March is when people go on spring break to Cancun and whatnot, although I never have. Although there was that one time in the college days, with 20+ people sleeping in a 2-bedroom condo in fabulous Hailey, ID, just down the road from Sun Valley. In more recent years, spring breaks (if they occur at all) involved long hikes looking for shed elk antlers. Again, though, entries like the previous one below reinforce our opinion that things are kinda hard to beat right at home, and we don't travel outside Montana all that often.

We recently made an exception, though, and took a trip to the midwest; Nebraska and Kansas. I know... not your usual spring break destination. But then hey, I now recall we spent a spring break in Valier a few years ago, so this is not exactly unprecedented.

Our venture to corn country was mandated by my first purchase of a vehicle on eBay, a cherry 1952 Ford F3, that I now know was owned by a John Deere mechanic from fabulous Funk, Nebraska.

More on that later... You'd think an online auction would be a sketchy way to buy a vehicle, but that's not how it appears. eBayers are obsessive about feedback ratings, and negative feedback is the kiss of death, especially for something the magnitude of a vehicle. So, oddly enough, it appears your typical eBay seller with near-100% positive feedback is infinitely more reputable than some car salesmen. You know the type, you walk into a dealership to a dozen hungry stares. I'm more used to being predator than prey, and find it most unsettling!

Another good thing about eBay, as opposed to say an actual in-the-flesh auction is you can't get caught up in a bidding frenzy. Not if you have a lick of sense... You have time to think about it beforehand, figure out the max you're willing to pay, and bid. Preferably at the last possible second. If you get out-bid, well... so it goes. No sense getting in a funk over it.

In this case, though, I scored cheaply enough to warrant driving not quite 900 miles for a truck I was/am mainly interested in for the engine, which I'm now even more confident will be a half-century overdue upgrade for our even more cherry F5. Because it turns out the owner had a veritable fleet of these, two 1950's and this '52. I actually bought the truck via his protege, also a John Deere mechanic by trade, who was enthused about a Peugot diesel and automatic tranny they'd put in one of the 50's, a most intriguing idea.

Diesel engines are of keen interest to camelina growers, which ties into the other reason to drive halfway across the country. A fellow oilseed grower and I had decided to go in on an oil press, and it turned out a deal was to be had not quite 300 additional miles beyond, and so we ventured over the pass, down the old Bozeman Trail into Wyoming to the Platte, to the main route travelled by a quarter million or so immigrants on the Oregon Trail.

Ancestors on my Dad's side settled north of where we were in Nebraska, east of the Sand Hills near Atkinson. I'd been there as a kid, and somehow doubt it's changed dramatically since. We passed through a lot of small towns, and most haven't... It's not the rust belt, it's... farm country. Either that or badlands that remind me of eastern Montana. By the time you get down into Kansas, though, it's pretty much solid industrialized agriculture. Pivot irrigation everywhere you look. At a hundred grand or so apiece, I can't even fathom the investment in pivots alone. Not to mention power to pump water from six or seven hundred feet down! Out of an aquifer that can't keep up...

But the irrigation perhaps almost pales in comparison to the outlay for fertilizer, herbicides, machinery, et al. It's intense, corn and feedlots. And increasingly, ethanol plants. I was surprised to find out ethanol may use up to a quarter of the corn crop. That's corn that maybe used to go into cattle feed, or even your corn flakes or tortillas or soda pop and so watch for those prices to go up too!

Ethanol appears to be sort of a wash, economically, at best. That's why I remain enthused about oilseeds like camelina as part of a rotation. Somehow I can't see that catching on in Kansas, though. Once you're on that treadmill it's near-impossible to step off it.

I'm glad my other ancestors kept on moving to Montana, not to mention my wife's! It was an interesting enough trip, with among other thing huge bird migrations going on along the Platte. We hit the Sandhill Crane migration, with something like a half million cranes, not to mention unfathomable numbers of geese and other waterfowl. On the way back, though, after you leave the Platte and hit the headwaters of the Powder and Tongue rivers in Wyoming things turn a little more bleak. In fact, I must say the range along I-25 from Casper to Sheridan is just pounded! Way overgrazed... It's not just the thousands of antelope. At least something flourishes in that country besides coalbed methane.

I freely admit, we're prejudiced, but as soon as we hit Montana things just looked way better. There was grass, and water, wildlife, and hey, are those mountains in the distance?! We all but got out and kissed the ground.

