We were rolling through Ronan, Montana, and I just wanted to be home. That's not a knock on Ronan. It's a fine town sitting in the Flathead Valley with the Mission Mountains staring you down from the east like they're judging your life. Under different circumstances, I'd have pulled over and taken it all in. Today was not that day.

The reason was numbness that only a root canal can produce. If you've never had one, the procedure itself isn't as bad as the reputation suggests, but the aftermath is its own special project. Your whole face feels like it went three rounds and lost. Combine that with hours in the car, and the math gets ugly fast.

I used to love being on the road. I did. The kind of restlessness that pulls you toward wide open spaces doesn't just switch off because your mouth hurts. But there's an honesty that creeps in on the hard days, a moment where you stop performing adventure and just admit you're tired and sore and ready for your own couch.

Still, those mountains were out there doing their thing, indifferent and enormous, draped in snow that catches the afternoon light in a way that's genuinely unfair. You look up, and for a second the jaw stops talking.

June 1st Never Sits Still

June 1st has shown up reliably for nearly two decades, and apparently so has the impulse to race, camp, philosophize, and narrowly avoid rattlesnakes. This On This Day reflection traces the thread from a double race weekend in Montana to a wilderness gauntlet in Paradise Valley and a few quieter years in between. The date has a personality, and it is restless.

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There’s a moment every year that sneaks up on me like a rogue root on a trail descent. Someone’s birthday is coming, and I have absolutely no idea what to get them. Not because I don’t care. Because I care too much and the options are paralyzing. So naturally, I did what any reasonable person does with a nagging problem... I started thinking of an app.

The idea is pretty straightforward. A person sits down, answers ten well-crafted questions, and an AI uses those responses to generate five personalized gift ideas that would actually mean something to them. Not another candle. Not a gift card. Something real.

The tricky part, and I’ll admit this kept me staring out windows longer than I’d like, is that gift giving is fundamentally about communication. You’re handing someone an object, an experience, a concert ticket, whatever, and saying: I see you. I thought about you. Most of the time it lands as a physical thing, and that’s where the guesswork gets genuinely frustrating.

So the question I keep turning over is whether ten thoughtful questions can give an AI enough signal to reliably connect someone’s answers to something that would make them happy. Not just satisfied. Actually happy. Because happiness is wildly subjective, and I’m honestly not sure the research and technology are there yet to bridge that gap with any real confidence.

But I keep thinking about it. Which probably means I should just build the thing and find out. The worst outcome is a list of five mediocre gift suggestions, and honestly, that’s already better than what most of us are working with in December.

May 31st’s Long Strange Trip

May 31st has a long history of restlessness, from a new apartment in Connecticut to brain-machine interface fiction to desert photography to quiet mountain ranges nobody bothers to visit. Twenty-plus years of posts and the throughline is pretty clear: always moving, always looking for the next thing. Some anniversaries are tidy. This one sprawls.

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A couple of weeks ago we made our first trip of the season to Legacy Bike Park, which, if you know us, means we immediately tempted fate. I texted our friend Constantine the day before with a fair warning: rain and snow were likely, and expectations should be low. He wisely stayed home.

The drive out took forever. Major construction on the route made it longer than the trip to Kellogg, which is saying something. But we arrived to beautiful scenery, a genuinely stunning sunset framed through the pines. The view that makes you forget the tent collapsed. Not a bad start.

The next day I had a pedal pass and things were going well until the rain arrived and reminded us who was in charge. We burned through all our shower water cleaning the bikes, went to bed, and woke up to snow. The tent had collapsed. We, fortunately, were in the van, warm and caffeinated, quietly accepting that Sunday was a write-off. We had planned to leave but I had a root canal Monday morning, so we stayed another night like two people with absolutely no good options.

Then Sunday afternoon happened. Clouds parted, sun came out, trails started to dry. We caught the shuttle and got a couple of laps in. After everything, it felt like an actual victory.

