Zombie Apocalypse Preparedness: Missoula, MT

When David saw that our local REI was having the Zombie Apocalypse Preparedness class (and it is FREE), he immediately sent me a text and signed us up.  We wanted to take this class when they offered it last year but I was out of town.  I'm glad he waited for me because I had a lot to learn.

 

They took us in the back storage room for the class. The sign is a little confusing.  They are directing us to go right for the class but then at the bottom are warning us of Zombies and to Keep Out!  We decide to risk it.

They are set up for about 40 people.  We are the 2nd to arrive.  I wondered if the three of us there would be it but they filled a little more than half of the seats.  Most were couples like us, one in the back had a newborn with them.  The guy sitting next to me is a little on the odd side.  You might be thinking, You went to a Zombie Preparedness class and people living in houses Zombies can break into shouldn't throw stones.  But he is weird in the way that makes you think that he thinks the show The Walking Dead is a documentary.  Incidentally, I have never watched a single episode of that show.  David would sometimes watch when I was in the room doing something else or in the next room and the sounds alone are enough to run me off.  Like when the kids were teenagers and were trying to watch Saw in the living room and I could hear it in my office.  I made them turn it off.

 

I'm not sure if she is supposed to be a Zombie or if she was in an earthquake and had to dig out of her house or what.  This poster from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)  was on the door we entered through.  I visited the website listed at the bottom (emergency.cdc.gov).  No mention of Zombies. 

 

The class lasted about 45 minutes and the instructor actually has a masters degree in emergency preparedness (no emphasis on Zombies).  This class is basic emergency preparedness (they were honest about this at registration) with some funny stuff thrown in about Zombies.

There are some handouts and slides to explain the stages of Zombieness?  Zombieism?  

The one that I struggled with the most was smell.  Zombies smell bad.  But several times during the presentation hygiene came up - or more specifically - the possibility that hygiene won't be high on the priority list in any emergency.  We might start to smell bad.  How can I tell if David has turned zombie or not when his BO takes over?  And what about teenaged boys?  They smell bad all of the time.  Do we kill them and not take any chances?  As the mother of a son, I found teenage boys to be generally useless so I might have to give this more thought if the you-know-what hits the fan.  Even our dog Karma didn't like teenage boys.  Every puberty-riddled male that walked through our door made her bark and growl and caused her back hair to get up.  No other group of people or individual person makes her do that.  

You know what they say...dogs sense evil.

 

If you are inclined to deal with your hygiene, these towels might come in handy.  They are only slightly bigger than my thumb.  As their tag line points out it is "The Only Towel That is a Survival Tool".  Could be true.  If David smells good he is less likely to get accidentally hacked up with my Sog Tomahawk.  That would be ironically sad too since he was the one who bought it for me.  

During the presentation they show things that you can buy at REI, obviously this is expected.  But she didn't cram it down our throats and she also showed clothes that can't be purchased there, food that came from the regular grocery store and other things purchased elsewhere.  She also provided websites and information on other companies, some that I had no idea existed.  Like Zombie Tools.  This company is even based here in Missoula and they make tools appropriate for Zombie eradication - swords, knives and bladed instruments of all kinds.  After checking them out, I don't understand how Helena made the #1 city for Zombie Apocalypse survival in Montana.  

 I am set for blades.  David bought me a machete a couple of years ago that I carry when we hike and also the aforementioned Sog tomahawk.  He tried to tell me when I mentioned wanting it that the Sog isn't for chopping wood, it is for killing people.  I said, "What's your point?"  He is a very trusting man.

There were several things I learned in the class that I didn't know and other things I knew but might not have thought about again had she not mentioned them.  I took a lot of notes and it did cross my mind that people (the instructor in particular) probably thought I was the odd one because I was the only one doing that.  Here are a couple of notes I made that need to be shared:

• A shovel is probably your best choice for a weapon/tool combo.  You can use it "to bash a zombies head and to bury your poop".
• Boots are also a good choice as a multi-purpose purchase.  They are good for warmth, difficult terrain and "smashing brains".
• Guns are not a good choice.  Ammo is heavy, you will eventually run out and the noise attracts more zombies.
• Slow moving zombies are called Walkers.  My maiden name is Walker.  Take what you will from that.
• You will get bored.  Pack something to entertain yourself.  I mentioned this to a lady I work with and she immediately produced and gifted to me a tiny deck of cards.  

After class, I thought more about this than I expected.  Not about the zombies but about being prepared in an emergency.  David and I have a lot of the things they suggested we have but I realized they aren't all in one place.  If we had to evacuate our house in a hurry, we would be hard pressed to get it all together.  Iin a place like Montana where it is early November as I write this and we already have snow, we need to be prepared to be outdoors in harsh weather.  It is easy to think we will never need to leave in an emergency or to "shelter-in-place" but it happens.  We have already had a flood at our house (we have hip-waders hanging on a hook in the garage because of this, they could be handy in the future).  We could get snowed in.  There could be a wildfire (there was one not far from here the second year we lived here).  There could be an earthquake. 

