Blinded By The Light

The old adage that time flies when you are having fun is not really true. It turns out that time flies regardless. It seems like just yesterday that I rolled into Powell, Wyoming and now its already been a month.

Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t come across this realization in a fit of misery and boredom. I just can’t tell if a month’s stay is too long or too short. Powell is a nice place. I enjoyed it thoroughly but It was a struggle to come up with things to keep myself busy. Once I finished a day of roaming the main street shops

including a wonderfully packed to the rafters Ace Hardware store. It even sells hamsters and Guinea Pigs in an out of the way corner. The one coffee shop has a nice sofa and good internet. The usual customers, the old folks table, a college student doing homework, a nicely dressed business person popping in for one more dose of caffeine before rushing out to take on the day and one poorly dressed homeless guy. 😉 A two screen movie theater shows the latest releases. There are also a lot of second hand donation stores I am not sure if that is a reflection of people buying good stuff worth reusing or that their land fill is just filling up. There are also a lot of real estate offices. All this comes with ample street parking in spaces that you can swing your car door all the way open and people can still walk past.

There are a couple beauty shops, 2 tattoo parlors, 2 sports bars and 2 dive bars. None of which have very much use for. There’s no help for me in the beauty department, Tattoos are silly, and sports go way over my head. I do like dive bars. Especially the dive bars where passersby can’t see in from the street. You want to see where the fun’s at? You have to commit. But since I am still on a drinking break, It feels a bit rude to pop my head in only to say “Hi, just looking” and turn around and walk out. Like I am the fun police or something. There are a couple of Mexican restaurants that have a pretty good supper crowd and a line on the weekends. There is even a Chinese restaurant that I figured that I would hit for Christmas eve dinner. Maybe meet a nice Jewish girl. I guess there aren’t enough Jewish girls, nice or otherwise, to have made it worth there while to stay open because they weren’t. I ended up with a peanut butter sandwich and some reruns of WKRP.

The shops and street poles are decorated for Christmas. There are Christmas carols playing over the light pole mounted speakers. No umbrage from the locals upon hearing the more nonsecular playlist. There was a Christmas parade the first weekend I was here. I think everyone in town was in it because it went on for a long time. Pretty good turnout too. Maybe the parade walkers and the parade watchers swapped seats when it was their turn to march.

Surprisingly, as small as Powell is, it has some sprawl going on. I was making the night drive back from my emergency visit to the hospital 2 hours away. Driving along thinking about how much that little adventure was going to cost, my eyes caught a blanket of city lights spread across the whole valley. For a second, I was thinking I had missed a whole big city somehow and was eager to check it out. But it was just Powell in an earnest effort to block out the night sky and any passing comets that may stray into our solar system. Comet Leonard, for example. I have driven out to the little airport 7 miles out of town on a couple of cold clear nights, with binoculars, I still couldn’t see the comet that is supposedly as bright as they come. I need a warmer hobby because roaming around remote country sides looking for good sky viewing on a cold winter’s night is not doing my love life any favors.

The comet is supposed to be up there until the new year but the clouds have rolled in for the remaining time its supposedly visible so I am off the comet kick. That’s my excuse. The sub 0F degree nights have nothing to do with it.

Oh yeah, the hospital. I am old and starting to get these black threads floating across my vision. Its common but recently there has been some fluttering in the peripheral vision. As you are aware, I really have nothing to do so I called the local eye doctor for an overdue checkup. Nothing local was available until mid January. I was in a mood and and wanted it done so I called the local Costco. Local in western terms means 2 hours away on an ice covered 70mph 2 lane road to Billings. Their schedule was wide open for that day. I even got there early and was able to move it up 2 hours.

I am not a fan of the eye doctors because I get light headed thinking about anything eye ball related, especially mine. In fact, I have passed out more than once during the eye exam. Freaks the poor doctor out since eye exam doctors have a pretty easy gig usually. Cover your eye and read the letters pretty much their day to day, I would think. I must be getting chill in my old age because I did alright.