Legacy has a way of teaching the same lesson repeatedly until it sticks: buy shuttle tickets last minute if the weather cooperates, lean on a pedal pass if it doesn’t, and never, ever fully trust a forecast. We keep learning this. We keep forgetting it.

The laps were worth it. Despite the soggy, snow-dusted, and tent-flattening conditions, there was just enough fun to make the weekend feel less like a mistake and more like the inevitable cost of being out there. I think.

May 30th, Plans Optional

May 30th has a long, storied history of consistently rewriting our plans, from the uncertainty of waiting on a credit check in Connecticut to hammock naps, desert memories, and mule train drama. Then Sluice Box State Park showed up in 2015 and reminded me that some places just earn a slow walk. No bikes needed, which is almost something I never say. Whether it’s a trip taking an unexpected turn, the plan is always just where the story begins.

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Yesterday threaded together nicely, which felt like a minor victory given how these things usually go. At noon I slipped out for a walk around Silver Lagoon, the little children’s fishing pond tucked into Missoula’s east side. The turtles were out doing their thing on a submerged log, stacked up like they were posing for a nature magazine, completely unbothered by anything happening in the world. Hard not to respect that energy.

Got back home, knocked out the rest of the afternoon, and then Snuggles arrived early, which meant we actually had a chance to get the bikes out. One of our first rides of the year, maybe second. We climbed University Mountain Access Road, cut across the midsection on one of my favorite trails, the kind that makes you feel like you earned something just by showing up.

The trouble started on the descent. Somewhere through the gut of the mountain, the sky made a quiet decision and raindrops began tapping our helmets. Not dramatic. Just persistent. By the time we rolled back to the truck, we were damp in that specific way that takes longer to dry than you expect, and the bikes had collected a generous coating of Missoula trail loam, the dark, not-so-clingy kind that gets into places you forget exist.

Back home, neighbor leans over and asks the obvious question, wanting to know if we had stayed dry. I turned it over for a second. Thought about the lupine-lined trail on the way up, the big ponderosas standing quiet in the trees, that brief window before the rain arrived when everything felt exactly right.

“Almost,” I said.

May 29th, Always Becoming

Twenty-two years of May 29ths, and Bill has been racing, riding, speculating, and tinkering his way through all of them. From a rainy Montana road race to a possessed Trek Fuel to a tiny wooden figure discovered behind the oregano, this date has a habit of delivering the unexpected. Some dates just have a personality.

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The first trail I’d been scoping had been dug up entirely. Not rerouted, not improved, just... gone. I walked my bike over to the actual path and found trees down everywhere across it. Whoever’s responsible apparently looked at the situation and decided closing it was easier than clearing it. Cool. Great. Very cool.

So I dropped down to the Bear Right, a trail I hadn’t ridden since I went over the bars and broke my neck on it, which honestly felt like a poetic moment to get back on the horse. Also blocked. Trees across the whole thing. Missoula’s been taking hits like this all over, Blue Mountain, Dead Man’s Downhill, parts of Deer Creek, wind damage just quietly erasing trails people have ridden for decades. I was pissed. More than the trails, though, I’ve been losing my grip on things in general, stressed in ways I can’t explain or shake, watching the people around me grind themselves down and wondering if that’s just what happens now.

Eventually I stopped fighting it and just rode what was left. Sidewinder, Son of Sidewinder, Sound of Music. That last one brought something back. Railing down it, not thinking, just moving. The full ride clocked ninety minutes and ended better than it started.

I’m not done yet. There are too many trails I haven’t touched, too much gear I haven’t justified buying. The frustration is real, but so is the reason to keep going out there.

May 28th Never Plays Nice

May 28th has a long history of demanding something, whether it’s chasing a peloton up a Montana mountain pass, grinding through a 24-hour solo race, or just figuring out where to ride when it’s snowing again. Looking back across two decades of posts from this date, the through line is simple: showing up, whatever that looked like that particular year.

