The Greatest Show on (Very Muddy) Earth

Every year Outside Bozeman magazine holds a "Suby Tales" competition, in which owners of Bozeman's omnipresent Subarus submit stories of their cars' wonders. Having been the owner of not only a Subaru, but also of a very excellent Suby tale, I decided to submit a story. Unfortunately, my story was over 1200 words and the max for the contest is 800, so I had to do some heavy editing. Here's the unedited version. I'll let you know if I win anything.


Suby Tale: The Greatest Show on (Very Muddy) Earth


Okay, so I’m a Flatlander. I admit it. I can’t help that I was born and raised in New York, and, like many others, I hope it’s the sort of thing that’s not too obvious.

But, the fact is it takes a while to adjust to some of Montana’s idiosyncrasies. Namely, that a road that’s closed during winter may not having a sign noting this.
Such was the case when, during a warm spell in March of 1993, me and my nifty silver 1990 Loyale wagon decided to take a scenic jaunt. Brandishing an official Montana state highway map with freshly elected governor Marc Racicot’s smiling face looking benevolently upon us, we eyed what looked to be to be an excellent loop: north from Belgrade along Dry Creek Road, picking up Sixteenmile Creek Road at Maudlow, taking that east to Ringling, and then south on Hwy. 89.

The weather had been unseasonably warm, getting up into the seventies. An early spring! Nothing like zipping along Montana’s rural back roads to take in the scenery. Not even a patch of snow was visible along the gravelly Dry Creek Road; it looked like it would be smooth sailing all the way to Ringling.

But looks can be deceiving. The ghosts of Maudlow offered few hints – an abandoned schoolhouse offered no lessons to visitors. The Suby and I rolled onward.

The road became narrower… and muddier. It was barely noticeable at first, but as we passed one cow pasture after another, gaining elevation all the while, the road gradually became slick. Then sloppy. No problem for the Suby, of course – I just pushed the handy red button for on-demand four-wheel-drive, and slathering through the muck was nothing but fun.

Farther on, it got worse. Perhaps you’ve heard of something called “gumbo”? That’s the kind of mud that just sticks to itself – the more your wheels turn, the more mud you pick up, until your tires no longer have traction, they just have mud. The sliding and slathering was no longer fun, as I dropped the Suby’s automatic transmission down to low 2, and then low 1. I wondered how far it was to Ringling; could the road get any worse? Maybe it would be a good idea to turn around. But no, the road couldn’t get any worse, could it?

It got worse. Much worse. I was swerving left and right, flooring the gas pedal in a desperate attempt not to lose momentum.

In an even more desperate move, I abandoned the road. Drove it right off the side, onto the unfenced pasture. Cows looked on curiously. Surprisingly, this worked very well. The road was crap, but the side of the road was not bad. Not good, mind you, but the little car found enough purchase to roll onward.

But the road seemed interminable. I alternated between left-side pasture, road, and right-side pasture, depending on what looked most passable. And the Suby did a great job, powering through the thickest gumbo I ever imagine existing. A nightmare of gumbo – the car was covered in it.

Finally, the road began to descend. Ringling would be ours! But not quite yet – inexplicably, there was a massive snow berm completely blocking the road. I had barely seen any snow the whole way.

But the Suby had done so well, I knew there was only one course of action. I floored the mother. Full speed ahead! I’m givin’ it all she’s got, Cap’n! It would be like Evel Knievel and the Dukes of Hazzard except with snow. In a Subaru.
But it was not to be. Despite the full-throttled thrust, the Suby got high-centered midway through. We were stuck, and good.

These were the days before cell phones, and there was only one course of action: Hoof it to Ringling, and seek help there. How far was Ringling – four miles? I had no jacket, no water, no food, and it was getting dark. I said goodbye to the Suby and headed out on foot.

I didn’t see a soul the whole way to the sleepy little town, but I knew where to go: the bar. No shortage of people there. I shamefully confessed my fate to the crowd of ranchers. The response: “You’re the third one this weekend!”

Apparently, Sixteen Mile Creek Road has high entertainment value for Ringlingers. They told me to use the payphone outside to call a tow truck in Livingston. How much would that cost? Dejectedly, I went outside and picked up the phone. It was dead. Was this part of the fun?

I went back in. One old rancher said, “Well, okay, I’ll give you a pull, but just let me finish my beer.” He was drunk off his keister. I didn’t like the looks of this, but I was desperate.

Following him into the truck, he said, “Just give me a hand bringing in the cows first.” Sure, why not? He probably just wanted me to hold the fence open or something.

We drove a short to the ranch, and getting out of the truck he pointed to two four-wheelers and said, “The right one’s the gas, the left one’s the brake.” He hopped on one of them. I looked at the other, thinking, He’s kidding, right? He fired his up and, taking off, yelled, “Don’t mind the one’s that are calving, I’ll get those later!”

I looked at the thing. How hard could it be? I hopped on, switched the key, grabbed the right handlebar, and turned. It roared to life. I took off after the cows.
How does one herd, anyway? Watching the man, it seemed like you just head straight for the cows and yell a lot. I wasn’t much of a yeller, but I was okay at running straight at them. They generally moved, although rarely in the right direction. And how was I supposed to know which ones were calving? It would be nice if they had a big “C” painted on the side of them or something.

After ten minutes of pathetic herding, the man took pity on this sorry-assed Flatlander and called it good. We headed back to the truck, where another guy was waiting. His minivan was stuck in the mud farther back on the road, with a wife and two kids still in it. Another sucker! “Hop in,” the man said.
Hey! How come he didn’t have to work for it? Ah, well.

My Suby was waiting for us at the snow berm – which, I learned, was the barrier so that no one from the Ringling side would be foolish enough to drive on the road. No such luck on the Maudlow side, of course, but then, what would Ringlingers do for fun this time of year? The Superduty diesel made short work of it, plucking the Suby off the snow like popping the head off a dandelion.

It was smooth sailing from there on out. The Suby was covered in thick clumps of mud, but it was no worse for wear. Me, on the other hand… well, I’d had a good walk. I learned how to drive a four-wheeler, and how to herd cattle. I didn’t bother with the ones that were calving (or several others that weren’t). I learned my car kicks ass in mud.

And most of all, now I know where to hang out in March when I’m looking to make fun of some Flatlanders.

People notice things

Like the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, for example. In today's "What's Up With That?" section, Chronicle staffer Brook Griffin noticed my Christian Science Monitor article about Ron Gompertz, owner of Bozeman's EcoAuto.

The Chronicle's website doesn't show the article without subscribing, but it's just a blurb so I think it's okay if I stick it here.

Monitoring Gompertz: Ron Gompertz is in the news again. The Bozeman resident and chief purveyor of tiny, fuel-efficient cars, is featured in the July 9 edition of the Christian Science Monitor in the science and tech section.

The story follows Gompertz around town in one of his 1,500 pound cars drag racing with diesels on Main Street and telling a complicated and convoluting life story.

The gist of the story centers on Gompertz selling environmentally aware vehicles in a state that doesn't really care about being that environmentally friendly. At one point Gompertz is even quoted as referring to Montanans driving big trucks as a "Neanderthal kind of thing."

While this kind of thing probably won't sell any more of those tiny cars, it was an interesting read. Those who want to know more can check the article out at www.csmonitor.com, click on the "sci/tech" button.

Should I take this mentioning of my article as a compliment? Of course!

Finding Nima

At last, my article about Nima Sherpa has finally appeared in Outside Bozeman! Those of you familiar with Sonoma Valley may know Nima from the Meritage Restaurant and Martini Bar. Along with being a really first-class waiter, Nima's also an accomplished climbing Sherpa on Everest - plus, he's spent time in Bozeman, too. Perfect for an article in Outside Bozeman, no?

