Winter Storm Curtis

 Who's Curtis ?  Well , he's Mooontana's Jackie Purcell, the weather guru. When he says 12 inches of snow overnight that's what you get. Exactly ten years ago me and MPeasy chased Winter Storm Atlas as we drove across North Dakota to Minnesota to see Max. That storm was impressive and so was this one so I figured I'd name it myself .  Now retired #003 knows snow, I've been around it my entire life but there's always more to learn and this is what I'm learning ( the hard way of course ) is that Montana weather is just more dynamic that Alaska. You see in Alaska it starts raining or snowing and it does that for 5 days straight until you get 16 inches, around here it happens quick, 12 inches one night then a bonus 4 inches for a fantastic total of 16 in 24 hours. Kinda like the toad strangler that hit July 3rd 2021 and delivered an unbelievable 2 1/2 inches of rain in about 30 minutes. Here's a pic of our house...

We love this house, one story so no stairs and a beautiful expansive view . It has wonderful outdoor living spaces and mature landscape which means privacy....BUT...there's always the 'didn't think of that deal. We're on a fairly steep hill so now I know what Chris and Melinda on the Hillside of Anchorage go through to have their fantastic view...The morning we woke up to Winter Storm Curtis was exciting, I've never seen so many Subaru's stuck along side the road. People would pull to the right to pass someone turning and walla, the thick wet snow grabs the car and stops it next tot he curb....But Montanan's are a bit like Alaskan's everyone pitches in with the first batch of non-understanders and then things go smoothly the rest of the day. Here's the entryway at our health club.

So we do what we've always done in this situation....the car stays in the garage and the truck and camper are safe and sound under the new carport that was the last structure build of my life.  Then we shovel and the area around our porch could be prone to flooding so I use the wheel barrel to take all the snow out into the lawn....I hope you're enjoying that trusty snow blower I left you Mike because that is about the only regret I have in my life right now . We spend the day reading , a guy only needs so much news this day and age....Then about pre-cocktail hour we decide to walk down to the Casino to jokingly make a withdrawal.  They were happy to see us . Now I never hardly gamble but MP she likes to play the reels a bit and turn a 25 dollar breakfast into 40 dollar breakfast sometimes.  It's her upbringing I guess, she loves the hope, the mystery but she was taught to conserve everything so she will never lose any money to speak of . But me...well I usually go full speed ahead and man the torpedoes, that's why I seldom gamble.

So I get an ace and a King dealt to me and then the 10, Jack and Queen come on the draw...Walla !!!...the holy grail for video poker players . So now I've gambled twice in the last year and this is my second Royal Flush. Did I ever tell ya'all that I'm an awful lucky guy ?  It's just a shame to use up your moe-joe on $$$$$ when life's challenges await . So we left and walked home and the next day resisted the temptation to go again...It's called Balance . 

And that's the report from storm central.  We'll be Mazatlan soon and thanks to St. Pete's physical therapy and re hab I'm feeling like I can fish, all be it a bit slower I suppose . Hope ya come along.

The King of understatement

That would be my friend  and fellow retired fishing Pro Randy Berg who stated ' ya know this ageing process can be tricky '.  So as I type ( sitting in a chair of course as the desk hurts my neck ) I'm fasting and beginning my laxative treatment for tomorrow's colonoscopy.  Now if there's anything more awkward than having a colonscopy from a young female doctor I'd like to know what it is . So I might not have a lot fish pics foe this issue of Mile 14 but I do have the promise of a good story....and here's what we got goin on....

We've closed down the ranch portion of Mile 14 south and what a season it was. We have a drip system on a 20 X 20 foot area that out produces the 40 X 40 and two greenhouses we had in Alaska. A couple days ago we pulled  the row of tomatoes and harvest two full baskets and that's after supplying the gym, the neighbors, MP's family. our friends and the food share. We had the most gorgeous Black Crem tomatoes that are a Russian Heirloom....We donated at least 100 pounds of produce to Helena Food Share. Here's a pic of a Zucchini the evaded detection and got to big....The garden plants are so full of fruit that it's like mining when you pick as you never know what you'll find hidden away...we like it.