I brought up what I was thinking about a few times  over the next several days with David.  He openly told me he was concerned that I might go too far and become a "prepper".  Until I make him dig a pit in the backyard for a secret underground schoolbus shelter (a real thing, look it up), I think he is overreacting that I might be overreacting.  I did investigate some things on the Internet including the CDC website and Ready.gov, the website the instructor suggested.  Most of these had the same lists of things you should have in your Emergency Kit.  It just so happened that I recently emptied a large Rubbermaid tub like the one the instructor showed so I decided it was time for us to make a kit.  Here's what I put in it.  The items with an * are things we already owned, I just had to locate them.

• 2 pair of inexpensive work gloves
• a set of 3 crescent wrenches in various sizes
• box of kitchen trash bags* (good for hygiene or trash)
• box of contractor bags* (can be used to seal up windows/doors for pandemic or hazmat problems)
• roll of duct tape (we had this but I bought a fresh roll)
• 2 Life Straws (lets you drink from potentially contaminated sources without treating first)
• 2 particle respirator masks (we also had these but they are well used so I got new ones, they were $1)
• a BBQ lighter
• 2 small flashlight/glow stick combos in red (the recommended color)
• Notebook/pen/pencil/sharpie*
• Tiny Deck of Cards*
• 2 sticks of Chapstick
• Bug spray & sunscreen
• Toilet paper - wet and dry* variety (this will be the new economy by the way)
• 2 large lantern-style flashlights with extra batteries (one of the flashlights is in the hall by the garage door, one and the batteries in the kit)

I put the kit in the hall closet where I keep my winter weather clothes: snow pants, coats, hats, gloves, scarves.  I could grab what I need when I get The Kit.  David also has a lot of camping stuff in the garage that could be quickly thrown in the truck, stuff like tents and cooking gear).

I also added the recommended first aid items to The Kit:

• Various bandages and bandaids*
• Scissors*
• Non-latex surgical type gloves* (I put in 4 pair and if you are wondering why I already had this, I dye fabric sometimes and it keeps my hands from staining.)
• Medical tape*
• Tweezers (I couldn't find mine which you would know if you looked at my eyebrows so I bought a replacement and one for the kit)
• Instant cold compress
• Bendaryl - liquid* and cream
•  Tylenol* and Advil*
• Asprin (for a heart attack)
• Imodium* (because, diarrhea, if the Life Straws don't work as advertised)
• Petroleum Jelly (could double as "entertainment" in a pinch)
• Hydrocortisone cream
• Rubbing alcohol
• Wet Wipes*

And Food/Water:

• 10 Gallons of water (we had none, they recommend 1 gallon per person for a minimum of 3 days for both hydration and sanitation/hygiene/cooking, more if you have special needs or a pet - which we do).  This the only thing not physically in the kit, it is on a shelf in the garage.  We could chunk in a vehicle of we had to go.  If we were at home, the ground water wasn't contaminated and we could get outside, we are on a well and could pump more.
• 2 cans of Spam (they actually don't recommend this because it is salty and bad for hydration but I had to get something David will eat)
•  2 pkgs Tyson white chicken chunks
• 2 cans of sardines in oil (for me, David will NOT eat these, even in an emergency)
• A large jar of Peanut Butter
• 1 box of 8 Atkins chocolate PB bars (low sugar - David is diabetic)
• 1 box of 4 Kind bars in chocolate/sea salt flavor

If we had to leave the house for more than a week, we wouldn't have enough food so I need to keep working on that. If we stayed here, I always have rice and potatoes and other staples on hand.  There is a Costco in Missoula.  I don't have a membership because I despise that place but they do have this:

 

This is the SMALL one.  If you look in the sidebar there is another bigger one for the bargain price of almost $4,000.  That will have to wait until David digs our secret pit.

 

I needed dry milk to make some bread a few days after the class and found that the store down the street only carries a Zombie Apocalypze size box - like this one of the same size at WalMart.  That is a 4 LB box.  If I bought this for The Kit I would have to buy 4 pounds of chocolate Nesquik to go with it or David would never touch it.

 

Poking around the Internet I also found you can get this Zombie Extermination, Research and Operations kit on the OpticsPlanet website.  For a bargain basement price of just under $24k.  

I don't think I have gone that far over the edge.  I did think that we needed to also prep our vehicles (again, cold and snowy here) so in the back of my car I now have (I also made David a car kit with minor changes):

• A bag of kitty litter (for traction, not hygiene); David is to get sand for his truck, it helps add weight to the tail end and can be used for traction (he had this in the past but we used it up sandbagging during our flood)
• 12 16oz bottles of water
• A fleece blanket*
• A sleeping bag*
• A first aid kit
• Wet Wipes*
• A flashlight and extra batteries
• A change of clothes* (I didn't do this for David)
• A 4 pack box of those same Kind bars (also just me)
• Ice scraper, snow broom*
• I can of Fix-A-Flat

I realized during this exercise that I don't even own jumper cables.  David is presently researching a stand alone jumper kit for my car so we can order it today.  When that arrives, I will make him take me out and show me how to use it.  I also want him to show me how to change my tire.  I did this exactly once something like 20 years ago and I put it on backwards (Remember that mom?).  Who knew you could even do that?  I am also ordering 2 NOAA compliant emergency radios (one for The Kit and one for my car) and 2 tools for breaking auto glass and cutting seat belts (one for each vehicle).  

