So, the Montana trip comes to a close.

We just got back from dropping off Iwan and Mike from the airport, and the house is definitely a good bit quieter with them gone. In fact, I'm not sure if there's been a reference to bear scat or Pete's taint once yet!

Let's recap. When you last read, we were heading out for an evening of dinner, drinking, and poker, and all those missions were accomplished. We had some sushi, and Mike did a pretty good job abiding by the "no sushi snobs" sign up on the wall. After dinner, we headed to a local bar and ordered up some drinks. I was standing watching the poker, and a seat opened up, so I plunked down some money and started to play. I was driving that night, so I wasn't drinking, while Diana had a few, and Iwan and Mike proceeded to get very pleasantly sauced.

The poker was an absolute experience. I eventually ended up $10, while Iwan lost a little bit. There was quite a crew sitting around the table. At first, I was between two older guys, brothers, who were substantially drunk and friendly. A guy across the table (next to Iwan, making him his boy, a'course) with an absolutely fantastic mullet was completely shitfaced, and that was BEFORE the 5 or so jager-bombs he and his boys ordered in about a half-hour timespan. Not sure what happened to him. Later, the brothers left, and a young, mildly attractive girl sat down with a very low cut top, and a new guy to my right decided we were boys and started making very suggestive comments about her, her rack, and so forth. I mostly sat with my mouth shut and just took it all in. Good stuff.

After poker, we played a little ping pong. Mike, in spite of non-trivial intoxication came back from behind to beat me, but it was a pretty close game. Diana and I took care of them in doubles, however. We made it home (after finding a lost wallet near the car!), played a final round of Euchre, and to bed.

The next morning, a few of the group nursed some hangovers, and we spent most of the day hanging around. Diana introduced a new game somewhere along the trip, Alibi, which is basically Clue on steroids. Where in Clue there are only three different variables (person, weapon, room), in Alibi, there are eight (person, time, location, specific location, weapon type, specific weapon, motive category, specific motive). It's all played with cards, and gets rid of the board and moving around nonsense. Pretty fun game, I thought. Hard to develop a good "system", but fun to joke about what system you do have.

Iwan and Diana and I headed out in the afternoon to meet the wallet-loser in town and return that (no reward! What a gyp!) and picked up some more fishing licenses. We came back, picked up Mick, and headed out to the north fork for some evening fishing. I'd been to the spot before, and thought it was pretty good. Iwan sounded a little dissapointed that we didn't see more fish, but I caught a couple, including a nice 10-12 incher and a couple little guys, and had a good number of bites as well. Mike and Diana spent a lot of time on the banks reading and chatting and taking in the sights. I felt a little bad that we were essentially dragging them along to watch us fish, but they seemed satisfied to do so.

Today, we packed a lunch and headed to the beach by the lake for a picnic and some more game playing. It was a nice relaxing afternoon there, and then back for packing and airport dropoff and goodbyes. And now, a quiet house.

The trip, speaking for myself at least, was a really great time. I think that everyone had tons of fun. The idea of a friends trip to Montana really spawned from reading Discostup's blog (a long time ago), and the thought that he sounded like he needed a vacation, and I'm really glad that he was able to go.

It was also really satisfying to watch Diana's interaction with my friends. She and Iwan see each other all the time, and I think have a pretty good relationship, and it was nice to watch her get some bonding time in with Mike. In fact, she probably had the most serious conversation-time with Mike while Iwan and I were fishing and playing poker. I'm glad that they seem to like her, and respect her. She really enjoys not only being with my friends, but watching me be boys with my friends as well.

Diana is a piece of work. She's absolutely wonderful in essentially any social situation (well, I think so anyways). When heading out for an excursion, she quietly ensured that we had enough water and food and stuff that we needed, yet not intrusively so. She certainly wasn't in charge of us by any scope, but at the same time, I think really made the logistics of the entire trip go very smoothly. I'd really be curious to know what my friends thought of her, now that it comes to mind, but probably wouldn't want to hear anything negative, so I'll retract that statement conditionally. :)

The goodbyes were casual, since I'll probably see Iwan within the a week, and Mike is coming back into town for a few days for the fantasy football draft. As I noted before, it was really great to spend more time with him, and I look forward to seeing him again. We hardly ever keep in touch lately, but in spite of that, I thought we fell back into our old friendship pretty nicely.

So that's about it. Diana and I are going to get the house straightened up a little, and we're getting picked up for the airport tomorrow at 2pm. It's going to be both good and bad to get home and get back into the swing of things. It's been a nice trip, but as I usually feel at the end of these vacations, I'm looking forward to getting home. I even look forward to heading back to work, if you can believe it, and I look even MORE forward to grabbing a copy of Doom III and giving it some singular attention.

That's about it for now.