Costco has this retina imaging camera that lets them take a look at whats going on back there. I was going to attach the picture here but its too big. I’ll send it if you want to see it. Anyway, the doctor noticed a little white spot that seemed to have him concerned, He went into poking and prodding my eyeball all while shining the light of a thousand suns directly into my eye. He was concerned enough that he texted the local eye clinic. I guess to hear from a doctor that does more than listen to people recite a jumbled alphabet all day. That doctor couldn’t tell from the Costco photos what was going on I guess and quit texting. The Costco Dr said the clinic would call me up for a follow up. For some reason I went against my nature and decided to used my phone for its original intention and called over to schedule an appointment. I told the lady what was going on and she said “Oh, that’s an on-call emergency. You need to get here right now”.

Well, that had me worried. I didn’t even have time for a Costco Pizza slice let alone a stop at a nudie bar for one last look, just in case.

Billings is nice. The largest city in Montana as a matter of fact. But not so large that there is much traffic, even driving across town at rush hour took 15 minutes. They have the main hospital in Montana but as far as I could tell Billings isn’t so large that the hospital is very busy. I drove up and had my pick of rock star parking for free. I got to the clinic so quickly that I probably did have time for a nudie bar look see. At least a topless one.

I was immediately shown to the chair. The doctor tilted my head back for more eye drops. I do not like messing with my eyes. That includes getting eyedrops! My eyes were still dilated from the eye exam so I tried to talk him out of anymore. “Oh no”, he said. “these aren’t for dilating, these will desensitize your eyes to what’s about to come”. The concern was that my retina was about to tear. Its an easy fix with a laser if they can get to it before it tears. Once it tears,which is led up to by flashing lights in your vision, its too late. They have to go into full eye surgery mode. He wasn’t lying. It felt like he was trying to pry my eyeballs out of there sockets while shining a super nova level light in my eyes. I guess the only way to tell if the little smudge on the screen was a tear, is to squeeze the eyeball to see if the smudge on the picture shows signs of tearing.

The Costco doctor didn’t send over the images and I couldn’t remember which one was of concern. This doctor had no choice to go after both of them for an hour. I was 3 desensitizing doses of eye drops in he gave up and saying “They look ok. but you would be wise to check back in a month, though”. Which, of course, is highly unlikely.

I still have an annoying floater crossing my vision all the time but I guess I just have to get used to it. Other than that, I don’t have to rely on my memory for naked ladies. Who am I kidding? Yes I do.

This got longer than my usual year end letters so I’ll start wrapping it up.

Lots of outdoor things to do here but many of the hiking trails are closed for the season. I did take a drive up to nearby Bighorn Canyon the other day carved out by the Bighorn River over lots of million of years. I took in a couple of short hikes to take in the view but although the Grizzlies are supposedly snoring away in their dens, the mountain lions are still out and about. I didn’t stray to far from the parking lots with a view.

I drove up the road a few miles to the site of a Japanese Internment camp back in World War 2. There isn’t much left other than an old admin building but the visitor center gives a good feel for what was there. Pretty sprawling place that is now a field with a walking trail of placards explaining life there.

I have been mostly sitting on the couch, flipping between the 2 channels this house gets. One is reruns from the 70’s and 80’s and the other is all procedural crime TV shows. i.e Law and Order. I am easy to please with both so that makes me happy all around. Its a

good thing because the internet is pretty bad. It is quite a slog trying to stream Amazon shows at low bandwidth. It might be as bad as watching on my phone back on the mountain.

The sunsets here are pretty good. I spent the first few evening walking around taking pictures of them like a tourist. Since it has gotten cold, I spend the sunset hour watching reruns of “Third Rock From The Sun”. I have forgotten how funny that show was. I do have a couple more sunset scenes posted on my IG-ish page if you are interested

Two of my favorites in one pic:
A granary and a sunset.

My time here has ended and I am all packed up for the next place. I’ll leave you hanging for dramatic effect. But I will say this. There might be mermaids. In the Mean Time, Happy New Year.

Oh; and PS. Looks like Santa must have me on his naughty list. Haven’t heard from the building permit office yet.