Hello From Rainy Missoula

Well, this is a first. I've never been to Montana before, let alone Missoula. But Julia and I landed in our prop plane today after a very bumpy ride over the Cascades on our connecting flight from Seattle.

She barely noticed the bumps; Julia has traveled by air ever since she was a baby, and never seems to concern herself with turbulence or much of anything else on these trips.

We got up at 4:30 am to start our journey.

To say it's been worth it is an understatement. We met up withe Aidan and Dylan at a local joint, Bridge Pizza, and toured the campus, saw their dorm rooms, and heard all of their news.

As they talked -- and they talked a lot -- it reminded me of when I was a freshman in college 49 years ago and I told my parents about how things were going. I hadn't yet found any real friends or developed my self-confidence about living on my own. Everything was new and fresh, scary and exciting, especially because I really hadn't tried much of anything yet.

To me, the remarkable thing is how well these two tall redheaded boys get along, so different from each other but enjoying each other after all these years living in the same room -- now, for the first time, in separate rooms. They are such great friends, it makes me wonder what it would have been like for me to have a brother.

One 20, one 18. One works out every day and one loves to read history. One thinking about a career in physical therapy, the other wondering what the hell he can do with a degree in history, because he sure does not want to teach high school students.

But both boys seem to genuinely like Missoula, a sleepy little Western town, set in a wide basin surrounded by majestic mountains. They seem slightly perplexed by the local fixation on the college football team, the Grizzlies, given the team plays in a minor conference and is, at best, pretty good.

But it is hard for the kids who have grown up fans of a professional sports team, the San Francisco Giants, who play on the world stage, to immediatley grasp the local pride a sports team can generate in a place like this.

I get it because I grew up in Bay City, Michigan, where the biggest show in town was the Friday night high school football team.

Trust me, Missoula has orders of magnitude of sophistication over Bay City.

Here, there are great academic programs, libraries, museums, plays, shows, galleries and some of the leading environmental studies opportunities in the nation.

But compared to where they come from, to the boys, it's a small town. What is so very nice is they seem to be loving it.

Except for the food. There is some Mexican, some Chinese, but compared to what they are used to, it's...not so great.

"I think San Francisco must be the best place on earth for food," ventured Dylan.

Since it was stormy, we decided to stay in tonight and order room service as we all watched the San Francisco Giants win a big playoff game over the St. Louis Cardinals. (My post.)

Just as we would have done back home.