Wow, two and a half years as Montana Public Radio‘s Capitol Bureau Chief–leading up to today. If you would have told me seven or so years ago, when I started at MTPR as a student anchor of Montana Evening Edition, that I would one day be the station’s Capitol Reporter, I would have called ya bonkers. Frankly, Sally Mauk probably would have, too.

Alas, she hired me and here we are.

I’ve grown and matured as a journalist in a place I’ve been thrilled to call home, among friends I know I’ll have for life. I told myself I wouldn’t leave until I found a job that shot for the moon. It’s crazy how much my new job as Colorado Reporter for Inside Energy fits that criteria. Public radio and TV reporting, on a topic I’m hoping to specialize in, in a major metropolitan area that will let me keep a semblance of my outdoor lifestyle. Ha!

I wouldn’t be in the place I am without the places I’ve been–I have loved this job, talking to myself in a basement.

 

Those of you with a really good memory may recall I went on a several week long journalism fellowship to Pakistan in the  Spring of 2012.

I have been working on a radio documentary on that experience ever since–almost a year.

Finally, it’s done and I’m very pleased with the final product.

If you can, please check it out this Thursday. If you can’t make it, that’s fine–I’ll post the thing here afterward.

In the meantime, here’s a promo:

Thanks to those of you who kept urging me to finish this over the last months. I’ve never worked so long on any project in my life.

I recently turned 27. My friend Colt told me that on average a man reaches his mental and physical peak at this age. I’m sure he read it on the internet or whatever so who knows how true that is, but it piqued my interest.

I began thinking if this year truly does represent my peak, I need to start refining some skills for the slow decline. And one of the first that came to mind was my awful penmanship.

It’s embarrassing, really.

So, I decided the first step toward this goal shall be to try to write in cursive again, for probably the first sincere attempt since Junior High.

Cursive is harder than I remember, and I’m surprised at how many of the cursive letters I straight-up forgot how to write. I had to check some of them on the internet, so who knows if they’re the real ones.

The internet also told me the way I’m holding my pen is not the most technically correct way. I’m now flopping around like an idiot with the pen held between my thumb and middle finger, with the index just providing support. Wacko.

The funny thing is, after about a week, it does seem to be slowly working. My cursive is still pretty juvenile.

Compared to my print though.

 

Baby steps, folks.

 

 

 

The main advertising strategies in Montana’ U.S. Senate race have been set since the very beginning.

Republican Congressman Denny Rehberg has been trying to paint incumbent Democratic Senator Jon Tester as a rubber stamp for the policies of President Barack Obama.

Tester is putting himself across as a common-sense moderate that votes for the good of Montanans.

Most Montanan’s are very familiar with ads like this by now:

President Obama is not popular in Montana, nor are some of his landmark policies.

Tying Senator Tester to Obama has been a consistent strategy of  Rehberg’s campaign.

And Tester has been trying to distance himself in his ads:

But boy oh boy, could things be any more different in blue Hawaii:

The strategy seems to be the exact opposite in Hawaii’s Senate race between Democratic U.S. Representative Mazie Hirono and Republican Governor Linda Lingle.

Hirono tries to tie Lingle to Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney.

The Lingle campaign and supporting organizations try to put her across as a moderate who supports President Obama at times. Check out these two ads:

 

From what I hear, Hawaii is different from Montana in other ways too.

A little while back I had my station’s logo embroidered onto my gear bag.

It totally changes the way I think about it, and how I feel wearing it.

It doesn’t  hurt that having a windowless office in the basement of the capitol building already makes me feel like I have a batcave.

If the local police commissioner wants to make a microphone spotlight to shine on darkened clouds whenever help is needed, that’s fine by me.

He should know that I don’t typically work nights, though.

 

Blink and you miss it, I guess. I purchased this little black jellybean of a car early this year on a whim.

It seems nice, right?

Yeah, it’s the coolest car on the road, for about four total weeks of the year:

Two weeks in late spring after the snow is done falling, but before it gets so hot that you notice its lack of air conditioning and cruise control on Summer getaways.

And two weeks in early fall when it cools off enough to roll the windows back up, but before the streets ice up the slightest bit and I violently spin donuts trying to put it in first.

