Hailstorms

So yesterday I'm sitting in lab fitting data on the computer, Hugh's reading to my left, and Priyantha's around the corner working the accelerator...when all of a sudden the power flicks out for a minute. Of course everyone thinks that someone flipped a switch at the wrong time and gets up to see who did it...but no one's by the box. About this time the power goes out again and suddenly there's cursing and running around everywhere because the accelerator's going to mess up if we don't find out why the power's being crazy. Micheal opens the door to see if it's something building wide and everyone just stops when we hear a steady roar as soon as the door's cracked.

At the same time, Patrick (from a lab upstairs and one of Orion's friends) is in the bathroom when he hears Cowboy Nick go "DAAAAAAAAAAAMN" outside in the hallway. Pretty soon everyone is out of their labs watching this hailstorm pummel Bozeman. There's really no other word than pummel. There was probably a half-inch of hail covering the ground after it passed...and the hail only lasted five minutes, tops. No one got pictures, but seeing the entire building gathered at the windows on the second floor and the porch on the first was very amusing. My lab started throwing ice balls at each other once the hail stopped while Patrick was frantically trying to reach someone at his apartment so that they could save his precious tomatoes.

Later that night I was talking to Kelsey when I looked out the window and saw a storm approaching. This one was even bigger and better, and when I looked the weather forecast called for "quarter sized hail and 70 mph winds". I took some pictures from my room but they're not nearly as awesome as Ben's, because he went outside and hid behind a pillar taking pictures. So...here are Ben's pictures of the awesome hailstorm.



It's insane to be able to just watch a storm come for you like you can here.



The rain and wind began. A lot of branches and trees got blown over.



CRAZY HAIL. I seriously thought my window was going to crack. The 4th floor hallway window got blown open and the screen got busted out.





A lot of hail got washed into the creek.



It was big, big hail.



Oh, and there's a new-ish post below this, if you missed that.

Epiiiiiiic

Epic is our new favorite descriptor. As of yesterday, it has also been concluded that physics students inordinately like Cheeze-Its and gin compared to the rest of the population, but that doesn't have much to do with this post. Actually it has nothing at all to do with this post.


Monday - Bastille Day!
Bastille Day is awesome for three reasons:
1. It's Bastille Day.
2. It's John's birthday.
3. Nick has studied the Bastille Day solar flare for the past two years now.

To celebrate this wondrous day, we decided to have cupcakes and shave off all of Nick's hair. I got a call Monday afternoon that went something along the lines of...

Me: Hi?
Nick: Soooo....hypothetically...if someone were to make you cupcakes....what flavor would those cupcakes be...?
Me: Well they would obviously have to be fitting with Bastille Day.
Nick: Oh, great. Fantastic. That makes my life better.
Me: *laughing with my hand over the receiver*
Nick: What are Bastille Day qualities?
Me: It's a fun time.
Nick: FUNFETTI. *click*



Nick was super-happy the beard was coming off, because everything in the world got in it apparently. Including cupcakes.



Eric was given the job of shaving, which was a silly choice. We found out that Eric likes making fun shapes in hair.





So we just all got to stand around and laugh at Nick....though he laughed too. It made the job harder.



No one really knows what's going on here, including Eric.



At this point Nick looked super-creepy, and laughter delayed shaving for five minutes.



Then he got itchy and took the shirt off, which only added to the creepy factor, which of course added to the hilarity factor.



Then came the neck shaving, and the resulting picture had me, Chris, and Eric crying on the floor from laughter when we went back and looked at it.



The finished product! Nick has a face again!




Tuesday
It was Family Night at Colombo's Pizza, which for some reason means that if you buy a large pizza, pitchers of beer are half off. I usually go with Chris and Nick and they split the pitcher, but Nick was bowling so I just went with Chris, who was unable to finish the pitcher. Probably a good thing, but then again, he smashed Carlo Challenge in the face...so maybe a pitcher of beer wouldn't mean much. Part of the reason for not finishing was that we got a call from Nathan (MSU) inviting us to come over and play a game called Settlers. I'd never heard of it before but apparently it's pretty popular, and it's a lot of fun. Kelsey would like it a lot (you should check that out). Orion and Brian were there too, and someone named Casey. Orion warned everyone that Nathan would win "because he's a sneaky bastard," and tried to play against him the entire time, but Nathan won anyway.


