Mayor John Engen is making me lose my faith what was supposed to be a liberal Missoula City Council.

Missoula has all the trappings of a smug little progressive city. We have more bike shops than car dealers, more breweries than McDonalds, and snowy city streets that can go an entire winter without seeing a snowplow. Why, then, does this city continue to put its stamp of approval on new construction that looks like shit?

Towns that give a crap about how they look hardly hesitate to form boards whose sole function is to meddle in architectural drawings. In Biltmore Forest, which is about ten times richer than Missoula but not even half as liberal, I once sat through a design review committee meeting where appointees debated for a half-hour if a renovated home’s back doors should be French, French Provincial, or French Country. That’s what I’m talking about!

Fred Van Valkenburg no longer has the moral authority serve as county attorney.

There was a time when Van Valkenburg could have deftly maneuvered the current crisis to appease critics and build a better attorney’s office. That time is long gone . When presented with a 20-page federal report on his office’s shortcomings, he called the contents lies and said the Department of Justice had no constitutional authority to investigate him. He cajoled the county commission into granting him $50,000 to sue the feds – a black mark on an otherwise decent commission. He then went on vacation. Being on vacation made him unavailable to the press, but did not prevent him from personally confronting his critics at home and abroad.

Missoula has enough crap to deal with these days. It ought not to have to put up with an attorney who is causing problems rather than solving them.

And after all that, who doesn’t need a good pancake recipe?

Pancakes for dinner, Southwestern style:

2 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups milk
2 eggs
4 Tbs. vegetable oil
1 can chopped roasted green chilis
2/3 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Mix until incorporated, then cook on a griddle. Serve with a sauce -- I mix 1 cup of sour cream with a generous dollop of hot sauce.

Oh yeah!

And finally, the blizzard update you’ve all been waiting for.

Missoulia has been host to a historic and record-setting bout of snowfall for the past several weeks, culminating in a real-life blizzard which began early this morning. This storm caused the cancellation of classes not only for Missoula County Public Schools and the University of Utah, but also a host of other public and private institutions – including Hellgate Elementary, which had only closed its doors to a storm once prior to this in the past 30 years. People outside Montana might not immediately appreciate the sort of winter we’ve had lately, but I think you can safely assume that when things are so heavy that even Montanans take notice, then they are pretty freaking heavy. National Weather Service Missoula summed things up nicely this morning in their forecast discussion: ‘The weather will not be fit for either man or beast.’

Montana, it’s so … colorful:

The map shows the state from border to border covered in watches and warnings of one form or another, but actually many spots in Montana currently have two warnings simultaneously.

The slate of storms has left the mountains with their deepest snowpacks in years, and made possible legitimate backcountry skiing options leaving literally from town. I’ll end this post with some pictures I took skiing University Mountain this week after work:

The four horsemen of the apocalyptic Chinook.

Things are looking good.

Better if you go up a few feet.

Some things are so close but so far away.

How deep is the snow? Ask California Creek.

I hate to see that sun go down.

At Maverick, the party is in the bar, where the ski patrol band was playing "Wagon Wheel" and we were invited to the baked potato potluck fundraiser.

The baby, however, finds the party out on the ski rack.

The state highway over the Continental Divide roughly from Anaconda to Wise River is never short on adventure. This year the north side of the pass featured the largest frost heave I've ever seen (and that includes the Alaska Highway). Last week the south side was featuring an ice dam which had forced French Creek across the road. For more than 100 yards we had thick hard ice, running water, and deep ruts. We traveled the entire route without seeing pavement, and often having to power through drifts crossing the road.

Technically, "chinook" referns to a wind that is warmed by the downward rush of air from a mountain. Colloquially, it's used to refer to almost any spell of warm weather. We had the colloquial version last week, which sent the temperature from -23 to 44 in four days, and removed about a foot from the valley's snowpack in seven.

Thankfully, it's snowing again.

Single speed, single digits, single lanes

Fresh studs work wonders on hardpacked streets – and are ungainly and awkward on dry pavement.

Somehow I wound up with a bunch of Kenda tubes for these 26 inch wheels. Kendas are nice and cheap but I’ve been troubled by the seams cracking and splitting, especially when the temperature dips toward minus 10. Seam cracks are impossible to really fix.

Single speeds are not that bad for winter biking. Given enough slush, mud, grit, and grime, most geared bikes will eventually go single speed on you anyway. The downside is that the Cannondale’s single speed is cogged for city riding, so deep snow, icy hills, and strong headwinds make for a spicy commute.

