Spring in Montana

The rivers are running big and brown around the state. It is the hot topic for media. Snowpack and runoff are reaching all sorts of records and predictions are for the rivers to stay high for quite some time. The northeastern, eastern and now the central parts of Montana are flooding. Most folks predict the flows to be as high if not higher than the record year of 1997.

But really, the stuff we're seeing around here pales in comparison to the other major disasters around the country. My thoughts go out to all the people affected in Joplin, MO.

The Campbell clan has been busy enjoying the out of doors as much as possible. The lawn is all greened up and going apeshit, requiring multiple mowings per week. The first batch of homemade compost was applied to some of the garden beds. Finally, that stuff takes a long time to make.

And best of all our chickens are plumping right up. Yep, chickens. The peeping chicks slid into the household while I was zonked during post surgery. Oh that T, she's a smart one. We've lost 2 out of the 5, most likely due to the fact they've been living outside during some cold temps this spring. I think that might make them taste better.

On my knee- I am recovering well and making progress every week. It's slow progress but good. I returned to work after almost seven weeks. I'll have another month until I can return to regular duty. The road is long, but I can see the light at the other end. I'm grinding out my 6 days a week of leg exercises and almost enjoying it. I'm cleared to ride trails that are less steep, but hey at least it's outside. Watching the flat screen in front the basement spin bike was getting a little stale. I've also finally got back on the weights, I see lots of squats in my future.

Back to the outdoors, everyone has been enjoying the blast of life that has hit the valley. I'm reminded how much I love spring in Montana every year. Lilacs and fruit trees spill forth the color that we've missed for the long winter months. Hopefully you too are out enjoying spring and getting after it. Check back soon for some lively Montana spring pictures. Cheers

Earthquake memories

I recently watched the Discovery Channel's Megaquake: The Hour that Shook Japan and was absolutely floored. I don't think I had sat with my mouth agape and said "whoa" so many times. It brought back some memories of living in the quake ridden zone of California. If you get the chance, search your DVR and record the Megaquake show.

I grew up in Southern Cal and thought that I had felt some big quakes, but obviously nothing close to the 9.0 magnitude earthquake that struck northeast Japan on March 11, 2011 and the tsunami that followed, resulting in more than 12,000 deaths. The destruction and devastation is heart breaking. There are serious changes that where imparted by this quake, some areas have sank as much as 4 feet and now flood during high tide from the now closer sea.

As everyone knows there have been 3 major earthquakes since last February: Christchurch in New Zealand was rocked by a 6.3 quake that killed 166 people; 550 people died after Chile was hit in February 2010 by an 8.8. Japan's 8.9 earthquake was the highest ever recorded in Japan, compared to the 8.3 Great Kanto Earthquake in Tokyo in 1923, which killed more than 140,000 people. The well known and reputable organizations could use your help, but watch where you donate they're not all equal.

Back to the SoCal quakers....for any of you out there following from that neck of the woods. This might pique your interest. Do you remember those big shakers back in 1992? Anyone have any good stories/memories out there? I definitely vividly remember the night of June 28th 1992. I thought that might be "the big one", really I did. I had been through other earth quakes and they had always been pretty short.

However, on that night the Landers 7.3 quake shook for 2 to 3 mintues! I got shook awake, laid there for a bit, then finally decided I had better get out of bed. It kept going and then I moved under the doorway, still going....I ran down stairs as the whole house swayed back and forth, pictures crashing off the stairwell wall. As I ran downstairs, I made way for the backdoor, hoping the outdoors might be calmer. As I looked around my whole family was out there. Best of all my dad stood there, naked as a jay-bird, hand over his swaying....er stuff. If I remember right there were several other aftershocks that night, making us all pretty edgy. Then that morning another one centered less than 10 miles away at 6.5 scared the crap out of us.

1992	April 23		1:50	Joshua Tree	6.1			1992 Joshua Tree earthquake
1992	June 28		04:57	Landers	7.3			1992 Landers earthquake
1992	June 28		08:05	Big Bear	6.5			1992 Big Bear earthquake
1994	Jan 17		04:30	Northridge	6.7			1994 Northridge earthquake

Anyway, thanks for following some old earthquake memories. If you've got any of your own, we'd love to hear them. As for anything shaking in Montana, I think I've felt a few tremors but nothing serious. The main thing we have to worry about here is the Yellowstone Caldera, at least the wind always blows from the west though. We'll be fine right?

Check out this crazy, scary video of some POV tsunami footage.