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The lupine was out along the trail, those big purple clusters lining the edges of the dirt road like someone had actually put thought into the landscaping. Nobody did, of course, which is the whole point. The conifers were doing their thing overhead, the sky was doing its overcast but cooperative thing, and for a couple of hours everything worked the way it was supposed to.

Then evening came and it poured. I stood at the window, mildly annoyed, watching the rain kill my walk-and-maybe-the-store plans. But here’s the thing: the bike was already ridden. Already cleaned. I didn’t have to rescue it from the mud or talk myself out of being irritated that the weather had stolen something I cared about. The frustration just... didn’t have anywhere to land.

Bike park season is close. The legs felt good on the climb. The flowers were out.

May 27th Keeps Showing Up

Twenty-plus years of May 27ths reveal a through-line of restless movement, honest racing results, quiet grief, and muddy Wednesday night rides. It is not a landmark date, just a persistent one that keeps asking whether you showed up. Turns out the answer has always been complicated, and worth remembering.

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Then I felt the shed calling.

The bike parks had opened while we were away and I’d been feeling a little left out, so I thought I’d just pull Mo’s bike out and give it a wash. Fifteen minutes, tops. Except then Mo got involved, and then the tire was off, and then we were on the floor wrestling with a Cush Core type insert, which, if you haven’t had the pleasure, is essentially a foam sausage that refuses to cooperate on its best day. That was just the wheels. By the time we got there, we still needed new handlebars, a fork service, a shock service... I was standing in the sun, losing tools, completely in over my head.

I got the handlebars on. Then I bailed. Put everything away, went inside, sat down.

But it was already too late. The rest of the day just kind of collapsed inward. That particular flavor of burnout where life feels finished, motivation feels permanently gone, and you can’t quite explain why a half-assembled bike caused an existential moment. You know the one.

But here we are. New day. Like Blue asleep in a sunbeam, completely unbothered, which feels like the right energy to borrow. I’m rested, I’m calm, and I’m actually going to do nothing today. Well, besides go to work.

There’s an old saying: don’t talk to the police, don’t sleep on the tracks. Meaning, some trouble you just don’t need to invite. The shed is closed today. I’m leaving it alone.

May 26th Has Always Been a Lot

May 26th has a long history of big efforts, hard truths, and at least one robot bear. From Missoula singletrack in 2004 to a 24-hour race win in 2012, this date has never been short on material. A look back at what this day has meant across two decades of riding, racing, and wandering.

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Then an email arrives asking me to hide my Strava tracks because, apparently, people are shuttling. I sat with that for a moment. The response I wanted to send was short, direct, and would have made exactly zero friends in the Missoula … wait, #missoulaisashithole. I bit my tongue so hard I probably owe it an apology. One thing at a time, I kept telling myself, even as the aggravations continued their cheerful little parade. But… Fuck them. So fed up with human powered roadie shit-heads.

The cat, for his part, had absolutely no notes on any of this. He was parked on the blanket like a small, warm, indifferent loaf, eyes half-closed, completely unbothered by the chaos of human scheduling and petty inbox drama. There is a lesson in there somewhere, or at least a lifestyle worth considering.

The Canadian Grand Prix is tonight, and by most forecasts, rain is expected in Montreal. Wet-weather Formula 1 racing is its own particular kind of theater, the day hands you nonsense, and then it hands you something genuinely worth watching.

The coffee helped too. It always does.

May 25th Never Sits Still

May 25th has a two-decade history of restless energy, from frantic housing searches and brutal training rides to rainy-day tourist hikes and a bear with a very complicated escape plan. Looking back at the full run of posts, it’s clear this date has never once been boring. Some days just have a personality, and this one is relentlessly, cheerfully unresolved.

