Montana & Wyoming - Day Off

Hurrah! At last, a day off. Good timing on our part too, as the weather is TERRIBLE today.

Only joking. It is overcast though.

Here's what I'll be doing today:

(in case any American's have started reading the blog, that's supposed to be a pun, as I plan on doing sweet F A today)

(in case that still means nothing to you "sweet F A" means, er, not very much)

Montana & Wyoming Day 7 - Bozeman, MT to, er, Bozeman, MT

Feeling refreshed after a good night's kip, we set off on today's trip. It was a big old loop, taking in a variety of awesome sights. First off were the ghost towns of Nevada City and Virginia City. These old mining towns are a fascinating juxtaposition of old and new, and seem to be real tourist traps. Horse drawn carriages were taking families down the streets and alleys of old mining towns in the baking heat.

Too busy operating to take photos at the time, but here are the ghost towns from the ground at least!

We then filmed canoeing, a bald eagle, a rodeo and white water rafting! It was an action packed day, with some fantastic close up shots. I've now got the urge to spend my week off after this travelling into the wilderness! 

And I may have found the perfect companion:

This isn't the actual one I saw for sale. This is much nicer. The one I saw was broken, missing a front bumper, rusty and every panel was dented. BUT, it was only $1,000 (so $500 after some harsh negotiation), and it has awesome roof mounted floodlights!

Hmmm. After last time, perhaps not.

Although, I have discovered a rather awesome piece of kit, which I feel I may have to invest in, regardless of whether or not I go exploring the great outdoors. It's called a DeLorme, inReach, and it's a satellite GPS device with two awesome features. 1) At the push of a button, it sends an SOS signal, via satellite, sending your lat/long/elevation 2) You can send/receive text messages by pairing it with your iPad. How cool is that?! It's not even that expensive. Think I'll get one!

After the morning's flying, we landed at Ennis Airport. Simon dared me to go out with some white paint and draw a P on the runway in front of the airport's name. Fortunately, I am not a hooligan, and declined. Nor did I have any white paint come to think of it. Ennis Airport is a fascinating place. The FBO (fixed-based operator) is normally a large building, with staff, a pilots lounge, wifi, showers, vending machines, coffee. At Ennis, it was literally a shack. One room. Despite this, it had wifi and a fridge stocked with soft drinks and candy bars. In another show of American trust, they have an honor system. If you take anything from the fridge, you leave the money in a tin. How trusting is that? Less awesome was the outhouse toilet with a hole in the ground.

The less said about that the better. 

We lifted up for the final bit of filming, the rodeo, run by a bloke whose name is, and I kid you not: Pokey Armitage. What an insane name! Although perhaps not, considering top 20 Montana names include: Wyatt, Hunter, Landon, Caleb and Shelby. That last one being a girl's name. "thanks ma, fer namin' me after the railway station".

Anyway, the bucking bronco's are an impressive sight. Apparently the horses buck because their testicles are tied together. Fair enough really, it would probably make be buck too... Surely that's an urban legend though? Right? I mean surely the most popular sport in this north-western state isn't based around a group of leather clad men constricting a horse's nutsack? I'd Google it, but I'm too afraid of what I might find....

Montana & Wyoming Day 6 - Miles City, MT to Bozeman, MT

It is perhaps unsurprising, that none of us slept particularly well. It wasn't the quality of the rooms, which were fine, nor the ineffectiveness of the air con, which was aging, but just about working. No, the reason we all slept badly, is that some bright spark decided the best way to design a motel by a busy road is like this:

After dragging ourselves out of our rooms, we were greeted with a breakfast that can only be described as being cooked by Satan himself. The bacon was so crispy, it actually snapped in half as I tried to pick a piece up. Abandoning this (along with overcooked smeggs - fake eggs, that are called smeggs, for reasons we won't go into here), I opted for the "healthy" option of a bagel, muffin and yoghurt.

Our day of filming was shorter and sweeter than most. We started our journey west, covering a few interesting features such as Pompey's Pillar, before landing at Livingston.

(apologies for the delay - here is the second half:)

Livingston is like the land that time forgot, except it's an airport. They were missing basic things like hot coffee, flat screen TV's, magazines, oh and electricity. Yep. We landed, they unraveled the pump to fuel the helicopter with some Jet A fuel, and it just went click. The pump didn't start. At this point they discovered the power was out in the local vicinity. I find it somewhat incredible that they only discovered there was no power when they were trying to fuel something. Obviously the poor old dear behind the counter had been sitting in the dark for the last few hours oblivious. Strange.

We waited. It felt like an eternity. Colin was miles and miles behind us, and we had to wait for him to catch up. My first lunch consisted of two bananas and a handful of nuts, this was washed down by a warm can of Monster energy drink. Loverly. :s After that I attempted dozing, but in the stifling un-airconditioned heat I soon gave up and ended up watching the rest of the Sherlock Holmes film with RDJ. Pretty decent, in a light-hearted action adventure kind of way.

