Surf's Up In Montana

Not much surprises me these days on my trips up to Missoula, Montana to visit my chick, Jennifer, and chicklet, Isabella. In a state where the highway speed limit was whatever was "reasonable and proper" until 1998 and a city where the townfolk gather twice yearly to parade for the Day of the Dead or in the Walk of the Wild Things, all dressed as wild things, no one seems to turn a head at the offbeat, the unusual, or outright eccentric.


This is the town where A River Runs Through It, the Clark Fork River, usually a tranquil, meandering river in the summer and fall.


Watch long enough from the Higgins Street Bridge and you can imagine Robert Redford or Brad Pitt stepping out with a fly rod.



In the spring, the rains and snow melting from the mountains raises the river to a cold and raging torrent -- and Montanans do what's natural for them. They get out in the middle of it.

Kayaking,


And yes, surfing...


Missoulians have built a barrier off the shore to create a waterpark, Brennan's Wave. Brennan Guth was a kayaker who died at age 32 in an accident in Chile. The barrier causes a perpetual eddy and lets a kayaker or surfer do their thing while not going anyplace.



Those Missoulians know how to have fun.