I swear she doesn't look a year over 218.
I went on a fun little trip the week of the 4th, and I want to chronicle it before booze and weed erase it from my spank bank.
I took off for Hamilton on Monday morning and pretty much felt like a bag of dicks. I got some sort of throat virus (presumably from a bus station skank) and it was rocking my world. After taking a few Ibuprofens, I was pretty much ready to hit the road. My car on the other hand was not ready. It was downtown at the tire shop where they had just put my summer tires back on and aligned it all (drives like a badass again). My first attempt to get a ride was from the rents. They both were at work so my search continued. Not being afraid to lay a little groundwork for the future (read: present), I went next door to try and get a ride from the hot 16 year old that likes to wash her car in her swimsuit. Sadly she didn’t answer the door (I assume she was touching herself to the mix tape that I gave her and didn’t hear me ring the doorbell). I finally got a ride from the grandma that watches the kids across the street. So I guess it is true what they say, “although slow and dangerous behind the wheel, senior citizens CAN still serve a purpose”.
I finally get the car, load up the boat, longboard and some clothes and hit the road. The drive was nice now that I’m rockin the satellite radio. Comedy and re-mix techno are the shizz. But aside from getting a few new pumps for the raft, the trip was pretty uneventful.
Pulled into Hamilton at about 7PM and stopped by the hotel to see my sweet little hotel friend X-tina. Chatted (read: hit on her and talked dirty) with her for a while and then went and saw the rest of the crew. Finally settled into the Coin for some beers and called it a night. Actually I went back to my Mexican’s house and watching bow hunting for turkeys. If you ever get the chance to watch guillotine bow hunting for birds when you are drunk, TAKE IT. It is hilarious, and I don’t even hunt…or care to start.
Woke up around noon (to a nice naked pic of X-t) and went up to Darby to get my one of my favorite burritos. It is a little place called the Little Blue Joint. You must stop in and have one if you are ever passing through. After that tasty treat we (Mex and I) went to a fishing access just outside of town and planned on floating to Main St in Hamtown where my Mexican’s house is located. For those of you that don’t know, the Bitterroot River just killed a guy (or gal, not really sure), and everyone and their fucking mother’s dog felt like they needed to tell me about how I was going to die on this river. Turns out the river is a slow moving lake with only 1 section that actually has anything worth mentioning (read: wave that can put water in the boat). All in all it was a nice float and a good excuse to drink some beers. Afterwards we hit up the brewery and failed miserably to get some girls to come out drinking with us.
Next morning I woke up and started my trek towards Idaho. Everything was going quite well until I was a few hours into the trip. I was racing across some pretty open/barren land and I started to recognize a town I was quickly approaching. Everything seemed so familiar although I know that I hadn’t been down the road before. I soon put together the mental puzzle pieces and realize that I was in Leadore Idaho. The same town I was in when doing firecamp catering. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue, but Leadore isn’t even close to the path I wanted to be on. To further the problem, I was running low on gas.
Me: What’s the fastest way to Boise from here?
Gas station attendant: Airplane (laugh). Did you just come from Salmon?
Me: Yep, I’m sort of an idiot.
GSA: You aren’t the first to miss that turn. The quickest way is to go down to Arco.
Me: Do you just have 85 octane fuel (my car manual recommends 93)?
GSA: Yep, but you can put in some octane boost if you fuel up, that will get you to about 89 octane.
Take a look at this map and you will see how far off I went:
Should have gone this way.
Went this way.
Original trip would have been 336 miles. My new trip was 432 miles. Ooooopps!
The nice part about that drive though, is that I got to really open ‘er up. You can see for miles down there, and it is so empty in this mountain valley (think napoleon dynamite landscape) that you can spot any and all cops (there were none). I also had the radar/laser detector on, so I spent about 30 minutes of driving at an average speed of 120mph. Even with the reduced octane fuel I never had any engine knocking. Go Subaru.
Things shake a bit at this speed.
Finally got into Boise around 5, met up with PIC and his girl and went to the downtown “Alive at 5”. When we got on the bikes to go down there, I was expecting the skanky methed out version of downtown drinking events that Billings so eloquently hosts. What I got instead was a sweet party. The booze was better, the music was better and the people…well the people were just dead sexy. Younger, hotter and did I mention sexy. PIC had to go to school, so me and his girl went and got some food downtown. We ate outside and I just sat back and filled up the spank bank (which really paid dividends the next morning in PIC’s shower, HEY OH!). After dinner we went up to the road that leads to Bogus Ski Resort and did some longboarding. I tell you what! It was the shit! It is a 20+ mile road and steep. We bit off a 6.1 mile chunk of that road and made it our bitch. In that 6.1 miles we descended just under 2000 feet. The chip and seal was a little rough and lit our feet on fire from the vibrations, but you can’t have everything.
Next morning we got up and started to prepare for a river day. PIC and I were sort of being beavers and opted out of the Main Fork Payette trip (after almost killing MBSE a couple days earlier on the Stillwater River I didn’t have my daddy pants back on yet) and settled with the Boise River. The Boise is a super mellow float with a ton of people from the city on it at all times. It would be super chill, but the town is a touch mormon and have strict booze laws regarding boozing outside. It was a sweet day to be on the river.
As you can see it was a bit on the warm side in Boise.
We capped the float off with some sweet zza and beer (and beer and cheese paring), and then we drank it up downtown. The next morning I decided I didn’t want to go all the way out to Bend OR only to turn around and have to drive to Billings in a day, so I opted to head back up to Hamtown for the fireworks and 4th of July tomfoolery. Before that PIC and I did a sick 2 mile smooth stretch of longboarding right at the ski hill. It was another epic run. I said “epic”. I suck.
Drove back up to H-town the “correct” way and it was a MUCH nicer drive. There were a lot of passes and roadside rivers and it was in the woods instead of the desert. The South Fork of the Payette is a sweet looking river and someday I’m going to return to it and float it (who’s with me?).
I bought some fireworks from a mildly foreign guy that night and it was a blast. Haggling for fireworks in a nearly empty stand is funny shit to me.
Foreign Guy: That will be $55.
Me: Damn, I guess I’ll have to go get them somewhere else because I only have $46.
FG: Sold.
The best part is I still got raped. Hahaha.
Woke up on a couch the morning of July 5 (feeling like another bag ‘o dicks) and went to the farmers market for an Amigo’s Burrito, rented two PFDs from a fishing shop and then went floating with 4 other people. Good times. That night the Mexican and I got fucking housed at the Coin and the Rainbow and ended up playing with a kitten in his front yard (trying to get it to kill something) and yelling at cars that went by. Times like this sure make me miss the small towns.
We went inside around 3AM and I don’t think the Mexican even made it to the menu of Semi-Pro before he hit his proverbial wall:
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