The last thing they covered that I never really considered was evacuating while at work.  This is particularly stupid of me since I have had to leave my hotel room more than once due to fire alarms.  Once, it wasn't a false alarm and I couldn't find my room keys.  I had to stand at the front desk bra-less in my sleepwear to get a replacement key when they let us back in.  All while meeting a customer for the first time.  Not good.  Now I make sure to leave clothes (including a bra) and shoes readily accessible and put my car and room keys in my purse by the door before I go to bed.  I also added a small first aid kit and flashlight to the bag I carry on the plane when I travel.

The Ready.gov website had a list of items you should keep at your desk in case you have to shelter-in-place or evacuate and walk a long distance (again, prepared for extremes like the cold if you live in Montana).  Since I work at home, I have the whole kit here.  But David could have this happen.  I figure the kit in his truck can double for this.  Since he works at the airport, they have a pretty relaxed dress code and it can get cold in the hanger so he is usually prepared for that.  Being diabetic, he needs to keep some food in his desk and truck.  I am leaving it to him to handle that.  That is probably naive of me but he is a grown man after all.  I am also trying to get better about hanging my keys up when I get home so I know where they are and knowing where my shoes are since I rarely wear them when I am in the house.

There was one thing that they didn't cover in the class that was already ingrained in me by my dad.  Gas.  Not the "I hope you put Gas-X in The Kit" kind of gas but the gas in your car kind.  David is really bad about letting his truck and/or my car if he drove it last get really low on gas.  Less than 1/4 of a tank bothers me but he is okay with waiting for the light to come on.  And then waiting some more.  I finally told him (after more than 25 years of marriage) that this drives me crazy.  What if we had an emergency in the middle of the night?  If the Zombies are coming at 1 am you don't want to have to stop and get gas.  But in all seriousness, what if one of us was sick or injured?  We live 30 miles out of the nearest city with a hospital and we only have a volunteer fire department.  Our next door neighbor recently collapsed at home and had to be taken in an ambulance to Missoula and then taken to Salt Lake by CareFlight.  If I had to stop and get gas during a time like that I would probably freak out.  I am going to train him to start leaving more gas in the vehicles, maybe it will only take another 25 years of nagging gentle reminding.

As a former fireman, dad also preached that you change the batteries in your smoke detectors when the time changes.  Ours were changed recently (they were chirping at us) so instead, we bought replacement 9-volts for all 7 of them to have on hand.  But the other thing I will do now, based on this class, is update the kit at the same time.  I asked the instructor how often she rotates her food and other items that expire (like medicine) and she said she would do it that weekend, when time changed.  That weekend, I put The Kit together and went through our cabinets (food and medicine) and got rid of anything that was overly expired (defined by me as more than a year).  Like the sunscreen that expired in 2007.  For someone that can get a sunburn sitting in my office in a long sleeved shirt with the curtains drawn, it was particularly sad that I let that go so far past.  No more, I have a schedule now.

And because my dad taught me these extra lessons I decided I wanted to pay it forward.  I will be at his house next weekend and his birthday was yesterday so I got him a few things (don't tell him if you see him, I want it to be a surprise):

1. A solar-powered hand-crank emergency radio with am-fm-weather options.
2. A monogrammed (Stanley) Swiss-army style tool that has a mini-ax on the top.

 3.  For his food supply.  He considers Eagle Brand one of the 4 food groups.

I am feeling fairly confident there will be an emergency requiring pancakes at his house next Saturday.  I can teach my grandkids to improvise with their utensils using dad's multi-tool and to crank the radio until NOAA comes in while we ensure these products don't make it past their expiration date. 

My daughter knows how to make a fire by rubbing sticks together.  I think I will schedule her to teach a lesson after breakfast.  It is never too soon to start teaching the next generation of preppers.

 

Ghost Hunting at the Old Montana State Prison: Deer Lodge, MT

A ghost made me throw up.  It could have been the tostadas I ate right before we left but I really think it was the ghost sitting on my dashboard.

David somehow found out about a ghost tour being hosted by the Old Montana State Prison museum.  The prison, which is on the National Register of Historic Places, opened when Montana was still just a territory back in 1871.  It officially closed in 1979 and all inmates were moved to a new facility.  Our tour guide, Mel, tells us that over 200 people died in the prison over the years.  Some murdered, some suicide, some natural causes.  The tour will take us through the prison grounds and out into several different buildings.  After the official tour ends, we will be allowed to go back out anywhere we want (that isn't expressly blocked off or locked) on our own.  Did I mention the tour doesn't even start until 10 pm?  We have to check out with the front desk and leave the premises no later than 2 am.