Eventually Colin arrived, and we set off to lunch at the Ribbentrop, ahem, sorry, I mean the Rib 'n' Chop which seems to be a Montana chain. Richard and I decided to feast on the animal that had spent so long eluding us from our aerial perch: the buffalo. Buffalo burgers are darned tasty things! A bit gamey, and not as strong a flavour as beef, but decent nonetheless.

It's hard to take pictures up in the helicopter, as there's always something going on. Here's a quick on I managed to grab. In  America they make fields round, as there is so much space, it' makes them easier to irrigate I suppose. The corners are just abandoned land - imagine that in the UK!

A short flight to Bozeman, where we're going to be staying for the next three days and we checked into our hotel. I asked for a room near the gym, at which point I was laughed at (quite rightly), but the rest of the team: "let me get this right", asked Colin, "you want a room that's near the gym, so you don't have to walk so far to get there?". Guffawing ensued. I ended up in the room directly opposite. With a run up, I could actually jump from my room into the gym.

So to the gym I went. Despite the late and very filling lunch, I felt like going for a run. Half an hour on the treadmill, at a steady 6.5 mph, I thought. That'll do the trick. Having spent half the day crammed in a helicopter, and the other half sweating like John Prescott in a pie shop, I was feeling pretty out of shape by the time my running shoes hit the rubber. But off I went, and my god, it felt torturous. After 15 minutes I could feel myself struggling, and by 25 minutes I could feel the buffalo burger threatening to make a reappearance. I heard a good expression recently: pain is weakness leaving the body. I decided though, that buffalo leaving the body is probably a step too far, and so a minute later I stopped.

Dinner was a very civilised affair at a local restaurant. I've decided I am a beer heathen: I like cold lager, preferably European, but budweiser, coors, or even a miller will do. These weren't on tap in the restaurant, and I had a choice of ales. I settled for something that was sort of OK, a light ale I think. For someone who likes lager quite a lot, I'm really not into any other beer. Richard and Colin found this quite amusing, after I sent the first one back having ordered an ale that was simply gross. Hey ho.

Montana & Wyoming Day 5 - Glasgow, MT to Miles City, MT

Awaking from about 9 hours sleep, I almost jumped out of bed, filled with energy. Last night I flopped into bed and just fell asleep - I didn't even get undressed or crawl under the covers. Either this film making malarkey is taking it out of me, or the combination of 10oz steak and several pints of beer proved fatal!

Breakfast got off to a slight misfire. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but we ended up split into two groups, each one having scouted for the other before sitting down. This was followed by a senile old waitress, who carried over our breakfast, a plate in each hand, and the third resting on her bosom. And not in a good way. Think Jabba the Hutt more than Dolly Parton.

Over breakfast we discussed the arduous heat that was afflicting us. It's hot in America at the moment. I mean really hot. So hot that this happens:

Yep, that happened today (full disclosure: that is not my photo - our helicopter flies low, but there's a limit!)

And so, our acting sergeant in chief, ex-RAF man Simon Cookson, taught us an old army trick to keep cool whilst flying: the sweat rag. The premise is simple, take a bit of cloth (like a handkerchief), not too dense, preferably a light cotton of some sort. You take the rag, you moisten it, then you wrap it around your neck. The end result, if done right, should look something like this:

It looks like I'm wearing a bib, it's actually just a really bad choice of t-shirt to wear for this photo.

Why, might you ask, do we need a sweat rag? Well, today, and yesterday, it reached 38 degrees celcius in the cabin. And it stays that way. For hours. Our record is 42 degrees. Yeah. It gets hot. And when you are wearing a helmet, headset, and covered in various control panels, you end up feeling like you being slowly grilled alive!

Our day of filming saw us take off and head for Sidney, which we arrived at two hours and 5 minutes later. Two hours from Glasgow to Sidney? Alas, the Glasgow we stayed at was more dire than it's hellhole of a namesake in Scotland, and Sidney looked pretty Mad Max-esque: by that I mean post apocalyptic. Still, we saw some awesome sights yet again. Abandoned shacks among still working oil derricks. The owners, as Richard pointed out, have no doubt long since moved to their new homes in the Cayman Islands.

Lunch at Sidney was a pleasant affair. We normally try and forage for food somewhere in the local vicinity. Midday is the only point in the day where I am completely at a loose end. Simon is busy fueling the bird, Richard is making notes and reporting back to base. I have nothing to do. So I do what comes naturally: find a way to fill my stomach. This usually involves finding a courtesy car, getting a restaurant recommendation, and hoping we don't end up with enough food to feed Italy. For a month.