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The trouble is I am nowhere near regulated. After my coaching session I switched to my Oura Ring Advisor and ended up in a full argument with an AI, eventually just typing “Fuck off” over and over. Yesterday did not help. Two back-to-back social gatherings, the kind that hollow you out at the cellular level. I did what I always do and disappeared mid-event, slipping away for a two-mile ride and a thousand feet of climbing just to breathe. Later, Mo found me glazed over on a couch and nudged me toward a hike so she could regulate too. The second gathering was worse, long drawn-out mini conversations that went nowhere, everyone trying to leave and getting pulled back in. I survived by turning the whole room into little plushies in my head, actually rendering them in an AI program, which probably says something about me I should examine later.

Somewhere on the drive home I slipped into a full disregulated trance.

This morning I keep drifting back two weekends, when the dysregulation was still manageable, when I was watching my daughter’s family charge through a Spartan race in Bigfork, cheering them through the mud and the obstacles and the whole glorious mess of it. That felt good. And this week's target, friends, that feels good too. But not my nervous system.

Two weeks later I am totally gone, and I honestly do not know if I am coming back. I am just not comfortable existing right now. Sometimes that is the most accurate thing you can say.

May 24th Keeps Showing Up

Nineteen years of May 24ths add up to something: race wins, crash recoveries, muddy midnight laps, and a few quiet moments on the coast. This date has a habit of showing up with something worth writing about. Turns out it always did.

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Coach launches in. HRV holding steady, resting heart rate solid despite the mental load... today calls for moderate Zone 2 cycling, flat terrain, forty-five to sixty minutes. Just enough to help with circulation, mood, and, apparently, constipation. That last one lands with the gravitas it deserves. There are flags: back sensitivity, hydration, fiber. My sleep efficiency is sitting at seventy-five percent, which coach interprets as stress being quietly processed in the background. Stay grounded in the social event, I’m told. Treat it as part of the foundation, not a distraction from it. Good advice, genuinely. I’m nodding along, absorbing it all.

And then my mind just... drifts. Last night’s conversations start replaying. Looping. The kind of mental replay you can’t really turn off, like a podcast you didn’t subscribe to. Coach is still talking. I know this. The words are technically reaching my ears.

Then Mo’s voice cuts right through everything. “Time to drive to Eden.”

Just like that. Back in the room. I have no idea what coach said after that, and honestly, it didn’t matter.

There’s something worth sitting with there. Not every important instruction makes it through. But some voices don’t compete for your attention... they just end the meeting.

May 23rd’s Long Strange Road

A look back at May 23rds spanning two decades, from a relocation freakout in 2001 to a mountain bike race in Idaho to a dentist chair dream in 2012. The date has a habit of catching life mid-stride. Every year, going somewhere.

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On top of Valley Bank sit two sculptures by local artist Kayz Lynn, commissioned by bank VP Dan Hensley, who apparently walked into a meeting one day and said, essentially, “put a robber on the roof.” Lynn found this hilarious, which is the correct response, and she ran with it. The robber wears a black hat and a look of pure panic. A small terrier in a vest marked “VB” nips at his heels, defending the bank with considerably more urgency than any alarm system.

The joke, though, had a missing piece for years. The robber kept looking back at nothing. A sheriff had always been part of the plan, described as waiting just around the corner, but he simply never showed up. The robber ran alone. The dog did his best. The punchline just... hung there.

Apparently it takes a 113th anniversary and enough tourist foot traffic to finally close the loop. Around 2024, the sheriff was commissioned and installed, tucked around the corner like he has all the time in the world, which honestly feels right for a small Montana town. My photo caught both of them without even trying, the full gag finally complete after years of running on half a joke.

There’s something quietly satisfying about a town that commits to a bit this thoroughly. No grand statement, no plaque explaining the deeper meaning. Just a robber, a dog, a sheriff, and a rooftop in Kalispell doing exactly what good public art is supposed to do: make you stop, look up, and laugh before you even know why.