I was finally feeling good enough to go fishing the other morning. Well I was using that invisible leader that is new to me and on my third cast I hook a good Bass that pulls just hard enough to pull my botched knot job apart....so add a Rainbow colored Rapala shad rap to my losses. I've now lost more Rapala lures than your average fisherman has ever owned . It took a bit but I carefully tie on another and seeing a Bass surface a little farther out than a normal cast I gave it a little extra and walla....a searing pain shoots down my shoulder to my arm and I'm done fishing.....how exciting. Ya know for years I've told people  that this ol life is a marathon and not a sprint. Well, for me it's turning into a sprint.  But somebody somewhere has faith in me, this next pic was my fortune cookie the other night at Yatson's Chinese food , Several of my friends have suggested that I learn to bait fish so I don't have to cast.....mmmm.....nope, not, ain't gonna give it up that easy.

I haven't found anything that isn't helped by walking so I put the rod away and hiked around the lake. The fall colors and soooo vibrant and it looks to me we're an even month behind the world famous Mile 14 of the Kenai River.

Nov 7th we're gonna jump the jet. Ya know if a guy has to slow down a bit and do my re hab Physical Therapy exercises why not do it on the beach ? So being a 100 % guy I'm gonna apply myself to avoiding surgery on the neck. Strengthen the muscles, budget the activities that trigger the pain that are basically my lifestyle.....oh man, I gotta get better and I will.

The good news is that me and this new Chromebook computer are getting along splendidly. It's lightening fast and intuitive. It's going to make my winter of writing a lot easier as I move forward with Mile 14 and other writing projects......and yes, fish pics to come . See all my Team Xer buddies real soon.

I got a good excuse....

 It's been almost a month, I've been miserable .  I did exactly what I counsel people not to do, I had a nagging health problem and instead of getting it looked at I waited until it went code red. I guess being stupid that way is a classic 'guy thing' .

Last winter my neck went south one morning when Curt and I were fishing the rocks at the Holiday Inn. I was having horrible spasms that would radiate down my arm from the neck whenever I'd work it hard or reach for things , so I was left with stopping the activity that was triggering it....and you know how I hate to stop anything. Well the spasms began to come more often and finally a month ago it became chronic. If I reach or hold my arm up etc....I haven't driven a car or my bike in a month, the computer brings it on , if I trip or reach it's like getting a hold of  live 110 wire.

The MRI showed it is age and activity related spondylosis or osteo arthritis in the cervical area, degenerative spine disease....kinda the pinched nerve I thought would go away. My vertebrae at C5 and C6 are so rubbing that the doc doesn't think there is room to accept cortizone  for relief.....SO, I'm in Physical therapy in hopes of strengthening and loosening up the muscles that spasm after the bones rub. I've had 4 treatments now and at first I was skeptical but just today I'm feeling like it is helping and just maybe surgery can be avoided. 

As you can see my therapist Amanda knows the route. Not only was I cupped but I was also given a therapy with  what is called a ' cold needle ' that is a mono filament needle  that delivers a tenz like pulse of electricity directly into the muscle. And of course I have exercises that I do religiously at home. It's the worst pain I've ever experienced....but I'm finally feeling optimistic. I'm typing this on a new  chromebook allows me to type from my headrest recliner.

About the only thing funny that's happened is the mystery of how I got a BB into me at some time in my 70 years.  I've always had what me and MP thought was just a fatty cyst right below my rib cage. Well....when getting a MRI they are crazy about no metal in your body as it's a magnetic process that  would be dangerous to somebody with a metal knee of metal plate . So they X-Ray and walla, I got a BB  in me....So I contact my brother and asked if he remembers us having BB guns when were kids and of course he did....mmmm....now I ain't inspector Closeau but....