This time though, the courtesy car was already gone. "Don't worry", exclaimed the woman behind the counter, "you can take my car", as she thrust the keys to her car, house, and all her worldly belongings into my hands. The hands of a stranger and foreigner she had met only minutes before. Can you imagine that happening in England? Or indeed anywhere else? They say Americans can be paranoid, with their guns and what not. But there's a very trusting and over-the-top-trying-to-be-helpful-and-please manner that is frankly awesome. And so we took this woman's Chevy Suburban, complete with her kids booster seat, down to the golf course to lunch.

I ordered a club sandwich and coleslaw. I then discovered that in America, coleslaw is served sweet.

Gross.

After forgetting my doggy box of half a sandwich in this poor woman's car (which I realised hours later, much to the delight of my colleagues), we headed off towards our destination: Miles City. On the way we filmed the Badlands, some terrific rock formations called the Medicine Rocks, and I continued to marvel at how varied and pretty the Montana landscape is.

Our final treat, before the day's end, was a trip to Walmart. At long last! Walmart, you see, is a source of all my tackiest of clothing. I decided this trip would be no exception, and promptly kitted myself like so:

America. Fuck yeah!

I'm now drinking my second cup of real tea, made in a Kettle (thank you Colin for the tea, and aunty Clare for the kettle - which I have now used for the first time in 4 years!). In five days we've traveled the whole way across the top of the state. And what a state it is!

Montana & Wyoming Day 4 - Great Falls, MT to Glasgow, MT

Day four has been short and sweet so far. Flying east, we decided to wait for the sun to get out of the way (it's easiest to shoot forwards and you don't want to shoot into the sun!), and so had a leisurely 8:30 start, a real lazy call time compared to the last few days. Over breakfast we had a good banter over some more delicious breakfast sausage patties. I had my second healthy thing ever in america - some fruit! Perhaps I am able to resist the lure of american food after all?

Despite deciding to start late, we then some mild weather warnings, and so were underway before midday. Although we left the Rocky mountains behind yesterday, today we had some of the best filming of the shoot. A deserted ghost town, an eagle chasing a smaller bird of prey, a group of a dozen elks roaming around in the prairies. For only a few hours filming, we got a bucket load of shots.

Now we're just resting up in Glasgow airport, waiting for Colin to catch up with us. This is a small railway town, so not expecting much out of food and accommodation - let's see!

Here's a shot of me and my rig:

Montana & Wyoming Day 3 - Polson, MT to Great Falls, MT

Our longest day of filming yet (and in fact possibly ever)! 6.9hrs of flight (which is about as much as you can do on two tanks of fuel), and seven shot tapes. And the footage we got was outstanding!

Being a bit mad, I decided to go for a jog first thing, so I set my alarm at silly-o-clock (that's 5am), and off I set. But did I factor in the higher altitude? Nope. So after 20 minutes I'm struggling to breathe as I'm running around alongside this stunning lake. Even so, it was superb!

We met for breakfast at 6:45 and I treated myself to pancakes with some sausage patties. I cannot understand why the only place you can get sausage patties in the UK is at McDonalds! They are delicious. I'm quite tempted to get a 40ft freezer container and ship a ton or two back - there's got to be a market for them back home. If you go to the states, do NOT miss out on the best thing america has to offer.

This was, of course, washed down with a gallon of lukewarm liquid, that's probably coffee. Or bovril. Or river water. I'm not sure. I am missing tea though, to the point that I can feel physical withdrawal symptoms. Typical isn't it? On trip 1, I have neither kettle, nor tea. On trip 2, I remember the tea, but forget the kettle! On trip three, I remembered the kettle - but in my rush to the airport I didn't have time to pick up any tea bags. And the shooting schedule has been so full on that we've not even had a chance to pop in to Walmart.

After our action packed day, Simon the pilot retired immediately to the sanctuary of his room (and who can blame him!), whilst Richard, Colin and I were treated to some live country music at the local gaff. Can't say it was the best music in the world (you know it's a bad sign when one of the singers is holding up a music sheet to sing along to), but the burger was delicious and I consumed my first salad so far on this trip!

Finally got some pics up, here's the view from my office!

Montana & Wyoming Day 2 - Whitefish, MT to Polson, MT

What an fantastic second day, despite the grueling 5am alarm for a six thirty departure, my god was it worth it. We started the day by flying north over the glacier national park, before bad weather grounded us for the next six or seven hours. We had an enjoyable lunch, worked on various bits of kit and enjoyed the hospitable FCO before taking off in much better weather later in the afternoon. Heading south east we finished up in Polson, where there was a rodeo show in town. It was absolutely awesome, with cowboys and cowgirls bucking around on horses and the whole town cheering them on.

Pics to follow - can't seem to work out how to get pics of this damn iPad!

Update: Polson Rodeo!