Deer Lodge is almost 2 hours from our house.  We set out around 7:30 because that's how David and I roll.  If you aren't early, you are late.  I am driving and David is looking up apps to download that have ghost hunting capabilities.  The museum has encouraged people to bring any equipment they want.  After downloading the GhostObserver app, David discovers there is a ghost right in front of him on the dashboard of my car.  I guess I could have been on the hood but I can't see it so I can't be sure.  Right after this happens, I get the very strong feeling that I am going to throw up.  This is not because I am afraid of ghosts, I'm not.  I am pretty sure my grandmother Meriam, who I have written about before, has been hanging out with me since her death on Halloween in 2000.

The feeling goes down a bit but never leaves me the rest of the night.  In fact, about 60 miles into the drive, I have to pull over.  Later, at the exit for Deer Lodge, I go to the first gas station I can find, primarily because we are going to be almost a hour early, but also to see how clean the bathroom is.  I can personally attest to the reasonable cleanliness of the Conoco station there.  I had a pretty intimate look.

 

As a rule, I hate most pictures of me and this one is no exception.  In fairness, it is almost 10 pm, it is cold out, my bed is a distant 100 miles or so away and my tostadas decided to make an encore performance tonight.  It could be worse.

There is a gift shop where the 22 of us here to take this tour mill around waiting to get started.  When the time comes, the guide has us gather around and the stories begin immediately.  She is telling us about a riot that happened back in 1959 and how the National Guard had to be called in.  The assistant warden has his throat cut.  One inmate shoots another (who was also his lover) and then himself.  Somehow a national guardsman ends up with a fragment of the first inmates skull and part of his jaw with three teeth still attached.

 

He has since gifted them to the prison.  They tell us that in the meantime, these have been used in cadaver dog training.

While she is telling us this really detailed, horrific story, a very large spider descends from the ceiling right in the middle of the group.

 

Yeah, not that one but he might as well have been that large.  One woman freaks out and backs away from the group.  Her friends are helpfully telling her there will be more spiders in the prison.  They seem to enjoy her distress.  In the meantime, the real spider is knocked to the floor and becomes the most recent murder victim at this prison.

This tour was worth the drive and the fee.  Even if we hadn't been allowed to go back out alone to our possible death or severe psychological trauma (which we of course had to sign a waver for), it still would have been interesting.  They spent almost 3 hours taking us around and that time flew by.  Even with me not feeling good.

 

Deer Lodge isn't a big city so there isn't a lot of ambient light here.  We are issued flashlights.  David and I are sharing and it is nearly inadequate at times. A few people brought headlamps or higher quality flashlights from home and that helps.  When we went back out on our own we got a second one from the museum and we are barely able to see a few feet in front of us.

 

We spend time both outside and in the prison buildings.  As you walk by these barred cell windows, it does give one the sense of being watched.  I shine my flashlight up in the rooms as we go by and I don't see anything I shouldn't.

 

Both inside and out we stop periodically to hear a story.  Always about a murder or a death or some gruesome act a prisoner committed.  Twice we stop to use the equipment.  There is a device she has that is supposed to allow spirits to communicate through that device (called an EMF reader).  She played a recording back in the gift shop that was taken the week before.  A woman put the recorder by "the hole" (isolation cell, where of course, an inmate died) and something was recorded that I didn't catch all of.  Something about a "redhead".  Our group hears nothing either time.

 

David and I take these opportunities to consult our apps (incidentally, there are others who brought apps or other personal ghost hunting equipment including a woman who took a large number of Polaroid pictures).  The GhostObserver app located a 192 year old ghost that looks something like an alien.  We also see "specters" and "errant souls" but I don't really understand the difference. Frankly, when you are standing in a dark prison at 1 am, does it matter?

 

Some of the rooms still have equipment and furniture in them.  This is the dentist office.  This one doesn't scare me any more than a present day dentist office.  They are all equally terrifying. 

 

Every once in a while, there is a mannequin.  I won't lie, these startle me every time.  The people in the group get strung out and separated sometimes and they never scare me but these always do.

We went around poking around in dark places, talking about scary events, stopping to listen and record what ultimately was nothing, but that doesn't mean nothing happened.

We were inside the original women's prison.  Something like a dozen cells.  Outside, the guide tells us that this is the building were the most physical things have happened.  People have been scratched, touched (inappropriately at times), pushed.  Last weekend a man was pushed so hard his hat flew off.  So all 22 of us and the 3 employees are wandering around two small adjacent rooms, look at the displays, looking in the cells.  There is a cell that has an 8x10 photo of the woman that stayed in there after she murdered her daughter.  They thought she was the one causing the problem and the photo was suggested as a remedy but so far, they say they haven't found it helpful.  The girl that was afraid of the spider (she isn't a girl exactly, she is probably 30ish) is there with 2 other ladies.  One of them says something and then crouches down by the wall like she got dizzy.  Then someone notices her face is isn't right.