May 21st Never Plays It Safe

May 21st has a long history of being a lot: graduation chaos and alcohol poisoning in 2001, a brilliantly written solo adventure personal ad in 2011, failed cabin trips, quiet pandemic exhales, and snowy lakeside rides with Snuggles in 2025. Looking back across all these posts, the throughline is someone who keeps showing up for the adventure even when the weather, the road, or the body says otherwise. Some dates just have a personality.

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The first trip was a root canal attempt. I’ll leave it at that.

The second was a full weekend watching my daughter and her family run the Spartan Race, which was genuinely fun, legitimately impressive, and a welcome reminder that some travel is worth the toll.

The third trip was root canal attempt number two. We tacked on a stop at Legacy Bike Park at the start of that visit since we were already heading that direction. It snowed. The bikes came home muddy. It kind of sucked, and we still had a good time, which feels like an important distinction.

I walked in braced for surgery, already mentally preparing for whatever new disaster the universe had queued up. It went off without a hitch. Completely uneventful. I sat in the van afterward genuinely unsure what to do with that outcome.

So here we are. Three trips, completed. The glass in that photo isn’t just a beer, it’s a small ceremony, a quiet acknowledgment that the season held more than it probably should have, and we got through it anyway. Not gracefully, not without cost, but through. Or did I? we still have the Ogden trip remaining.

May 20th Never Sits Still

May 20th has a long track record of motion, from sausage grinder guilt in 2002 to devil dust rides at Suce Creek and everything in between. Across more than two decades of posts, the date keeps showing up as a launching pad, something packed, planned, worried over, or pedaled through. Same restless energy, different mountains.

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I had a root canal scheduled for the next morning. It had been sitting quietly in the back of my mind all day, the way unpleasant appointments do, surfacing at inconvenient moments between runs on the Legacy trails. Not debilitating, just... present. A low hum of dread.

Then, on one of the shuttle rides up the mountain, we met a dentist. He was handing out gummy bears to fire up his family for another lap. A dentist, mid-mountain, feeding his kid sugary candy with the casual confidence of a man completely unbothered by irony. When I mentioned my upcoming procedure, he told me root canals are really no big deal anymore. Simple, routine, nothing to worry about.

I wasn’t entirely sure whether to feel reassured or suspicious of a man whose professional advice arrived between handfuls of gummy candy. Both seemed reasonable.

Still, I decided to take him at his word. Flathead Lake sat glowing below, the mountains behind it doing that thing they do at golden hour when the light hits the snow and the whole scene looks slightly too good to be real. I watched it a little longer than I probably should have, then turned my back on it and went to bed.

May 19th Never Sits Still

Twenty-four years of May 19ths and the pattern is right there in plain sight. Racing, recovering, stressing, riding, ranting, and occasionally just standing in the flowers noticing that spring showed up without permission.

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A week later, we’re sitting around watching it snow, which feels about right. Last weekend was the 2026 Montana Spartan Trifecta Weekend, held May 9-10 out at Wrangler Springs Ranch near Bigfork, and we’re still processing it. The six of us, Nick, Melinda, Isaiah, Felicity, Mo, and myself, drove into the Flathead Valley to meet up for what the Spartan race people cheerfully describe as a “Trifecta Weekend.” That framing makes it sound like a festival. It is not entirely a festival.

Their event was the Super, a 10K course with 25 obstacles cut through wooded hills and uneven terrain that had no interest in being friendly. Bigfork’s landscape is beautiful and completely indifferent to your fitness level. Wrangler Springs Ranch delivered on both counts.

But before any of that, there was the small matter of not having seen each other in eight months. That kind of gap has weight to it. You can’t just show up and start climbing rope walls. You need a meal first, preferably a loud one with a lot of catching up. HuHot handled that perfectly. We ordered, we talked over each other, we laughed, and somewhere between the second round of noodles, it felt like no time had passed at all.

The race itself is the easy thing to point to, the obstacle count, the elevation profile, the finish line. But the actual weekend started the night before, around a table, with people you hadn’t seen in too long. The snow outside the van right now is a decent reminder that conditions are rarely perfect.