I'll get back to writing and of course we're headed to Mexico even I have to live on Salon Pas and Ben Gay....don't give up on us, we'll make Mile 14 fun....

Bass Pro's

 All of us fish bums have watched those guys on TV with varying takes on the sport....I'll admit, I've never seen it as a sport with any athleticism and I kinda always wondered how they get all the sponsors and why have all that promotion jazz busying up a perfectly good shirt. Well, I've got new respect for those guys and some answers and insight into the tackle industry.

People have been helping me learn and move forward with my search for Walleye fishing university but I just haven't taken the boat out that much as I realized that after a lifetime in a boat I was still kinda treating it like work, like I had to, like duty...and I don't like the tow out to the lake and well...what I'm liking is being at the local Bass lake at O dark thirty and walking the banks and learning the pursuit of Large Mouth Bass. So my first observation is that guy who stands up in the Ranger Boat for 8 hours straight and is a middle aged 240 pounder is a REALLY good caster . When you're throwing a Whopper Stopper that costs 12 bucks and trying to get it as close to the trees and stumps as you can accuracy is everything.

Here on our Lake the Bass are tight to the shore and under the heavy algae fields wherever they occur. My friend Dan told me in the heat of the summer that slow is the answer and he ain't wrong. Cast anything that floats real close to the shore and with a  very slowly retrieve. My local expert 12 year old got me casting a shallow diving Rapala and using it as a top water by slowly retrieving ...the problem is those babies cost 10 buck's and I've salted a small fortune of them around the flora of the lake. This is typical of the shoreline, I find a place where I'm on a bit of a point and I cast parallel with the shore.....then I either catch a bass or lose 6 to 10 bucks. 

I ask the 12 year old " how do you keep it out of the algae " ?.....he said " mister don't cast it into it " ? But the fish are under it...mmmm.....well, I went to guiding myself and remembered that when I was a kid and we skinny dipped in that same lake it was full of crawdads so I go to the store and get the right hooks to rig weedless like Stewart showed me at Lake Picatchos in Mexico and some Berkeley power bait crawdads and walla, they work but ol slimey would really rather have the hard bait balsa wood lure hand carved by a Norwegian women and put on the rack at your local store for 12 bucks.... how's that for a run on sentence ? Here's the line up, or whats left of it I should say. Left to right, Power Bait, Rapala, my last Bass Pro popper....mmmm... the one in the middle is the smallest, works the best and costs the most, ahhhh, America at work.

The other morning on my very first cast I caught a really nice Bass. I released him and inspected my line near the lure and my second cast went into a tree . Actually it hit the water but the line snagged a branch which made the lure elevate on the retrieve and the ol quick flip trick when it reached the wood of the branch firmly imbedded it for another 10 bucks.

So then you not only need to cast accurate straight and true but distance is maybe more important . In a case like the pic below I want the lure to land right next to those trees, as close as possible . My lure is what ever is left of the days arsenal and they all weigh differently and some are bigger or smaller and catch the wind easier or lesser and well....hello to the terra firma and another 10 bucks.

So the 12 year old tells me to cast a ' frog ' onto that algae you see. The frog is completely weedless and cost, you got it, 10 bucks. Well, I started with a Sebille brand , kind of a designer frog that was in my line up that I bought at a garage sale in Mexico...somebody payed 15 bucks for that baby. Once it was gone to an errant cast I replaced it with a Walmart varietal.....Man it really hurt me when that gorgeous Chug Bug disappeared.

And hooks....I know this is stupid but you don't catch nothin without hooks....and these Bass will test your grey natter to which plastic needs which hook.....am I confusing you ? There's straight shank, off set shank, weed springs, weighted ( different weights of course ) AND they all come in 15 different sizes.

So considering all those things it's no wonder that the middle aged 240 pounder ( white guy ) standing up for 8 hours casting ain't got no room on his shirt for anything else ! You've seen that guy on TV and he has 15 rods and reels laying on the floor of the boat that he spends the day trying not to step on....and I gotta say I got a few myself and you know why ?  It's so at the end of your 8 hours  there's at least one that still has a lure on it.

