George and Susan's Blog: Good times in Bozeman

Just back from a really nice 4 days in Bozeman, MT visiting Caitlyn and all her friends. This weekend was graduation weekend at MSU and a couple of Caitlyn's roommates are moving on to new adventures this week so we decided to drop in and visit with her for a long weekend. We left Denver on Friday morning and got back yesterday evening. It was great to see Cat and get to know all her friends a bit. Susan had also never been to Bozeman so we had a really fun 4 days staying at a B&B (FoxHollow Inn, highly recommended.) Mike and Nancy are great hosts and we had fun chatting with various other folks staying at the B&B over breakfast. It was also really nice to get away from home and not have to worry about chores, paying insurance bills, treatment schedules, etc. It was very refreshing to just go somewhere and have everything taken care of and be able to set all the worries aside for a few days. Yeah!

Susan and I were a bit worried about the trip - sitting on the plane with 38 other folks breathing bugs at you that your white blood cells have to battle (what few I have left!) and being on the go for four straight days. But everything worked out very well. We made sure to get back to the room every afternoon for a 1/2 hr. to hour long nap/recharge time and Caitlyn was just a super host. There were two graduation parties on Friday night and we got to meet a bunch of her friends. To minimize the chance of getting sick I decided I wasn't going to shake hands with the folks I met. This caused a bit of a strange first meeting as all the guys would extend their hands and I would do a sort of Obi-wan kind of hand gesture and explain that I had some blood chemistry issues and that I was using my designated hand shaker (Susan) to do all my hand shaking. Everybody was cool with that. Not sure if it was necessary but I felt like it was worth doing to minimize the risk of picking up a cold. It was also Susan's birthday on Friday and of course, Mother's Day on Sunday. So we had lots to celebrate through the weekend. Had a nice birthday lunch on Friday, two parties on Friday night, tour of all the hot spots of the MSU Geology department Saturday, birthday dinner Saturday night, Sunday Mother's Day brunch and hot spring soak on Sunday, dinner with Caitlyn's house mates on Sunday evening, pal-ing around Bozeman on Monday including a trip to the MSU Museum of the Rockies on Monday afternoon (great dinosaur bones, also highly recommended).

At one of the Friday graduation parties Susan got to hang with one of the parents, down from Homer, AK. She gave us the down low that a bunch of the guys on The World's Deadliest Catch are pretty bad fisherman. Poser's that can only look good in front of the camera but aren't really the A Team of the Alaska crabbing industry. Good to know these inside details! The parents brought down some moose that they were grilling up. I slipped off the vegan bus for a minute and had a chunk - pretty tasty!

At dinner Sunday evening at Caitlyn's, we got to ask Todd what Star Trek character most reminded him of his wife (answer: Tasha Yar, good choice!) and also got to head butt Patrick (friend of Caitlyn's and hockey player. He naively thought that head butts only happened with your helmet on, to the goalie, after a game. So I got to broaden his horizons a bit on that front.) Knowing that we could talk sci-fi and also head butt Caitlyn's friends confirmed our opinion that she has chosen wisely in terms of building her posse :)

A few highlights and pictures from the trip:

The Bridgers from outside our B&B north of Bozeman:

Susan standing in front of the B&B

When you ask for a compact rental car in Bozeman, this is what you get:

Good rental rate per square foot of interior but not much fun at the gas pump!

Hmm, do you understand ANY of this Geology? (One of Caitlyn's posters related to her graduate work:)