Wednesday
It rained Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and the complaints from Nick were never-ending. There really isn't a great deal to do unless you go outside, though, so I understand. Fortunately I got invited to a barbecue thrown by Orion, so not only did I have something to do, I got amazing food! He had BBQ pork, of course, but also halibut he'd caught in Alaska, grilled corn, tofu, and everyone else brought sides. A lot of fooseball went down and then came the food. Casey, Ryan, and Patrick were there too, and I brought Chris along. A few other people were around who were there for turkey dinner, including the vegan twins. The next day Orion referred to Chris as "that bandanna-ed stallion," which had me clutching my sides in laughter while he stood there kind of confused. Orion says a lot of crazy/hilarious stuff without having a clue.


Thursday
We tried to go to the lake, but it started storming by the time Nick was halfway across. This was kind of funny because Nick immediately turned around and swam to shore in record time...and speed is NOT something Nick does. He's all endurance. So he kind of died when he got to shore.


Friday
Chris and Nick wanted to go to some Microbrew festival happening in Virginia City that night, and as soon as Nick told Chris about it it was automatically assumed that I'd be DD-ing that one. So I did.

I didn't have to drive there, though, and took some nice pictures.



Montana's too pretty. At least I've got a pretty state to return to though...Chris and Nick get Illinois and Iowa, respectively. That's just boring stuff, there.



We ate at a tiny cafe in a speck of a town, and it really hit the spot. The festival was HILARIOUS, because it was just a tiny thing in this tiny town where every street besides the main street was gravel... When we first got there it was all middle-aged people and a middle-aged rock band, the bar had a confederate flag hanging up which....wow...in Montana? We thought it hilarious. So yeah, they drank and the best people-watching ever was had. One woman had hair that we still haven't figured out the logistics of. On the ride back I scared Nick to death by going 70 down curvy mountain highways, then I made fun of him for being used to straight roads, and Nick and I blasted Neutral Milk Hotel and screamed along...and somehow Chris fell asleep. Who falls asleep to Two Headed Boy at speaker-blowing volumes while careening down a mountainside?!

By the time we got into town Nick's voice was shot, and he wanted to go to Perkins reaaaally badly. We went and got dessert and had the best waiter ever. We ended up going to bed at 1:30 or something, a terrible idea given what we were doing the next morning.


Saturday
This day was a designated EPIC day. We climbed the highest mountain in the Bridger range, Sacajawea Peak.



But the guys didn't JUST want to climb it and go back down to the car...oh no. They wanted epic. They wanted to climb up one side and go down the other. Luckily (or maybe not) they both had cars, so we took Nick's car to one side, then piled into Chris's car and drove to the other side. We weren't really sure if we had Nick's car in the correct place, but because we're crazy we decided that if we ended up miles away from it we'd just hitchhike or something.

The road to Fairy Lake, where we started, was super sketchy. I'm surprised we made it, really. Every other car we saw was a truck or SUV.

As soon as the hike started I knew it was going to suck, because the three of us had had no sleep, and I'd forgotten my allergy medicine the past day or two and breathing was rough. So, suck it did. By the time we got to this snowfield I was struggling. Not that oxygen deprivation helped. Also, Ben took about half of all of the following pictures...any that I appear in, at least.



On the upside, there were a lot of pretty flowers hanging out.



We got to the saddle and it was soooo windy. The guys could lean against the wind, and they had fun with that. I just got cold and almost blown off the mountain a few times, so I was less enthused by 40 mph winds. Still enthused enough by their antics to take silly pictures, though!



We still had some climbing to do, though.



To that pointy thing, in fact.

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Click on people's faces in the photo to tag them.

EPIC.



The next peak over was Hardscrabble Peak, a little lower, but not much.



More epic-ness.







Mmmm lunch on a mountainside.