So every morning I do my part to help the economy of this sport I love so much. I watch the Osprey's make it look soooooo simple .

and on July 16th ,

we went to see the movie Oppenhiemer and I was reminded that my birthday was also the first successful detonation of an atomic bomb. 

I'm a lucky guy. All of us have wonderful people from their lives that didn't make that milestone so for me I carry on and want to be as good a guy as I can for them, for me , for my boys.....for everybody . I'm looking forward to a great decade through my 70's as I also reminded myself that late July found the 50th anniversary of a terrible commercial fishing accident that altered my life forever....I still have things to do. Here's pic of me at 6:a.m. the morning of my birthday.

So, all of you that have read Mile 14 know I like lists. Every season I would be kept on task by a list of goals I would post in a place that I saw every single day. I'll do my goals next time but this time I'll do some pro's and con's of being three 20's and a ten . Lotsa Pro's, less con's is what I'm figuring my soul searching will find.

PRO'S

1. For 50 years  I've felt like I've been having to ' prove up ' . I've felt like that I've had to show that I deserve to be here, to be on the planet, to have been saved.....well, I'm done with that . I've graduated and I like the guy I see when I look in mirror and that's all that counts....as Jimmy Buffet sings " it just takes a while " and turning 70 is that while.

2. Life's turns has taught me a good sense of right and wrong. I like that . Me and my friends call it the code of the west and I apply it everyday . I try to treat people the way they treat me . And being an older guy now when I ask a question I generally get an answer . Because I've seen and heard so much I'm on a serious search for the new and fresh things in life.

3. I ain't scared .

4. I've learned perspective....don't sweat the small stuff and it's all small stuff .

5. I'm a musician...I know this is no surprise to anybody that knows me . But for me it's taken soooo long to like my sound and progress is so slow it's easy to gloss over how hard it is and how much it means to me in this trip around the sun. I got my first guitar in 7th grade, 58 years ago.  I love to communicate through music, sing my story and ask others of theirs.  When things are good I reach for the guitar to celebrate life, when things get tough I reach for the guitar to try and  explain it....Here's a link to a song I sang at a remembrance for a wonderful friend .   https://www.facebook.com/100000216794240/videos/640889487992727/

I got a roof over my head, 

someone to love me and a 4 poster bed.

And I can play this here guitar

and thank my lucky stars, thank my lucky stars.

                                           Jimmy Buffet

CON'S

1. Ouch : I got me some aches and pains . My neck problem is now 2 years old and seems to be finally getting a little better and I could probably benefit from surgery for the Carpal Tunnel syndrome I have. But my strategy is to see if it gets better... I know a lot of people my age and older that get kinda obsessed with their health and I don't wanna be that guy, I got fish to fry, songs to sing places to go . My old friend Charlie McDonald told me to look at a little pain as a good thing, what he told was this   " if you get  out of bed in the morning and nothing hurts ...you could be dead ". 

Team X sit rep : 

It looks like the July heat is history so we'll back in the Minnow 5 real soon and will be continuing our Montana cold water learning / exploration. I hope everybody comes back to Mile 14 and if any of you to my east want to meet up in the middle just holler and we can plan it out.....and of course if you're traveling through the Big Sky give a shout out .

TO ME

         

 

6 degrees of separation

That's one of my friend Curt's favorite sayings, of course it makes sense to him as it seems to me that he knows about half the people in the world and at the very  least half the people in Montana.  He knows a lot of people, but me I just rely on dumb luck and the randomness of life to find our connections to the planet. So Elliston Montana a mere 22 miles from here is becoming a favorite place of ours. It's just a small railroad town, one bar, one gas station with one pump and the funkiest little target golf course you've ever seen called Blackfoot Meadows as it's right on the banks of the Blackfoot River. We stop and get our water jugs full of the best spring water in the west first. We kinda avoid the chemical treated city water here in Montana.