May 18th, The Long Haul

May 18th has shown up in a lot of different forms over the years, from a funky morning that barely got started to mountain climbs, big bike days, and a day at Grandma’s that felt worth framing. The thread running through all of it is someone who kept getting up and going anyway. That counts for something.

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The trail winds between jagged cliffs, and I kept glancing past the pines toward the mountain face, scanning for something that only shows up during this exact narrow window of the year. It sounds like a reasonable thing to do. It probably looks a little unhinged from the outside.

Then I saw it. A silver ribbon of water dropping high down the stone face, cascading over tiered ledges, cutting through layered rock that looked like it had been stacked by someone with very strong opinions about geology. Dark wet stone against white churning foam. Fragile pines clinging to the grey face like they were trying to look casual about the whole thing. The scene felt alive and urgent and somehow also very quiet, which is a weird combination that the Rattlesnake wilderness pulls off better than it has any right to.

This waterfall doesn’t exist in June. The summer sun takes it completely, no trace left, like it was never there. You have to earn it by showing up at the right time, in the right month, on the right trail.

I watched the flow for a long while before turning back. There’s something clarifying about beauty that keeps no schedule and makes no announcements. It just runs until it doesn’t.

May 17th Has a Way

Twenty years of May 17ths reveal a consistent pattern: life throws punches, the bike is the answer. From social frustrations in 2006 to a work blindside in 2025, the through-line is stubbornness, humor, and wheels. Some things do not change, and maybe that is the whole point.

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Every day I go for a walk. Partly for health, partly to keep the calories honest, partly because after sixteen or seventeen hours of fasting and a morning that disappears entirely into work, getting outside around noon feels less like a choice and more like a biological necessity. It’s a good routine. I like it. Most days.

Today was not most days.

April in Missoula served up forty-degree temperatures, sustained wind, and snow. Actual snow. OK, that’s normal, but let me rant. In April. I turned into the gusts at one point and my eyelids went completely numb, just... stopped working. Couldn’t blink. Which means the wind had to be pushing thirty miles an hour at minimum, because human eyelids don’t just quit on you in a light breeze. That’s not how eyelids work.

Here’s what gets me: winter barely showed up when it was supposed to. Skipped most of its shift, honestly. And now it wants to come back in April and act like it owns the place? No. That’s not the deal. Spring had a reservation. Winter’s window closed.

I know Missoula sits in a river valley at nearly three thousand feet, surrounded by mountains that hold cold air like a grudge, so meteorologically speaking, none of this is surprising. But knowing why something is miserable doesn’t make it less miserable. It just makes you the well-informed person standing in the snow, unable to blink, feeling vaguely betrayed by geography.

May has done the same. When does it end? Don’t answer, let me rant. The walk happened anyway. It always does. And somewhere between the numbness and the wind and the muttering under my breath, I’ll keep going, which I suppose is the thing about a good routine.

May 16th and the Body Keeps Score

Twenty-three years of May 16th entries tell a recurring story: plans interrupted, bodies sidelined, and a stubborn habit of showing up anyway. From concussions to burger crimes to knee injuries, the date has a way of testing the gap between ambition and reality. What stays constant is someone who keeps coming back for more.

Read more: https://8i11.vercel.app/story/0419s22i

There’s a small ritual we’ve kept for a while now... nothing fancy, nothing planned too far in advance. Weekend rolls around, nothing urgent on the calendar, and we pick a restaurant. New place or old favorite, doesn’t matter much. We walk there, we eat, we walk back. That’s the whole architecture of it.

Today it was Michi Ramen Bar. The name alone sounds like it knows something you don’t.

I’ll be honest, I walked in with some confidence. I’ve had ramen. Plenty of times. Noodles, broth, in those compact little packages. I had a working theory about ramen. Michi, apparently, had a different theory, and theirs involved considerably more nuance than mine. The broth was meaty and spicy at the same time. The noodles had opinions. I sat there thinking... okay, so this is what ramen actually is. Interesting. Fine. Good, even. Not the lightning bolt I was bracing for, but solid. Respectably solid.

