Today we took out the rest of the dock. It's a very fast job if you have 4 people: we finished in less than 45 minutes. The lake level is still pretty low and so we were able to do it with two people in waders and the others on the shore carrying things as we disassembled. I measured the temperature of the lake a week ago and it was 45. Probably slightly lower than that now. The whole lake needs to get to be 40 before it can freeze. Next week it's going to be cold, lows in the 20s and highs in the 30s, so while it probably won't freeze completely, we will see ice here and there.

After the dock was out, I rode my bike down to the center of town where there was a small protest scheduled. I was surprised that there were only 15 people there, because the timing was perfect for the local UU church letting out, and generally speaking they are on the right, meaning left, side of these issues. And it was announced on the church social mailing list (which I am on, even though I never go to church), so I fully expected a large number of people to join us at around 11:40. But only a few did. It was cold, so maybe that was the issue. "Fair-weather protesters." Of course, I had my heated insoles in my boots.

I had a flat tire a month or so ago. I found a weird bulge in the tire material at the corresponding place to the hole in the tube, which I assumed contained a small piece of shrapnel, but I couldn't get it out. So I carefully arranged the patch to be under the bulge, thinking that the patch was pretty thick.

Then, I got another flat Friday. This was in a different place, and this time the murder weapon was easy to locate still in the tire and possible to pull out with needle nose pliers. But with two flats in a month, plus the funny bulge, it is now tire non grata, so time to replace. So off I go to the local bike store ("small business Saturday") but they don't have one, because it's the front wheel of my recumbent which is an odd size. So I had to order one (did not wait for "cyber Monday"). Normally, I would just curse and put the old tire back on my bike and hope that I don't get a third flat while the order is being shipped. But I recently got a replacement bike, so I can use it as a parts bike! Swap the wheel and all is good.

Issues: in the last four months most of the air had leaked out. Four months is a long time, so I just pumped it up. It's not the same rim width, so I had to adjust my brakes. It's not the same size of tire, being both slightly narrower, 1.25 instead of 1.5, and thus less tall, and also having less aggressive tread, also reducing the height. So the circumference is less. Which means that my odometer (which I see I neglected to mention in blogs that I replaced the wiring harness so it is no longer flaky) will read the wrong number. The wheel goes around a slightly larger number of times during each mile, so it records a mile somewhat earlier. Thus: cheating.

Ken and I went on a ride together, and he went 6.81 miles while I recorded 7.18, so we know that it is 5% high. Then I recorded 10.37 after that. Unfortunately I didn't look at the total odometer before I started off on this cheating plan, but subtraction shows that it was 1939 or 1940 (it only shows whole miles, and we don't actually know when it clicked over to the current 1957). I'll just keep track and adjust later; probably it won't be as much as the 5 miles or so that it owes me for the flaky odometer. Also, the new tire I ordered is likely to be a different circumference than the one I replaced. So there will be more adjustment needed. It will all come out in the wash on January 1 when I reset for the new year, and I will get new measurement of my circumference before then.

Tuesday I met my cousin in Butte MT for lunch. It's ecologically bad, but I enjoyed legally driving 80 miles an hour on the interstate. It's so sparsely traveled and well graded that it's completely safe to just do that.

We started by going to the mineral museum at Montana Tech, which was pretty cool. There was a lot of large smoky quartz, which are cool, and obviously they would have a lot of different copper ores. Like every mineral museum they had a giant geode. There must be a lot of them. They're very cool though! There was a cool black light display showing minerals which fluoresce. Then we had lunch at a slightly foofy cafe, which would be more at home in California than Montana.

After lunch we went on a short hike to the M above Montana Tech. The parking lot for this one was higher, so the hike was not as strenuous as the one in Missoula. Turns out there is an M in Bozeman also, and probably another Montana towns, but I'm not actually going to collect the whole set.

Historically, Butte was all about mining, and as a result is now home to one of the largest Superfund sites according to my cousin. We tried to go there, but it turns out that the viewing platform has a fee and it was closed so we couldn't actually get up close and personal. However, we could see it at a distance from the M. It's pretty enormous.

I enjoyed catching up with my cousin and hearing all about what her kids, her grandkids, her sister, and her niece and nephew were all up to, and sharing everything about my kids. I learned, to my pleasure, that my cousin is not a Republican, and has been adjacent to the indivisible movement, having friends who are in it. It's much more of a useful thing to do in Montana than in Massachusetts. In fact, I was surprised at the small number of Trump signs that I saw. But my cousin tells me that Bozeman, where she lives, and Missoula, where I am, are the liberal bastions in Montana. I did see some Trump signs, but only quite a ways outside the city limits.

On the way back to Missoula I stopped at a rest area, which had some educational plaques about the local mountain ranges' geology and some history. And one that was blank. One wonders what woke stuff was there. I wonder if there is a site somewhere that has copies of all of the things that have been removed…

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The Butte M

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The Butte pit