State No. 17 - Montana

I got off the plane in Missoula around 4:14 or so local time.  I had been in contact with the Owner of 5 Valleys CrossFit, & we had discussed me dropping in either Thursday night, Friday morning, or Friday night.  Missoula Airport is, however, small enough that I was able to get my rental car situation squared away before the checked baggage carousel activated.  I was already off to 5 Valleys CrossFit in about 15 minutes.  Those of you from my area know that the time from plane landing to sitting in a car heading to [Insert destination here.] is not usually that fast in Newark Airport.

It should be noted that along the outer edges of Missoula, that there are various places that advertise that they have casinos inside.  Apparently the gambling laws are very different out west, though that shouldn't be a complete surprise.

On Friday morning, I ended up taking a short hike to the M on the M trail.

http://www.missoulian.com/app/hikebike/MS-mtrail.html

Having not hiked in over a decade, plus doing 2 WODs within the last 24 hours (I went back to 5 Valleys CrossFit on Friday morning), plus almost choosing the wrong path, resulted in me taking around 37 minutes to reach the M.  (Unknown distance on the harder path to get there, elevation gain 620 feet)  There were, however, some beautiful views & I tried to capture some of them while I was up there.

I went back to the room, napped for far longer than I thought, & then made my way over to the Historical Museum at Fort Missoula.  The funniest story I remember reading when there was that the fort commanders tried to stop a group of Native Americans from traveling southeast by building a hastily-erected earth & log barricade at Lolo Canyon, but the Native Americans went around them.  This site later became known as Fort Fizzle.

I took additional pictures of a one-room school below & the internment center during World War II.  Except for the school, none of the outer buildings on the grounds were open as it was too early in the calendar year.

This was the second trip in a row that a friend of mine joined me on the trip.  My friend was a classmate of mine in college, but she happens to live in Montana now.  I met her & her family for dinner in the downtown area.

It should be noted that this is the first time I drove through an area that had flashing yellow arrows for dedicated left turn lanes, as the downtown Missoula area has several of them.  They seem to love this in the Northwest, as a Professional Engineer once spent a two-page email telling me about its benefits.

Before I move on to the chess game, it should be noted that there is no sales tax in Montana that I observed, similar to Delaware.  You know your bill instantly by simply adding up the prices of things you ordered.

The tournament was interesting.  It is safe to say that I was the only player from the eastern time zone at this tournament.  Gary Solomon & Daniel McCourt did a good job of organizing the tournament.  It was strange at first, but refreshing overall to hear them introduce me as the player coming from New Jersey prior to the start of the tournament.  These two, as well as a few others, gave me some warm welcomes & overall were pretty friendly.

There was an interesting oddity in Round 2 - Out of 9 games involving a Round 1 winner, 6 of them finished in draws, including mine.  I can't recall ever seeing 2/3 of the field do that.

I had a hard time selecting a game for this blogpost, as I promised my third round opponent that I would not post the miniature, & the other games were decided in the ending.  I have selected my game against the Oregon National Master in the Fourth Round.

After drawing this game, I was able to win the last round & seal up a tie with the Oregon NM for first & second, marking this the 5th state that I have won a prize in.

Full standings available as a pdf here: http://www.montanachess.org/2017/04/09/2017-mt-open-april-1-2/

Edit: Map updated

And this ends State Number 17.  #fiftystatesofchess