Then it's off the golf course where we had a credit coming after we were chased off the course last fall by the fattest Black Bear we've ever seen. The place is always quiet and always gorgeous . Maybe three acres of tees and greens all rolled into one. I carry a pitching wedge, a 5 iron for the chip and run and of course a putter. 

You'd think that a guy with years of blogging under his hat and hundreds of pictures taken would learn to keep his thumb and golf clubs out of the foreground....but nope...I'm still learning. Here's a pic of the course and the clubhouse where they had bug juice for us and an honor system pay box like we had at Stewart's Landing where we learned that the honor system works well....if you monitor it .

Then it's to the tavern for cold cerveza . We walk in and I tell everybody I finally broke 100. I'm kind of a roving ambassador for Alaska, for fishing , for fun and of course for myself. So it's no wonder 
Alaska fishing comes up and we meet Rhonda Webster who is Mindy Payne's aunt who runs Widespread Charters with her husband Ruben in Soldotna on the world famous. Mindy's dad Jeff is also a retiree from life on the river and well we just had a wonderful chat . They're all friends of ours so if any of you fishermen who were orphaned when me and MP retired these guys know the way and so here's the link to the adventure , great friends.....widespreadfishing.com , here's a pic of MP and Rhonda.

Back in the mid 70's I met a guy named Al Antilla who was playing country music at Honey's in East Helena. Al was from Elliston and I always remembered that when I met his brother Bob who was the yard manager at Spenard Building Supply in Soldotna Alaska. Bob was a wonderful friend and his office was right next to the warehouse portion of the store that was the first building project I worked on with Wayne Passe Construction in 1977. The building had flat top bearing commercial trusses which finally gave out last year when the snow load collapsed the building...how's that for connectivity ?  There are still Antilla's in Elliston of course and I hope someday I can sing them a country song like Al always did.  Maybe a song like this , in one of my favorite movies Mac Sledge sang about redemption 40 years ago , Tender Mercies .

So as we strato cruise along we ran into these young guys filling up with gas in Townsend Montana. I was so excited, the human spirit at work.  I asked the young guy how far they ride those things as they were in leathers etc. Well, they have a traveling club and had been to the east coast, Hatteras North Carolina and then into Canada and then Montana on their way home to Medford Oregon....Well, it took me back to the days when I got in a Volkswagen Beetle by myself and drove into the future. How cool, the scooters are 300 c.c. and get 150 miles per fill up AND they never ever drove on an interstate highway. Back roads are good roads. Carry on young man !

mmmm....and in the We're still Alaskan's category.....MP's got all these birds she loves and takes care of.  We bird watch, now with my new hearing aids we  ' bird listen ' . Maybe it's a sign of appreciation and coming of age but we like birds. So as we walked the other day the conversation fell on birds. We talked about our favorite, the Stellar Jay with it's huge personality and aggressive survival ways...and they're kinda social. We see Blue Jays but they ain't the same sooooooooo.....MP built us one. Jeez, that's amazing. 💚

Ahem,,,,ya know Kenai guide #003 , father of two wonders, a guy with 250 songs , who's disappointed as well as  uplifted and is crazy about Mary Patricia Brown is turning 70 years old in a few short days. Mmmmm, that's  a big number that I intend to increase, so come back to the ol Mile 14 soon and I'll do a list of the things.....70 brings 😎

 

It's like one huge golf course...

And I mean huge !  That right there is a typical windshield view of North Eastern Montana. You see me and MPeasy have a map of our new State that we highlight the roads we've traveled with a goal of seeing the entire State.  So, in between rain storms we did a 3 day 1,000 mile adventure to hike at Makoshika State Park in Glendive Montana ( I saw this stunning geography on Sunday morning television )  and then up to Fort Peck Reservoir to see the country that MP's grandparents homesteaded on and lost to the government when the Lake was flooded in the early 1930's and get a feel for how they lived, what they saw and who what their neighbors might have been like. And then we wanted to drive Highway 2 from Wolf Point to Havre with a stop at Sleeping Buffalo Hot Springs near Malta. 

