Greetings and welcome!
It looks like we have a fair bit of stuff to cover today.
First things first.. The first snow of the season..
I haven’t seen it yet myself, but rumor has it that we had the first frozen precip of the season this week. Wednesday night the nice lady at the gas station told me that someone on the way back from Antigo Wednesday ran into some snow, rain and sleet. There was a little precip moving through a little south of here, and it was cold enough, so I will put that in the likely category.
I also had a local say that he had a piece or two hit him while he was outside late Wednesday. Somewhat less reliable, the radar covering the UP has been showing snow of the lake effect variety, and showing it as white on the radar.
We have a wet weekend coming up as a couple of medium sized storms come our way. There will be wet and dry periods between now and about next Wednesday, but the chance of rain will be there. Today looks like the nicest day for the immediate future.
About next Wednesday the cold wave behind the second storm could bring us some pretty winter-like conditions. This is a week out forecast almost, and it has been changing, so it isn’t carved in stone. At any rate the current GFS shows cold air, lots of wind, and enough moisture behind the storm to bring us some white stuff and fairly unpleasant conditions.
Like it does when it teases us all winter, the GFS is starting up with the chance of snow about a week out, oops, no, ok here it is again stuff. In earlier model runs the back of the storm for tomorrow had snow, as did the back of the one for Monday-Tuesday. Now it looks like it won’t be cold enough for snow until mid-week next week. There is another chance about a week after that.
What we are seeing is a positive cooling of the land and waters. Our nights lately have been below freezing and our days have been below 60. The ground is not frozen yet, but it is cooling and will eventually move in that direction as November comes.
I have been using the wood burner in the morning and at night daily now. I have been burning mostly soft hardwood like cottonwood. I do mix in a bolt or two of oak before I go to sleep to carry it, but too much of that, and we will be back to triple digit temps and the doors and windows open.
Yesterday I rented a log splitter again and hit a milestone in the year’s firewood. I am now comfortable that I have enough split for the winter. It still needs to be stacked, and there is more here that can be split, but I could get by without it.
Yesterday’s crackin’ o’ the wood involved about a cord and a half of oak and about 2 cords of basswood. I had gathered it up early summer, but hadn’t gotten that deep into the pile to finish it last time. My rough tally for the winter’s wood store is about 6 cords of oak, 2 cords of basswood and about a cord of ‘popple’. The oak has a special pile of the premium stuff, the January Wood. There is the regular oak for December and February, and the softer maple, basswood, and popple for early and late season, like now.
Hitting this milestone is a big deal in the fall around here. It frees me up to do other stuff, like play with my snowmobiles. I did have 2/3 running this week, and I even moved one over to the work shed. (Wow is it late December already?_) Miracle of miracles, the RXL battery actually took a charge. Usually those are a one winter and out item. We will see on this one.
I have been working on web sites hot n heavy lately. I am hosting no less than 5 snowmobile sites this year, and I have been working hard to whip them into shape. The Bear Point Sno-Cruiser’s grew up a lot last week, and now attention has turned to one a little west of there. My on-line store for the glow in the dark exit signs and safety markings is coming into some exciting stuff, so I have had my hands full.
Last weekend we were at the Bear Point Sno-Cruiser’s club meeting and they followed it up with a clean-up of the 2 mile stretch of Adopt-A-Highway that the Sno-Cruisers takes care of. We had 20 people out there, and it only took an hour.
In events we have the AWSC workshop in Stevens Point this weekend. The AWSC is the Association of WI Snowmobile Clubs. They take care of a wide variety of issues that relate to snowmobiling including legislative issues, club support, and generally working together to further the sport of snowmobiling. They are hugely important to our sport.
The AWSC magazine says that there is a grass drags in Brussels with the Red River Riders this Saturday.
Green Bay area folks.. there are a series of snowmobile safety meetings at Pamp’s Outboard in Green Bay Monday, Thursday and Saturday of next week. ( October 25, 28, 30, 2010)
There are some changes coming up on this site eventually. I don’t care for this template, though I like the picture. I will also be getting people that have sent donations properly credited, and I am going to get to work selling ads down the side pretty soon. I am way behind on that.
I am planning on bar tending at Rapids Resort again this winter, but only on certain Saturdays. I would like to pick up a few days a week at another area trail stop, ideally catching Monday and Friday riders and maybe another day or two as well.
In the meantime I have been working on expanding the computer services to keep the lights on. I have been working on a lot of laptops and computers, and recently set Hilltop Resort up with a nice long range WiFi access point Like Curve Inn’s. Later today I am putting a new keyboard on a Macbook, doing a reformat on a laptop, and talking to two customers about computer based camera security systems with remote Internet access. If you need computer related services or want to buy a computer or a security system, get a hold of me. I am cheap, honest, and I have done it for about 14 years. Dollar for dollar my hand built computers blow away store bought units every time, and are very upgradable.
I checked in on John Dee’s site last night and he has been a busy guy. His seasonal forecast should be coming out next week, and he dropped a hint that we would like it.
One last item is a feature planned for the site once it gets brought up to speed, a listing of no ethanol premium selling gas stations. Right now the list is; Log Cabin Gas Station Athelstane (only 93), Carter Casino (only91oct, not 93), Townsend Shell(only 93), Lakewood BP(only 93), and Piggly Wiggly in Crivitz(only 93). The Tall Oaks General Store on Parkway has no-ethanol 87. I am sure that there are more stations, feel free to leave your favorite(s) in a comment.
That is it for me. Have a good weekend and thank you for visiting!
RJB