Missoula's warmest day of the year

Missoula topped out today with the warmest day of the year. The Garden City registered 70 degrees and we even had that foreign yellow orb out in the sky for most of the day. As anyone in the state of Montana can attest to we've had a hell of a winter.

The gray days and almost constant precipitation has worn out its welcome for most folks. I personally would love for nothing more than sun and wear flip flops for the rest of the year. I know it's selfish, but since I can't ski and enjoy that snow that still sits in the hills, I'm done with it.

Looking at the Lolo Pass SNOTEL is still registering 86" of snow on the ground, and it's MAY 2nd! Anything above 5000' continues to get pounded on a weekly basis. I was over in the Phillipsburg area over the weekend and saw it dump 5 inches of fluff in about 3 hours, impressive.

But the relentless cloudy days is what everybody in Missoula seems to be talking about. We've also been 10 degrees below the average high, which means we've been kicking it in the 45-50 degree range, boooooooo. If you're interested in seeing which cities get more/less sun, click in over here. It shows Missoula with 75 days of sun (not including partly cloudy day). Compare that to say Yuma, AZ at 242 days of sun.

But alas, you can either sit around and complain about the weather or get out and do something. I'm mostly in the complaint chair right now, with the knee and all its a bit limiting. I know in a few weeks I should be cleared to mountain bike and that my friends will be a warm welcome.

I've been working on a little project, basically the same thing as I did last year with the Lolo Timelapse. It should be fun, the banks are ridiculously big compared to last year. Just have a look here at these to May photos. Hope you check back in to see the results. Ciao










**btw - the America Fuck yeah picture was taken nearby Ground Zero on our NYC/Bermuda trip a few year's ago**

Skiing with crutches

I had a dream last night that I was skiing with crutches. Now that's messed up. I don't know what is going on in that little brain of mine, but at least it gave me a good chuckle when I woke up this morning. In my dream it actually seemed to work pretty well, dragging the crutches as I turned, almost like a rudder. Huh? I've been off of the crutches for a week or more, but the trauma of being forced to walk with assistance is still fresh on the brain apparently.

You too can get a chuckle this morning by watching some of these videos. A big thanks to Earlyups for finding them and bringing them to the masses.


Quality audio and "I told you so" from your buddy


This guy is kinda like the double rainbow guy, Oh the Quality!


This one takes the cake, you'll be laughing your ass off at the :38 mark...OH MY GOD!

Knee update: the PT told me that I am 3 weeks ahead of schedule on my recovery. Rock on.

Yo bro, I'm done skiing

These xtranormal skits crack me up. This exact conversation is going on in every mountain town right now.

Run Forrest, RUN! 8 days after

That's kind of how I feel today. I had at PT session this morning and found good results. I no longer need 2 crutches and I don't need my post op brace, WOOT! One of the main differences between Forrest and me is that I cannot run unfortunately. But the fact that I'm dropping some gear is a great step in the right directions. My range of motion this morning was up 15 degrees from Tuesday, at 120.

Both the PT and the Doc were impressed at my motion and said I'm well ahead of schedule. The spin biking I've been doing seems to be helping, so I've got to keep that up. Swelling has gone down substantially, although I can still press with my thumb on my shin and the indention stays there for a few minutes, nasty. Stitches came out today too. Now that I'm showering I feel like a much better person. My beard is coming in nicely. I plan to grow it out until I have to go back to work, which shouldn't be for another month and half. Although the crop of grey hairs in there is a little unnerving. Oh well, I guess a set of twins and life in general will do that to a guy.

I've been quite the couch sloth for the last week and since no one gave me any ideas, I had to shoot from the hip. I found that surfing the internet relentlessly and a dozen or so Netflix's kept the boredom somewhat at bay. Although the drugs certainly helped. Oxycodone is some stong stuff and hours morphed into days. If my knee will take it, I'll be out the garage doing a little bit of woodworking. I plan to build a step up box to be used in rehab. Something similar to these appleboxes, we'll see how they turn out. Cheers.

Muto Man

I'm pretty sure it's not just the pain meds. But just in case take a few minutes, once you start watching you won't stop anyway. Someone spent what I would guess a lot of time, paint and patience on this creative piece of art. Glad it's not my neighborhood, sorry man.

All aboard the Pain Train! Right Knee ACL....

Well, I'm 5 days into recovery from my right ACL reconstruction. Those five days have certainly had their highs and lows. Mostly lows interspersed with a lot of pain. I came home on Wednesday at about noon and was in a serious drug induced haze until Friday. T has been a saint and been very helpful waiting on me. Not to mention our 2 very demanding twins who also ask quite of bit of their mom.

