Montana Trip...
Well, I'm sitting in the airport terminal in Montana right now. Just got done with a new model intro from Yamaha. It was my first time at one of these things and hopefully not the last. Pretty much the whole weekend we got treated like rich bastards. We stayed at this ranch resort type place, way out in the country. Basically, if this place didn't have its own zip code, it should have. I think the actual number was around 20,000 acres, ridiculously huge. Anyway, we found out early on that we were going to be staying in "tents"...needless to say, you can guess the first acronym out of our mouths, WTF. But, as it turns out, these happened to be giant ass tents, larger than my living room, and filled with better furniture. It had a typical, centralized campsite bathroom location but the bathrooms were complete with heated floors, overhead “rain” type shower heads and a décor rivaling that of a $400 a night Vegas suite. As we soon found out, this place tended to cater more to the super-rich types, corporation execs, athletes, film/TV starts, etc.
The only thing that rivaled the accommodations was the food. We basically had a chef-prepared gourmet meal for every meal of the day, save for breakfast, which remained traditional. The aforementioned chef (I can’t recall his name) was recently featured on the Food Network. So Courtney, if you are watching and you see a chef from the Paws Up Ranch, you can definitely be jealous of the fact that I got to eat his food :) Everything was a crazy sounding as it was good. Things like elk ribs with a cherry topping, shrimp cocktail with a fruit/guacamole mixture, and even a lemon/olive oil ice cream. It all sounds nuts but it was wonderful. By the end of the trip, we had concluded that rich people must have just gotten tired of regular gourmet food, and decided to put the most obscene couldn’t-taste-good-at-all things together, and pay a chef enough money to actually make them taste great.
The riding was an interesting experience as well. All of our riding was done within these 20,000 acres of privately owned land, which was a new experience for me. I am used to public lands and trails, where you have to obey the signs, stay on the trails, and not so much as fart on a helpless little tree sapling. Quite the contrary is private land. Basically you can do whatever the fuck you want. Which I was used to as far as the sand dunes and such, but this was out in the forest, with trees, and pastures, and logs, and a host of other things I wasn’t used to running over. So it may seem trivial to someone who’s never ridden, but it was cool to just be able to have free rein over an environment like that.
The coolest things I saw all weekend:
A Bald Eagle- I had never seen one in real life before and it’s such an iconic creature, that it was cool to actually see one in the wild.
“Hills Have Eyes” Style Encampments- We ran across these crazy hippies living out in the wilderness out of 1960s and 70s automobiles. Their camp was complete with hand-painted signs, 1800s mining equipment, a leprechaun flag, and a multitude of animal horns and antlers affixed to a variety of vehicles. One of the squatters was named “Two Gun” and the other I can’t recall, but I’m sure it was something that was equally comical yet unsettling at the same time. The best part, “Two Gun” actually carried a side arm.
The Bovine Mating Ritual- We ran across a herd of cattle on one of the trails and decided to hang out and get a couple of shots. To our surprise we had “walked in” on a bull and a couple cows. Being “city boys” we couldn’t help but stand and watch the miracle that was unfolding in front of us. It seemed pretty frustrating for the bull though, he would constantly try to mount the cows and repeatedly miss his mark. Not that he wasn’t equipped for the job, his unit resembled more of a carrot-shaped walking stick than anything else, needless to say I felt bad for the cow. The only thing more frightening than his cock was the fact that each time he made a pass at the cows, he got 10 feet closer to us. So when he got within about 15 feet, and started starting at us, we decided it was time to leave. I didn’t want anything to do with the business of any of his “ends”.
Well I am now finishing this post from SLC, and if you read manifestation of complete and udder boredom (otherwise known as layover) then let me know and you’ll get a high five.
The only thing that rivaled the accommodations was the food. We basically had a chef-prepared gourmet meal for every meal of the day, save for breakfast, which remained traditional. The aforementioned chef (I can’t recall his name) was recently featured on the Food Network. So Courtney, if you are watching and you see a chef from the Paws Up Ranch, you can definitely be jealous of the fact that I got to eat his food :) Everything was a crazy sounding as it was good. Things like elk ribs with a cherry topping, shrimp cocktail with a fruit/guacamole mixture, and even a lemon/olive oil ice cream. It all sounds nuts but it was wonderful. By the end of the trip, we had concluded that rich people must have just gotten tired of regular gourmet food, and decided to put the most obscene couldn’t-taste-good-at-all things together, and pay a chef enough money to actually make them taste great.
The riding was an interesting experience as well. All of our riding was done within these 20,000 acres of privately owned land, which was a new experience for me. I am used to public lands and trails, where you have to obey the signs, stay on the trails, and not so much as fart on a helpless little tree sapling. Quite the contrary is private land. Basically you can do whatever the fuck you want. Which I was used to as far as the sand dunes and such, but this was out in the forest, with trees, and pastures, and logs, and a host of other things I wasn’t used to running over. So it may seem trivial to someone who’s never ridden, but it was cool to just be able to have free rein over an environment like that.
The coolest things I saw all weekend:
A Bald Eagle- I had never seen one in real life before and it’s such an iconic creature, that it was cool to actually see one in the wild.
“Hills Have Eyes” Style Encampments- We ran across these crazy hippies living out in the wilderness out of 1960s and 70s automobiles. Their camp was complete with hand-painted signs, 1800s mining equipment, a leprechaun flag, and a multitude of animal horns and antlers affixed to a variety of vehicles. One of the squatters was named “Two Gun” and the other I can’t recall, but I’m sure it was something that was equally comical yet unsettling at the same time. The best part, “Two Gun” actually carried a side arm.
The Bovine Mating Ritual- We ran across a herd of cattle on one of the trails and decided to hang out and get a couple of shots. To our surprise we had “walked in” on a bull and a couple cows. Being “city boys” we couldn’t help but stand and watch the miracle that was unfolding in front of us. It seemed pretty frustrating for the bull though, he would constantly try to mount the cows and repeatedly miss his mark. Not that he wasn’t equipped for the job, his unit resembled more of a carrot-shaped walking stick than anything else, needless to say I felt bad for the cow. The only thing more frightening than his cock was the fact that each time he made a pass at the cows, he got 10 feet closer to us. So when he got within about 15 feet, and started starting at us, we decided it was time to leave. I didn’t want anything to do with the business of any of his “ends”.
Well I am now finishing this post from SLC, and if you read manifestation of complete and udder boredom (otherwise known as layover) then let me know and you’ll get a high five.