Advice of the Day
For good luck, always remove the left shoe before the right.
… suddenly, EVERYTHING makes sense.
Category Archives: General
Only Tuesday
It’s only Tuesday, but it already feels like it’s too late to say much about the past weekend and whatnot.
Since I left you last, I had a busy work week starting to get caught up from vacation, and then we went rafting up in the greater Crivitz area over the weekend. It was fun. Frankly, I’m too tired to say much more about it right now. I just looked at the date when I last posted something here and thought that I should write a little something anyway.
Michelle drove my car in to work yesterday. It was her first time driving my car by herself. She did just fine. I told her that this means she has to get a manual for her next automobile.
Finally, I was late to work this morning because my landlord had me parked in to the driveway. I know that I’ve been taking the bus and leaving the car there all day, but you never know when I’m going to change that plan, y’know? *sigh* I think it’s going to be a long year in ‘tosa.
Made it home. Stop.
Sorry for the telegram-style post. Busy @ work. Made it to Sioux Falls by 1AM Monday. Forgot that it was bike week, South Dakota overrun w/ bikers. Don’t like Sturgis. Deadwood seems kind of neat, if not for 3000 Harleys parked in a 6-block downtown area.
Rapid City likewise overrun. No bikers panning for gold, so that was OK. Met a western film vet/quick-draw record-holder. Accidentally saw Mt. Rushmore in passing. All heads intact. Rapid City-area is marketed almost as heavily as WI Dells. Drove through Custer State Park in SD, but had a hard time enjoying it w/ very heavy motorcycle traffic/noise. Saw a herd of buffalo. Bikers not very conscientious of their highway crossing.
Wall Drug same as ever. Michelle bought souveniers. We ate ice cream. Motel 6 in Sioux Falls cheap, adequately comfortable. Minnesota boring. Played a lot of the Yes & Know book games on Monday.
Also went to state fair on Monday night back home, consumed the following:
– two 20-oz. beers
– corn, 1 cob
– bratwurst, 1 (with sauerkraut)
– spiral-cut potato chips (one heaping plateful)
– half a thing of cheese curds
– a few bites of Michelle’s elephant ear
– half a cream puff
– butter pecan ice cream cone
Hardly a Hotel to Be Had
We really need to keep better track of when that bike rally is going on in Sturgis if we’re gonna keep making these western road trips.
There wasn’t a hotel room to be had for about 300 miles around Sturgis, SD on Saturday night. We wound up with a campsite in Hardin, MT, where we slept in the car. At least there was a no-limit, no-coin-op shower and the bloody Internet!
I put up a post I wrote while we were off the grid from a few days ago (precedes this one). Glacier was pretty awesome, and we had a good time. I will try to write more about it when I have a little more time.
Last night we got a late start coming out of Bozeman, as we had stopped there for dinner and Michelle wanted to do a bit of shopping. We wound up taking a 1-hour tango lesson, so our quest for a hotel got a late start, and you know the rest.
Today we’re going to stop off in Deadwood, SD, probably Wall, and then hope to make Minnesota at least by the end of the day.
It’s gonna suck to go back to work.
Stage Three
We’re into the third segment of our vacation now as I write this from I-15 about 30 miles south of Great Falls.
The part of Montana is just as gorgeous as the rest. Michelle and I agreed that it feels more remote than the cities along I-90, even though it doesn’t look that different, mile to mile. We attributed this feeling to the fact that neither of us have ever been to this part of the state before.
The last few days at Storyhill Fest were a lot of fun. When we got there, I had this warm feeling of coming home. A lot of the same folks made the trip, but I thought that the overnighters might have actually been a little fewer. I have no actual data to back that up.
We camped in the same spot, and our new tent slept pretty well. Michelle was warm enough with her new sleeping bag– in fact, both of us got a little sweaty the first night. Overnight Monday into Tuesday, it rained off and on throughout the night, and there were a couple times I was woken and lied awake worrying about the fly blowing off in the gusty wind. This was irrational, of course, because the fly was tied to the tent which was staked to the ground and contained two sleeping people to weigh it down. The wind was blustery enough that a little rain did sneak under there and get inside at one point, though.
