Weekend news

I had a great weekend. I graduated from my Fire Fighter One class with only one mishap. My partner was this kid named Kirby. And, I'm not sure how he passed our class. He almost failed when Tony had to yell at him three times to get the hose behind me. Not sure how he failed this part, but I may have a permanent reminder of our little friend Kirby. While putting out a propane fuled car fire, I was exposed to radiant heat and steam and obtained a nice 50 cent piece size 2nd degree burn on my right shoulder. Everyone was a little jealous as we were fighting a pretty intense fire. Tony, our instructor was not so happy. He was worried. But, all is going well with it!
After cleaning up Jim, Ashley, Ian and I took off in their F350 on Highway 2 towards the YAAK. Every year at the end of April, this bar called the Dirty Shame holds a 3 day Crawdad festival. It's been Jim and I's prize at the end of the tunnel for the last 2 months. And it sure was! We arrived around 8:30 Sat. night but the party was just getting started. Crawfish crowded the troughs, beer and liquor flowed from the taps and hands of already drunken bartenders. This great band called Brother Power Music House played all day and all night and into the morning and the next day as well. They are an amazing blues band that can also jam pretty hard to some mean R&B.
My favorite parts of the weekend were:
-watching Jim Campbell eat a pile of mudbugs the size of a small dog.
-bandaging up a drunken fellow who split his head open by having teh living crap beat out of him with Bailey and Jim and seeing him the next morning still going strong.
-Laying in the sunshine, enjoying a relaxing time with friends and strangers. The YAAk is full of outlaws, weirdos and red necks, but somehow who you were didn't matter. Everyone was there to have fun, and party.
-First camping trip of the year, freezing my ass off while trying to stay warm.
-Watching Jim and Ashley love on each other.
-getting a five dollar bill with information for future camping weekends written on it and hanging with the lucky duck who gave it to me.
-Not remembering telling Ian in the middle of the night, "go check with Mike, he's the IC (incident commander)" while he was trying to help keep me warm; and hearing about it the next morning.
-Taking a Sunday night off.
-The drive...I love road trips. And now I have destinations to go to. Many news places to go and see and things to do. Road trip anyone?

I just have to say it, this weekend is a perfect explanation of why I moved to Montana. There's so much to do and see and explore here. I am starting to make some good friends...switching my schedule around so that I can do some more things...and loving every minute of it.