Down and Dirty at the Prom

(The following was originally published in the June 2007 edition of Bozeman's Tributary magazine.)

Down and dirty at the Prom
The bump and grind meets a one-man media circus

by Ray Sikorski

At last, I had a date to the prom.

With Bozeman Public Schools Superintendent Michael Redburn.

Okay, maybe this was wishful thinking on my part. Redburn said I could attend the Bozeman Senior High School Prom on May 5, in the interest of journalistic freedom and the public's right to know. He also said I couldn't interview any students, I couldn't take pictures, and I would have to stand in a special observation corral put in place so parents could keep an eye on their kids. He also said he'd really rather that I not attend at all.

Perfect!

Naturally, my intentions were noble. Last year's prom had sparked an explosion of controversy over the way the students danced. Parents Melea and Dean Mortenson had written letters to the Bozeman Daily Chronicle demanding something be done about the bumping and grinding they had witnessed students doing on the dance floor, moves they considered overtly sexual and inappropriate for teens at school-sponsored dances. Voices were raised at school board meetings, yet “dirty dancing” persisted.

And I didn't even know what dirty dancing was. The craziest dance we ever did at my school was the “Rock Lobster,” in which we held our noses and slowly wriggled “down, down, down...” to the tune of the B-52's undersea shanty, only to explode in innocent glee to the final, rocking verse.

I asked Bozeman High senior Sean Smith about it; Smith had written an opinion piece for the Hawk Tawk newspaper defending students' right to dance the way they wanted to. According to him, for the moves in question the female leans back and rests on the male behind her, and they move their bodies in a way that some have described as simulating anal intercourse.

“I personally believe it's innocuous,” he said. While Smith said he had never seen the groping of breasts and hiking up of skirts that some had described, he admitted that, “There's definitely is a fair amount of physical contact.”

Smith cited a survey of high schoolers taken last year, which said that 80 percent of students support no restrictions on dancing. He added that there's little point in trying stop something that's difficult to enforce, while much more egregious acts go on that parents have little knowledge of.

“They don't see what goes on at student parties,” Smith said, referring to students getting drunk, removing clothes, and “seeing who you can hook up with.”

Superintendent Redburn echoed the sentiment that alcohol is a far greater concern than dancing – although he said that the dance moves have been a concern of administrators long before the letters started appearing in the newspaper. Redburn said that there are levels at which chaperones can deal with inappropriate dancing, although there's not always agreement as to what constitutes inappropriate.

“There are students that push the envelope,” he said, explaining that those students would be approached and asked to back off, with possible behavioral follow-ups in school later on.

“Our intent is to keep this event a fun activity for kids,” he said. To prevent the heightened attention from interfering with the event, administrators sent a letter to parents explaining rules of conduct for the prom, which including a ban on cameras – not only for your correspondent, but for all students, to prevent the possibility of photos ending up in a newspaper. Obligations under federal privacy regulations were cited as the reason.

Paranoid? Redburn will be leaving his post at the end of the school year, to take a teaching position at MSU. Were the extreme measures to avoid a black mark on his record? I don't know. I do know he seemed very happy to see me, all cleaned up in my jacket and tie, as I made my way up the stairs of MSU's Strand Union building for the big night. He personally escorted me to the long hallway north of the ballroom for the “Parent's Corral,” which would be my post for the evening. There, I would have a view not only of the prom, but of the parents intent on keeping tabs on their kids.

Perfect! Right?

Well, yes and no. I could see all the students milling in, wearing their formal best. I could talk to the parents, whose opinions of dirty dancing ranged from “I'm not happy with it” to “Stuff goes on, it's always gone on for years” to “How did you dance when you were that age?”

The problem was I was about 50 yards away from the dance floor; I needed a telescope to size up the action. Was lewdness going on? I saw five students in something that looked like an inverted conga line. Was that what all the fuss was about? Or maybe that couple, where the boy was slyly sliding his palms down towards the girl's derriere; she immediately removed the offending digits to a more respectable location. But that move's been around since dancing was invented.

Without being able to interview students, my options were limited. A duo from the Bozeman Police Department showed up, who said their job was primarily to keep an eye out for alcohol violations.

“The way they dance is not a legal issue,” said school resource officer Trent Schumacher.

I had little to go on. The camera ban had been watered down to not taking any crowd shots; kids happily flashed away in the hallway. Maybe rules were being relaxed all around.

I ventured beyond the fence of my corral. Parents were doing it; surely it would be okay for me. But, despite there being hundreds of kids to keep an eye on, I felt certain that I was the one being watched most closely. No sooner had I advanced into forbidden turf when Redburn appeared nearby. I retreated to my corral.

Not much going on there. I went into the hallway. Surely there would be no issue with merely talking, right? I had a job to do, after all. It wasn't fair to set me up so I couldn't even see what was going on.

I started talking to two students accompanied by an adult, but before I even got their names Redburn was on top of me, accusing me of being a one-man media circus, threatening to banish me from the dance, and pointing me back to my corral. I asked if I could even interview adults. He said no, it wasn't a public event and people didn't come there to be bothered.

God, it was just like being in high school.

I went out to the parking lot, where no one would hassle me. A gaggle of teens seemed open to questions.

“I was almost going to pull mommy mode in there,” said Danielle Salcido, who attends Bridger Alternative School. Salcido, 19, said she used to grind, but since becoming a new mom her views have changed.

“That was cool when I was like 17, but not anymore,” she said. “They all look like they want to be strippers or something. ... Seriously, if I saw my daughter dancing like that, I'd pull a shotgun on the boy. I'd be like, 'Get away from my daughter!'”

Salcido admitted that she was in the minority among students.

“That's just gonna lead to one thing, and that one thing leads to another, and then you end up pregnant,” she said. I asked if she was speaking from experience.

“Yes, I am,” she said.

“[It's] one thing when you're in private, just with a couple people ... you're with your close friends so it doesn't really matter. But when you're in prom and dancing like that, it makes you look really terrible,” she said. She added, “Half of them in there are probably on something.”

Jeremy Saunders, 19, said that many of the kids just want to show off for the chaperones. Salcido's friend Katie Mahony, 19, said “It's just a bunch of horny kids on Ecstasy.” She added, “I think it's disrespectful to yourself.”

The next morning I felt used and discarded. Some date! My experience with Redburn left me feeling irritable. What a cad.

I had placed calls to the Mortenson family prior to the prom, with no response. I figured I'd give it one more try.

Dean Mortenson picked up the phone. Yes, he had stopped by the prom; he went near the end, and verified that they were doing the same kind of dancing to the same kind of music as he had previously witnessed. He also said that most of the evening he and his wife had been at an alternative dance they had arranged at Clubhouse, the glow-in-the-dark miniature golf place in the mall. There, a group of about 30 students enjoyed black-light dancing, air hockey, video games, and refreshments before filtering out to the after-prom party at the high school.

Mortenson said he realized that the school wouldn't change its ways, and arranging an event for students who cared to dance in a more old-fashioned way was the only way to assure a reasonably wholesome environment.

“We tried and we ruffled some feathers,” he said. “I think Bozeman High School is a really good place. We just had a problem with the type of dancing that goes on at the prom. Some parents, or maybe most parents, may be okay with it, but I'm not. I don't want to come off as the moral police or the bad guy. I guess I'm surprised that more people aren't more concerned about the type of dancing. Maybe they are and they just don't have an alternative.”

