December 31, 2009

Greetings and welcome!

New years eve on a full moon? Isn’t that like a tsunami in a hurricane? Golly.

Well if you are not out riding you probably should be. The trails are not perfect, but there are a lot of good reports coming back, and what I have seen is great. We have an ice base, a foot plus of wet heavy snow frozen in, and a little powder on top too. There are some icy spots.

I am going to take my own advice very soon and go for a short ride. Well they start out short anyway, then I start having fun and 6 hours later. I will be taking the gas card..

Anyway, I want to thank the guys like Steve from Athelstane Weather, Mixer King, and Packerland Rider for their trail reports. That is exactly what I had hoped for and envisioned with the comment section, and they have helped a lot of people. Thank you very much you guys.

Questions from comments-

Can I get a guest book that beats the spam? That is the plan, I am still seeking a good one. I think that you guys networking would be great. The same holds true for a message board. As soon as I find a good one that isn’t a spam farm we will have it.

Steve and Trish asked about how to share pictures. I will be setting up a photo gallery after the first. You will need to e-mail me for passwords, but then you have free run of it. There will also be a gallery of people pictures of those that come to visit. I will be at Rapids about mid-day Saturdays and will gladly snap a picture if you ask.

Ice conditions- I got another hot off of the lake report yesterday, they were looking at 5-6″ of ice right out of the bay with a foot of slush on top. Like the other sources, none had ventured all of the way across the lake or out too far into the middle. Ice conditions remain poor and plumb dangerous in a lot of places.

On getting no ethanol gas- I get 93 no ethanol at Cramers at C & A in Athelstane, the casino in Carter has 91 octane no ethanol gas. I also heard that Tall Oaks has no ethanol gas, not sure if it is high octane though.
Beyond that, the EAA probably has a list of no booze premium outlets, a lot of small planes run Bombardier 2 stroke motors and they want no ethanol.

When I was talking about the big cold spell predictions yesterday ( a bit ominous, no?)  some of my first words were, “I am not sure how excited to get about this yet.” Apparently not very.

The cold spell is real and it could serve up some chilly weather to a lot of folks that aren’t used to it, like the southeastern US and the East coast. There is indeed a big push of cold air heading their way, and to them it will be pretty chilly.

Around here I would expect to be midstream in the cold and sub zero. Maybe not. I am not seeing the bone chilling  sub zero stuff at all. For the next week we are looking at temps mostly in the teens and lows from -5 to +10. Saturday looks like the coldest day with highs in the +5 to +10 range, and some -25 wind chills Friday night and Saturday morning with zero-ish lows and 10-15mph winds.

That is pretty normal for January, right? I always recall Eagle River being held in the grip of the high of zero low of -25 stuff with a stiff breeze, and that is more of what I expected. So far it doesn’t look like we will see it in the next week or so anyway.

The cold push will send abnormal temps to a lot of people who aren’t used to it. Apparently we won’t be too affected by it. At least that is the prediction now.

Well, that is my story and I am sticking to it. I need to cover like 3 more things and then I am off to ride. Shortly after that it will be hats and horns and watch out for the big bad moon.

Have a good weekend and a happy, healthy and prosperous new year, and thank you for visiting.

See ya next year!

RJB