Internet addiction is hard to break

Hi, boys and girls! There's nothing like being on the internet! I thought I'd have access at my apartment, but there was a miscommunication between my roommate and his chosen internet provider, and then things got busy, and now I'm at a coffeeshop trying to post a bajillion things while talking to people and clearing out my inbox and acting on various causes and learning what's happening in the world and now I can't post the 100 photos I've already selected and written captions for and jiminy christmas I still have to buy groceries and do some prep work for tomorrow's meeting along with plan out what I want to do while I'm here and take care of some loose ends back in Winston-Salem and stay in touch with my friends and... and...

*collapse*

*deep breath*

*reboot*

I'm really enjoying my time out here - and I'm not being sarcastic; this trip has been great so far. Here are a couple of things I've written offline; first, from Monday, May 25:

Greetings from Bozeman!

After the usual frenzied packing on Saturday, I boarded a flight to Denver Sunday morning, enjoyed a leisurely four-hour layover in the Mile-High City, then endured a two-hour delay waiting for my flight to Bozeman. On the plus side, I ate my first meal from Panda Express – rather tasty – and discovered the fabulous photographs of Tom Mengelsen. His images of wildlife and landscapes stopped me in my tracks, and I couldn’t leave the store until I had seen every last one.

My room is a glorious mess without any furniture, and I can’t really justify getting anything for it since I’ll have to sell it in six months. Nothing like looking at a room and saying, “Wow, what this place needs is…” and then realizing that in six months that place will need emptying. L Oh well. I’ll only be living in the apartment for two of the six months, in one sense. In case I hadn’t told you earlier, I’ll be out working in the wilderness for 8-10 days at a time, followed by 3-5 days off in Bozeman, so I’ll be spending about one day off for every two days on. Oh, and my new roommate and I seem to get along all right, which is a relief. I’m definitely looking forward to making new friends and getting familiar with this town.

Well, that’s about it for now. Tomorrow morning I head out for training and orientation, getting back sometime Thursday and finding out who are the other four members of my mini-crew along with my crew leaders and our general location/focus for our time here. After that, it’s off to the races! I’ll be sure to keep this thing updated as best I can, along with pictures on facebook.

Until next time, valete!

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And now, from last weekend:

The training this week was great, featuring CPR and first aid, plus making some new friends. I found out who my crewmates are and what my schedule will be like yesterday, and I think it should be a great five months. We'll kick things off Monday when we head out to Yellowstone for some chainsaw training- yeah, that's right, I'm learning chainsaw skills from the fire crew at THE National Park. What up. Bring it.

Once I upgrade from n00b to bamf on the saw, I'll be traveling all over Montana hacking away at invasive species and clearing trails, pulling weeds and dodging bears with two extra trips into Yellowstone to help protect the historic buildings from wildfires and collect seeds. It's nice to know I'll be in bear country pretty much the whole time – one week I’ll even be hanging with the grizzlies. This trip is gonna be awesome.

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So, there you have it. Chainsaw training went well - we even saw a long bison 200 yards from where we were working - and I successfully used my new tent on the first try! And that was with rain, which mixed with snow early Tuesday morning! Work starts for real on Monday morning, when we'll head out to a youth camp for five days to clean it up for the summer kids.

Perhaps tomorrow I'll have better luck with the pictures... sigh.