The performances themselves were great. We bought CDs from The Get Up Johns (a bluegrass brother duo), Meg Hutchinson (folk-pop singer-songwriter), and Edie Carey (see Meg Hutchinson). Aaron Espe and Justin Roth performed again too, but we already have all those CDs. Interesting development in the personal life of one of the artists– last year, Aaron Espe met a girl at the SH Fest, and two weeks ago, they got married. Kinda neat. Chris and John were great in their typical fashion. We heard a couple new songs, but I don’t remember them really specifically. Each of them played a new song that they admitted were works in progress.
As a sidebar, I asked Justin Roth if he had his house concert dates for Wisconsin in October filled up. He said he still had a Tuesday open, but since Milwaukee is so relatively close to his home in Minneapolis, I should just write and let him know if Jen wants to host a show at her house. Might try to do that.
On Tuesday, we skipped out on the daytime Fest activities in favor of a rafting trip on the Gallatin River. There was a place we found online that did a 2-hour trip for a little less than 50 bucks a head. We had a really good time. Our guide was this fun older guy named Jim. He was born in the U.P. and said he spent most of his adult life in Lansing. He knew a lot of Yooper jokes. We shared a boat with a group of four people from Houston who were in the area for a conference of some kind.
The river itself was a bit less challenging than what Michelle and I had hoped for. I think we were both hoping for something that would be a little harder than the trip we took on the Wolf River at home last August. I got the impression from the guides that this is simply a time of year when the river is pretty low and the rapids are not that rough. Maybe we should try coming back earlier in the summer, or specifically try to find a trip that’s tougher.
So with the rest of today we have to make it Glacier and get our tent up. That’s the extent of our plan. Tomorrow, we’re going on a horseback ride mid-morning, and on Friday I want to try to do some hiking and photographing. We’ll be leaving the park again on Saturday, and we’re shooting to take the “low road” (I-90) all the way across to Wisconsin. We’ll have stops back in Bozeman and in South Dakota along the way.
Til then…
Medorable
Michelle and I had a slower start to our vacation than we originally planned. We rolled through Wisconsin a little bit slower, stopping in WI Dells to shop for a few things we didn’t have during packing– we both needed another pair or two of shorts, and we needed to buy some groceries, too. Throw in a stop at the Mall of America for dinner at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., and we were not nearly as far as we first thought we’d be by Friday night.
We rolled into the Comfort Inn in Jamestown, ND at about 1:00AM Saturday. We slept in until around 9 or so, grabbed some continental breakfast and were on the road again at quarter to 11.
As we proceeded through North Dakota, we realized it might be difficult to book a hotel in Bozeman on a weekend in the summer with really no notice whatsoever. Michelle made a call to AAA, and after we sat parked near an on-ramp for about 25 minutes (so as not to lose the phone signal), we had a room in Billings for Saturday and one in Bozeman for Sunday, because that was the best we could do.
The rooms were going to be more money than we wanted to spend, and as we contemplated what we should do with the rest of our Saturday, since we weren’t going to have to travel as far, Michelle dug through the Fodor’s guide and found some interesting things to see in Theodore Roosevelt Nat’l Park. The town of Medora, ND is the nearest settlement to the park, and Fodor’s mentioned a place called Custer’s Cottage as a nice little local establishment to hole up in. We thought we might as well make a call and see if we could get a room there, and as luck would have it, they had a cancellation for this weekend.
Rather than spending about $120 on a room in a Holiday Inn in Billings, we got a basement apartment with a kitchen, dining room, living room and of course a bed, for a paltry FIFTY DOLLARS. When we weren’t driving around the park or exploring some of the little shops and things in Medora, I spent the rest of the evening muttering to myself, “Fifty dollars,” and then breaking out in laughter. If you ever have occasion to visit Medora, Teddy Roosevelt Park, and the surrounding area, I highly recommend a visit here at the Cottage.