My sandwich tried to slide down and I caught it, and all of the guys flipped out and moved towards me even though all I did was move my arm. They were afraid I'd fall down this, and told me that if I lost my food again I could just eat theirs. They're all cute like that.



Not that I'd want to fall down what we'd just climbed up or anything.

More epic viewing:



As we were leaving someone else came up and we got them to take a picture.









Once back to the saddle, and windiness, we realized that we weren't quite sure which of the six converging trails to take.

We got out the guidebook and made some educated guesses, which lead us to this trail. Calling it a trail might be a little too generous, though, because it wasn't there about half of the time.



Partway down there was this rock outcropping, and next thing we knew Chris (who's a bona-fide rock climber) was up on them. Of course everyone had to follow suit, though more slowly.



Looking down.



We lost the trail and just climbed over fields of boulders for a bit.







Then we found it again!



There were so many wildflowers...too bad all of the colors don't show up here.





Partway down we got passed by a dirtbiker, and most of the rest of the trip's conversation became the guys coming up with increasingly worse names for him.



We still weren't 100% sure if we were in the right place, and so when we saw a sign partway down we were anticipating knowing where we were.



No such luck. Thanks, sign.

We continued onward, now down really deep ruts.



Then we got to an opening and took a snack break. We decided that having iced tea and ginger cookies right there would've been a fantastic time, but alas...we just had water and cliff bars.



We continued down the road and right after it flattened out we saw Nick's car. None of us had ever been so happy to see a car. We were gross and sweaty and had walked ten miles that day.



Then we had to get Chris's car, which was treacherous in Nick's little Dodge Neon. We got stuck going up a hill once on the road and had to back down it, speed up, and even then had to swerve around to avoid getting stuck again. There was a guy on horseback nearby who laughed along with us, but the people waiting for us to get out of the way so that they could continue down were not amused at all. Not sure why, because I'm sure it looked hilarious.

On the way back in Chris's car I had him stop so that I could take some pictures. It's a pretty road. The mountain on the left is the one that we climbed.



But the day was not done! We nearly ran into a bunch of free-range cattle. Half decided to move out of the way, and the others just looked at us while we creeped through the herd.



Then we showered and went without Ben and with Jenna to Montana Aleworks so that the guys could have beer and burgers. They spent the second half of the hike being pumped about beer and burgers (and complaining about the dirtbiker whose moniker I won't repeat). I got a salad and bourbon, which they thought was the funniest thing ever for two reasons. One was just the odd combination, and the other was me drinking something they could smell from across the table. Nick was confused about my not being smashed and kept saying "But you're so tiny! And it's bourbon!"


Sunday
A bunch of REU students and some grad students, along with Dr. Neumeier, went on a rafting trip down the Yellowstone river. Ben took all of these because he was the only one brave enough to bring his camera on the rafts.

We looked silly in our life vests.



Ben taking a picture of my raft on the first trip, during a calm part. I didn't get to paddle this one and it was sad.



The second part took place here, and I did get to paddle, which was way more fun. It was a much better group, too...you'd think Dr. Neumeier and his friend would be good front people, but no...they didn't listen at all. Even Austin said something about it, and if Austin ever speaks...well....you know that something important went down. This time around, Eric and Ben were the front guys and we all worked together quite well.



Ben took this, so he's not in it. We all got soaked...it was fantastic!

Eric, Jenna, Austin, our guide Erin, me, Nick.



On the way back supposedly there was nice scenery...



...but I was super-tired and ended up drooling all over Chris...who ended up napping on Eric...who had his sleepy face all over the window. Apparently I was the funniest, because that's the picture that got taken...it should be in Kelsey's "terrible pictures of Alyssa" album.




Lastly, Jacob uploaded some REALLY OLD pictures. Some interesting ones...

The REU Mixer...this is probably the first time I talked to Nick, and that it was documented is weeeeeird.



The first cupcake party, for Eric's birthday. I'm sitting beside Jenna, but Chris and Eric are hiding me from view.



I take the worst pictures.



The beer-shipping party/waiting for Eric to officially turn 21.