From what I see, this isn't just the Last Best Place, but as some contend; the Best Place, period. It's nice to be home...

Luckily I got over my indecision and went skiing up at Bridger Bowl on Friday. With over 30" of fresh snow it should have been a no-brainer, but I still agonized over whether to stay home and slog away at various projects. Not after we hit the hill, though.

On Thursday the classic Bridger Bowl Cloud had developed. There used to be a scientific explanation of the phenomenon on the Avalanche Center site, but alas, it's vanished. In layman's terms, though, when you get just the right combination of surrouding high and low pressure areas, a cloud can park right over the northern Bridger range and dump prodigious amounts of the lightest, fluffiest powder snow known.

True to form, the BBC wasn't forecast, to my knowledge, until the snow set in Thursday morning. I know I began to wonder when it socked in and started dumping here at our place across the range from Bridger. We got about five inches, with less in town, and also true to form, not that much on the way up Bridger Canyon until you hit the ski area. But then... The lucky or even more flexible who were up there Thursday talked about it in awed and hushed tones. But hey, Friday wasn't too shabby!

In fact, it was the funnest day of skiing I've had in a long time, and I didn't even ski the Ridge! My son Cody had the beeper, it was my first day alpine skiing of the season, and it didn't look like I'd feel gypped with only the whole rest of the mountain to ski. Which I more or less did, while testing out my new-to-me Alpine Touring setup. AT or Randonee gear allows you to free-heel on the way up, and lock your heels for the trip down. Like most ski gear anymore, high-end AT bindings like Naxo will set you back four bills or more. Being on the cheapskate plan, I'd been watching eBay for a deal (to no avail) and finally bought some Swiss-made military surplus Fritschi FT-88's. Mounted on a pair of lightweight all-mountain skis, I was ready for the backcountry.

Until it quit snowing! Curses...

Friday I threw in the standby Rossignols just in case, but after I'd tested the release mechanism of the AT binders a few times in the parking lot I decided to give 'em a try. My son and his pal had disappeared, so I didn't have to contend with keeping up. Good thing, because I emerged from the experience much less sore than they. Definitely less sore than my friend Glenn who had the good fortune to be up both days, but whose wife mercilessly drug him those last 400 vertical feet up to the Ridge, over and over again. Grand fun, but too much of a good thing for a 50-year-old? Apparently not, he said they were the best days skiing of his life...

I sure didn't have any complaints, although had less than total confidence in my "new" bindings and didn't push it with abandon. They have a unique center-pivot release mechanism, but it seems to work and stands to reason the Swiss military wouldn't want their guys out there with broken legs. Further research is called for, but I think they'll be fine for the type of backcountry skiing I'm into. If a fella was one of those extreme types, hucking it off cliffs and other lunacies you'd probably want some of the newer Fritschi Freerides, although I made it down Exit Chute and only ejected once! But yeah, they're kind of hard to put back on, especially in a steep and narrow chute when you're in a hurry because clumps of snow are starting to fly by, indicating somebody's coming and you'd better not be standing in the middle of the chute like a doggone tourist or something!

Amazingly enough, all this new snowfall was relatively stable, and the entire area was open. Not so on the west side of the range. where the avalanche danger is rated at suicidal. So, I don't foresee going backcountry skiing right away, but at least I got to spend a day making turns through thigh-deep powder! As with time spent hunting and even allegedly fishing, it's said powder days are not subtracted from one's allotted share here on earth.

Works for me.

The National Weather Service was forecasting 30-50% chance of snow showers, but instead we got the Bridger Bowl Cloud. Yep, the dump of the season, thirty inches of pow! I predict mass absenteeism around Bozeman tomorrow.

Oh, man, I didn't used to have any trouble making up my mind about this kind of thing. But no, I was kinda sick and didn't get squat done today and planned to make up for it tomorrow. But then everyone else in the household was moping about also. Low pressure, or Seasonal Affective Disorder, or something. That must be it, because I'm uncharacteristically pessimistic about this. The filthy ridge hippies will have it all skied out time a guy my age gets up there, and I'd really rather go backcountry skiing, except that'll be suicidal for a bit here, and only the truly stupid or exceptionally fit slog uphill through 30" of snow.

But the avalanche conditions must be off the scale up at Bridger, also. Surely the Ridge must be closed... Bah, humbug! Must banish this faulty train of thought. I've kicked myself before for passing up powder days...