So, those two weeks are done.

Here’s looking at you, May 15th.

If you’re like everybody I know–you’ve never used Google+ other than to sign up for it and then say to yourself, “Wait, nobody’s using this–this is lame.”

Totally understandable and true.

However, I’ve been layed-up this past week with a knee surgery and in my free time I decided I really wanted to give G+ a solid try.

My conclusion–nobody uses it still and therefore it’s still lame. BUT, I am now a full and complete believer in ‘Google+ Hangouts’

If you’ve never done it, dust off your Google+ account and try it–RIGHT NOW!

It’s Google’s video call service and yes–it’s pretty much just like Skype. But, it is absolutely worth trying just for the effects.

In a stroke of pure Googality, you can do things like wear a pirate hat or a dog face that follows your face as you move in front of the webcam.

I’ve done probably five or six hangouts now and pretty much the only thing we do is mess with the effects–and it doesn’t seem to get old.

There is another pretty cool feature where you can watch YouTube videos together, which my old roommate Sean and I messed around with yesterday.

In conclusion, Hangouts are so cool that I may consider  using Google+ for some social networking just as a thank you.

Just kidding, that’s ridiculous.

 

P.S. If you ever wanna Hangout, just look me up. I’m quasi-obsessed.

I’m hiking this Forest Service trail just to the west of the town Polebridge, outside Glacier National Park.

I’m hiking with this hip nurse couple, Pat and Lisa, that I had just met the night before while biking the Going to the Sun Road under the full moon. That was a whole other experience, incidentally, but that’s not what we’re discussing today.

We’re talking Q-tips.

Pat and Lisa swear that Q-tips are bad for you. Horrible for you. One of the biggest marketing scams in history.

They were telling me about this on our pleasant hike through huckleberry patches. It dang near ruined the hike.

Ok, not really. But I LOVE Q-tips. They feel so good and fresh and cleannnn.

Lisa and Pat say your ear wax naturally pushes the naughty stuff out and using a cotton swab actually just shoves it all deeper.

They swore off the things a long time ago and urged me to do the same.

I haven’t used one since, and have really mixed feelings.

I’m trying to shake the water out of my head after a shower and use a towel corner to clean what I can in there.

And then Lisa sends me a text a couple days ago:

“Totally used a qtip after a year and it felt awesome! Thought I would divulge or more fess up! Sort of like AA”

Really mixed feelings.

There are lessons to be found in everything, right?

I set out last weekend on what I wanted to be a vacation of personal discovery.  A week of unscripted adventure in Jackson, Wyoming.

It has been an adventure, and a week of firsts.

I picked up my first hitchhiker. Although, it was more of a dream come true than an act of selfless compassion, seeing as  she was an attractive Stanford undergrad.

It wasn’t my first time sleeping in a teepee, but I can safely say it’s one of the first times. The dwelling you see here sits out behind my cousin Mike’s house. He lives there with his beautiful and hardcore girlfriend, Beverly (whom I’m pretty sure could out-hunt, out-fish and out-bike me without scratching her somewhat poorly applied fingernail polish.)

I stayed either in the Teepee or on Mike and Bev’s couch for a couple days. Bev took me to yoga. The three of us went fishing and ate Thai food. We fished the Hoback and Snake rivers.

Incidentally, it was the first time I’ve caught a fish in another state on a fly rod.

It could have gone on like this forever–me catching tiny fish, Mike congratulating me, rubbing elbows at Jackson’s classiest establishments and seeing absurdly good Wes Anderson movies at the Teton Theatre.

But this was a quest which could not be solely derived from the mooching of  family hospitality.

NO!

This was a quest of self-discovery, after all.

I have long wanted to do a multi-day backpacking trip by myself–to prove I could connect all the dots and not die.

So I mooched off Mike and Bev’s knowledge of the Jackson area, and mooched their map and compass and let them design a three-day route for me in Grand Teton National Park.

It began with a ferry ride across the park’s Jenny Lake. I followed throngs of tourists along a one mile path to ‘Inspiration Point’, a name I found strange owing to the fact it looked out onto the rather plain-looking lake and away from the far more inspiring Tetons.

