September, 2009

The Wyoming Hunting and Fishing Heritage Expo is held in Casper every year. Outdoors and wildlife agencies and organizations set up booths with information and free candy for the hundreds of kids who go through the expo in school groups. The outside exhibitions let kids shoot air rifles, fish in the parking lot and even canoe around the tiniest pond I’ve ever seen.

Lifejackets required.

I forayed into the world of Wyoming wildlife with Elyse, girlfriend of one of the photographers and recent Wyoming resident. She moved from liberal Oregon, I from diverse New Orleans, so discovering Wyoming is something we have in common. She wore her Birkenstocks and best hippie shirt. I wore the only “wildlife” t-shirt I own: the Louisiana king gator shirt.

The Wild Turkey Restoration project

There were a lot of dead stuffed things. That was to be expected, but there were mounts everywhere, even at booths that had nothing to do with animals. We didn’t shoot any guns (the lines were too long) but we did pick up some sweet pheasant hats. Kids who hadn’t been inside yet were jealous.

The exotic animal truck could have been a very still petting zoo. “At least it didn’t smell like death,” Elyse said.

Here’s a short video photographer Tim put together from the expo: Hunting and Fishing Expo

Floating means different things in different places. In Missouri floating means renting a canoe and drifting down a stream or creek without using a paddle. I was told that here, anything that floats goes.

Labor Day is one of a handful of official holidays so I wanted to make it good. Carol, the special sections editor, and I planned to float a little on the Platte River yesterday. After checking the direction of the riverflow at least three times, we parked my car upriver and drove a few miles west to another entry point. We walked our tubes past a family and a group of guys inflating their giant party rafts. Our tubes were questionable from the start — car tire inner tubes patched with hose tape — but we were determined to make it work and set off on our adventure.

Pictures taken with my new waterproof/drop-proof/party-proof camera.

We started with two small tubes and one large one. The cooler got its own tube.

Carol let me have the big tube and made the two tubes work. And we’re off!

The water was cold, but the sun felt nice. There was a good stretch where we didn’t have to worry about hitting rocks.

But then I noticed bubbles coming from my tube and I flipped over into the rocks and the float trip ended. I pulled the dead tube through the rockiest part yet to the edge. We walked through someone’s backyard and through a subdivision until we found the bike/jogging path that runs along the river.

We walked the last 1.5 miles to my car in our suits and sandals, but we didn’t scare these deer away.

I’d do it again — with warmer weather and a more reliable flotation device.

After a monstrous two days, I threw stuff in a bag, secured Ruby to the trunk rack and drove south to Fort Collins, Colo.: home of Colorado State University, my sister Sam, my friend Stefanie and the New Belgium Brewery.

The brewery (responsible for the Fat Tire and Sunshine Wheat brews) sponsors bike rides — Tour de Fat — in several cities to raise awareness and money for transport by bicycle. The ride ends with a show, vendors and Fat Tire beer. Costumes/crazy clothes are required: “Come in your favorite alter ego, because when everybody’s weird, no one is.”

me and Stefanie post-Tour

Sam, her friend Annie and I rode a few miles to the start and joined the parade with 12,000 other college kids, retired folks and families. The route winds 2.8 miles through Fort Collins, but it’s not a race. At one point I almost fell over because we were moving so slow. Tall bikes, short bikes, tandem bikes, septacycles… we saw it all.

The sumo wrestler was very popular.

Afterward, our legs ached and our butts were numb, so we headed to the swimbeach at the Horsetooth Reservoir for some R&R. I left Sunday and because there weren’t any major incidents over the weekend (yay cop duty!) I fit in some hiking. The holiday weekend closed out on a high note with today’s float trip.  More on that later.

Here’s a video from last year’s Tour de Fat:

We’re raising money for United Way with a slew of activities/fundraiser opportunities. Up for silent auction: two season tickets to the University of Wyoming football games in Laramie.

I bid as much as I could afford after evaluating my current credit card situation and calculating how much money I’ll get with my first paycheck Friday. Because I thought it would help my cause, I wrote in the margin, “Please don’t outbid me! I <3 college football.” I almost added, “and I’m a poor ex-grad student with loans to pay and will cry if I can’t go to a football game in my new, wonderful home state of Wyoming,”

I was outbid by $100.

The publisher saw this go down, felt bad for me and stopped by my desk to tell me he’d get me tickets for a game at some point in the season. So I’ve got one!

Also, my sister approved of me going down to Fort Collins for homecoming weekend, so it looks like I’ll join the family for a game.

But UW and CSU play a different type of football — Mountain West Conference football. I might have to fly to Missouri for the Texas game.