Orofino or Bust

The next stop in the “Mobile Ghetto” tour was to visit our friends Jess and Becky in Idaho. This turned out to be quite the experience. I had no idea I was going to learn how to properly mount scopes on rifles,  split wood using a log splitter for my first time, a “33” ton I might add, it doesn’t get any better than that and help rescue a couple of kittens left on the highway near Jess and Becky’s house. By the way, if the party discarding those kitten’s had gotten caught by Jess leaving those little guys I would probably be writing this story in the police station while I was posting bail to get Jess out! He was not happy someone would do that to kittens and muttered some offensive terms, the only printable one being vermin!

The kittens were so new that their eyes were barely open! As a matter of fact one of them only had one eye open so I called him “Mono”, short for monocular.  We figured if his name was Mono because of only one eye open then we may as well call the other one “Bino”, just to be fair. Becky took care of them overnight until she could arrange to take them to the animal shelter the next day.

However there were limitations of what would be tolerated in the house. It seems the two boys, Garon and Zeger, full grown German Shepherds were not going to tolerate Mono and Bino living under the same roof. So they spent the night in the garage in cardboard boxes with blankets for their own protection. I think I saw the boys licking their chops as Becky made them go back into the house for the night. The next day they were delivered to the shelter with a donation from Jess and Becky to help with their care.

Over the next few evenings I was given a crash course on how to properly mount a rifle scope. Interesting stuff, I thought you just lined it up and bolted it together, boy was I mistaken. Jess goes through quite a process to do it correctly and it shows when you test fire the rifle. I was sworn to secrecy and can’t give any trade secrets away in this blog. But now that I think of it maybe I should start singing like a canary because every time I visit Jess it seems I end up with a new gun! Last year I left his house with a new rifle and this year it seems I have acquired a new pistol.  Pretty sneaky.

During the next few days I couldn’t resist trying my hand at splitting wood with a hydraulic wood splitter I spotted out behind the house. Especially when I look it over and see “33 Ton” printed on it! This had to be an omen, me showing up and having a splitter with that number on it. Once I fired that sucker up and started shredding those big round sections of wood like they were Popsicle sticks I found myself grinning from ear to ear! What I remembered about wood splitting was the axe, maul and sledgehammer I had to use and what a pain it was to get through the wood. This made it almost fun having that kind of power at your disposal. Sort of like when I used to ride a CR 500 or a 490 Maico, you know, MAN’S BIKES!

I was having so much fun tearing through the wood until I took my first break and got a drink. It seemed I had created quite a pile of wood that needed to be stacked.  After a couple of rotations of splitting and stacking I finally ran the machine out of gas. There was still more wood so I couldn’t wait to get some gas and tear it up again tomorrow!

A few days later we were treated to a thunderstorm with lightning strikes that touched off several fires. The fires took off and created so much smoke that the beautiful surroundings were obscured and some of the local towns started evacuations. I watched the firefighting helicopters come down to fill their buckets from the river. It got so bad I was afraid they may close the roads so I figured it was time to move on before I lose the ‘mobile ghetto’.

#33

‘Riding is like licking Honey off a thorn’