Mortenson, a father of eight, admitted disappointment at the low turnout for the Clubhouse dance. “I think we could have had quite a few more people come if we had advertised it more, and I think we will next year,” he said.

Yes, the age of innocence will return. All I need now is a date.

Bozeman writer Ray Sikorski is the author of “Driftwood Dan and Other Adventures,” available on amazon.com

Climbing: Skyline Buttress

I figured I ought to write about a recent outing just to show you that not all my adventures end up in disaster. Last week Craig and I made an attempt to climb Skyline Buttress, a rock climb in Gallatin Canyon south of Bozeman.

The climb is rated 5.6 - not very hard, but we're still novices and this was our first major multi-pitch climb. Just getting to the base of the climb was a bit of an adventure, especially since Craig called the ol' "You go that way, I'll go this way" move, splitting us up... and then decided he'd go my way, but I was looking for him above me...

Ah, well. We made it to the base of the climb eventually.

And I don't really have much in the way of trauma and drama to report (if you want that, see below). The day was beautiful, the climbing was easy, and neither of us fell. We placed protection the way it's supposed to be placed, we learned a few things about setting directionals (using slings so the rope stays straight) and tying into anchors from others on the rock, and we watched people doing way crazier things than what we were doing. The climb was great fun, especially the chimney section and the tunnel section, which required us to pop out of a small hole in the top of the rock. We decided a better name for the climb would be "Santa's Revenge."

I suppose the end got a little spooky, when it started to sprinkle a little and I climbed a pinnacle that I decided really wasn't part of the climb. I ended up downclimbing it, with its wobbly rock, in the rain.

But other than that all was well. We made it back to our packs for sandwiches and pudding, and watched the climbers on Sparerib. Possible future climb? We'll see.

Railbike adventure, ho!

The railbike odyssey continues. I finally decided the test tracks at Wallace and L Streets in Bozeman were destroying my bike. Sure, the first couple of times it was important for me to take care of some necessary tweaking, but after repairing the thing time and time again I finally realized that I was dealing with the worst set of railroad tracks in the state of Montana.

So, onto bigger and better things. Was my bike ready? Who knows. It wasn't ready to take another beating at the test tracks, that's for sure. I had originally considered riding the abandoned line from Wilsall to Livingston, but after a bit of research I realized I'd have permission issues with some of the landowners along the rail line. I needed a place without such constrictions, preferably on National Forest or BLM land. I needed... Homestake Pass.

Here's where Montanans take a deep breath, look at me dubiously, and mutter, "Wow." Homestake Pass is the route I-90 takes over the Continental Divide to Butte, Montana. It's known for steepness and treachery.

The rails running alonside it, however, aren't steep at all. After all, it's rare that any railroad has more than a three percent grade, Homestake included. It takes a big, swooping northward turn before coming back toward the interstate, making the pass in double the distance. Plus, the rails were gorgeous compared to the test tracks: straight, gleaming, clean, and totally gap-free. If it weren't for the large sage and juniper bushes growing up between the rails, it might even be fun.

Yes. Now, the Bentley railbike was not designed for wimps. Two- or three-foot plants, I could ram through them, no problem. Those weren't the problem. It's the four- and five-foot trees that were the problem.

Of course, if you see a big tree growing up between the rails, the common sense thing to do is dismount, lift the bike off the tracks, carry it past the tree, and realign the bike back on the rails. It gets old after a while, but it's the only sensible thing to do.

Other than getting rather repetitive, that wasn't the problem. The problem was the in-between-sized trees, the three-and-a-half-foot junipers in-between the tracks, or the taller ones growing right alongside the rails. For these suckers, I had a choice: dismount and carry, or go to full-throttle ramming speed for the railbike-juniper battle royal.

Knowing me, which do you think I chose most often?

Suffice it to say (as usual), the railbike didn't fare too well. Oh, it won the occasional battle, with me emerging triumphant on the far side of the tree, bushy branches flying from my spokes. But more often than not it sent me crashing to the tracks, right on the delicate front-end guide.

A note to those of you who just can't help taking notes so you can try this at home (not recommended): My two most recent modifications to the front-end guide were smashing successes (literally). 1) Lowering the skateboard wheels with washers was something that should have been done originally, and really helped keep the guide on the tracks. 2) Replacing the guide-springs with a less-tense pair not only made it easier to align the device on the tracks, I think it helped keep the sideboards from splitting from the multiple times the bike sloughed off the tracks.

In fact, the sideboards - both of which had previously split and I had reinforced - were fine. It was the main horizontal board of the front-end guide that split. Yep, cracked right in half... but there were enough bolts in the thing for me to keep on truckin'.

And truckin' I did go. At certain points the bike rode quite nicely, just like in the pictures on the Bentley website: merrily clacking along, swaying gently as the tracks sped beneath my wheels. Then, Clunk!, as I thud inelegantly the seven inches to the rail. Thank God for that foam testicle-protector I put around the top tube. Usually it was plants knocking me off the rails, but I noticed that when the track banked left - which seemed to be most of the time - my rear wheel had a really hard time staying on the rail, even if there wasn't a weed to be found. Conversely, when the tracks were straight and level I had no problem staying afloat.


Which was exactly the case for my first trestle. Honestly, it scared the shit out of me. Sure, it was plenty wide, and if the bike came off the tracks there was little chance of plunging over the railing-less side. But just the idea of riding a hundred or more feet over a gully, staring right through the tracks at it, with no one around for miles, was a bit nerve-wracking. Suffice it to say I went slow. Really slow. Like, barely moving slow. But, as you can see from the picture, it was dead-straight and the most weed-free section of the entire trip. I made it across without incident.


The second trestle was just as long and high, but it had the added bonus of a left-leaning (!) curve at the end. I made it through the straight part with slightly more confidence than trestle number one, but, yet again, the left-leaning rail sloughed off my back wheel at the end. Fortunately I didn't plunge through the tracks to my demise.

I went a little ways farther past the second trestle before running into a whole slew of trees growing between and next to the rails. It was growing late and looking like rain. I looked at my GPS unit to figure out how far I'd gone: 2.87 miles. Yikes! I hadn't even made it beyond the big hairpin back toward the top of the pass. And I had hoped to make it to Butte.



Oh, well. I considered going further - for about a second. I was tired of lifting the bike past trees. Plus, there was the cracked board in the front. I'd be done for if I kept going.

So I turned around and headed back down. Which was great! Even though the grade was gentle, downhill was way more fun than uphill... and, now that the track was mostly right-leaning, I seemed to have no problem staying on the rails. I clacked merrily for about a mile, removing only for the really big trees, ramming through the little ones, and cruising over both trestles. Then... I don't know what happened. I must have hit a gap in the rail or something; all I know is I came to an immediate stop, my left shin ramming the outrigger pole, my front wheel bouncing off the track.

And that was pretty much that. I had split one of the wooden arms holding the front-end guide in place (I had broken this board once before, by the way). Sadly, I removed the front-end guide and outrigger from the bike. There would be no more railbiking this day.

It was raining hard now, and I wasn't dressed for it. I duct taped the contraptions to each other and tried carrying them as I pedaled down a faint trail next to the rails. But the weight-distribution was all off, and that didn't last for long. Instead, I walked the bike and the contraption the mile and a half back to my car.

So now I have a dilemma: Do I rebuild this dagblamed thing for the nth time, or do I just let it sit in the garage, rusting away? After all, there's plenty more rails that need to be explored. And I still have some more wood, and some more metal bars to reinforce things with. And, I'm still the only one in my neighborhood who has one.

Or, maybe I'll just set aside a day to ram my bike into trees and parked cars. It'll have about the same result.

