The bus flew again today…sometimes sideways (high winds) from Oacoma, SD to Buffalo, Wyoming. When I was talking about being tired from fighting wind in the Winnebago (22000 pounds - 2 axles) on my trip home, Bill suggested that if I had behaved correctly and we were doing the trip in the Magic Bus (47000 pounds on 3 axles) that I wouldn’t be getting tossed around. Today, I reminded him that he had said this after he complained about fighting the wind to the point of “getting concerned”. His reply was that “I” wouldn’t be getting tossed around because he would be driving - “TECHNICALITY” I say!!! Just for clarification, I have driven the monster - once… and we all lived through the experience…

Anyway, now he’s set on buying the Tru-steer system and it is apparently about the first thing he will do after he gets here.

Tomorrow might be fun - he has his first Western mountain passes to go up and over. And to add to the fun, it is supposed to be cool enough that there might be a bit of that white stuff up there - snow - for you southerners! He says if so he will stop and make snow angels. I said I want a picture of that.

Temperature in Buffalo, WY is 49. Temperature in Florida Panhandle is 95.

Bill is 660 miles from my house tonight. Tomorrow’s destination is 411 miles and will leave him 240 some for Saturday. The last 100 miles is a 2 lane highway so good to travel on Saturday - usually less traffic…no one likes to be behind a motorhome EVEN when it is going the speed limit!

3:30 p.m. - it’s done…the server was down from approximately 1:55 to 3:30 p.m. MDT. If you tried to get here and could not - wasn’t your problem.

My hosting company has let me know that the specific server which hosts “From the Front Porch” is failing…before it fails completely they will move everything to a brand new server. They tell me there will be a 30-45 minute period of time when everything will be offline. This will happen sometime today.

Generally, a server failure happens gradually and they would start noticing and do a changeover on a weekend night with a lot of advanced notice. Apparently, this server is all of a sudden showing a dramatic number of errors and to avoid a complete outage that would require recovery from backup and more downtime, they decided on a short notice, short outage scenario. Works for me!

This post is a little late for some of my “coffee with From the Front Porch readers”…Yesterday was a little out of whack…it started with no coffee and no breakfast as I had an 8 a.m. appointment for a “fasting” blood test as part of my annual physical. The no breakfast I can do - even though I am a daily breakfast person…the no coffee is another kettle of fish altogether! I have a 35 mile drive to the clinic and all the way there I just wanted to pull over and take a nap. The good news is that I didn’t fall asleep driving and my after blood test treat was a Cowgirl Mocha from my favorite coffee spot AND Lox on an everything bagel. I know that last bit doesn’t exactly sound like Montana, but Whitefish has a superb bagel place where they boil the bagels, then bake in the proper kind of oven - just like New York City!

Because I am trying to think about consolidating trips to save on gas costs, I combined a grocery shopping trip with the run to Whitefish. By the time all of this got done it was 11 a.m. before I got home and got to work and then I was called on to help with bus navigation… The day slipped away without much work getting done. Finally I just called the day, called Karl and we took our evening walk about 7:30. I had something else planned for a quick post for today, but the mountains had a new look that I couldn’t resist.

Back from the walk, I downloaded the photos and took the computer - and a glass of cognac to the front porch. I have to ‘fess to the cognac as it is in one of the photos and looks so pretty that I didn’t want to disappear it. I have sworn off wine for the week - ‘nother story - and really intended no alcohol but the cool evening and the playing with photos…..I succumbed and I’m NOT sorry! But I did run out of steam before getting the blog post finished - hence the late post this morning.

I know a lot of you skipped reading all of the above - that’s ok! Here are the photos.

It was the wispy clouds hanging around the mountain tops that called to me…

A blue hole above and below, to the west, the clearing sky.

From the front porch…

An evening shared after last night’s walk.