The lanterns hanging from the ceiling were genuinely something, though. These big silk Vietnamese-style lanterns in every color, glowing warm against the stone walls, a neon sign above us reading ずるずる... which, for what it’s worth, is Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound of slurping noodles. So at least someone there had a sense of humor.

Sometimes a bowl of noodles and a good walk home is exactly enough.

May 15th Keeps Finding Me

May 15th has a habit of catching me mid-stumble. Literally, sometimes.

Back in 2002, it was a sick day that somehow still included mountain biking, because pollen counts and sinus pressure have never been a legitimate reason to skip the trail. The thought never quite got finished. Story of the day, really.

A year later, the focus sharpened into peak bagging in Vermont, racking up Ascutney, Stratton, and Killington on a sore ankle, sleeping in the car, already planning the next sufferfest in the Adirondacks. Seventeen miles. Three peaks with names nobody can spell.

By 2007, it was Missoula life, post-race wounds, chores, bills, the eternal promise to catch up on emails. Then 2008 brought a harder reckoning, with clinical documentation of what stopping costs you, muscle loss, concussion risk, the body’s brutal accounting system. Around the same time, a quieter note: friends at 44, which turns out to matter quite a bit.

In 2012, a new bike disappeared into the landscape the way good equipment should. In 2013, a bear charging out of the Gallatin Range turned out to be a total miscommunication. In 2016, a thought about tagging all human knowledge with GPS coordinates emerged from somewhere between the coffee and the trailhead.

Then 2020 offered a quieter moment in time, 2022 looked back honestly at a hard Livingston Christmas, and 2025 delivered the most dramatic May 15th yet, a torn something behind the knee on a hill too steep to run, the body finally filing a formal complaint.

Twenty-three years of this date, and the throughline is pretty clear. Go hard, get hurt, keep going.

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The trail had that early-season energy, part promise, part obstacle course. I was picking my way along when a Dusky Grouse stopped me cold. Just standing there in full display mode, fanned tail, orange combs raised, red throat patch puffed out like he’d been waiting for an audience. I stopped, grabbed my phone, fired off a few shots. Honestly, he looked like a tiny, unhinged turkey auditioning for something. I took a water break right there, snapped a quick selfie to send to Mo, feeling pretty good about the whole thing.

What I did not know, while I was standing there feeling smug about my wildlife encounter, was that there were bear tracks in the snow directly behind me. Fresh ones. Cool, cool, cool.

The trail didn’t get friendlier after that. Snow banks pushed across the path like they hadn’t gotten the memo that it was spring. Then came the elk remains, picked clean by what was almost certainly a mountain lion. Not exactly the vibe you want mid-hike. There’s a specific kind of quiet that settles over you when you’re standing next to something like that, equal parts sobering and reminder that you are not, in fact, the apex anything out here.

But you keep moving. The arrowleaf balsamroot was blooming everywhere, those big yellow flowers catching the afternoon light like they were trying to out-sunshine the actual sun. Hard to stay rattled when the hillside looks like that. The city spread out below in the golden hour, the Clark Fork winding through it all, and at some point the grim stuff just fell back a few steps. Not because it was tidy. Because it wasn’t.

May 14th Does It Again

May 14th has a pattern. Not a subtle one either. Over the years, this date has reliably delivered finals stress, Montana wandering, bike misadventures, and the particular joy of being outside when you probably should be doing something else.

It started back in 2001 with finals week and a nervous wait for a job offer, the woods already calling louder than any textbook. By 2004, May 14th meant a photo safari through Lambert, Montana, oil wells and a 24-hour flu included at no extra charge. Then 2008 brought the kind of racing news that stings, a venue change yanking the marathon finish line out from under carefully laid plans.