Flat Stanley Goes to Bridger

Flat Stanley is this kid who was smushed by a bulletin board, and he wanted to go on a trip so his family folded him up and mailed him places.

Which sounds rather abusive. I received Flat Stanley in the mail from my 7-year-old nephew James, although I don't know how James got him. Found him on the street, squeaking for help? Anyway, James sent him to me to have some adventures with, and that's something we're never short of around here.

Housemate Ross and I decided to head up to Bridger Bowl today for the last official day of the ski season - and why not take ol' Flat Stanley with us? He seems like a good sport. Probably not dressed properly with the tie and all, but hey, no one up there really cares.

So away we go! Might as well pose at the entrance sign:



And, of course, if you're going to ski, you're going to need a lift ticket. We don't want any embarrassing incidents! Fortunately, I work at Bridger Bowl, and I'm entitled to a few freebie passes for my friends. Kitchen manager Tina was more than happy to help us out with a voucher...



...and then ticket-man Jeff got us all set up:



Not only did we get an all-day lift ticket, we got Stanley a Bridger Bowl tattoo for his leg. That should loosen him up a bit! The lift line ticket puncher couldn't help but admire it:



And then we were off. I'm not sure if Flat Stanley has ever ridden on a chairlift before, but Ross and I didn't hear any complaints from him:





We put Flat Stanley in Ross' backpack for safekeeping. After all, we were headed to the steep and dangerous "Fingers" area, and Flat Stanley doesn't need to be any flatter.



At Bridger Bowl, the chairlifts don't go all the way to the top of the mountain, so if you want some really nice, steep, untracked powder, you're going to have to carry your skis to the top. Ross was nice enough to carry ol' Flat Stanley, too:



And then it's go, Flat Stanley, go!






Flat Stanley made several runs on the mountain... and he even made a bunch of new friends!



Ah, yes, after a hard day on the slopes, there's nothing like a nice, frosty apres-ski beverage. Yum! It looks like Flat Stanley's getting the hang of life out here after all.

Easter Skinday on Mt. Ellis

Here is a picture of my backyard. Why show a picture of my backyard? Certainly there's no adventure to be had back there (excluding Ross' trampoline, that is).

Ah, but look closer, dear readers. Off in the distance, directly over the birdbath, Mt. Ellis hovers over our fair city. And you know what? I've never climbed it all the way to the top. Yep, that thing's been tapping me on the shoulder for years, but I've only managed to make it up to its lower summit twice.

It's not like it's inaccessible or hard to climb or anything. Quite the contrary - backcountry skiers regularly ascend its southeastern flank to ski down fluffy, untracked powder. So, this past Easter Sunday, that's exactly what my housemate Ross and I planned to do.



For such an undertaking, one needs very specialized backcountry ski gear: skis with bindings that release at the heels for uphill travel, and adhesive skins to affix to the bottoms for uphill traction. Of course, once you're all decked out with the requisite gear, it's also kind of nice to have some snow. Since it is, after all, April, there were a few patches at the lower elevations that could have used some sprucing up. Here I demonstrate how to cross a creek when you're too lazy to take off your skis. Note the brightly colored outfit - yet another benefit of buying gear in thrift stores!





It took Ross and me two and a half hours to reach the ridge between lower and upper Mt. Ellis. Well, it took me two and a half hours; Ross spends his summers on a Hotshot crew fighting forest fires in the summers, and he's like bionic or something. Fortunately, he doesn't seem to mind waiting, which he was doing patiently by the time I huffed and puffed my way up the steep skintrack to the ridge.

(Note: If you look carefully past Ross' head, you can make out Mt. Black, which Craig and I climbed two weeks earlier.)



From the ridge it was an easy skin up to the 8,331 foot summit. What a beautiful day! But we couldn't stand around like a bunch of tourons drinking in the view; Easter dinner was scheduled for 5, and we were hungry. So down we went.






Of course, it wouldn't be a Ray outing without at least a little bit of adventure, so it was pretty much mandatory for us to get stuck in a bunch of impassable trees for a while, having to clambor out of deep snow just to get going in the right direction. But that didn't last for long; most of the run was mercifully aided by the laws of gravity, with enough long, open runouts to keep us happy. Of course, the snow was deep and warm and heavy and a bit unmanageable. Really, it was a bit of a struggle to turn in, but hey, I was just happy to be there. We made it home at five o'clock on the dot, got our fill of Easter vittles, and then (with about four glasses of wine in me) I made my counterclockwise circumnavigation of Mr. Boulder (see below). Then I went to bed, with every bone in my body aching.

Meet my climbing buddy: Mr. Boulder

Wow, oh boy do I have a lot of blogging to catch up on. I slack off for a few days, and people are banging on my door, demanding more blogs.

Well, not really. I sense that you're out there, though. The fact is, I've been doing a lot of interesting things lately, and I haven't been writing them down for you, my loyal readers. So I'm going to have to make up for some lost time.

First off, meet Mr. Boulder. Mr. Boulder is not your ordinary rock. First of all, he's fake. Utterly. Why hide it? He was never real to begin with. He was put there for the enjoyment of Bozemanites, and enjoy him we do. Just the other day I was climbing on him, along with about 200 children of varying ages and climbing abilities, along with several nervous parents. The kids seemed to enjoy standing on top and asking me weird child questions when I was huffing through a particularly difficult series of handholds: "Is that hard? Did you buy those shoes just for this? Are you good?"

To answer, yes, it's hard, I bought the shoes to climb, but not just for climbing Mr. Boulder, and... am I good?

Well, I like to think I'm getting better. After all, I just completely circumnavigated Mr. Boulder in a counter-clockwise direction, without touching the top or the bottom. Some large-limbed muscle-bound guy was kind of impressed when I told him that.

Yep, me and Mr. Boulder, showing off our stuff. One of these days maybe even the kids will be impressed.

Fool for thought

Last night (April Fool's Day) several Bozeman writers, myself included, performed the fourth annual "Foolish Words," a story we all conspired to write. Well, not conspired, exactly. Poet Sam Louden started it, he passed it along to the next person, and so on, and so on... Fifteen writers and 8,524 words later, the beast was cooked.

I'd love to show you my entry, but it wouldn't make much sense without the rest of it. Actually, it doesn't make much sense WITH the rest of it... which is sort of the nature of the game. I ran into former Foolish Wordster Paul Groueff today, who said it's liking taking the old axiom "too many cooks spoil the broth" and turning it on its ear. Like, spoiling the broth so incredibly that it's actually kinda interesting.

Instead of posting my part, I'll let you see the whole dang thing. My part is at the very end -- I was once again given the role of anchor-man, in which I had to tie together the myriad twists and turns and characters that everyone else had created.

The thing is full of Bozeman (and Butte) specific jokes that not everyone will get, but that's part of the fun. Really, we do it each year primarily to entertain ourselves... although a few spectators did show up, on their own accord, at the Leaf and Bean coffeehouse. Plus, I'm editing it somehow so that it will once again be published over several issues of the Tributary magazine.

Please also note that during the performance I not only read my own part, I also read the part written by Equinox Theatre director Soren Kisiel, who was unable to make it. Which meant I spent a good deal of the evening faking an Irish accent - and, scarily enough, I think I actually did a halfway decent job. I can jest pull the Blarney out of me arse, I tell ye.

The ice is sweet, but the future may be bitter

By Ray Sikorski

(This article originally appeared in the March 2007 issue of the Tributary magazine.)

The 2006-2007 ice climbing season was akin to the movie Deliverance: One hell of a wilderness outing, marred somewhat by the prospect of banjo-wielding psycho hillbillies doing unspeakable things to your friends.

