freakout a piece, which were both short lived. T stayed another week and half while I held down the Missoula homestead bachelor style.

T's brother was gracious enough to take us deep sea fishing off the Palm Beach coast for 2 great days. The weather was perfect, no thunderboomers or other nastiness. The air was warm but the breeze kept it nice. All in all we brough in a mahi mahi, a couple blue runners, a wahoo and a bonita. We even hooked into a shark on one of the live blue runners we strung up for bait. Man did that shark make a serious run, but in the end it snapped the line. Here's some pics.....

Mahi Mahi

15 lb Bonita

Blue runner

The Doughboy, our boat for the 2 days
Wahoo!
Tracy's new car, a Lamborghini

Then just a few days ago we got to get out and do a nice float on the Blackfoot. T's mom was in town so we were taking full advantage of their offer to babysit. The tuber hatch was just starting luckily, so the hippy redneck tubers were not in full swing. We used a goddard caddis and slayed'em. While I won't claim to have caught any monsters, I definitely landed 20 fish w/in about 2 hours. Probably about 1/2 of those were tiny guys, and the rest in the 10-12" range.

T hooked a few nice ones on the ole' spinner

Notice Steve's smoothly shaved arms, almost as shiny as the fish scale, huh?

Look at this beast, I almost had to use a gaff to get it up

Mt. Sentinel burns in Missoula

*Images from www.newwest.net
Last Wednesday I was hanging out at home when a friend called and asked if I was on the fire. "What fire?" I asked as I ran out side to see what he was talking about. Holy crap! Fire was racing up the side of the "M" with grey smoke pouring off the top of Sentinel.

Turns out, 2 boys (7 and 8 years old) were playing with a lighter burning phone books at the base of the hill. I would have put money on it that it was a firework, but unfortunately not. Those two little boys are going to be a lot of trouble w/ their parents.

I was still on light duty with the old knee, I sat a watched the action from town. I kept a watchful eye in between batters at McCormick Field as I kept score and drank a beer.

The fire ended up being about 360 acres and mostly burned grass and brush. Although the fire got into the timber, fuel moistures were still high enough that all the trees escaped unscathed.

Here's a great video that Firewater Films put together of the action