I met with the doctor and PT on Thursday and got a report of what he saw when he was in there digging around in my knee. Dr. Shutte fixed four things: 1) He found some wear on the backside of the kneecap, some fraying (looked like seaweed in the picture), which is not desired. He was able to trim up the fray and said I should be better off. 2) He also found and removed a free floating piece of cartilage about the size of a peanut that was either meniscus or a piece of the torn ACL. 3) Trimmed (doctor's call it "fix") the tears on my meniscus on the lateral and posterior sides. 4) And last, he reconstructed the ACL using my patellar tendon, affixing it in place with 2 screws.

All in all, the doctor said I had a made a wise choice to have this done as I was "on the road to having a self destructing knee". He commented that my quad strength and ROM was better than expected, which hopefully translates to a strong recovery.

I've been following the PT instructions on exercises and for the most part been able to perform them with out much issue. I was able to get on the spin bike yesterday and make full revolutions, which was not expected until Monday. While in the CPM machine, I'm able to crank it up to 115 degrees.

The hardest part has been the mornings. Talk about pain, oh man, I've seen the PAIN TRAIN and I don't like it. Every morning so far has been brutal with my first step out of bed, my scale of pain spikes to a 9 out of 10. I haven't been that successful in managing the pain medications in the mornings. My full bladder forces me out of bed before I can load up on meds. They definitely weren't kidding when they told me to stay on schedule with the meds.

If you're not familiar with Larry Tate the Office Linebacker, well now's the time. I was introduced to him back in my cubicle days at RightNow Technologies. If you've ever had a job in the office environment, I think you might relate and enjoy these few videos. The pain train's comin! Cu'z when its game time, it's pain time! Don't bring that weak ass stuff up in this humpy-bumpy!

Miniature and not so miniature

Miniature faking is very interesting to watch when it's done right and this video from Jackson is one of them. It's pretty dang entertaining to watch the little ant skier's rip big powder lines. Around the 6:10 mark is classic.

A Tiny Day in the Jackson Hole Backcountry from Tristan Greszko on Vimeo.

On an unrelated miniature note, there are a few things around Kneetopia headquarters that are quite the opposite, BIG. The snowpack around here is monstrous, 130" at Stuart Peak with 46" SWE. Snowbowl also is reporting 120" at the summit and 62" at the base. The storms continue to pour over the mountains dropping more snow weekly, there doesn't seem to be much end in sight. The spring outlook seems to be wettish and cooler than normal.

Blah blah blah weather. Its that time of the year that its a crap shoot on what you'll get. Squalls roll in with no warning. Gail force winds rip through the trees trying to bring in warm weather. I'm am officially done with winter as of this point. I am selfishly wishing now that the sun gods will show their face and begin to warm the Missoula Valley.

Which brings me to the other big thing that's happening around here. I recently decided that it was high time to fix my right knee. I injured it last July, hyper-extending the knee badly, exacerbating an old injury. Result torn ACL and torn meniscus. It's been a battle since then, trying to rehabilitate the worn out joint has not been as successful as hoped. I'll be going under the knife on Wednesday and out of frontline work for 3 months. There's a good chance you may see the frequency of posts go up on Kneetopia. Now, now don't get too excited. If any of the upcoming knee talk get's boring at times, bare with me it might just be the drugs.

Hello spin bike, here I come. The task in front of me for the next year will not be miniature.

If anybody's got some ideas to keep me from going insane on the couch after surgery, feel free to speak up. I'd love to hear'em. Thanks for reading.

Snowbank envy

***WARNING: if you don't like shoveling snow, this could be boring***

Some people love snow. It's as if frozen H20 was spawned deep in their gene lines, programming their brain to honor the white fluff. They often obsess over incoming Pacific lows and highs. Late nights are spent in a death stare on SNOTEL sites and webcams, hitting refresh on the hour. Scanning eyes gaze from the window,searching for signs of an inbound front.

I've got a few friends like this and I might even have some maniacal tendencies towards snow. With much of the West having above average snowfall, I can't help but get excited. As I kept tabs on the epic dump in the Lake Tahoe area, I thought about a good friend of mine. He inspired me back in 1994 when he left our local SoCal mountains for the epicenter of California skiing, Squaw Valley. He lived within walking distance to the base of KT and immersed himself in the Tahoe snow scene. I first visited him during the monster winter of 1994, the highest season snowfall total on record of 662 inches. This record now shattered in 2011, with 691" at the present day. Time passed and his love of snow morphed along with his life and family. But when one has a passion for snow, he can't hide it. Ralph took up a job with the parks and recreation department of a town on the North shore of Tahoe, with snow removal being a primary responsibility.

