Greetings and welcome!
We REALLY have a lot to talk about. Grab a Snickers or two and buckle up, here we go.
Why I have been gone..
A month or so ago I sent myself down the path of education. It was time to upgrade my web site skills and software. There was a heck of a learning curve to the new software(s). It has been a long road, but i am now proficient in a lot of cool new stuff. You will see..
In the meantime no less than seven new web site jobs came my way. Some are pretty in depth and the new training paid off instantly. I am delighted with all of the work and my new skills, and I am looking forward to showing some of this off. I am nearing completion of a store that sells one of the coolest products in recent memory. Soon.
My regrets are, lost time here, missing fall snowmobiling events, and with my outside work like firewood and winterizing the house. The snowmobiles have been looked at, thought about, and moved out of the way, but that is about it. It is a good thing that 2 of 3 are in good shape.
Snowmobiling stuff..
Wow.
Let’s start with the new snowmobile club. Some key members of the River Road Riders snowmobile club started a new club this fall. The new club is called the Bear Point Sno-Cruisers. They are a social snowmobile club headquartered at the Bear Point Yacht Club. They plan on helping other clubs in the area as they can by brushing trails and such.
The President is Slug Radke, the VP is Ken Boren, the secretary treasurer is Andy Malecki, with directors Ron Rost and Gene Thomas. They had the organizational meeting in early October, and are well along the path of being an AWSC member club. Chris and I are charter member #38. You can be a charter member too by signing up for the club in the first year.
I started a web site similar to this one for the Sno-Cruisers at http://www.bearpointsno-cruisers.org . It has a nice modern template, and will very soon have membership and other information on it. The best part is it will be another source for us to check in on in our daily quest for conditions updates, once I show Slug how to use it.
The River Road Riders also got a new web person, and asked if they could still have a link. But of course. Their new site is at www.riverroadriders.org . Their link, along with the Sno-Cruisers and all of the other area clubs will be listed here as soon as I can finish writing the page. In the meantime, the new links are here. The links to the other clubs and the information form the old snowmobile page is still available here. www.silvercliff.com/bigsnowpage2 .
Snowmobiling item number two.. a registration increase is a good thing?
Apparently so. There is a new registration scheme that will end up costing more, but it structured so that the clubs end up with both a lot more money and a lot more members.
In short, you register your sled once per owner, but need a trail pass annually. The trail pass is $34.25, but you get $20 off with a paid membership in an AWSC club. In other words, you can give the money to the state, or give it to a club. That is a pretty obvious choice.
The clubs have been suffering in recent years, and it is a positive thing to see some of their lost revenues restored. It wouldn’t be bad to increase membership either. Likewise, having 100% of out of state trail pass money go to the snowmobiling causes is a good thing too.
From what I can figure, it won’t cost me much of anything, and the clubs get some much needed support. I always belong to at least one club, and pay about $15 a year in registration, so the money isn’t any different on my end. I guess that is pretty hard to be mad at.
I don’t know if the catch comes with sled #2 & 3, or if you still get the discount on extra sleds..
I haven’t been able to catch any snowmobiling events this fall. About the closest that I can get is to point you to Leon Koch’s fancy new web site at www.vintageyamahasnowmobiles.com. He and his daughter are top antique snowmobile grass drag racers, and they have a sweet collection of antique Yamahas. I spent a lot of time on that site, and it is pretty nice. Take a look.
The weather big & little…
My hopes, dreams and predictions of a fading El Nino have been crushed. We actually were into LaNina territory in the Nino1 region in October, but temps quickly climbed after that. So far it is into the low moderate zone, and can stop any time now. There is a lot of cold water around the ENSO regions, so there is still hope, but recently the temp trend has been up.
There is also this little gem of info..
Our El Nino is not what we have seen with recent El Ninos. It is what is called an El Nino Modoki Event. The difference between this and every other El Nino in the last decade or two is that we are now in a cool phase PDO.
The PDO is a much larger oscillation, and it tends to affect El Nino. Exactly how, we don’t know yet, but I am still saying that this probably won’t be what you expect.
Google it up for yourself and do a little research on El Nino Modoki. Chances are that guys like Bob Tisdale and Anthony Watts will come up. Both have written about this topic, and both are regular blog stops for me, especially Wattsupwiththat.com .
Things will be a little busy for me for a while, but that is a good thing. I will dig out of it, if all goes as planned, shortly before the season starts. In the meantime, I will be getting the Sno-Cruiser’s info posted probably tomorrow.
Thanks Slug & Andy!
Have a good fall and thank you for visiting!
RJB