After Inspiration Point, the crowds quickly dissipated and I began to feel more like the solo trekker I imagined. There were still plenty of other hikers, but at least it didn’t feel like Splash Mountain any more.

The grade was easy, the moose were present, and afternoon sunlight glittered from the shimmering wings of songbirds as they took turns landing on my shoulder for whistled duets.

Cascade Canyon is a must see, by the way, if you ever do make it to Teton.

I spent the first night at a campsite just below Lake Solitude, my first destination.

It was a pretty tough situation to beat. But in terms of quasi-masculine displays of self-sufficiency–I had bigger fish to fry.

My goal for the second day was to hike down into Grizzly Bear Lake, on the other side of a high divide from Lake Solitude. Grizzly Bear Lake is off-trail, and the state plants fish in it. Both Mike and Bev had heard it’s pretty awesome.

I humped my way up that divide, which could have just as easily been a hike up K2 for how much I was wheezing and hallucinating.

From the top of this pass I could look down onto Grizzly Bear Lake. Making my way down off the trail proved a bigger challenge than I expected, especially for someone with zero internal navigation ability.

I got cliffed-out a few times before deciding to set up camp on a shelf above the lake.

I then grabbed my rod and slowly made my way down a steep scree field to the lake shore–descending into what was unquestionably one of the most beautiful environments I have ever seen. The wildflowers were so thick underfoot that each step felt a kind of misdemeanor.

The lake had absolutely no evidence of humanity’s presence. I could no longer see the trails on the slope behind me, there were certainly no trails in front of me.

It is a truly sublime place. I was entirely alone and emotionally serene.

A small waterfall feeds the lake’s West side, all flowing to an outlet in the Northeast corner. I found the fish there, holed up around a log jam, and it was on.

I don’t know if the fish were dumb, or inexperienced, or if they were just trying to contribute to my perfect evening. I do know they were biting and I pulled at least six of them by dangling streamers or nymphs right in front of their face.

Evening evolved into early twilight and I made my way back up the scree field. Looking back I saw the ripples of rising fish all over the lake. They weren’t just at the outlet after all.

I slept in and read for hours the next day, slogging my way back up to the trail mid-afternoon and hiking out through Paintbrush Canyon, equally as beautiful as Cascade.

I needed to hitchhike the four or so miles to my car, parked back at the Jenny Lake Campground. It was my first time really hitchhiking, so I experienced both sides of that culture on this trip.

I was picked up by a middle-aged couple in a little compact, listening to electronica and groovin’ on the sunset. The first thing they did when I sat in the back was offer me a PBR.

“Wow, nothing could get me down, ” I’m thinking.

Or, so I was thinking.

The couple dropped me off at my car, telling me to ‘pay it forward.’

Totally, I replied.

I went to reach for my keys and, what’s this? Oh, that’s funny, the seam on the front zipper of my bag is split.

And everything I had been keeping in that pocket was still there–except for my keys.

Of course, it would have been far to logical for me to have a spare somewhere on the car–plus I have this stupid alarm system that would have woken up the entire park if I tried to get in.

So I sat there by my car, laughing and cursing.

“Mission 99% Accomplished,” I say to myself, taking out my phone. And on this journey, supposedly proving my self-sufficiency, I called Bev and mooched a  2-hour round-trip ride back to their house.

I woke up the next day (Saturday), wondering what to do. Do I use Bev’s AAA to get a locksmith to break into my car, disable the alarm and make me a new key? Is there some parcel company that ships on Sunday, so I could get my spare sent quickly over?

Then I think of one last ditch idea. With Bev watching, I pull my tent out of my backpack, reach into the tent’s pockets…and pull out my keys.

heh, heh.

Bev wasn’t able to take me back into the Park (frankly, I think I already am ride-indebted to her forever). I did mooch their jeep into Jackson though with a cardboard sign reading “South Jenny Lake Campground” and hitched a ride back out to my car.

The rest of the day was spent aimlessly wandering Jackson before an epic evening mountain bike ride Mike described as a “Jackson Classic.”

We finished at a cafe where Mike and I ordered burgers topped with hotdogs topped with bacon. Bev had a chicken wrap.

I’m driving home soon, with hours of road time to find my lessons.

See some more pictures from my trip on this Facebook album.