The rock formations at Makoshika are amazing. Of course it was raining and the lady at the check in station told us to use our poles as the rattle snakes were the worst ever...yikes.... I didn't much like that part. But we got our hike in with me grumbling along about snakes. Then we retreated to Glendive as MP perused the 2nd hand store I walked into a music store .

What a surprise and the highlight of the trip for retired guide 003. This place had a as many guitars as any Guitar Center Franchise I've ever been in, for a music hound like me this was huge...but MP finally found me and we discovered the second room with a full sized Tyrannosaurus rex replica . We were astounded . This place is the coolest ever so stop and see it, buy a  t shirt. Guitars, comics, candy....AND as I talked with the owner about how he ended up in Glendive Montana and he showed me the new PRS SE with an acoustic Piezo pickup with two output jacks a guy walks in and says hi who is depicted on the shirt, it was Ron Thral who plays the double neck guitar for Guns and Roses . .The two of them were searching for a slower life so I congratulated them and off we went with a wonderful brush with stardom. 

With the record rains Montana has experienced everywhere it is incredibly green. Fort Peck is gorgeous and huge . MP chatted with some other descendants of the area as I took pictures. The two brothers were city folks who came up for a cousins reunion. There grandfather had worked on the Dam and they shared stories as we gazed on the project from a viewpoint that had a memorial for the dozens of men killed in construction. I loved the story of MP's relative swimming the mail across the river before construction.....I guess I'm just not a good enough writer to tell you how we felt as we drove off but I can tell you it was unusually long and quiet for me and MP.

All over the ' High Line ' as they call it you come across scenes like these. Most of the little towns once active main streets are shuttered and I wondered why, where'd the people go ? Why ? How does one town have a vital commercial are, small but successful and the next town is all shut down ?....How does that happen.  Here's Saco .

I guess every town starts out with big dreams....it's going to be a city someday .  Towns have these 100 year old buildings like this Bank in Big Sandy that now looks a bit out of place and  has a Real Estate office in it....The Visitor and Cultural center reminds me of a Pawn Shop in the inner city somewhere, strange .

Half way to Alaska on the Alcan highway is Laird River Hot Springs . I tell people it's like the lord put it there for car sore travelers. Sleeping Buffalo Hot Springs outside of Malta is no different. Don't drive by without stopping. It's 3 pools are hot, clean and the friendliest staff ever , they're glad to see you and we're glad to see them.

And seeings how I'm passing out endorsements like I was making money from it I gotta give a nod to Ma's World Famous Diner is Loma .  It's owned by a Mexican Lady from Hermisillo so I had authentic Rancheros . Amongst all the cool fish mounts and memorabilia I spot this fish . Yup, and honest to goodness Kenai King Salmon right here in the heart of Montana....I'm feeling connected like I often do. We spotted their billboard up the road around Box Elder and when it said World Famous we agreed we were stopping. As we chatted in the cafe I told them you can't be world famous unless you think you are....

Now you've read through this so far and thank you....but you're probably wondering where the rest of the fish are....Well, I found them at yet again another fantastic State Park in Great Falls called The Giant Springs. Cold clear water creates the worlds shortest river as it merges with the mighty MO. The fish Hatchery has these huge Rainbows that I assumedare the Brood stock as  I know a little bit about old slimey. Well I'm told they're ' show fish '....So you got a place with 20 miles of riverside trails, birds and wildlife and Show Fish...did I mention it's all free ?....what a place.

I can't help but notice that Mile 14 has hit a milestone , 1/4 of a million reads . Wow, all I can say is mucho gracias for letting me share this trip around the sun with you. I'll keep the faith and as I said earlier I see it evolving like most things in life to something it didn't start out to be...the natural order of things at work here at Mile 14....