The season was one of the best in recent memory. “There was ice in places that some people have never seen ice before,” said Joe Josephson, author of Winter Dance, the seminal guide to ice climbing in Southwest Montana. Routes like Narcolepsy, Airborne Ranger, and even the aptly named Smear Today Gone Tomorrow made appearances, as well as routes that had never been seen before. On top of that, an inordinately lame early snow season made the normally treacherous drive to Hyalite Canyon’s frozen waterfalls a relative breeze right into February. Those unwilling to sacrifice their boards to the rocks on the ski hills took to Hyalite instead, with the Grotto Falls parking area filling up right up through Super Bowl Sunday.

But then, of course, was the specter of the banjo-wielding psycho hillbillies — in the form of the U.S. Forest Service — ruining all the fun. Area ice climbers had grown accustomed to negotiating the unplowed, rutted road from the Hyalite Dam to the Grotto Falls trailhead till their trucks and Subys just couldn’t take it anymore, which some years could be as late as March. The Gallatin National Forest Travel Plan, released in December, threatened to change all that. The plan, currently under appeal, proposed gating the road at the southernmost point of plowing on the first on each year, requiring climbers to ski, snowmobile, or walk a minimum of three-and-a-half miles to the ice.

“There’s not many people with the ability, gear, or gumption to ski or walk or whatever it takes from the dam,” Josephson said. “It’s basically gonna eliminate most of the climbing that goes on in Hyalite.”

Which would truly be a shame. According to Josephson, with over 140 established ice climbs within a three square mile radius, Hyalite is one of the top ice climbing venues in the world. “It’s the most concentrated area of consistently formed ice in the country.”

That’s what attracted my housemate Craig Hall and I to ice climbing in the first place. Craig had taken part in expeditions up Rainier, Denali, and other high peaks, and I had done my share of scrambling in the Tetons as a founding member of the Creampuff-Pantywaist Climbing Association (Motto: “If it’s big we can’t climb it, if it’s small we can’t find it”). But there was something about the serene gurgle of a waterfall in winter — and bashing it to smithereens with ice tools and crampons — that drew us to the cliffs.

We attended Barrel Mountaineering’s Ice Festival in November, where top ropes dangled from the cliffs of Genesis I, one of Hyalite’s most accessible routes. The festival was great: Along with trying out first-rate gear and getting instruction from ice pros like local legend Jack Tackle, we gained enough confidence in our abilities to venture out on our own.
Scary! Right? The thing about ice is that it has a tendency to break off when you whack at it, and ice climbing is all about whacking. Constant, repetitive whacking. The key is to have a sort of elegance and precision to your whacking, so that you surmount the frozen waterfall with grace and efficiency. And hopefully you don’t take the whole shooting match down with you.

Despite Craig’s enthusiasm, I was a bit skeptical. Jack Tackle had an icy stare and a determined, no-nonsense way about him. Did we have that? Did we need that? After all, Craig is a jazz guitarist and I’m a sort of silly writer. There’s no doubt we’re climbers, but, really, we’re artists. I sensed that maybe we were just a little too loopy to do this.
Case in point: Our gear, or lack thereof. Ice climbing equipment is not cheap, and we weren’t going to sink hundreds of dollars into a new sport right off the bat. But we each already had mountaineering boots and crampons, ropes, harnesses, and carabiners. Add to that a handful of antique ice screws purchased at a garage sale and a mismatched pair of decade-old straight shaft ice tools we planned to share, and we were raring to go.

Barrel Mountaineering owner Chris Naumann said: “As long as you use good judgment and common sense, there’s nothing really wrong with figuring it out on your own. There’s something to be said for doing it that way – just discovering it yourself, versus being told how to do this or that.”

And figure it out we did. In repeated forays to the Genesis area, we learned all sorts of things. For example, while in other sports helmets are only used in emergencies, in ice climbing that’s not the case at all. The top climber regularly sends down chunks of ice ranging in size from pebble-ish to volleyball-ish (though not nearly as bouncy), and one quickly learns to lower one’s head at the call of “Ice!” for maximum brain-bucket effectiveness. Kicking a crampon too close to your other leg can turn your snow pants into tatters, and you end up looking like you just Hulked out — clearly an ice climbing “Don’t.” Stepping on the rope with crampons is a bit of a faux pas. Tossing the top rope into a bunch of bushes can really delay things. As can leaving the ice screws in the car and having to trudge back for them. If the climber at the top of the climb sends ice tools flying down the rope, which you have wrapped around a tree, it can be really scary. Not recommended.
Ice is weird. On super cold days it becomes hard and brittle, and it’s difficult for a pick to find purchase. In a rare display of temper, Craig hurled an incorrigible ice screw into the snow… but it wasn’t the screw that was at fault, it was the ice. On warm days, the tools slide in with ease, and we find the grace we were hoping for. On a really warm day — like, next summer — we hope to find the ice screw we’re still looking for.

After one great King Midas mood Craig bought more ice screws and brand new ice tools of his own. I inherited the old mismatched straight-shaft ones, which I’ve gained a certain awkward fondness for. Now we’re both lead climbing like crazy: Genesis, Greensleeves, Hangover… and that’s just in the Genesis area of Hyalite. There’s tons more. We just did Pine Creek Falls in the Absarokas, and I experienced my first leader fall. The rope saved me inches from the deck. I was shaking after that, but I carried on.



And there’s always next year, right? Ah, but the plan. In Deliverance, the brave canoers were among the last to paddle the Chattooga River, which was being inundated by a new dam. If I recall correctly, that movie ended with one guy dead, one seriously wounded, and another…

Well, I’m just hoping for a happier ending.

For information about ice conditions, Hyalite road conditions, and finding climbing partners visit MontanaIce.com

Home

Why are you where you are? How did you get there? Do you plan on staying? Have you ever visited a place and thought... man, if I could just go back.... Where was that place? IS there a perfect utopia, or are we naively spinning our wheels? Is it worth packing everything up and starting over again?

These were the questions my friend Cassie posed to her friends and family the other day. After a year discovering the trials and tribulations of the all-too-hip city of Portland, Oregon, Cassie is considering moving on... but to where?

I suppose my desire to live here in Bozeman can be said to border on the maniacal. After all, I had a lot of things going for me in Sonoma when I left -- good job, a great deal of respect in the community, a swell new girlfriend -- so a lot of people were amazed that I'd pack all that in and head to... where? Montana? Are you out of your mind?

Yes, I'm out of my mind. The job situation for here has ranged from sporadic to pathetic. The winters are long and brutal. It's a pain in the ass to get to here or get out of here. Housing prices are running amok. And romantically... well, that could be a book in itself. A tragedy, naturally.

So, why? Hell, I don't know. It's home, is all.

Maybe I should tell the story from the beginning.

Summer, 1989. My first summer out west, spent in Jackson, Wyoming. A co-worker, Aleece Erskin, mentions that the town of Bozeman, Montana has excellent thrift stores, good bands, and cheap housing.

May, 1991. I move to Montana. Big Sky, that is, the ski resort 50 miles south of Bozeman. Aleece has since moved to Bozeman with her new fiance, Chick Kurowski, and I spent my weekends couch surfing at their seedy dive apartment on North Black Avenue. As long as I brought a 12-pack of Schmitty's they were happy, and I spent many good weekends mountain biking, hot springing, and sitting on the porch drinking beer. Later they moved to a house (since condemned and demolished) at the foot of Peet's Hill, and we'd watch bikers attempt to launch off the ski jump, usually landing on their heads.

