Whine, Whine, Whine - A Montana Story

OK, I had business in Great Falls Montana. It's done, but I got more to do up on the West Coast. So, all y'all that's been whining because I haven't posted lately, get a grip -- I'll be back online for real before too long. In the meantime, a quickie:

Had a project in Great Falls, which means I got to visit some old territory I ain't been in since military days, lo these many years ago.

As noted in my last post, I got into a variety of locations, including Billings, where I hooked up with an old pard who still smokes dope every day, and Bozeman, where I knew a little hippie girl who later turned into a real estate agent and where I watched heavyweight rock and roll bands at the MSU auditorium in the 70's. Bozeman has become quite a little tourist/university town which I quite liked.

As my rather -- uhmmm -- spotty memories of those days worked their way up through the forest of substance-killed neurons, I managed to recall a ratty cowboy bar with a stone floor where a bunch of us got hammered on our butts for our quarter-century birthdays, a cabin on a creek outside the east end of town, and a little shack-type operation called "The Pickle Barrel" on or near to the MSU campus where the best sub sandwiches in the universe were constructed.

Oddly enough, they (the sub shop and the bar) have now merged operations -- Pickle Barrel has moved into the bar, and still makes damned fine subs, although not the paragons of sandwich making art they produced back in The Day.

Bozeman's also got the only Harley shop I've ever seen which mostly sells Harley Chique Stuff, but with nary a bike for sale in sight. It's a fucking Harley boutique, which is where I bought the way cool shirt noted on the previous post. The actual Harley shop is out on the west city limits, where I got the distinct impression that even they considered the Harley storfront on Main Street a vaguely embarrassing aberration.

Still a neat little town, though, with hot 'n' taut college babes in evidence throughout.

Great Falls is always the same, as far as I can tell, the primary difference being that every available surface and bar, including the Wagon Wheel on 10th Ave South, where I spent many a wasted night swapping shots of Lemon Heart and war stories with the locals, is now covered with casinos.

The military has reconstructed everything on their little patch o' turf, the only remaining landmarks being the main headquarters buildings and the old 24th Norad command post, now Wing Headquarters, streets on the base, and the enlisted housing. Old when I was there, places where our now-grown children played as pre-schoolers are still filled up with troops and their families, although even these unkillable cockroaches of the cold war are being torn down to make way for "updated" residences.

Then a sweep across northern Montana and into the Rockies. What can I say. Spec-fucking-tacular. Glacier Park is, hands down, the best national park in the US. Here's some landscape-type pics, for those of you whining (see title) about my tshirt pic -- something more your style, I trust:


Me and the Mountains


Me and the River


The Beneficiary and Another Mountain


Mountain Stream In The Fog

In Our Next Episode: Wyoming -- Why Camping On The Desert Is Too Cool (Or, Alternately, "Washington, Weirdness In The Rain" -- We'll See)