Back in Missoula!!!!

Phil and I have spent the past few days back in Missoula, which is where we met on our "montana afoot and afloat" course last september. missoula definitely seems like the place to be around in montana, especially if you are of our generation. you can meet almost every type of person you can imagine here. it almost feels like a mini-utopia i would even venture to say. for example, if you forget to lock up your bike for a few hours while you go swimming and hiking, and it even has saddle bags full of stuff on it, you may just be lucky enough to come back and find your bike completely unharmed. if you are a traveler passing thru town and you need a place to stay, you may just run across The Lab, which is one of the coolest houses I've ever stayed at. There are 7 or 8 residents but several more people have been passing thru in the past 3 nights that we've camped in their yard. They have an absolutely beautiful and bountiful garden that reminded me of K.K. and Ira's biodynamic farm back in Long Island (PS if you want to learn more about KK you can type KK Haspel into youtube's search engine and there's a 6 minute video segment about her and her garden). They also keep chickens for eggs. There's a treehouse bed you can stay in if you're passing through, and there's also a cargo net and some hammocks hanging from the porch ceiling. These along with several couches are occupied all the time by people just hangin' out, talking or making food or watching movies outside on the projector or whatever. Their fridge is covered in thank you notes of the people who have passed thru just in the past few days; Phil and I will add one soon as well.
While in Missoula we got to meet up with 2 of our past WRFI instructors as well as a major WRFI coordinator. First we went to their office, where we traded news and got some long overdue WRFI mugs that were supposed to be given out on course. Then we met another on the University's campus and looked around at an exhibit of Pulitzer-prize winning photos... they were all very depressing and kind of a slap-in-the-face reality check for ya. The instructor we met at the exhibit, whom we call Fancy because of his fancy snowpants, offered to take us floating on the Clark Fork River and then end up back at his house for dinner and drinks. So we ended up spending most of the day with Fancy! Phil got to test out his class II whitewater skills in a single person kayak, while Fancy and I shared a big blow-up "ducky" kayak, where I did practically no paddling whatsoever. When we pulled out I took my bike (which we'd dropped off) back up the river to where we'd left the car, and then brought both back down to the pull-out site. It was a really, really good time =0)
I think we're leaving today, but maybe tomorrow. We've got a week's worth of riding left! I think I am off to get a dollar slice of pizza at Pizza Pipeline. praise richard.