This was my introduction to Bozeman, and what I encountered with Aleece and Chick remain some of its most powerful selling points to me. Chick was a serious abstract painter, working as a line cook at the Cowboy Cafe. Aleece was a backpack sewer at Dana Designs. Both were dedicated to outdoor recreation, art, music, drinking beer, and living on the cheap. They were underemployed but it didn't matter because so was everyone. They were ornery, but usually in a good way. They kept a pistol in the silverware drawer. Although neither was from Montana, they seemed to embody the spirit that I found in Bozeman: as long as you weren't going to wreck it, you were pretty much okay in their book.

But I really wanted to move to Colorado. See, I just moved to Big Sky as a way of getting out west, but when the summer season was over I headed to Steamboat Springs, CO, which my calculations had designated with utopia potential: skiing, artsy, not too big, not too small. I got there in early November, and landed a job as a lift operator before the season opened. I stuck around a while longer, waiting to see if I could get in on the employee housing. I had to stay there several days for the answer, which finally came in: None of us with jobs would get employee housing. They were saving it for the late-arrival employees.

What about us on-time arrival employees? We were out on the street. I was so pissed off I immediately left Colorado, vowing never to return (which I actually managed to do for about five years or so).

I would go where they cared about me. I would return to Montana.

End of Part I

Climb every mountain... ?

(Photo: The Tetons, with Jackson Lake Lodge in the foreground)



It's that time of year again: the time when I have to figure out what I'm gonna do when the ski season's over.

As many of you know, I returned to Bozeman fully intent on making it as a freelance writer. While I am working and getting paid for that to a certain extent, it hasn't been the flag-waving success I'd been hoping for. So, in January I took up my old job waiting tables at Jimmy B's Bar and Grill at the Bridger Bowl Ski Area.

Which has been great. I'm really happy to be back at work there; I had forgotten what an integral part of my social life it was, much like working at Murphy's Irish Pub was for me in Sonoma. Plus, I come home with my pockets filled with cash, and I get to ski for free on a regular basis.

But the ski season doesn't last forever. It lasts until mid-April. After that, they boot us off the hill and we're made to fend for ourselves.

In the past Bridger Bowl has had a Thursday-Sunday summer season in which the mid-mountain lodge is opened to the public as a restaurant and for weddings, but that plan has already been downsized to weddings only for this summer.

That leaves the following choices: a) Crank up the querying a notch and get more freelancing gigs. Which I should be doing anyway, but I'm having way too much fun with skiing and ice climbing. In the summer I'll be having way too much fun with hiking, rock climbing, mountain biking, and kayaking.

So then there's b) Go back to my old summer job at the Pioneer Grill in Grand Teton National Park. There I'll be able to play in the mountains to my heart's content and then some, and make tons of dough for possible international travel after season's end.

It's tempting, isn't it? But what will happen to the fledgling freelance career I've put so much time into building? Will it fly straight out the window? Will I return to Bozeman starting at Square One again?

What to do, what to do...

I suppose I could work in a regular year-round restaurant in Bozeman... but that sounds too much like a real job. Lame!

If you have any advice, I'd love to hear it.

Bloom and grow, bloom and grow

The Sunflower Center puts its heart into its seedlings

(The following appeared in the February 2007 issue of the Tributary magazine, except for the secret parenthetical paragraph that was edited out.)

By Ray Sikorski

“There’s a reason why I chose Sunflower as the name,” said Dean Williamson, founder and director of the Sunflower Center for the Arts. “If you think about a sunflower, it sort of picks the sun, finds its source of energy and life, and follows that. And they look really wispy but they’re actually really strong, and they’ve got interrelated roots underneath the ground…”

This was all fine and good, but my assignment was not merely to report on the new creative writing center in town. Being the February issue of the Tributary, my editor had asked me to try to tie it all in with love.

I looked Williamson in the eye. “Are you in love with sunflowers?”

“I’m in love with sunflowers,” he confessed.

Now we were getting somewhere.

Williamson explained that the Sunflower Center opened in August 2006, offering workshops in poetry, fiction, script, and creative non-fiction. It also has begun a speaker series, in which successful artists are brought into conversation with members of the community. So far potter Josh DeWeese and Equinox Theatre co-founder Katie Goodman have been featured speakers.

“What we’re trying to do is send the ripple out and hopefully inspire more people to be more creative,” Williamson said.

That same ethic is what guides Williamson, a playwright who has taught English at MSU and Bozeman High, in leading the writing workshops.

“There’s nobody bringing along the next generation of David Quammens and Tom McGuanes and Pete Fromms,” he said.

“There’s a rich history here. What I’m fearful of is there’s nobody here to take their places.”

The workshops, which meet on the comfy red couches of the Sunflower office in the Emerson Cultural Center, take place one evening a week over the course of seven weeks. Writers submit poems, stories, or articles prior to each session, to which the others in the group offer constructive criticisms within the secure confines of the room.

The process, Williamson admitted (with a minimum of prodding), is a bit like love.

“I think this whole creative process is one of love and compassion, and trying to nurture something along that tends to be pretty delicate,” he said. “Imagination and creative stuff, these are beautiful things. But they also need to be tended to.”
Williamson wasn’t sure exactly what the future holds for the center, which as of yet remains a solo operation. (While he often used “we” to describe the center’s goings-on, Williamson explained that it’s the “royal” we.) He mentioned the possibility of a spoken-word series, a songwriting workshop, a publication, or even a film incubator, which would help screenwriters turn their scripts into movies.

“I’m purposely leaving a lot of spontaneity in the way this is playing out,” he said. “I like the idea of setting it in motion and sort of watching it unroll and seeing what happens, and not trying to necessarily know everything that’s gonna happen.”

“Is that like love?” I asked.

“I suppose,” he said. “If we must make it like love.”

Yes, we must!

(Note: Although Williamson would not reveal his relationship status in print, at one point in the interview the tall, dark, and handsome 39-year-old did blurt out his astrological sign. “I’m an Aquarius to a T,” he said, explaining that that means creative and spontaneous and also possessing a certain airiness. “Some people would call us flaky. I would choose, ‘interested in a lot of different things at the same time.’ Multi-interests.” He rattled off some of his interests: skiing, kayaking, canoeing, backpacking… “All the good stuff.”)

Williamson’s nurturing of his sprouts has already rendered results. Although the program is still in its infancy, already four of his students have had submissions that had been critiqued in the workshops published in literary journals and magazines.

“Part of the responsibility of the writers here is that they send stuff out for publication,” he said, explaining that he sees a national trend that’s antagonistic to the arts and free expression. “I think the stakes are way too high right now not to be contributing to the cultural dialogue.”

Although he uses his aesthetically crafted SunflowerCenter.org website as a tool, Williamson said he believes the Internet, and its hordes of lonely bloggers tapping at keyboards in darkened rooms, is detracting from the natural interaction of humanity.

“I still firmly believe in people sitting in the same room talking about writing. I still firmly believe in artists sitting in the same room talking about their creative processes. Because a lot happens in community,” he said. He added that conversing face-to-face is part of the idea behind the speaker’s series, as well as the workshops.

“There’s nothing that can replace human-to-human contact,” he said. Then, after thinking about it, added, “That’s kind of lovey. Isn’t it? Maybe that’s good enough for love.”


Ray Sikorski’s astrological sign is Cancer, which means he sits alone in his basement typing away at his blog: raysikorski.blogspot.com.

Cold? Sorry, I hadn't noticed

There's nothing like a little brisk weather to make you stand up and say, "Isn't it great to be alive?" Either that, or stay under the covers all day and never come out. One or the other.

