Damian in Montana part 2

Ok so yeah its hard to find time to write in this thing. Sorry about that. Anyhow, I was told that i needed to get a picture of the buffalo with me in it. I don't know I guess they wanted proof. The issue with this is that the buffalo are rather skittish and run away when we get even remotely close. Also if your too aggressive and you aggravate a bull, they will charge you. Just yesterday we found out that the buffalo managed bust an irrigation pipe, which meant I had to go out and dig the thing up so we could fix it. While I was out there the buffalo got curious and came pretty close giving me the opportunity to take a picture.I look dirty.

So anyway here are a few things ive been working on here in Montana. One of the first things we tackled here was tearing down a hundred year old power house. The building was so old and rotten it was falling apart. It was full of junk that we went through and sorted into good crap and crap crap. After that we tore the whole packrat infested building down and burned it up.
I didnt have a camera yet at that time so no pictures of what it looked liked before. I do have this picture that i took when we were trying to wrestle some of the bigger pieces of equipment out of there. That's Hunter, and the foot/leg coming out from behind the big things belong to Coal.

The next major project that has been occupying my time is concrete. Hunter owns a hanger at the local airport but it just had a dirt floor. So Hunter decided to lay a slab of concrete. So me and Coal dug out the edges and made forms for the footer.


After we poured that Coal went to work for the park, so me and Hunter poured the rest of the slab.


We were working on that for a while and now were trying to pour a slab of concrete for his garage were going to try and build.

The rest of the time has been spent doing all kinds of random stuff including mowing and weed waking large amounts of lawn. I also end up running this thing a lot.


Its a skid steer, or basically a glorified forklift.


Its has two joysticks for control and is easy to use. Its kind of like playing a video game so I got the hang of running it pretty quick.

Onto what ive been doing in my off time. Back in Redding I had started going to a Carol and Angel's house for dinner every Saturday. It became known as Saturday night dinner. When I came here, it changed to Sunday night dinner, where I go to Janine's mother's home. Here name is coincidentally Carol.


Living with her is Krys who is currently traveling with her mother. Its complicated but we hope that she will make it back to Carol's safe and sound, and soon.


The other two are John and his girlfriend Jennifer, who are both into video games, so to say the least we have plenty to talk about.


I used to think that Heather's family was complicated and confusing, but i can now honestly say that it is simple and easy to understand when compared to Janines family. I still dont understand how everyone is related to everyone else, and quite frankly ive stopped trying. Seriously Janine, John, Jo, Jim, Jennine, THERE ARE TOO MANY J'S!!! Whats important is that their all very cool and friendly people, and im always looking forward to the next Sunday night dinner.

This last Saturday I went up to Livingston to hang out John and Jen, and we had a sort of gaming day. It was great fun, and I find it just a little bit sad that I had missed video games so much. Next weekend I hope to find time to go up to Bozemen and see my cousin Becky. Maybe ill get to see the new Harry Potter movie, who knows.

Heather's sister Ami is in a band called Social Concern. About two weeks ago Social Concern was rolling through Montana on tour. So I took a trip up to Billings to hang out with Ami and the band. It was small but it was rocking, and alot of fun. There was a group of guys who were dancing/moshpitting. It was entertaining, violent, but also friendly. When someone got knocked down everyone quickly picked them back up. I didnt participate and im glad I didnt, when the sixth and last band started playing, the friendly moshpit turned into an allout brawl. Some dude got hit 9 times in the face and another guy who had a huge goose egg on his head took a chair and was useing it as a weapon. It was broken up fairly quickly and the people who seemed to be responsible left quickly. Like I said, it was rockin. I crashed with the band and got some t-shirts and cd's. I didnt get very many pictures because it was so dark.

You cant really see but that silhouette on the left is Ami.

I also finally got the opportunity to go down the Yellowstone river, Janine's nephew Jim and his girlfriend Katlyn are both river guides and they stopped by to visit. They had planned to go down the river while they were here and offered to take me with them.

The water was incredibly cold, and there were plenty of rapids to get us very wet. Since we have been getting so much rain the river is really high and very fast moving, so it only took us about an hour and fifteen minutes to go from Gardiner to Hunters house.

I ended up rowing for half of the trip.

It was great fun, and at some point I hope ill be able to go again.

...thats all I can think of at the moment. Few, that took alot of time. Time for bed. Im not going to proof read because im lazy. I miss you all.

Damian in Montana

Hello everyone. I was told that I should start a blog to document my activities here in Montana, and so here it is. My old phone died right before I left, I suspect sands from Coo's bay, the same sands that messed up my Ipod. You would think that after the first incident I would have had the sense to leave my phone in the car. Ahh well. So now I have a new phone, one with a 2 mega pixel camera on it, which is pretty good for a cell. Ive tried my best to take pictures, so here you go.

Here are a few pictures of the property and the Montana landscape surrounding it.


The property is right next to the Yellowstone River, and is in a stretch of land above Yellowstone park called Paradise Vally. One of the interesting things about Paradise Vally right now is the weather. It seems to change every 30 minutes. One moment its sunny blue skies, the next its poring rain, or the wind picks up and its suddenly very cold. I am constantly taking my sweatshirt off and putting it back on throughout the day.


A quick introduction. This is Hunter, the guy who gave me the job. Hes holding a boot.


This is his wife Janine.


This is Archy. A rescued dog of an unknown age. Hes supposed to be 3-4 years old, but who knows how accurate that is. All in all hes a real good dog.


And this is the guy Ive been working with, Coal. He was working with me and Hunter these last two weeks, but hes off to work for the park the rest of this summer. In a few weeks he might come back Fridays and or Saturdays to give us a hand.


Its hard to say exactly what I have been doing here, simply because we do a variety of different things each day. Mostly we have just been shoveling, weed waking, breaking things down, and throwing away copious amounts of scrap steal. Oh and cleaning up after these guys...


Hunter has a contract with the government to keep these Buffalo on the property. These Bison are from Yellowstone and are pure bred. Most Buffalo have cattle genes in them, so the idea is to take the offspring of these pure Buffalo and reintroduce them into places that no longer have Buffalo. There pretty easy to handle, you walk towards them and they walk away from you. The best way to move em is to throw their food into the pasture you want them in, wait five minutes for them to wander in, then shut the gate behind them. Unfortunately they also have a tendency to mess with whatever else is in the pasture, such as the irrigation system. This leads to situations like this...

That is a large irrigation reel, Buffalo rubbed up against the hose and popped it off when the water was off, and when we turned the water back on, this is the result.

Anyhow that's about all I have time for. More work to do in the morning. Ill try to update this blog as often as I can, hopefully with some details about what I'm actually doing here. Sorry for typos and such, no time to correct it all. Night everyone. Miss you all.