Way back in the way back days, before the Mountainstroh Blog, shoot, even before I am sure I knew what a blog was, I become a cyclist. It was December 2007, and I got my first real bike.
Who knew how far it would take me…. Continue reading “New Decade, New focus and a New Name”
Yeah yeah yeah, I know. Every stinking TV show, radio program, podcast and blogger does a “looking back post.” So here I am doing the same. But ya know, honestly 2018 has been a year of change, AND the blogger mafia threatened to take away my website if I didn’t do it, so, here we go, 2018…
One of the things I have learned over the last few years of writing this blog is to never get in the way of a new post. There are just too many days when the blog fodder just does NOT happen. So, today as I was eating dinner and sipping a glass of wine in Spokane, my mind started thinking back to what I consider my fist ‘real’ hike of the Mountainstroh era.
The more I thought, the more I decided it was blog worthy, so here we go! Yall can let me know if I was correct! Continue reading “The First Real Hike”
I have said this many times, over the years: It is funny where one gets one’s blog fodder. Sometimes it’s the radio, sometimes a conversation at work and sometimes it’s its our old pal Facebook.
For this post, it was FB. One of my friends posted: Tell us something about you we would be surprised to know.
My answer? There was a time I was the dumbest kid in class. Continue reading “The day Tony got smart”
With Michelle down in Oregon with her roommate from college, I am on my own this weekend. (I am going to try to get her to do a guest blog for her adventures on the Rogue River yesterday, they even considered “Pulling a Panama”)
I have decided that tomorrow morning will be the first hike of 2014, but I also wanted to get a good bike ride in today. This meant starting relatively early (OK after 8, I was a serious slacker today, and slept in) to get the errands done, and then jumping on the bike about 11:30. It was during the ride that I came to a realization about myself…. Continue reading “Should I change my name?”
Over the years I have discovered many differences between men and women. Guys, in general, smell worse, have fewer manners, are louder, and are more likely to try something, that in retrospect, might not have been the smartest thing ever. These are just a few things that separates us.
But the one I am referring to here, is the desire to rearrange the house. Continue reading “Craigslist Karma”
Have you ever run into someone after a number of years and been totally surprised? You know, they have either gained or lost a ton of weight. Or they look hella old, or instead of being a boozehound they are clean cut and professional?
When you see someone every day, the changes are gradual and you may not notice at all. If you are an oblivious guy (like me) you may not even notice radical changes. Shoot, at the Holy P, I was the only guy, I started listening for the ladies I worked with to say something like “LOVE the new hair!” I scored many a brownie point commenting after hearing this. (Monica totally caught on and called me out on it! I owned it! I call it survival of the fittest, NOT cheating)
But when you haven’t seen someone for years, the change can stop you dead in your tracks. That’s what happened to me last night, but NOT because of a person. Continue reading “Wow you’ve changed!”
I have commented MANY times since I started this game, that you NEVER know what it is that will inspire a post. Scary enough, since I began in Mid January of this year, I have posted damn near every day. I keep thinking, “Sometime I will slow down!” Or “Sometime I will run out of stuff to write about.” I keep thinking it, but it doesn’t happen.
Now, I am pretty darn sure that the only two people who have read every post I have written are my lovely wife Michelle and Mom! But I know, that there are a lot of you that read a lot of the posts. and I just want to say thanks!
I start this post this way, because tonight, after a night out with our friend Kaye, and a long day at work I had no stinkin clue what, or IF I was going to do a post. but then it happened. Continue reading “The Moment”
Ask people in the United States if they’d like to visit Seattle. Quite a few of them will tell you, “Hell no! All it does is rain up there, why would we want to go?” Many, not all of course, but many of us LOVE that answer. We like things the way they are up here, laid back, friendly, even peaceful. We try to avoid tourists.
Because of that, we don’t always correct people when they talk about our rain. Truth be told, from July 5th, until sometime in September (excluding Labor Day weekend) we are honestly dry as a tater chip! Blue sky, sunshine, not too overly hot, the perfect place to spend a summer and get outside.
That is until this week. Today actually. Continue reading “The Cusp”
OK, I fully intended to sit her and write yet another sad post about my poor stolen bike. Or maybe talk about my shopping trip to the bike department at REI. Maybe even whine a bit about the bug bite on the bottom of my foot (annoying!), any of which could easily have been the post of the night.
But then I read my buddy Jim’s post How do you write the chapters of your life?, and I realized it was time to stop whining and actually write something meaningful (or at least my version of meaningful) for a change. Continue reading “Chapters”