But you can't stay under the covers forever. There's stuff to do out here! Last Thursday, for example, I went skiing. It was 16 degrees below zero, which is pretty cold, but there was fresh snow and barely anyone was out there messing it up. I was getting freshies left and right... of course, I was probably also developing frostbite on my left and right earlobes, but that's really beside the point.

Here in Montana cold weather is nothing new, and most people barely seem to notice it. It was probably about -20 when I went to a party on Friday night, but that didn't seem to keep people away... although I think it was close to -30 when I left, which could have prevented me from going home if my car didn't start.



But it did, and the next morning Craig and I set out for a nice sub-zero day of ice climbing. I imagine some readers may never have experienced such frigid temperatures. Basically, think of a seven-layer cake — that's about the right number of layers to be wearing. Generally I went with a thin Duofold Coolmax thermal top, turtleneck, light fleece, heavier fleece, heaviest fleece (bought in extra-large size specifically for such circumstances), then my North Face Gore-Tex jacket. Toasty as a bun in the oven! On the bottoms, thermal long-johns, knit acrylic long-johns, and ski pants seem to do the trick. The face is probably the most vulnerable to frostbite, and my thin balaclava head-covering was essential. That, plus my pull-over neck warmer and ski hat. I also brought ski goggles, but they proved unnecessary. It was only like 10-below, after all.

That evening I went to an art opening in Willow Creek, about 40 miles west of Bozeman. Again, the place was packed; nobody was deterred by the weather. The thick icy rime that had built up on the inside of my windshield was more stubborn, however — all the way there and all the way back with the defroster blowing on high, and it still refused to melt to the edges.

Hardy Bozemanites proved their mettle again on Sunday, showing up in force (well, 50 or so, anyway) for the Martin Luther Kind Day march along Main Street. Ya just dress warm, is all. It's no biggie.



On Monday my friend Sam and I almost met our match. We went skiing at Bridger Bowl, and along with the cold we had to deal with 45-mile-per-hour winds. The skiing itself wasn't bad, but the chairlift rides were brutal... especially when they stopped for the wind, leaving us to be buffeted about 50 feet in the air.

We only took a couple of runs, and rewarded ourselves afterwards with a trip to Chico Hot Springs in Paradise Valley, along with an entourage that included Sam's wife Heather, their 5-year-old twins Ari and Olivia (shown), Heather's sister Mikelle (shown toasting with me below), and friend Suzie, who took the photos. Cold weather, hot water, tasty drinks... if this isn't living, I don't know what is.

The Interstate Trail System

Another hare-brained scheme

Enough about cars. I don’t want to write about them, I don’t want to hear about them, I don’t want to see them, I don’t want to ride in them. I just want to ride my bike.

Okay, so Bozeman’s covered in snow and it’s not the easiest thing to do. Ah, well. A few years back I drilled machine screws into my tires, creating studded snow tires for my bike. They worked well on the ice, but they added a good deal of rolling resistance overall. Nowadays I just say winter is for cars, the rest of the year is for bikes.

Bozeman, with its university and masses of adrenaline-dripping outdoor recreationists, never seems to have a shortage of bicyclists plying its streets, even in winter. I’ve even seen a few extra-hardy souls panting their way sixteen miles up Bridger Canyon, a snowboard strapped to their backs. Clearly, some people are insane.

But it’s not like that in other parts of the country. Most notably California, where it’s warm and sunny much of the year (not to mention pancake flat in the places I’ve been). Despite ideal conditions, riders are hard to find. Well, not too hard. They’re all on the bike paths.

I suppose it’s not unreasonable that bicyclists are afraid of riding on streets. The streets are designed for cars, not bikes, and when faced with timed stop lights and turn lanes at every intersection, cyclists are clearly at a disadvantage. Would you want your small children riding around on busy streets? Probably not. Many kids grow up not knowing how to ride in traffic, so never do.

Despite given a great deal of lip service to how everybody ought to ride bikes to work and school and everywhere else, with modern traffic systems it’s highly impractical and unsafe. “Oh, take the bike path,” they say… but where does the bike path go? Quite possibly not where you want to go. Most bike paths seem to be almost exclusively for recreation, and not for commuting. Although there’s been heightened awareness in recent years, rarely do bike paths link communities.

So what’s my hare-brained scheme? An interstate trail system, just for bikes and hikers. It’s based on the idea that there are people who’d be perfectly happy not driving anywhere, if only they could do it safely and conveniently.

My original inspiration for this was the Appalachian Trail, a hiking trail extending from Georgia to Maine. While it’s certainly possible to hike bits and pieces of the trail, every year a few hundred hike the entire distance. I’ve been on parts of this trail, and it’s not easy. Brutal comes to mind, especially considering the size packs people carry with them.

So at first I was just thinking along the lines of an easier A-Trail, one that you could take a mountain bike on — following along the foothills, perhaps, and traveling through the middle of towns when appropriate. Naturally I wanted my trail, which I dubbed the “Bee-Line” (as an acknowledgement of the A-Trail’s superiority, as well as “B” for “Bikes”), to go all the way from Key West to the border of Maine and Canada. Someone suggested using old railroad right-of-ways… which totally makes sense, as the Rails-to-Trails program is already well underway across the nation.

There’s two keys to the Bee-Line: The first is tentatively mapping a desired route, but having a de facto route using existing roads that can be used immediately. It could take decades to obtain rights to the land and build trails, but as long as alternatives exist and people use them, it’ll provide impetus to carrying out the plan.

The second is that dirt is okay. In Calfornia every bike path I ever set wheels on was paved. Why is this necessary? Bozeman has a huge bike/hike trail system that’s completely unpaved, and there doesn’t seem to be any protest at all. Most bikes have tires fat enough to be right at home on dirt. The exceptions are the fancy pants skinny-tired road bikes, but those things go too fast for bike paths, anyway. They’re more at home on streets and highways. Plus, part of this concept is the natural experience, and asphalt takes away from that.

I chose Key West as a starting point specifically because there’s an old road that runs alongside the current highway, which goes the entire length from the mainland to Key West. Originally build as the part of the Flagler railroad, the rails were converted to a highway after hurricane damage. The current road replaced it in the early 80s, but it’s still there. And a lot of it is now used for a bike path, but the old bridges are in pieces — literally, chunks of them are missing.

It would be no small expense to repair these bridges to be adequate for bike and pedestrian travel. But when I think about the Interstate Highway System and the amount of money we put into our automobile roads and bridges, it strikes me as a double standard. Don’t we want people to get around in ways other than cars?

Right now I’m seeing a lot of interest in bike paths and trails covering short distances — which is great. But long distance bike/hike trails could spawn an industry unto itself, perhaps even revitalizing depressed small towns that are on the route. Along with the Bee-Line, there could be routes crisscrossing the nation, just like the Interstate Highway System. That was a bold, monumental idea for its time; I don’t see why this should be thought of any differently.

Chevy Volt needs an EEStor jolt

Hello, Chevy Volt! Yep, this is GM's offering to eco cadres of the world: a plug-in electric car with a three-cylinder gasoline engine that's not really an engine -- it's a generator to power the electric motor when it runs out of wall-socket juice. Kind of ironic since GM was accused of killing the electric car in the first place, but hey, it's a step in the right direction.

So it's not the most aesthetically pleasing car in the world. Some have suggested that they made it look mean so it wouldn't be associated with cutesy-wutesy bunny loving environmentalists. The fact is this car is just a prototype and won't be on the road for at least three years. The reason? The lithium-ion batteries around today just aren't good enough.

But is that really so? When I interviewed Eco Auto owner Ron Gompertz (see Smart Car article below), he tipped me off to EEStor, a company that patented a battery that's strong enough to power an SUV and can be charged in minutes rather than hours.