For now, though, we have to see a man about a horse, and then head out to Bozeman.
Ninja Redux
Don't Really Remember
Hey, I’ve got a busy week, with moving in, busting ass at work, and trying to get ready for a week-point-five road trip all at the same time. I slept in my new apartment for the first time last night, and it was good to be back in my bed. I think I sleep the best there. The bus ride on route 21 is OK; it’s definitely a little quicker than riding through downtown. I’ve been able to get a chapter or so of my book down each way.
The thing that I don’t really remember, though, is this:
If you and I are friends, how exactly did that happen? Do you remember anything about the process? I’ve come to the realization recently that the friends I have at present are so scattered, I’m coming up really short on them in the town where I live. I feel like I would benefit from getting some new ones (possibly local), but I just don’t remember how to do that.
That led me to thinking how I got the friends that I have, and a lot of you I’ve known so long, I really can’t come up with an effective means of duplicating whatever process we went through. It’s troubling.
Couldn't Resist
I was going to put off reading the last Harry Potter book until Jen finished so I could borrow her copy. But, she was up north over the weekend, and I had 4 hours in the evening on Sunday where the book would have just stared me in the face, so I relented and picked it up. Got through the first 12 chapters, and I plan to pick up my own copy later today, because I know Jen will want to read it right away, too.
It’s uncanny how popular these books are. I saw four people reading it on the bus this morning.
One thing I’ve noticed about the relation between the books and films in this series is that both can stand and be enjoyed on their own merits. Personally, I find the books to be quite a bit more satisfying, but the movies are good for a digested, special effects romp through Harry’s world.
One thing’s for certain– J.K. Rowling is doing OK regardless of what I think.
The Financial Aid Experience In a Nutshell
I have a feeling that in years past, the position that I have at the university (financial aid administrator) was a pretty cake spot. You help kids fill out forms, you do some calculations, you hand out some checks (this is a rough approximation of how things worked, based on my conversations with older colleagues).
It’s definitely not like that anymore. I could see myself burning out on this job in the next 12-18 months because you can’t say to a kid, “I know that that loan is not enough. I know that the money they say your parents can contribute isn’t there. I know you can’t get a loan from a bank on your own, and I understand that you will be imprisoned by debt for the next 20 or 30 years even if someone helps you to secure one. What can we do for you besides hand out loans? Nothing. You are screwed.”
This is not uncommonly The Truth for people that I talk to, and as a relatively compassionate individual who wants to help the other humans, it’s infinitely frustrating for me. What am I supposed to say instead? How can I, from my position, initiate change? Even if they could create other government-funded programs, where is that money going to come from? How do we fix this?
When the Higher Education Act of 1965 was signed by Lyndon Johnson, it was intended to (and to a great extent, did) allow people who would not normally have access to higher education strictly because of prohibitive cost into that arena. The effect? Universities are no longer the realm of white-male-upper class only.
But people are falling into the margins again. I meet with students every week who are choosing between going to college or supporting their families. Even more, this is an area where Great Pinch of the Middle-Class rears its head– you are well-off enough to not necessarily be living paycheck-to-paycheck, and your parents probably could help you get a loan, but there is no way you can do this WITHOUT a loan, and free money is just not available. The folks that I see getting by are:
- both extremely poor AND academically strong, or
- in the military, or
- among the top 1-3% in academic performance
It is a depressing scenario to contemplate, and I find it extremely unsettling that what I have to say to students more often than not is, “go find some way to get a loan.” I am a living example of the financial prison that is educational debt.
I’m not saying that I always made the best choices about money when I was in college, and I don’t want to imply that I don’t deserve to be paying back what I’m paying back. But just 10 years later, even students who ARE smarter, and will work harder, and have a better idea of what they’re getting into, now lack a choice. If you want a degree, you have to pay for it.
And I don’t know if that’s fair.