Buffalo Ranch Birthday Party

Steaming Cow Nostrils, originally uploaded by JaseMan.

Mom turned 29 a couple of days ago so I decided to spend the big day with her in North Carolina. We did the usual things that most folks do on birthdays: hung out, told stories about the past, ate a birthday dinner and did whatever the birthday mom wanted to do.

Well, it just so happened that the folks down the road at the bison ranch were planning to tag the yearling calves and vaccinate the entire herd. Mom was invited to help out and brought me along.



The bison are sent down a fenced corridor after having been corralled. The photo shows the tractor in the rear "encouraging" the bison to walk toward the turnstile.


This shot shows a pair of bison in the turnstile. Once in the hole, an observer would call out the number written on the ear tag, if the bison was tagged, and the color so that the ranchers could log the visit. Yellow tags indicate cows. Orange tags indicate bulls. Meanwhile another helper would squirt some vaccine on each bison.

All freshly tagged bison were guided along to a secondary holding area for further medical work (some sort of worming, I think). All bison that were previously tagged were immediately turned out of the processing chute and released into the same area as us. Fortunately, per the ranching experts, bison aren't inclined to mingle with people and are actually scared of us so there was nothing to worry about.

The bison were returned to a grazing pasture (on the other side of the fence in the background of the photo above) once we finished with this portion of the herd.

Now it was time to round-up the remaining head and run them into the holding pen. Sweet! Where're the horses? Wrong. Instead of horses we did the round-up with some four-wheel drive trucks, a tractor and a fourwheeler.

It worked really well, right up to the point where the herd stampeded right through the fence (right side of the photo). Most of the internal fences are 4x4 posts and electric fence wire, which works well if you want to hold a meandering buffalo. Not so much if you're trying to hold back several tons of ass-hauling bison running from a bunch of vehicles.

Oops. So, now what?

We had no way to contain the bison with the fence down so the tagging and spraying was halted. We spent the next couple of hours working out a way to fix the fence. This ranch, like most farms and ranches that I've visited, had a few piles of junk that had been kept for posterity. Now had just become posterity. We rounded up all the spare length of pipe and prepared to make a new stretch of fence out of pipe instead of wire.

Unfortunately the junk piles didn't include bags of concrete, welding rods and a steel cutting saw blade so the progress was slow. We did have time to get three of the post holes dug and to cut a few lengths of pipe.

We had to leave before the fence project was finished. But, we had a lot of fun while we were there.

I'm glad I got to spend her birthday with her doing something she liked.

It's your thang. Do whatchoo wanna do.

Holiday time typically makes me want to jump in front of a bus or listen to Yani. Most of the time I opt for Yani because the consequences are less permanent, but this year the bus jump seems appealing.

It's not that I don't like the time off from work. I do. I REALLY do. My family stresses me out. More accurately, I stress myself out thinking about what my family is thinking about if they are not surrounding me every second of every day during said holiday period. Anybody got some Valium?

Here's the deal. Like many folks in my generation (yikes that makes me feel old), my parents are divorced. Fortunately, each side of the family still loves me and wants to see me. Unfortunately, holiday happenings (like Thanksgiving) typically occur during the same period of the day. For example, Thanksgiving dinner usually cranks up between 11:30 and 1.

Welcome to the holiday shuffle. You need to arrive at the first location at least twenty minutes early so that you can schmooze as much as possible. Only serve yourself tablespoon sized portions so that you can taste everything but will remain hungry still have room for food at subsequent destinations. Depart Destination #1 as soon as someone gets up to serve themselves another portion of anything. Arrive at Destination #2 and repeat above steps while limiting yourself to a 30 to 60 minute window of visiting before heading off to a subsequent destination.

Sounds like a whole shit ton of fun, no? During college I "had to make" FOUR stops on Thanksgiving. Stoopid.

Many of my friends are married now, some with children, which means that they have gained some sort of secret power that allows them to say no to their families without the guilt trip or constant torment. What the?

I'm grown up, too. I am over 30 and have a mortgage. Just because I'm not married con kids doesn't mean I should be trapped into mandatory family visits on the holidays. Perhaps their families are just cooler? Maybe they're not Catholic so they don't have the built in guilt machine?

Sara and I were talking about this the other day. She's got the same issue. We've decided that the best course of action may be to be holiday dates for each other.

Sorry, I can't make it home for the holidays. I'm going to Sara's.

Sorry, I can't make it home for the holidays. I'm going to JB's.

Instead, we head for Fiji, which would be great because then I'd get to stare at her boobs in her bathing suit. She's got great boobs.

Please don't misunderstand me. I love my family. No, really. No, really. I don't always like them, but I love them and like hanging out with them. But, I don't like having my time off from work mapped out without any sense of freedom.

This year is different. I put my foot down. I'm doing my own thing for Thanksgiving. It was easier than I thought. I blamed it on Los Pedros. Not really, but slightly. I accepted their generous offer to explore the wilderness of Vermont for Turkey Day. I didn't even have to get married.

My people have a body chop

My people have a body chop
Originally uploaded by JaseMan

After the Bolivian and I nearly drowned rescuing B. Whitley & Carie from HRL, we found the best Mexican restaurant in town per the Southwest lady, who by the way kept trying to whisk me away to Vega$. The body shop was next door to the restaurant. I wonder if they'll gimme a yob.

What I did on my Christmas vacation

Let's be clear from the get-go. I don't like holidays. In fact, I can't stand them. It's a personal issue, but I am not a big fan of how pissy folks get about Happy Holidays vs. Merry Christmas. I don't like Christmas shopping and the escalation in gift buying that closely mirrors the Cold War arms race. I don't like driving back from Texas to Louisiana and despise airports during peak periods of tourist travel of any sort. Take your car keys, $20 of pennies and cell phones out of your pockets before you get to the metal detector, JACKASS!

But, I like seeing my family and friends. The key is spending the "right" amount of time with folks. Determining the right amount of time depends your mobility, the amount of constant contact and the number of like-minded folks with whom you can commiserate.

This year's Christmas vacation was short on QT with friends and high on the family factor. I did attend the 5th Annual Oyster Crawl in the French Quarter with the gang. But, I missed out on Panthers vs. Saints and New Year's Eve in general. Most of the trip was spent with Mom this year helping her migrate back to North Carolina and we are both still alive to tell the tale.

The short story is that Murphy's Law was in the house, literally, for most of the moving adventure. Stuff seemed to multiple as we packed up her loot. Apparently boxes multiply if you get them wet, which is tough when you get doused with over six inches of rain in a week. When we tried to head out the truck also got stuck in the front yard that was once packed harder than a diamond thanks to the rain. It was worth it to help Mom get to a happy place.

"They" say that the lessons are in the journey. Brothers and sisters, this was one hell of a journey chock-filled with lessons of all sorts like it's probably not a great idea to try to eat a chicken salad sandwich, adjust the volume on the iPod and change lanes in your 26' moving truck all at the same time. "They" also say that one may not understand the full extent lessons learned until much later in life kinda like when your parents give you shit for not doing your homework or drinking too much Coke. Thus, I am unable to articulate everything that I learned during the trip. I can tell you that I am officially off the helping you move market until 2020 unless you're moving some place cool like Fiji or Como.

Yo Mama's an Astronaut

tyler the rocket ship, originally uploaded by JaseMan.

And, apparently my brother's a rocket ship.