The company is contracted with a Canadian electric car company called Feel Good Cars (or Zenn Cars, at zenncars.com), which makes the golf-cart-like Zenn car (I drove one for the article; it's slow and tiny and if you turn on the heat the battery drains). But supposedly much grander things are in the works.

I tried doing a little research, but it wasn't easy because EEStor keeps a very low profile; they don't even have a website. But I did find out a few things.

From Business Week Online:

According to a May, 2004 edition of Utility Federal Technology Opportunities, an obscure trade newsletter, EEStor claims to make a battery at half the cost per kilowatt-hour and one-tenth the weight of lead-acid batteries. Specifically, the product weighs 400 pounds and delivers 52 kilowatt-hours. (For battery geeks: "The technology is basically a parallel plate capacitor with barium titanate as the dielectric," UFTO says.) No hazardous or dangerous materials are used in manufacturing the ceramic-based unit, which means it qualifies as what Silicon Valley types call "cleantech.

From Clean Break:

On top of this release, a reliable source familiar with EEStor had this to say about the company's technology:

* The batteries fully charge in minutes as opposed to hours.
* Whereas with lead acid batteries you might get lucky to have 500 to 700 recharge cycles, the EEStor technology has been tested up to a million cycles with no material degradation.
* EEStor's technology could be used in more than low-speed electric vehicles. The company envisions using it for full-speed pure electric vehicles, hybrid-electrics (including plug-ins), military applications, backup power and even large-scale utility storage for intermittent renewable power sources such as wind and solar.
* Because it's a solid state battery rather than a chemical battery, such being the case for lithium ion technology, there would be no overheating and thus safety concerns with using it in a vehicle.
* Finally, with volume manufacturing it's expected to be cost-competitive with lead-acid technology.

"It's the holy grail of battery technology," said my source. "It means you could do a highway-capable electric city car that would recharge in three or four minutes and drive you from Toronto to Montreal. Consumers wouldn't notice the difference from driving an electric car versus a gas-powered car."

Too good to be true? Who knows? I keep wanting GM to hook up with these folks and go, "Look! Look! There really is a battery good enough!"

If you know anyone who works for GM, please let them know.

Eco-friendly transport

On Bozeman’s streets, it’s getting cool to be green

(The following was originally published in the January issue of Bozeman's Tributary magazine.)

by Ray Sikorski


“You have to be a little bit brave to own a Smart car,” said Ron Gompertz, owner of Bozeman’s Eco Auto car dealership.

True enough. With no established dealer network, third party warranties, and a price tag disproportionate to its diminutive length, the Mercedes-built microcompact may not be for everybody. Not to mention that other drivers will gawk at you as if the head of Jar Jar Binks has sprouted wheels and is rolling down the interstate.

And beyond owning a Smart car, you have to be more than a little bit brave to open a Smart car dealership, especially in the middle of Montana. And you have to be downright courageous to hand the keys to a reporter, and specifically ask him to seek out snow covered streets to test the car’s handling.

But such is Gompertz’s nature. A self-confessed “serial entrepreneur,” Gompertz’s businesses have included an indie record label, a mosaic art supply store, and he’s written two books about a winter holiday he refers to as “Chrismukkah.” He claims to have good instincts for new trends, and is convinced that small, eco-friendly modes of transportation are the next big thing. Hence his showroom on the corner of Grand and Main, which, along with plenty of Smart cars, features the Canadian-made electric Zenn car, and a sizeable showing of Dually Limited’s scooters.

“Al Gore catalyzed me,” Gompertz said, referring to the former V.P.’s global warming revelation flick “An Inconvenient Truth.”
“My goal is to show Montanans that there are other options.”

Hence the Smart car. More worldly Bozemanites may have seen the eight-foot-long runabouts on the streets of Europe or Canada, where they’ve been a fixture for several years. An intro to the U.S. market was balked at due to notions about Americans’ taste for asphalt-roaming grandiosity, but spiking gas prices and what appears to be an evolving national consciousness has scheduled an official debut on our shores in 2008. Until then, however, Gompertz and a handful of other pioneering souls have taken upon themselves the job of importing the cars, retrofitting them to U.S. specs, and presenting them to the public as the must-have item of the year.

The latter of the list may prove to be the most difficult objective. While the odd-looking vehicles garner no shortage of amused stares — Gompertz’s daughter refers to them as “Daddy’s silly cars” — getting people to take them seriously as a transportation choice is another story. Are they a toy? Made in China? Cheap? Dangerous? Gompertz asserts that they are none of the above, that they are real cars with two seats and room for groceries in the back, that are equipped with efficient 3-cylinder turbocharged gasoline engines that get 40-60 miles per gallon. He notes that they can travel 85 miles per hour, that they cost $25,000 (thanks to a strong Euro and the costs incurred bringing the cars up to U.S. specs), and that they can — in theory, anyway — be parked sideways because they are just that short in length.

Gompertz has sold a few of the rear-engine, rear-wheel-drive cars to out-of-staters through his ecoautoinc.com website, but no locals had yet been emboldened enough to make the move.

“They’re just awesome little cars,” Gompertz said, adding that they’re not only cute, but they’re safe and a joy to drive. He likened them to a cross between a VW Beetle and a Porsche Carrerra. And, Gompertz insisted, they handle well in the snow. This I had to see.

The Smart car I tested was already dressed for the part — the ski rack even had a pair of K2’s seemingly ready for action. After a short test run showing off the car’s acceleration and speed on I-90, Gompertz handed me the keys.
And, true to his word, the car really is fun to drive. It has a unique standard/automatic transmission, and after some turbo-induced hesitation between first and second gears, the car took off. You ride high and fast in its tall cockpit, and it can keep up with any car — although crosswinds can make it seem a bit unwieldy.

Gompertz directed me to the northeast neighborhood, and encouraged me to try to get the car to slide on the snowy sidestreets. This is the sort of thing I occasionally enjoy testing on my own vehicle, so being granted carte blanche to do the same on this brand-new, $25,000 weird-looking ecomobile… What’s that? Oh, just the tingling of my loins. Slide away!
It turns out a brave entrepreneurial spirit may be slightly removed from being brave while having an off-the-street reporter try out your baby. I sensed Gompertz’s hands reaching for the Hail Mary strap.

But despite my efforts to the contrary, the little bugger proved to be defiantly steady. Computer-assisted traction control, Gompertz explained.

Gompertz isn’t the only person in Bozeman determined to rattle the environmental status quo. Bozeman Streets Superintendent John Van Delinder has been quietly waging his own municipal eco-campaign for the past five years. Now, the 30 diesel vehicles of the city’s Forestry, Street and Signal, and Street Maintenance departments are running on a 20 percent biodiesel blend.

The city gets the seed-based fuel from Story Distributing, and Van Delinder says it’s a couple of cents per gallon cheaper than regular diesel. He added that despite the views of skeptics, the change hasn’t caused any damage to the vehicles’ engines.

“No problems,” Van Delinder said, explaining that his department regularly takes oil samples to check for aberrations. “None. Nothing.”

The only problem has been convincing old-timers, particularly in other departments, that the less polluting biodiesel is the way to go. Despite Van Delinder’s prodding, Bozeman’s Sanitation, Water, and Parks departments had yet to make the switch. Van Delinder suspected, however, that things would soon change, now that the city council unanimously adopted the Mayor’s Climate Protection Agreement. The Agreement mandates that the city consider an eco-friendly attitude in all orders of business, and Van Delinder predicted that the city would be making some forward-thinking changes in the not-too-distant future.

“I love it,” he said. “I can’t imagine working in a city in which nothing was happening.”