alright folks; i can't help it...we've been traveling for 2 weeks now and like the parents we are, we've taken enough pictures of stella to make a 3-D movie. the truth is, she's a damn cute baby and i just have to devote an occasional post to her her overall sweetness. if you're not a breeder or you just can't stand irrational parental doting please scroll along cuz all this is gonna be is baby pictures. (i have no idea why this is underlined or blue, the blogger site seems to want it that way and i can't figure out how to change it; you're just going to have to choose your own level of emphasis and emotional overlay)

for those mathematically inclined; if you take ultrawow, dodecahedrawow, and boombamwowza and fence them in with parentheses raised to the wow power, you'll find that the sum is eight, but an eight so bamfoozled with awesomeness that it faints euphorically and lands on it side suggesting a different answer altogether. for those of a culinary persuasion; take two pounds of lean grain-fed fantasticness and marinade it in a warm glaze of radicalized effervescence, set your oven to summer and sprinkle the pan with diced paradise. for those neither mathematical nor gastronomical i offer one last analogical lottery ticket; close your eyes and think back to a day when you were young enough to ignore thoughts of health and wealth and remember the day you laid down under a breezy june tree and let the sun shadows play on your face until you were almost asleep but woke with a clarified snap of realization that only minutes away there existed a chocolate freezer pop and a preoccupied mom. what i'm trying desperately to get at here is the all out wonder i felt at falling down a rabbit hole in idaho known as " the trail of the hiawatha". this parking lot miracle is thirteen miles of ex-railroad converted to bicycle trail. it starts with a 1.7 mile tunnel; basement-closet dark and dripping with unseen cave-splatters of aquatic acousticness. you start in montana and when you come out of the tunnel, you're in idaho and it's one hour earlier. it's not just a bike ride, it's a journey into the past. from the end of the tunnel you ride 13 miles downhill through idaho mountain forests and over improbably high and questionable railroad bridges to a park-service shuttle that takes you back to the start of the trail. cheers to my amazing daughter who sang her way through the tunnels and rutted gravel trail.

There is only one organization that i have ever voluntarily paid to join and i have been a member my entire adult life. The Adventure Cycling organization began the same year I was born with the purpose of creating a nationwide network of bicycling routes and kicked off their drive with a transcontinental "transamerica" ride in 1976. Since then, they have developed an extensive collection of maps that give cyclists a way to get back and forth across the country on backroads and roads noted for their scenery. Tiffanie and I rode across the transam route about 10 years ago and were floored by the generosity of small town folks who had become accustomed to dingy bikers rolling through town looking for a place to put up a tent. (it's hard to limit my commentary about Adventure Cycling so I'm gonna try a new approach) If cycling could be compared to Christianity with all it's denominations then adventure cycling is the only place where I feel comfortable pitching pennies in the plate. When Tiffany and I realized that Missoula Montana, home of adventure cycling's headquarters, was on our route, I had to stop by and say hello. I'm not sure they were quite ready for some unshaven awestruck Kentuckian with a baby strapped to his back to wander in just for the express purpose of "being there", but they were as friendly as I expected and offered us a soda and showed us where they make the maps and their collection of bikes. These bikes weren't there because they were necessarily old or fancy but because of the places they'd been. "this bike's been from alaska to cape horn" "this bike has been 30,000 miles" "this bike has been around the world twice" and so on. Our guide (a monk in the finest abbey) gave us some maps of local bike trails and shared his enthusiasm for the place. Now the unexpected benefit to all of this is the discovery that Missoula is one the hippest towns on the planet. I'm convinced that it's just the magic of adventure cycling drifting out over the town like the smell of apple pie in a scooby-doo cartoon. A river runs through the middle of town with a bike trail along the side of it and the whole place is ringed by mountain even thought the town is pancake flat. The vibe is palpably laid back and the day we were there the entire populace appeared to headed out to go inner tubing. I've never seen such a mix of young, old, hip and sketchy all headed to the same place with the same purpose. The town also raised money for a giant carousel, built it, and runs it with volunteers. Rides are 50 cents and it's worth waking a baby up for. I realize that this is a rambling post, but I'm still in a bit of a semi-religious frenzy about the place. I'll be knocking on your door soon with some literature.

For the last ten years, Tiffany has been cutting articles out of a variety of outdoorsy magazines like "Outside", "Backpacker", and "Hoofin' it" and filing them with a 3-hole punch into a binder. At last, on this trip she has had a chance to prove wrong my assertions that she's the granola equivalent of a coupon-cutting housewife. thanks to her diligent dewey decimalism, we found out about a place in wyoming called Bighorn. For all i know, everyone else has heard of this place already but according to Tiffany's sources, it is often overlooked due to it's proximity to Yellowstone and Glacier.
(picture: if you look closely you can see the rig nestled amongst the horse trailers)


Travis, if you're out there, forgive me for this, but we drug the airstream up a 7% grade (had to pull over and vent the engine after the wiper fluid started boiling and spraying out of the wipers) and through the woods on a trail fit more for horses than trailers. Once we started we had to keep going because there sure wasn't any place to turn around. Eventually we made it to the trail head and after some deep-breathing exercises got ourselves ready for a hike up into the mountains.



The bighorn landscape varied from rugged stone outcroppings to western mountain streams and meadows. Nala frolicked appropriately. I hauled the cheese disposal up the trail and Tiff reminded me that we would have never been here if not for her binder.

From here we headed into Bozeman for some hotel pool action. Bozeman's got plenty of style and some good eating. The locals all look like they just wound down from a tough shoot for the patagonia catalog. Sasha loved the hotel and after a night of wandering downtown, Tiff and I found her so asleep on the hotel bed that she didn't realize we'd come home.

i'm sure the badlands came by their name honestly enough. get rid of the roads, cold beer, and perfect weather and the place could be a real nightmare (especially if the beer was warm). but after a wet spring with a cool tailwind on a bicycle followed by a couple of hot blonds, the badlands are double sixes on a paradice.

this has turned out to be an incredible time to be up north; everything is grassy green and there has been enough rain to produce a bumper crop of wildflowers that are pleasantly incongruous with the harsh western scenery.

it's always a pleasure to see tiff's maternal instincts emerge. sliding down a loose trail with stella strapped to her back and playing next to the "beware of rattlers" sign shows me a new softness i'd never seen in my wife before.

the homing pigeons are racing tonight
intuition alone
shelters their flight
the shaman corks his bottles of thunder
and knows what grows
if you plow your name under
the weaver unravels the work that she'd done
then hums a hum
patient her lover will come
the doctor checks his pulse at the door
rings the bell
and dives for the floor
the gardener waters and waits
pruning his worries
and weeding his fates
the boxer swings and knocks himself out
and swears to his wife
that inside is out
the policeman's locked in the slammer
but plots his escape
with his grandfathers hammer
the sweeps and the swallows consider their fate
the students are seated
but the teacher is late
the homing pigeons are racing tonight
intuition alone
shelters their flight

this is apparently what things look like from stella's angle. this is a picture she took while playing with my phone. notice the subtle postmodern. underpinnings of the perspective contrasted with the abstracted photorealism in the composition of the piece. i would have used a different f-stop but she says she shoots what she feels.