Outside, her face is inspected with a lot of flashlight power and there are several red welts on her right cheek.  It looks like she was slapped or scratched.  She says it doesn't hurt only that they feel hot.  Several people feel her face and claim it does feel hot and that the welts are definitely raised.

Here's the thing.  I don't think she faked it.  We were all in the room so it would have been hard for her to hit or scratch herself hard enough to make those marks without someone noticing.  She claims she "isn't a believer" but she seems genuinely shaken up.  The rest of the tour she is more subdued and she kind of hangs back from her friends and the rest of the group preferring to stay next to one of the museum employees.  That employee helpfully offers her an obsidian stone from her pocket that she claims will help ward off evil spirits.

I am not saying a spirit scratched this lady.  I am saying that whatever happened she didn't appear to cause it on purpose and it couldn't easily be explained.  One of the employees theorized that the spirits are upset right now after a group came in recently and burned sage and did some "smudging".  I did think it might be possible that this girl touched the wall where the sage was rubbed and transferred it to her face and turned out to be sensitive but she claimed it didn't itch or hurt and she wasn't rubbing it or acting like it really bothered her like an allergic reaction would.  Later, when we were getting ready to leave, she was in the gift shop and the welts were completely gone.  I had something on the skin under my nose making me tingle and burn a little and even though I did scratch and rub it, when I went in the bathroom later and rinsed it off, it wasn't red at all.  So again, I don't think she faked it.

After the official tour, David and I went back to the building where that happened.  We were playing around with the app and this time, a word came up on the EMF reader:  writer.  Even if the app is throwing up random words, the irony of that specific word wasn't lost on me.  And something DID ultimately happen to us that is really odd but we didn't discover it until today.

At the prison, we came across 3 dead birds.

 

You know I took pictures of all three.  This is bird #2.  Bird number three was completely skeletonized and I found it creepily fascinating.  If I could have brought it home I would have.  I recently ordered a microscope to take photos with and it should be here this week.  I could have added it to the partial chupacabra jaw/teeth segment I have in my car from a walk with Karma over the summer as a specimen.  Unfortunately, the photo of bird 3 I took with my iPhone, because of the angle and darkness, makes it hard to tell what it is.  I didn't ask David if I could bring it home.  I wanted him to let me ride with him on the way back.  The second and third birds were discovered when we were off on our own.

David and I are in the midst of a photography class that we have an assignment due for on Wednesday.  I was setting up to take a picture of him in the backyard today when I saw something over by our well pump.

 

It was a dead (and also headless) bird.

Because this coincidence (it is a coincidence, right?) freaks me out a little, I decided to look up the symbolism of seeing a dead bird.  Happily, it doesn't have to be bad.  The second most common thing I could find (as there were many) was that seeing a dead bird symbolizes a new beginning, akin to getting the Death card in Tarot. 

The most common thing I found was that I should call my county health department because we might have a rampant case of West Nile or Bird Flu.  Or because everything living dies, including birds, and this is Montana, the bird died of natural causes and a fox or a coyote or a mountain lion or a bear or some other carnivore made off with the head.  I am going to explain coincidence this using my original explanation in regards to the woman that had the welps.  

I didn't fake it and sometimes things happen that just can't be explained.

Roller Derby: Missoula, MT

I am not sure why this always happens to me.  I think I am a nice person.  But apparently the people I know generally consider me an aggressive amazon bully.  Last summer, while attending the Logger Days Lumberjack/jill events in Darby, MT, my friend asked me if I was going to sign up to participate next year.  Even though to her knowledge I had never operated a chain saw or swung an ax in my life.  She clearly had no problem imagining I could do those things based on nothing other than her general knowledge of me.  And now, Roller Derby.  I posted a picture on Facebook the day we went and my MOTHER commented, "When will you be on a team" followed by my cousin posting, "I could see you out there". 

I have mixed feelings about all of this and I told David that I am not sure can or should take these comments as a compliment.  He says I totally should.  I can't judge by him though because every woman in his 5 (from the Friends episode) either beat up or violently killed someone in a movie.  He says he wouldn't want me to be a "girly girl".  But having people think you are going to beat them down in the parking lot just for looking in your direction only comes in handy when you are traveling to strange places alone at night.  Which I do a lot so...

I had never been to a roller derby match before and didn't watch it on TV as a kid like both David and our friend Steven said they had done.  So this means I have basically no expectation for the match but as it turns out, I did have some ideas and had stereotyped the players before we even got there.  The ladies were smaller than I expected (there were exceptions but as a group).  And I mean both shorter and lighter.  I would guess that only one woman on the home team and none of the women on the visiting team were as tall as me, though granted, I am tall for a woman at 5'10".  I think every one of  them weighed less than me.  They appear, from the distance I am at, to be generally younger than I thought they would be.  And there were fewer tattoos and wild hair and piercings and outfits than I expected.  And before you do it, David already called me out on my judgy behavior. 

The match hasn't even begun, they are still warming up, when the first injury occurs.

