6-30-2010

Arlee Micah roof

My friend Micah called the other day and we were talking about me going on the Nez Perce ride over in south eastern Oregon this year. He happened to mention that he had his roofing off his house and had tarps on it because it had been raining. He said he had the new metal roofing ready to go up and had a kid hired to help him get it on. I haven’t been doing anything but recovering from my European trip and told him that I would come over and help him as a ground man. I don’t feel comfortable working on the roof unless I have to. My friend Mark Weeding came over and helped me put the roof on the dog house and I know how much I appreciated that help especially as he worked on the roof and let me be the ground man on that job. So I packed up and headed over taking highway 12 all the way other than the few miles north on highway 93 from Missoula to Arlee. Micah and Jen live on the Fathead Rez just north of that town. The trip was fantastic all the way. Here is the view of the Crazy Mountains in the distance. Everything was green and quite a bit of hay was being put down with some rained on from the constant storms that seem to be constantly moving through the area.

I stopped in Harlowton to east my lunch (pizza leftover) on the bench next to the old electric Milwaukee engine.

across the stree is a coffee shop and that has the Montana Huckleberry icream… oh yeah, it is yummy.

Street flag on the power pole

Along the highway I spied these old wind generators abandoned up on a hill.

Along the highway there were more non working wind machines

And even more turbines that are not working next to a Hoot colony farm.

Now I am getting up near Arlee.

The new highway project has the highway spilt and I rode through town and spied this store. Damn if it wasn’t closed when I got there. It turned out that it was closed when I left early in the morning when I rode back home too. Double dang…. I actually wasn’t needy as I was carrying a little stash of panda licorice.

Jen is training a couple of new horses for endurance rides. I guess she is also training herself too. One of the horses was being shod by their friend Rich.

Micah and I got a start on the roof on Friday.

This is a view from the back of the house.

The front of the house with new roofing material that will taker on a rust finish.

The valleys took the longest to figure out and cut. I did all the cutting and drilling of the holes to screw the metal down. That saved a lot of time climbing up and down the ladder.

The garden had a nice planting of garlic.

They were doing other things one morning and I found a hoe and weeded and started hilling the potatoes.

A lettuce and spinich garden with cat proof cover.

Jen and Micah fed me very well and most of the meals we ate outside on the table.

The food was excellent.

Micah and I rode up the highway next to the river to meet Rich for a little ride. The river was bank full as were all the rivers in Montana now. With all the rain we are really fortunate to have All the water we need.

Rich has many bikes and chose this one for this ride.

We ended up at Hotsprings, Montana and the Symes Hotel/.

I went inside and found they had private bathtubs.

outside was the hot pool.

and the cool swimming pool.

Micah let Rich ride his Ducati for a ways. He let me ride it for a few miles too. It was just too much of a forward lean for me and I only made it about four miles before I had to give it up. Both Rich and I noticed that it was an amazing torquey little bike. Rich mentioned that it had that European feel and I guess it was much like an Italian woman, just em little twitch and they blast off. Don’t ask me how I know that.

Rich rode his old  Bandit which is a 1200cc Suzy

He had a switch for road rage.

We said good bye to Rich and headed home. What a really nice ride.

We stopped at the Garden of 1,000 Buddhas, which is just about a quarter mile from his house. Micah has a photo of the Dali Lama on his bike.

The Dali Lama will be here to visit next year when there will be 1000 buddhas that they are making in a shop here on this piece of land.

This is a photo of a brochure of what it will look like, if they are successful in raising a million bucks.

I finally climed up the ladder to check out the work. WOW…. I had to go back down and get my little camera.

my tent in the back yard was in a nice and shady spot.

it is always nice to be up on a roof and this one has some great views.

The ride home on highway 12 was just as good as the way here. It is almost exactly 500 miles.

I told you in the last dog log that I never got the knife I gave that woman at the luggage checkin. Well, I finally went to the Post Office and checked why I was not getting any mail. It turns out that they didn’t take the stop mail card out of my mail slot, so when I asked, they brought out this package with my knife and my little vice grips that she also sent me. Yippee…..