My meeting in Missoula was great. The professor there knew exactly what I should do and laid out a whole plan for me. I just need to write my proposal and get it approved then I'm up chasing birds around most mornings for the next few weeks. I went to my site today, which is gorgeous. I was watching some Common Yellowthroats when a huge male white-tailed deer with a rack that a hunter would kill for (no pun intended) bolted right past me. There's also fox and coyote in the area as well as tons of eagles and osprey. There is a component of my study that involves remote sensing (are you reading Tom?) which will be interesting since I have basically no idea how to use the technology as of now.
Missoula itself is the 3rd hippiest place I've ever been. (#1, Arcata, #2, Eugene) It is so crunchy I'm surprised they even have roads and cars. I am not making this up, you actually get wafts of patchouli from the boutiques as you walk down the main street. It's nice that they're so into sustainability and stuff, but the hippieness made me a little crazy. I countered it by going to the Army Navy Surplus store to buy bear spray for my friends. I asked the guy if there was sales tax and he said "We don't like that kind of thing around here."
From what I can gather the first rule of having a gay bar in this part of the country is that you have to walk down a flight of stairs to get into the bar. As I previously mentioned, this bar is actually in the basement of a post of the American Veterans Association. So I went down the stairs and there's people hanging out in the stairwell. Turns out you can't smoke inside in Missoula. (Damn you hippies!) It was early, so there were only 3 people there. I ordered a drink and although I was too early for happy hour my drink was $2. Next to me was a Native American guy drinking a very large pitcher of Bud Light by himself. When he finished he started another one. It would have been amusing if he hadn't been Native. Since he was it was kind of sad. The other 2 guys appeared to be Bitter Old Fags, which is basically one of my favorite kinds of person and also the regular customer of most of my favorite bars. I didn't have enough time to hang out but I will definitely be going back.
Ok I'm off to figure out if the 15 random Japanese people currently BBQing on our deck are actually supposed to be here or if (as I suspect) they think this is part of the state park next door.
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