 

It is bad enough to warrant getting out the stretcher.  It isn't bad enough for them to transport her to the hospital in the ambulance parked behind us.  Someone came and picked her up.  I am not sure why the ambulance is from a volunteer fire department of another town rather than one from the City of Missoula or one of the two local hospitals.

 

We were given a program with the ladies derby names and we get a kick out of reading them and talking about the ones we like the best.  Like Knuckle Slambitch.  At one point during the match they called over the intercom for "Fireman Joe" and when he didn't respond after a few minutes they tried again, this time paging "Mr. Slambitch".  David makes it clear he will root for the home team (Hellgate Rollergirls) while Steven decides on the time-honored method of rooting for the team with the best looking girls.  Seems reasonable.

 

I am not sure if his "better looking" method will work.  One of my preconceived notions is completely not true.  This is no T&A show.  The girls all wear yoga or spandex type pants and a basic tank top.  Nothing revealing at all.  The girl with the red arrow (which I added people, it isn't magically following her around) is a "jammer" and she is the only one on the team that can score points (as I understood it).  There is one jammer on each team, you can tell who they are by the star on their helmet.  The "lead jammer" is the only one who can "call it" and end a "jam".

 

After the first several "jams" David and I are still completely confused about the rules.  The score is something like 11-4 and we have no idea how that happened.  The rules are outlined in the program but we didn't find that to be all that helpful.  There are young ladies running around with signs that say "ask a rollergirl" and you can ask them questions about the rules or anything you don't understand.  We eavesdrop when other people near us ask and between that and trying to watch one thing at a time, I start to get the idea. 

 

There is no way to follow all of the action, there is too much going on.  There is so much to watch that there are a LOT of referees (who also have derby names, my favorite was Jeferee).  There is one referee for each jammer and a bunch of others that watch the other players for penalties and things like going out of bounds.  I try, most of the time, to focus on the jammer for Hellgate. 

 

The penalty box - sponsored by Planned Parenthood.  Every time someone is sent there they bring this up..."Pipsqueak is going to the Planned Parenthood penalty box for a forearm foul".  Anyone can go to the penalty box - jammers and blockers alike.  Those people in the gray shirts behind the penalty box are other "officials" though I am not sure what most of them do.

 

This official takes her job very seriously.  She is very precise with her movements and she appears to be the timekeeper.  She starts each jam and notifies everyone when there is a timeout (as she is doing here).  If she ever needs another job, I think she would be an outstanding aircraft marshal.  Not the ones with the guns on the plane, the one with the batons that directs the pilot when he parks the plane at the gate.

 

Each match has 2 halves with a 20 minute halftime.  At halftime we are entertained by a group doing bicycle polo.  The best player out there was a girl wearing shorts and cowboy boots.  All-in-all we found this to be boring and simply proof that if you put a bunch of college kids together, they will find something to do.  This group practices in a parking garage at the University of Montana a couple of times a week.  All are welcome.

 

A little jam action for you.

 

This event takes place in an open-air covered building on the fairgrounds.  The seats, other than the VIP couch to the left there, are wooden bleachers.  By the time the match started, the bleachers are filled and it is standing room only. 

 

The home team won in an exciting down-to-the-last-second move.  After the match the spectators line the rink to congratulate both teams as they skate around and high-five everyone.

 

Despite the uncomfortable seats, David and I will probably go back.  The season is short with only 4 home games, 2 away games and 3 tournaments (none local).  Tickets were $10 at the door and we enjoyed a nice dinner before so, a good date night all around.

Years ago when I worked at a bank one of the gentlemen that worked there was truly afraid of me.  He would return to his cubicle if he saw me approaching.  I never said so much as boo to this man.  When I asked my friend about it he said, "it's probably because your walk is intimidating".  When this man broke his nose at softball practice I was there but I was behind the backstop waiting to bat and he was in center field.  That didn't stop my boss from asking him if it was me that broke his nose.

They say you should embrace who you are but is who you are dictated by what other people see you as?  I spent a lot of time at the skating rink as a kid and always liked it.  Maybe it is time to embrace the inner bruiser everyone else sees in me.  I wonder when Rollergirl tryouts are?

The Color Run: Missoula, MT

Back in the fall of 2012, I got the distinct impression that the universe was trying to tell me to get up off my butt and start running.  The idea crept in on its own and then 3 times in as many days, something came up about 5k runs.  The first was on an airplane.  The airline magazine had an article about "fun runs" including The Color Run.  Normally I don't even read those magazines and I never take them with me but this time, I did both.  Then, the customer I was visiting told me how she was running in a 5k that weekend.  The third day I saw someone wearing a shirt from the Color Run.  And on it went, there were more subtle hints and I kept thinking about it so finally, I looked it up and The Color Run was coming to Dallas (where I still lived then) that next April.  So, I started training.

Then we moved.  By that January I was living in Montana and would not be in Dallas in April to make the run.  Some time passed where I didn't train after moving here...we were learning our area, buying a house, generally getting settled.  But the seed had been planted and the universe isn't one to be put off so easily so eventually I decided to go back to training.

