Differences in Colorado and Montana

Later this summer, my wife and I are going to move from our beloved Montana down here to Colorado. We are renting our home in Bozeman, kind of an escape clause in case we want to go back, but the move is meant to be permanent.

We are down here on a visit right now, and several differences jumped out at me:

1) I had to pee, and we stopped at a gas station south of Estes Park. There was only one unisex bathroom with one pot, and four people ahead of me in line. The guy in the stall had apparently been in there quite a while, and when one person in line knocked on the door, he yelled “I’m in here!” I don’t recall ever having to wait for a bathroom in Montana. I finally left, and peeing behind a tree down here will get you in trouble. I endured.

2) Bozeman is going to have a 4th of July tax protester rally, bringing people down from Noxon, I assume. This coming Sunday there will be a nude bike ride rally in Boulder. I assume most of the participants will be men, sadly, so I won’t be watching. The local police have threatened to arrest participants, and if they are arrested, they will have to register as sex offenders. As far as I know, exhibitionists are not the same as pedophiles, but I yield to the better judgment of the local constable.

3) Denver has charter schools, and a controversy is brewing as it becomes apparent that the charter schools are subtly, cleverly avoiding kids with disabilities. One school openly asked applicants if they had ever had special ed, and said lying about it would be grounds for dismissal. Montana doesn’t have charter schools. Bozeman has very good schools, but most public schools in Montana reflect the parents – mediocre. I like the idea of charter schools, to allow bright kids to escape. But they should not be allowed to turn down kids who are more challenging. That’s the private health insurance model applied to education.

4) Driving down through Wyoming these past two days – we came down through Dubois and Laramie – it was very green, but those forests we saw were devastated by pine beetle, as are the forests of Montana. Colorado forests that I have seen are lush and green and largely unaffected. But I haven’t seen enough to know this is universally true – I doubt it is.

5) Bozeman’s Daily Chronicle, for all its faults, is a much better newspaper than the Boulder Daily Camera, which is awful. When given a choice at the coffee shop, I always choose the Onion. The Denver Post is a very good newspaper. My vote for the best newspaper in Montana: Billings Gazette, simply for the fact that it carries more news than the others.

6) Traffic traffic everywhere – we drove down from Boulder to Morrison yesterday around 4:30 – every light back traffic up for blocks. But travel on the freeways is fast. We are going to have to adapt to that fact of life.

Our objective is to move someplace in the foothills like Evergreen where we don’t have to travel much – a self-contained community. We are looking at houses for the next few days.

As a lifelong Montanan, I’ll be able to reflect on the good and the bad about that state, and I will be in the coming weeks. I still have a mother and two brothers and a daughter in Montana. I will be traveling back frequently, but come August 15 forward, I will be a nude bike rider.