A lazy Sunday on the Odyssey where Extreme moments were somewhat few and far between. Waking up in our campsite on the Madison River, we were completely surprised to discover that -- amazing! -- it was running high and muddy from runoff. It seems like pretty much every river in the west is running high and muddy to one extent or another. Neither dazed nor confused, I rigged up my flyfishing gear and cast a few halfhearted flies into the soup just to be able to say "I fished the Madison," and then we hit the road for Bozeman.
Home of Montana State University, Bozeman is reputed to be one of the more liberal towns in Montana. We wanted to see for ourselves. While driving down main street, Kristanne stuck her head out the window and gave the mating call of the wild fuzzy liberal -- "No Nukes, No Nukes," she cawed. Then, I leaned out the other side and started up with "Organic produce! Organic produce!" We gauged reactions. A few scattered cries of "right-on!," but not much else. It was time for the acid test. We parked Otto, our VW Van on the side of main street in front of a likely looking coffee shop. Within minutes, we had between six and ten tie-dyed pilgrims toting guitars and smelling like patchouli oil affixed to our front bumper. It was beautiful, man. Bozeman is liberal. It is!
That discovered, we realized we were hungry. We decided to check out some of the restaurants recommended by our "Let's Go U.S.A." book. The first one, Brandi's, was described as serving two pancakes for 50 cents, and a full breakfast of eggs, sausage, and hash browns for $1.00. We were intrigued. "How can they possibly flout the profit margin so blatantly?," we thought. "Have they gone mad?"
It turned out that they were not mad -- what they were was a greasy little casino on the outskirts of town where you could buy a lackluster casino breakfast and a pint of Jim Beam after spending the night gambling. We demurred, and headed on to "Let's Go's" second recommendation, a deli called Pickles, "famous for their sandwiches hewn from whole loaves of sourdough." Sounds good. Let's check it out. Unfortunately, Pickles was also housed in a greasy casino\bar, and did not appear promising at all. At that point, we decided to rename "Let's Go U.S.A.," "Lets Go Get Blasted, U.S.A." We also agreed not to check out the combination roller rink\crack house they boasted about on the west side of town, nor did we deign to explore the "lovely bakery that doubles as a whorehouse in Bozeman's warehouse district."
Instead, we tossed Let's Go U.S.A. out the window and repaired to a local cafe called the Leaf and Bean for coffee, nourishment, and web page production. The Leaf and Bean was very laptop computer friendly as you can tell by the couple in the background of this shot with His-n-Hers computers. They even had monograms!
After finishing the web page and eating some lunch, it was time to send our page in to our web server. Typically, this is the most Extreme part of our day. Network connectivity is an elusive quarry -- to find just the right phone connection for your laptop requires patience, skill, and resolve. But we are clever huntsmen, full of cunning, elan, and, on the odd occasion, a bit of esprit de corp (though typically this passes quickly now that we've been eating more fiber).
Clever though we are, we could still stand a little bit of assistance. Today,
we found that assistance. Today, we found the golden passkey to FTP
satisfaction. Today, we found the answer to society's ills. The answer is Kinkos.
Yup, Kinkos -- home of the free 800 call. Home of employees who completely
expect you to set up office in their business. Home of rock. And now that we've
found the nationwide Kinko's directory, it's our home too. See you at dinner,
ok?
Kinkos also provides us with the Extreme Shot of the Day -- FTP action from Kinkos computer section. I have to tell you, we felt a bit strange walking out of their store after 30 minutes on the internet without paying them for anything....but hey, the 'New Way to Office' is a two-way street, I reckon.
Total Miles for 6\8 = 121