I should preface this by saying that my "running" would be laugh to some.  First, I don't run non-stop, I do run/walk intervals.  I don't know how fast I am running either since I don't actually track that specific part at this point but I do something in the neighborhood of a 12-13 minute mile.  So, not fast.  If you want to get nitpicky about my definitions here, you can probably just stop reading now.

And for those of you worried that this is going to turn into a fitness blog or a sad weight loss tale, you should be okay after this paragraph.  I am overweight.  I have been for most of my 20s and all of my 30s and 40s (so far).  I gained after my 2nd daughter and let me just say:  IT IS ALL MY OWN FAULT.  I am not saying things like stress and life didn't contribute but I am the one who ate what I ate and I am the one that didn't make time to exercise.  I was thin and fit all through my teens and into my 20s and have played lots of sports including at various time:  volleyball, softball, basketball and major league rules women's amateur baseball.  I played a year of soccer.  I threw shot put for the track team.  I ran the 2nd leg of the 4x440 relay.  But even back then, I HATED running long distances.  When the coaches would send us to the track to run sprints or bleachers or lines, I would be happy to lead the way.  If they said, "ya'll go run a mile", I would be the last one dragging in.  So I'm not sure if the universe really knows what it is doing at this point.

The Color Run didn't turn out to be my first 5k the way I thought it would be.  After I had been training (for no particular race at that time) about a month by myself, David decided to start joining me.  And "joining me" is a loose term since we start together and ride back together but don't really stay together the rest of the time.  I do my thing, he does his.  I walk faster, he runs faster.  The company he works for offered to pay for its employees to do the Missoula 5k which was part of the Missoula Marathon weekend.  So he signed himself up and after he mentioned this to me and I asked why he didn't sign me up, he signed me up too.  (Sometimes the obvious isn't so obvious to David.)

But The Color Run is still out there and I decided to look it up and see about doing it in DC or Philadelphia where I could go and see if my daughter would meet me there.  When I went online though, there was a star in Western Montana that had to be Missoula.  They have not had The Color Run here before (they have had other similar races).  So I immediately signed up.  My cousin was planning to come here for a visit at that time so she also signed up but the universe decided it wasn't in the cards for her and so we transferred her registration to David a few weeks before the race.

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Here we are pre-race.  The race is being held at the University of Montana and they suggested you get there early as parking could be a problem.  We got there at 7:30 for an 8:30 start.  We could probably have arrived at 8:15 with no problem.  It is cold out, probably in the low 50s, before the race starts.

 

To help get people warmed up, the girl in the pink on the stage is doing a Zumba style routine for people to follow along to.  We weren't that cold.

 

People are dressed in all manner of things including lots of tutus...

 

even the men.

 

This guy who ran the race in a black suit.  They encourage, but don't require, participants to wear white as much as possible.  The bag that woman has was one of the giveaways along with a t-shirt, a headband (the group in the next photo are all wearing them), and some temporary tattoos.

 

There were lots of crazy socks and we saw a handful of people in full bunny costumes.

 

They do a conga line over to the starting line and the emcee gets everyone to sing "Party in the USA" by Miley Cyrus.  I think everyone but David knew the words.  They have multiple bubble machines going and people are cheering and, like me, taking lots of pictures.  I put an arrow over the emcees head so you could see where he is in relation to me before I tell you what happened next.

 

The Color Run's mascot is this unicorn.  He comes up right in front of us and starts dancing, trying to get either David or the teenage boy next to us to boogie with him but he is SO barking up the wrong trees.  While I am taking his picture - WHAM - I get hit right in the face with something.  The emcee, from the distance he was at - hit me right in the face with a bandana in a plastic sleeve.  He had been throwing things into the crowd before this but I never expected him to get things out this far, much less hit me right in the face.  The bandana fell over the barrier we are standing at and a kid picked it up and carried it off.  I think someone must have said something to him because he came back and gave it to me.  Normally I would have let him keep it but I was still out of sorts from being hit at all so I still have it.

 

They said "run on the left, walk on the right" but that was all pretty quickly abandoned.  David and I got stuck behind this one family a couple of times.  There were so many of them together (in matching family shirts) that they stretched across the whole road and you couldn't get around them on the narrow parts of the trail.  As you go along, there are "color zones" like the blue one here in the photo.  As you go through, they squirt dry color powder on you from bottles.  The color is dye in a cornstarch base and most of the workers aim at your chest or lower.  The only time that didn't happen was in blue when the guy threw it right at my face making me glad I had on sunglasses.  David made it through pink, blue and yellow with barely any color at all other than on his back.  I got a little of each but am really not overly covered at this point.  We both got more in the purple zone than anywhere else until...

 

at the finish line they hand you a color packet to use at the "after party".  We got turquoise, not a color that was also a zone.

 

So as you will see from these after pictures, we did more damage to each other than anyone else did.  David poured most of his packet down the back of my hair and shirt.  The next day, I still had color coming out of my hair when I washed it.

 

 

I took a couple of pictures of the after party but remember the guy in the black suit?  I bet his pictures are better than mine.  He brought a drone.