I'll be the first one to admit I can get a little weird when it comes to plowing, shoveling, and snow-blowing. I have a strange fascination with the process. You get a sense of accomplishment when you move snow. The reward is instant and clean. This winter in Missoula we had the opportunity to shovel quite often. I enjoyed the seemingly daily workouts of clearing the driveway. Sculpting the berms and crafting mini-ski hills for my daughters. I once read somewhere that you can judge a man by the way he shovels his driveway. I'm not sure what that means exactly, but it's something to ponder.

When it comes to sculpted berms and snowbanks I can't hold a shovel to what my friend Ralph has been up against in Tahoe. In some areas they received over 100" in 4 days. Sugar Bowl now has a 303" base!!! I checke in with Ralph the other day and said he was beat down from snowblowing so much and had never seen that much snow. He's having to shovel out around the base of the house to make room for the next storms.
The picture above is from Skier666, taken on the Carson Spur near Kirkwood, CA.


I'm envious of his massive snowbanks, mine have all but disappeared. The relative monster of a snowbank in our drive that stood 5' tall most of the winter is now a mere dirty patch of white. I love seeing those high straight walled banks, stepping back and admiring your work. Heck, I once even asked a friend if I could come out to house and snowblow the 3 feet of new snow off his drive. Yeah I know, I've got problems.

Shoveling is a great way to clear my mind, almost meditative. I dunno.....Maybe we're on the path to enlightenment.

For a great shoveling poem, check out Shoveling Snow With Buddha.

Viva La Nina.

This picture to the right is from Soda Springs, that's a house under all that.

Ralph's tunnel out to his cars

Skijoring

Skijoring ('skē-jȯr-iŋ) is a winter sport where a person on skis is pulled by a horse, a dog (or dogs) or a motor vehicle. It is derived from the Norwegian word skikjøring meaning ski driving.

Red Lodge, Montana

Inspired

I came across the video over on StokeLab, which is a great resource for its namesake. The video shows a couple in their mid-seventies still having fun in "da powder, eh". Truly inspiring to see people that age still out there and having fun. They're not just going through the motions, grinding out groomers, they're actually skiing some challenging terrain. Wow, just wow. Makes me think about where I want to be at that age.

Stuck wide open

Lets just say you knew of a place where the powder was deep, the people were few and the price was right. Two guys thought that sounded pretty nice decided to seize the moment and time a potential incoming storm just right. Packing was simple, requiring not much more than your average backcountry ski outing + 3 days worth of food and drink.

Logistical issues showed up early. Before the sleds were even loaded on the trailer, there was already an issue. A sticky throttle on one sled brought the excitement down a few notches. Upon pulling the start rope the sled lurched forward instantly. Some lube, cussing and generally banging on things under the hood seemed to fix the throttle. At least temporarily.

An hour later, the sleds were unloaded and crossed over state-line. Both sleds ran fast along the trail. Silence, deep snow and trail breaking meant the skiers were one step closer to their goal. The gear was dropped in the cozy accommodations and a thigh deep trail breaking session began. Once established, the same track was used over and over the next 3 days. Perfectly spaced old growth giants lent well to the knee to thigh deep untracked powder.

All that was left afterward was to fire up the sleds and rip back to the trucks. Easier said than done. One cannot truly know your ingenuity or MacGyverness until you are stranded 15 miles from nowhere in the middle of winter. That same sticky throttle reared its head and more swearing was directed at the engine compartment. When one guy was about to give up, the other stepped up and pulled a huge trick out of his ass. Who knew that a piece of p-cord duct taped to a throttle cables could control the speed of a snowmobile? Cheers to hanging it out on the line in the name of powder.

Quick way off the summit

Dooooood! The video starts off quite normal, but watch the whole thing to see a not so normal way to get off the summit.

World record for the largest observed snowflake

Continuing with the extreme theme.....last night as I let the dogs out for their nighty-nighty piss in the yard I was blown away by what was falling out of the sky. It had been raining only an hour before and was just a touch above freezing, but now it was what we call in the business nuking. As I gazed skyward, I watched the biggest snowflakes I've seen in my 36 years. I scrambled for my phone to take some pictures or video, nothing could capture the moment. Catching a few in my hand they easily measured 2.5" across and most everything falling was that size. For 10 minutes I was mesmerized by the quiet giants piling up on the grass.

Looking into records, according to the Guiness Book of World Records, the largest snowflakes fallen during a storm in January 1887 at Fort Keogh, in Montana. A rancher nearby, called them “larger than milk pans” and measured one at 15 inches wide. Damn, bring it.