Day 4 – Altitude, Attitude, and Remote Office Meetings

Day 4 was a full day traversing the great (BIG) state of Montana. This was also to be my first day working remote on the road. I didn’t get my cell plan changed in time to be able to tether to my laptop so the first few days would have to be fully accomplished on the phone through voice, or hopefully via the Zoom app, but that too was somewhat off a bust because there are loooong stretches of interstate without cellular service.

I took my first meeting of the day by phone which worked very well, but I knew I would need to take the second in a more reliable manner where I could also take notes so I found this lovely shelter house to enjoy a ham and cheese wrap while having my biweekly 1:1 with my supervisor.

Toward the end of the meeting I took a walk along a footpath that provided various views of the mountains and a pleasantly babbling stream.

Once my scheduled meetings were finished I was back on the road with some altitude to gain. The highest point I caught was…

We won’t discuss the mileage (single digits!) I got during that climb!

Since cell service was so spotty, I wasn’t able to chat with folks by phone like I had in previous days so I listened to a few podcast episodes by Mark Groves. One such episode turned me on to the book Essentialism….good choice! The book and the podcast episodes were just the content I needed to help me with a bit with my attitude and outlook in general. Sometimes we need those moments of perspective, whether to change our own mind, or to help understand the mind of another.

My overnight plans took me nearly an hour off course…as if I was ever really on course to begin with. My destination was a beautiful location in Ronan, Montana. This place had been a wedding venue until COVID hit, and now they are functioning mostly as a Harvest Host site. I definitely didn’t fit in with my neighbors, but size doesn’t count, right?!?