August 5 - 17, 2006 Summer Ranch Week

Last weekend Maggie, Cassady and I took Dick and Brian back to Albq. and then went to see a movie. Cass was dying to see Pirates Of The Carribean. It was a good show tho I thought the first one was better.

The guys stayed around the H.Q. and got the fences back up and the pastures back usable again.

On Monday the guys went back out to camp to ride and be around keeping an eye on things.

I stayed here a couple days working equipment on the roads trying to get them back in shape and also doing a bit of new drainage construction. One day Cass and I went out and rode and another day we lured Maggie out of her studio and she rode with us.

Everyday it rained and everyday it got greener.

I left for a long planned and awaited trip to Canada for a little fishing. No I didn’t win the lottery, a best friend of mine offered me the chance of a lifetime and I took it.

Dustin also left at the end of the week. I came down pretty hard on him in the Log when he first got here. I am really pleased to say I have nothing but good to say about him now and smile when I think of him. As you read I made him pay some dues soon after he got here by having to dig all the postholes for a new fence. He paid his dues and then some. Many was the weekend he was out in camp by himself, tending horses and keeping an eye on things. I made him Quartermaster of Camp, he was responsible for resupplying camp and making sure we had everything we needed. It was rare that we came up lacking anything.

He was willing to take on any job thrown his way and always did the job till it was done. He didn’t ever try to halfass anything.

Arriving quiet and somewhat dour, he found his sense of humor out there on the range and I enjoyed more than a couple grins and laughs with his one-liners. I came to enjoy his company and he will always be welcomed back.

Blue also left while I was gone. He will be back some day, for now he had to get back to F.E.M.A. what with the Hurricane season coming on. His last couple weeks he worked on the cabin at Canon Creek and got the bunkroom pretty well finished off. His breakfast cooking, creative hands, and great humor will be missed for sure.

While I was gone it just rained more and more. The entire state has been wreaked by flash flooding and even here at the top of the watershed we didn’t escape it.

One evening a flash flood ripped through the valley. We had the old cows in the feedlot below the big tank and two cows were washed into the fence and killed when they were covered by debris and silt. Maggie had the chore of digging and dragging them out with her truck and pulling them to the Coyote Café out behind June tank. The fences we repaired last week were all needing it again.

The boys at camp enjoyed pretty mornings and wet afternoons. They spent a couple days gathering cattle out of Canyon Creek pasture. The rain had washed out a section of fence on the south side of T Bar Ridge and over a hundred head had found it and wandered through. They rode eight to ten hours a day for a couple days getting everything back where it belonged. A few days they really were in the middle of some tremendous lightning.

They reported less wolf sign than we had been. I guess keeping the cattle in the area between wolf packs is helping as is the constant riding and camping.

My last ten minutes in Canada I messed up my right knee when I slipped and got it wrenched between the float on the plane and the dock. I have been forced to stay in keeping it iced and heated for the entire week. I had so many things I had planned to get done this week. I’m so frustrated.

It did force me to do some long over due office work and I even got the 2007 calendar done.

I went to the Dr. on Friday and it was an ordeal. I went to the same orthopedic place that put my arm back together back in 2000. Dr. Miller’s name was still on the door but I found out it had been sold a couple years ago to a group of Indian Dr.’s. Nothing against them but the way they ran the place. After my initial exam I was told I had torn both my MCL and ACL and it required surgery. I soon felt like I was at a used car dealer. The Dr. wanted to do it that afternoon. I had questions about recovery time and she called in the head Dr. who was just a real ass. I told him what I did for a living and with a chuckle he told me I needed a new job. The surgery would take just a couple hours I was told with a couple week recovery while attending Physical therapy every day for a week then a couple times a week after that. I then asked about cost and was told “Insurance will cover all but your personnel deductible”. That’s when I told him I had no insurance and was selfpay.

“Did you tell the receptionist that when you made your appointment?” he asked. Meaning if we knew you had no insurance we would not have seen you.

He called in the financial person to explain costs. Once we tallied it all up it would be over 15k. I couldn’t afford the money or the down time and explained that, asking if there was a brace and recommended treatment until I could. The Dr. blew up saying if I wasn’t going to take his advice then he would have no part of me making myself a cripple. No brace, no advice and I was escorted to the payment desk. He stood and scowled as I wrote a check for $1,287.00 for an office visit and MRI. As I went out the door he hollered across the waiting room “to come back when I was ready to listen to his advice”. “Screw you pal and the elephant you rode in on” I thought and had to bite my tongue to keep from saying.

We went to the hospital and got the name of a medical supply place in town and found it. A little hole in the wall jammed with all kinds of stuff. The lady who ran the place was great. I told her my problem, she knew what she was doing. She fitted me with a brace, told me what I could do and what I couldn’t do. She recommended the surgery but also reminded me that until recently there was no surgery and everyone dealt with bad knees as best they could. I figure I will just go see her any time I have an injury in the future.