 

 

 

The Color Run claims to be the Happiest 5k on the Planet and people were definitely happy.  There were a lot of people in fun outfits, there in groups, laughing and having a great time. 

 

Because Missoula is about 30 minutes from our house and we need stuff from the store, we decide to go there before going home.  Some people know right away what we have been doing and others just stare at us like we are really strange.  In the first store a woman says to me "looks like fun" and I told her it was.  At WalMart someone took my picture (they thought I didn't know) so I may end up on the People of Walmart website (though I have to say a little color on my face doesn't seem like much compared to what I have seen on there). 

 

Another woman who sees me stops and says, "you look amazing!"  And do you know what?  I feel amazing too.

 

 

PS.  The color mostly came out of the clothes in one wash.  The skin was a little tougher.  I tried using makeup wipes on my face but just ended up looking like a smurf.  We both had to scrub pretty vigorously with a loofa to get it off.  Even then some of the places where we got sweaty, like around the bracelet we were required to wear, didn't come all of the way off the first time.  Even yesterday, David had some transfer back to his skin from a necklace he wore during the race that was over a week ago now.  So The Color Run may be over, but it will be with us for a while.

Western Montana Fair & Rodeo: Missoula, MT

I may have mentioned before that after moving to Montana, David became interested in photography.  I was already interested but up to this point, he was politely interested in my photographs but not at all interested in the process.  Now, we frequently go out and shoot photos together.  I thought that the fair and rodeo would provide a good lots of good subject matter for such an outing.

David and I have never been to a rodeo together.  I have suggested it in the past but his excuse always has something to do with this...

That's David.  He thinks he was around 16 when this was taken.

I think he felt he would be too nostalgic and possibly would want to try and compete again.  I played men's rules baseball once but I can still attend a professional baseball game without getting weepy.  I realize that I can't do all the things I could when I was younger and only covet the job of the bullpen catcher.  But he was resistant.  Until now.

First, we take in the fair.  I have been to the State Fair of Texas more than once, having lived in the Dallas area most of my life, and I have reasonably low expectations for the fair part due to the size of Missoula in comparison.  There are just over a million people in the whole state of Montana (the 4th largest state in size).  There are over 13 million in the Dallas metro area alone. 

But though this fair is smaller, it still has most of the things you expect at this type of event.  There are shows:  art, quilting, photography (why didn't we enter??), livestock, cooking.  There are the typical fair food vendors.  There are rides.  There is even a place to play bingo, which I talk David into doing. 

That's what BINGO looks like baby!  It cost me $2 for our cards and I won $6 (I had to split the pot with another winner) so I will take that $4 profit, thank you very much.

I need to buy David a treat with my winnings.  He didn't get very far with his card.

Treat acquired!  David's idea of a treat usually involves charred flesh of some kind.

And LOTS of mustard.

One of the most interesting things we stumbled on at the very back corner was the DockDogs competition.  Dogs would run down this platform and launch themselves to either catch a thrown baton or one suspended from a pole.  They land in a pool of water and swim back with their catch. 

If there had been any shade to sit in, we probably would have stayed here a lot longer. But we came as one competition was ending and there was a lull in the action and it was very hot that day.

And it is almost time for the rodeo.  Our plan is to watch the rodeo and then do some night photography on the midway.  We have good seats on the second row in the middle of the arena but next time I think we would try to sit slightly higher because there is a fence in front of us that was an issue for some of the shots we took (or wanted to take).  And yes, I said next time.  Despite saying it felt weird to be on this side of the arena, David really enjoyed himself.  There was some talk between him and a former rodeo teammate on Facebook about riding again when they turn 50 but I feel pretty confident that I can squash that before it becomes serious.  He still has residual knee issues (not to mention really ugly toes) from his former bull riding days.

When David got his camera, we got him a Nikon.  I use a Canon.  This wasn't on purpose but it does solve the issue of borrowing equipment.  Mostly for him since I am notorious for losing my lens caps, or leaving the house without my memory card (because I left it in my computer from our last outing), or not having my docking clip for the tripod.  A friend suggested that this would also be good from a competitive standpoint but this isn't an issue for us.  David and I can be standing side by side and the photo we will end up with is going to be vastly different. 



I asked David to pull out his 5 favorite shots from the day for this post, I think you will notice a theme:

Notice the guy in the background on this one.

All action shots from the rodeo, 3 from bull riding.  I know he liked a couple of his DockDogs photos but when pushed to give me only 5, when we took over 300 pictures EACH, this was the resulting field.







Here are my 5:

None from the events of the rodeo, unless you count the trick roper with the flaming whips, though I took several.  Normally I don't really like taking pictures of people but at this venue, that is really what was primarily available as a subject.

The fair was a little better than I expected and the rodeo was a lot of fun.  We will definitely go back.  Maybe next year, we will enter some of our photos in their contest, we have a few (hundred) to choose from.  We make good photography partners for one reason and maybe this makes us good partners in general.  We see different things even when we are sitting right next to each other.