Flat tires, broken windows and bears

Poor Joyce.  Last week the border patrol checked her out twice while she was doing census work.  And she saw a large bear bear.

This week her luck wasn't so good:

• She saw a mother black bear with cubs wandering down her road,
  
  
• Heard stories about grizzly bears wandering around the people's houses recently,
  
  
• Monday got a flat tire from the rough North Fork road.  Fortunately a guy eventually drove by and helped her change her tire.  One would think that when the County bladed the road it would be better.  Not really true with this rough road.  "Blading" is half ripping the road up by the road grader in order to have some gravel/rock to blade.
  
  
• Tuesday she locked her car keys in her car.  She found someone with a working phone and called me in the afternoon.  From the quality of the call I thought she was calling from some remote area in the other part of the world.
  
  I had to drive to Bigfork to meet with the rest of my team so I couldn't drive up the North Fork to bring her spare car key.  She asked me if some trick with a tennis ball would pop her car lock open but I had never heard of that idea.
  
  Instead Joyce ended up breaking a small window in her car and reaching in to unlock the door. At least her car had a small window as many cars today do not.
  

Where Joyce is doing census work is over 40 miles from 'civilization' (Columbia Fall, MT).  I am not slighting Polebridge, as other than the Mercantile and the Northern Lights Saloon, nothing is there.  All while Joyce was working ten to twelve hours a day on the census.

At least Joyce didn't get into trouble that eventually involved the sheriff department like another census worker in the Valley did recently.  There is a crazy story in that, but one I'm not going to share as it didn't involve any members of my team, and I heard it second hand.