Missoula’s legendarily lax street plowing routine, and a recent spate of high-test weather events have produced some memorable biking and Chariot pulling.

Whoa – lookie there. The Clark Fork, totally frozen. (I heard people are ice skating on McDonald Lake.)

A deep day on Lockwood, looking out to Potomac and Montana 200.

An after-work run up to the tippy top of Marshall. If you could stand the fact that it was -20, it was actually pretty nice.

Everybody jump!

Will someone please tell Atlanta to man up and stop being such a wuss?

My apologies. This blog post was going to be an epic rant calling out one of the world's most powerful and affluent cities for being stymied by 3 fingers of snow. The nexus for this rant was a diatribe from this apologist.

That's right. He called all y'all "assholes".

Instead of a rant, let me just point out a few things. (And let me disclaim that perhaps because I lived in the city for a while perchance I'm more prone to want to criticize it.)

(a) For Pete's sake slow down.

(b) Unless your streets are laser leveled, you can’t even plow 2 inches of snow. (The streets are not smooth in Missoula either, though that’s one of only about 50 reasons why our fair byways never get plowed. I think “laziness” is also a factor.) And you can make your own fancy pants sanding truck by filing a dump truck with dirt and having two guys stand back there and shovel it out. Bam! Any two-bit town manager can figure that one out.

(c) Big city people are disconnected from nature. The bigger the city, the bigger the disconnect. Hence, the issue is not that poor Atlantans don’t know to steer into the skid when sliding, it’s that they don’t consider that something like the weather can stymie their forward progress because they so seldom encounter anything that can’t be mitigated by a smart phone.

And (d) the people of Atlanta, like most people in America, are completely unable to perform even the simplest of tasks without getting into their cars. This is in part because they live in neighborhoods designed specifically to eliminate pedestrian activities; this is in part because people have consciously chosen to live stupidly absurd distances from where they work, where they shop, and where they go to school; and this is in part because performing daily functions as a pedestrian has become a quaint footnote in our development as a species. For inspiration, read the Snowed Out Atlanta Facebook page and note how many people marooned in their cars did not think they could walk for help.

Let's just go over a few points and then end today's lesson on a more positive note:

Atlanta, one of the most powerful cities in the world:

(AJC photo)

Atlanta traffic after 3 fingers of snow:

(Something I stole off Twitter)

A cool map someone put together of what it takes to close school:

(Source: http://www.reddit.com/user/atrubetskoy)

Instead, here's a photo of (sniff, sniff) my proudest moment yet as a parent:

Vexacious.

Well, it’s that time of year again:

(Yeah, things are getting a little stinky in the liner department.)

Date night!

Night commute:

First time to this gem:

The 70-mile drive had me down until I realized that would be a stock commute if we had moved to the Front Range.

You say you want another sunny day? Hmmm. Let me see.

Aw, look at the cute little sleeping city.

Well-placed turns:

We found this: Megan figured a wolverine smelled the elk carcass and dug to it – about four feet down.

Second time to this spot:

Early start, early finish:

Does baby’s allowance cover re-trueing for a 29er?

Twilight train spotting; we got a short hoot from one conductor as he passed underneath:

Long shadow on the M:

Yes, the wheels have come off the bus in Ravalli County.

Ah, how to explain the current state of things down the Bitterroot? Let’s try and cut this down to the essentials:

1. Last fall commissioners appointed Valerie Stamey as treasurer ($50,000 a year!). Suzy Foss noted Stamey lacked any experience treasurering but did in fact have a lot of enthusiasm.
2. Most of the remaining deputy treasurers promptly quit.
3. Stamey fell behind. October statements still aren’t out and tax disbursements have not been made in months – meaning everyone from school districts to irrigation boards are short of operating cash.
4. Stamey asked for help, and some commissioners agreed [though Foss – who, remember, first introduced herself to me as “a pissed off grandma” - said, “Things are not a disaster in my opinion.”]. Commissioner Jeff Burrows voted to use vacancy savings to pay for outside help in the office (and whoever gets to fix the county’s balance sheets will get $9.67 an hour), saying that there was no net extra expense to taxpayers. (I don’t remember which tea party platform Burrows ran on, but I’m pretty sure it was not “a penny saved is a penny we can spend later on”). Oh, the meeting where this was discussed? Stamey skipped it.
5. Commissioners learned Stamey used a few different last names, one of which was the subject of a 2010 default judgment in South Carolina which claimed she cashed the same $18,149 check twice after refinancing her home. She’s also apparently been sent to collections for a $312 vet bill.
6. Stamey stopped talking.
7. Commissioners asked what was up.
8. Stamey delivered this:

Actually, she did not deliver it. She read it, then ran from the room. It was Jan Wisniewski (yes, that Jan Wisniewski) who came in later to deliver the paper copy. And yes, it does appeared that Stamey's first name is spelled incorrectly.