The 2010 version was pure group ride energy, fifteen people and a handful of ginger snaps, bombing Sidewinder in the last light of a real sunny evening. Two years later, 2012 produced what might be the finest accidental date story on record, complete with aggressive doves and a woman straight out of frontier fiction foiling any romantic ambitions.

Then came the quieter entries. Little yellow buttons in 2020. A week in Gardiner in 2021. A hard desert goodbye in 2022, rear-view mirror framing everything left behind. In 2023, a scree slope and a wrong turn on Dunn’s Draw ended exactly as it should, guided back by someone patient enough to wait.

And most recently, 2025 turned larch needles into crowns and a windblown forest into a kingdom, two fools grinning at the sky.

May 14th, it turns out, is just another day that keeps showing up and asking you to pay attention. Hard to argue with that.

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Every Monday feels like a reset. Every Monday lies. This one started the same way the good ones do, quiet, careful, one more decent night of sleep after a weekend that was complex and strange and somehow fine. I kept telling myself I was handling it. I must be normal. I must be normal. I must be normal.

I am not normal.

All I was trying to do was wash the coffee maker parts. Something fell. I told myself it wouldn’t go down the drain. It went down the drain. More parts followed. And then I was gone, blacked out somewhere between the first scream and tipping over the fridge. Ripping things off walls. Throwing myself around until my knee buckled and I went down hard. I tried to chew through the carpet. I screamed until I thought, genuinely thought, if I just never breathed in again, that would be it. I tried.

I didn’t manage it.

Outside, a rainbow cracked open over the roofline, indifferent and stupidly beautiful, arcing over the gray hills like the sky was completely unbothered by everything happening inside. The trees were doing their spring thing. The lawn was green and wet and calm. None of it cared.

And I’m still here. Hurt knee, wrecked routine, scale confirmed what vacation already knew. I’ve fallen backwards. But the fridge is upright again, the walls are still standing, and I’ve got work tomorrow, something to reconnect to, something small to finish.

May 13th Keeps Happening

Twenty-four years of May 13ths have delivered domain scams, bike crashes, Badlands sunsets, Wednesday night adventures, and at least one very meaningful mushroom. Looking back, even the hard entries were pointed somewhere. The date has a pattern, and the pattern is motion.

Read more: https://8i11.vercel.app/story/1eby0ghs

Spring break in Lewiston. We’re rolling down toward dinner, Mo’s birthday I think, following a bike path that climbs over an overpass above a tangle of highway and river. Snuggles is somewhere behind me. The Snake River is doing its thing below, wide and indifferent, the kind of water that doesn’t care what day it is. Then we round a corner and there it is, hanging on the chain-link fencing of this mosaic-covered pedestrian bridge: a massive snake, tile by tile, yellow-bellied and green-eyed, tongue out, mid-strike. The whole bridge is covered in this stuff, ceramic fish, spiral forms, animals assembled from broken glass and river color. It stops you. Not in a dramatic way, just in a quiet, oh right, there’s beauty out here sort of way.

I didn’t think much of it then. We had dinner reservations and cold beers waiting.

Now it’s weeks later and I’m having what I call a survival day. The rules are minimal: don’t talk to the police, don’t sleep on the tracks. Lie low, regulate, let the burnout from the weekend metabolize on its own. I’ve been scrolling old photos instead of doing anything useful, and I keep landing on those bridge shots. The snake. The light. Snuggles looking genuinely delighted by a piece of public art while holding his purple mountain bike like it’s a dance partner.

I haven’t been on the bike in over a week. Last weekend had other plans for us.

But today feels like the right day to close it out properly. Simple ride. No agenda.

May 12th Keeps Talking

May 12th has been accumulating stories for over two decades, from rainy coffee shop mornings and Monopoly losses to bike accidents, desert animals reading the archives, and a hidden waterfall on Bass Creek. It is a date that keeps showing up, same as the person writing about it. Twenty-three years of evidence that the pattern, whatever it is, continues.

Read more: https://8i11.vercel.app/story/5f20fvah