YOU CAN'T RIDE A BIKE IN A BUFFALO TURD

Hey, we’re riding bicycles into Yellowstone Park.

  You need to come.  It’ll be FUN!  Come on.  

It’s only a short ride from Madison Junction into Old Faithful, no hills. 

I swore I’d never go with this pack of insane women again.   

Isn’t it weird how our brains can’t remember pain?

 So there I was, helping unload our bikes out of the back of Charlene’s pickup truck sixteen miles away from Old Faithful Geyser.  At least the traffic in the park wasn’t bumper-to-bumper tourists hanging out of cars like it is later in the year.

In no time at all we were helmets on and wheels on the road.

These ladies are training for an iron man triathlon.  They’d already swam a couple of hundred miles in the campus pool before we were out of bed.  They left the rest of us in the dust—literally.

The weather was perfect and the scenery helped take my mind off the hills that weren’t supposed to be there.

 This is exactly what it looks like.  Do not ride your bicycle through it. 

 Where does a two thousand pound buffalo go?

  Anywhere he wants to.

 So I’m taking these photos with my cell phone while riding.  

We’re getting awfully close to these big wild bovines.  

The only way to get past them is to go around them very carefully.

 This one was a bull. Trust me.  I went by close enough to get a good look.

Time to put the camera away and ride, blockhead.

 Well, the rest of the trip in was pretty tame after that encounter.  

We parked our wheels and went inside for lunch.

We almost had the café to ourselves since the six busloads of Asian tourists were all out by the big geyser waiting for the ultimate photo op.  The eruption wasn’t as spectacular as some I’ve seen and I was chowing down on a sandwich so I didn’t get much of a picture.

 The ride back was interrupted by a mechanical failure.

 (Pay no attention to the finger over the lens).

 This pedal is still attached to the shoe but not the bike.

  All attempts to repair the problem were unsuccessful.

 So she had to finish the last five miles using only one leg.  

At least most of those miles were downhill. 

She said it was kind of like riding a skate board.

I was so proud of myself for being able to at least keep up with some of these biker babes.  
But my backside is telling my head not to get any wild ideas about long road trips.

LINE UP TWO BY TWO

Under the supervision of Number-One Granddaughter,

all creatures departing for Forty Days & Nights are boarding at Gate One.

The Roman Gladiators are in charge of loading the ark

 so they make sure the lions get on early.

The Centurion in the chariot has decided to skip security pat-downs.

He did require the horses to remove their shoes.

  Anyway, no one is boarding with baggage except the elephant.

He is bringing a trunk.

The ark is overbooked so the dinosaurs have decided to take travel vouchers

for the next boat.

Thomas absolutely refuses to mingle with the riff-raff.

FROM THE GROUND UP

My parents started their farm a year before I was born by bringing in a two-room house and setting it on the edge of eighty acres of sage brush and lava rock not far from the Union Pacific Railroad track in south central Idaho.

My mother paused in her moving to take a photo of her new home.  You can see my older brother sitting on the step and I am in the baby carriage on the left.

By the time I was three ( you can see me in the foreground of this photo) my dad had squeezed enough time out from farming to add two more rooms onto the house.  Mom had planted three trees, a lawn and a garden.

Dad had also built a small milking barn out of scrap lumber and straw.  I remember there being four or five cows at first.  Two of the first cows were a big black Holstein named Cora and a tan Guernsey named Beauty.

 

 At first my dad milked the cows by hand.   I loved to go out to keep him company in the evenings.  The cows would munch on their grain, the cats would come in for a treat of fresh milk and the chickens would arrive to find a place to roost for the night.

Their dairy herd increased as new calves grew up and more were purchased at the cattle auction.

 The milk was sold in ten gallon cans which were loaded on a truck each day and taken to a creamery for processing into butter and cheese.

As time passed Dad and Mom were able to get a loan to build a dairy barn out of concrete and cinder brick.  There were four children by then and we all helped with the milking and caring for the herd. 

I was given a heifer to raise for a 4-H project.  She earned blue ribbons both years I took her to the county fair.

 By the time my parents retired they owned two hundred acres of fertile fields and pasture plus the dairy barn, out buildings, granaries and a nice house and yard.  They’d put all four of their children through several years of college.  My brothers weren’t interested in becoming farmers and my sister and I married guys who took us off to live in town. 

So Mom and Dad finally sold the farm, took their dog and their cats and bought a little home in town just a block from our house.  They both enjoyed over a decade more of life without having to milk cows twice a day.