Don't ask me.

Perry pretty well summed things up

Once again, this is a problem Suzy Foss could fix pretty easily. I’m pretty sure Stamey, as an appointed official, serves at the pleasure of the board – and is probably still a probationary employee.

Eat, sleep, fall of your bike, repeat.

Because who doesn't floss their teeth with a scalpel while your friend pretends to listen to his heartbeat?

...and...

Yeah, what winter? I guess someday soon we'll look back at this and think how good we had it.

The former '2834'. I found it while biking in the pre-dawn icy blackness of Fourth Street last week, spent about a half-hour, and cracked the code. I don’t know if I have been plain lucky or good at looking, or if this happens to everyone. Anyway, I seem to come across a lot of good gear out there on the streets and trails. The past couple of years have been especially fruitful. Among the finds:

*A pocket knife in Butler Fork in Big Cottonwood Canyon. I used this a ton until I left it in a bathroom in a restaurant on the Spanish side of the Spanish-Portuguese border.
*A multi-tool lying on a tree stump near Gash Point. I keep this in my pack all the time.
*A military grade Camelbak in the high Wallowas. I felt bad about taking this, but it was alongside the trail in the morning and still there in the late afternoon, and I had not seen anyone all day.
*A handheld digital weather station in an overflow parking area on the east side of Glacier National Park. I was super stoked about this, but unfortunately some of the functions stopped working almost as soon as I learned how to use it.
*A pair of Skullcandy ear buds in the parking lot of the cross country ski area at Whitefish Mountain Resort. This was fortuitous as at the time I owned four pairs of ear buds, each of which had only one working speaker.

I’ve lost a few things, but still I’m way out ahead. Actually, the only thing that I can definitely recall losing, except the aforementioned pocket knife, was a snow saw that popped out of my pack in Mill B, in Big Cottonwood Canyon.

All of my finds, however, were eclipsed by one mega find in 2003. Laura and I were two months into a three-month circumnavigation by bike of the South Island of New Zealand. Fall was progressing, it was cool and wet, and we were biking a deserted road along the southern swing of the island. It was windy, and I was biking with my head down and slightly to the side so I could keep an eye on the shoulder. Suddenly I noticed a spot of color on my peripheral vision, and stopped to wait for Laura to come up. She held my bike (our bikes weighed ridiculous amounts and even leaning them against road markers was not always wise as the markers could be pushed over) while I waded into the wet grass to see what it was. It was a yellow Australian bill. Australian money is color-coded – one denomination is yellow, one is red, one is green, you get the picture. I looked up and the field before me was covered in colorful confetti. When the find was totaled, we had just under $300 US.

I don’t remember what Laura did with her money, but I bought a nice bottle of wine when we got back to Christchurch.

Wait, did someone say icy streets? Just in time for the thaw, I pull out the big guns:

Was someone just complaining about this non-winter? Huh, well go uphill a bit and you get this, my first check each morning when I get online:

If you look in the right center of that picture you can see the remains of a snowstake, which is currently almost buried but if you look closely shows there is seven feet of snow on the ground. Odd to think that the trees next to it would not fit in most living rooms. Here's what it looks like in real life: pinballing down a tunnel of snow:

Last fall I paid $149 for a $299 Patagonia Troposhere jacket. It's got h2No waterproofing, which works pretty well:

But I still sweat a little on the inside.

The snow was so deep on Sunday on Lolo Pass that it was not possible to turn. I just had to point the skis straight, find something relatively steep, and go, and hope I was not running into anything. Floating suspended on snow like that, able to see nothing for it flying in your face, is memorable.

Since everyone cares:

Wait a minute, the Tea Party was supposed to fix government, right ?

On deep days, Whitefish should pass out simple information brochures like Mount Baker does to prevent this .

And ...

"Rehberg said then that people had begun contacting him, asking that he consider running for the seat he held for 12 years ." Oh really? What people are those?