The snow has settled quite a bit. It's been fairly warm, in the 30s during the day. Still too much to do any walking in the woods.

There was no school yesterday, so it was time to build a snowman. It was too deep to roll it up for a regular snowman. It turned out to be sort of a snowman sculpture.

No matter how much snow we get, we're still keeping warm!

Round 2, or is it 3 or 4?

2/26/07
snow: 1.0
storm total: 21

Well, now I think this storm is finally over. But, sounds like another one coming tomorrow and the next few days. One similar to what just went through. Maybe this next one will miss us?

When I had the dogs out for our walk yesterday (we couldn't walk in the woods because the snow is way too deep for Snoopy) I managed to get 2 pictures before my battery went dead. Maybe I'll try again today, with a charged battery.

Is it over?

2/25/07
snow: 2.0 inches
storm total: 20.0 inches

I hope it's over! I'm sick of plowing. The snow yesterday was totally different than the day before. The day before was a lot of snow to plow, but it plowed fairly easy. Yesterday was a bitch. Besides not having a lot of room to put it, because of the snow the day before, it was like flakes of super glue! It didn't want to roll over good, stuck to the blade, wouldn't pile well, and didn't clean up worth a damn. I hate plowing snow when it's like that. Normally when I change the direction of the blade, I brush the snow off the frame, then pull the pin and turn the blade. Not with this stuff!. I had to carry a stick around with me to pick the snow off of the pin.

Oh well, at least it's done for now. Hopefully today I can screw around and get a few pictures.

More snow!

2/24/07
snow: 8 inches
storm total so far: 18 inches

The wind blew much harder last night/yesterday making big drifts. Took the wife to work this morning and couldn't make it the usual way. Had to turn around in Timmy's (one of the neighbors) driveway and go the long way to town. The drift that stopped us was almost as high as the roof of the car. On the way home I was able to go that way because the road grader had made one pass through, and I could see a 4wd truck was buried under one of those drifts! Good thing we turned around and went the long way to town.

A lull in the storm!

2/23/07
snow: 10.0 inches
Not snowing at the moment, but supposed to be at least that much more coming yet.

Does my helmet make me safer? Maybe not.

Could the same be said for other things too? The people I have seen behaving the craziest were always those that had all the "safety" gear on. Same goes for ATVers, snowmobilers, boaters, etc. etc. Just goes to show you that wearing the "safety gear" isn't the safest you could be. Using your brain and keeping your eyes open makes you safer than any helmet could.

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=2893122&page=1
"When I wore a helmet, there was a quite considerable tendency for drivers to get closer," Walker said.
What's the reasoning, I wondered? Is it because a driver thinks, "Oh, that rider has a helmet. … If I hit him, he'll live?"
No," Walker said. "It's that they're saying, 'He knows what he's doing.' When they see a cyclist who has all the gear, they think it's a sign of someone who's experienced and skillful."

Snowstorm Coming - Bring it on!

Well, looks like the nice weather is going away. I guess it is only February. Today was like mid March, really windy. Not too bad though, other than the wind.

I refilled the porch with wood today, and brushed the chimney out a little. Now I'm good for at least another month. Shouldn't have to do that too many more times this year. Once or twice more and that will be it!

If the big storm comes, like they're talking about, we're supposed to get a foot or more of snow by Monday. I'll have to take my camera with me while I'm plowing and take a few pictures.

What a nice day for February!

The dogs and I went for our daily 2 mile hike through the woods today, but it was so nice out that it turned into about 3 miles. About 50 degrees and nice warm sunshine. The woods is a lot more work than walking on the road (especially with a few inches of slush), but nowadays there's so much traffic that I don't like to walk the dogs anywhere near the street.

Hopefully this weather just keeps on coming and getting better! Could still have a lot of winter yet though.

Anyone for a bike ride?

I think I have Spring Fever already! Been wanting to get the bike out. Probably could, most of the roads look clear now. This year I hope to hit the bike trails a little more, and maybe try some new ones. Maybe even camp overnight on one. I'd probably have to do it alone though. Getting the girls to go for one day with me is like pulling teeth, I can't imagine trying to talk them into bike riding for TWO days!

P.S. This was also a picture posting test too!

Disc Punched Hole Through Clouds

When it did take off, it went from basically zero to God only knows how fast. There was no acceleration. It just went. It did punch a hole through the clouds. [ See 010207 Earthfiles. ] I wasn’t directly underneath the hole. It kind of angled in our direction slightly to the east, I believe. It did leave a hole and it didn’t even seem that the clouds moved as it punched through. But then after it was gone, they began filling back in. That was it. The hole was there. Everybody was just open-mouthed that the craft did go through the clouds. People gasped. Several people screamed because nobody had anticipated motion.....................................

Full Story

webmaster note

After playing around with the weather observations, and not being able to get it to work like I wanted it, I removed it. I have so much archived weather info from the old discussion board and many years before that, it just didn't look right in a post. I'll probably still post the future weather observations here, and if anyone has there own to add, feel free to comment on them. Also, if you want to know something from my previous records (when that big windstorm was etc.), just ask and I probably can tell you.

webmaster note

2/17/07
I officially informed the club that I will not be handling their web site anymore, after they find a suitable replacement. I feel it's best if the club pays for their web services, but not to me since I have no desire to be an employee of the club. That's not why I'm in it and it would take some of the fun out of it.

This way the club will be able to dictate to the web service what they want, get a bill in the mail, and not have to be confined to the whim of some local. In the club's quest to grow and become more than just a local club, I will not be able to grow with them and supply them with the services they need. I'm just some dumb farmer that taught himself how to make simple web pages! I had fun doing it for the club while they were still growing, and now it's time for them to move up to better services.

Thanks,

quads :-)

webmaster note

2/14/07
I am working on a simple blogspot and am incorporating it into my home page. The webmaster's notes may eventually be copied to and replaced by that.

Thanks,

quads :-)

webmaster note

2/11/07
I updated my home page with a few pictures from the successful and very fun local poker run! What a great family event, with plenty of stops to keep everybody warm and fed.

Thanks,

quads :-)

webmaster note

2/5/07
I have created a weather observations page. It's link can be found at the bottom of my home page. I'm kind of a weather buff anyway, and now people can still see what's been going on with the weather at my house if they want to. It's not interactive like the now extinct discussion board was. It's read-only.

Thanks,

quads :-)

webmaster note

2/3/07
On a whim, I cleaned up the CRFAC pages to give them a cleaner, business-like appearance and a little less "local" looking.

Thanks,

quads :-)

webmaster note

2/2/07
After debating whether or not to remove the archive page, I decided to rearrange it to be more orderly. It was getting quite long, especially after the "mother of all paperwork years - 2006" (I feel sorry for the secretary that had to keep up with all that - as the saying goes, all work and no ATVing makes a secretary unhappy). I reversed all the links so that the most recent was on top, and separated them by year. It's still quite long, but hopefully easier to find the information needed, that is assuming anyone actually USES the page.

I removed the picture page. That page required a lot of storage space, a lot of time and maintenance to keep it uploaded, and with all the wack-oes out there (on both sides of the coin - anti-atv versus the totally radical "image is everything" crazies which are just as bad) I felt it was time to dump the pictures. ATVing should be fun and the members of this club shouldn't have to worry about being in a photograph with no helmet or legal mud riding that could possibly be construed as illegal by both groups of crazies simply from looking at a photograph. Besides, I will still be taking pictures for my own use (if you want a couple, and you do not belong to either crazy group, let me know). Also, some of them will end up on my home page from time to time.

The discussion board is gone. The damn thing was such high maintenance and the programming did not work too well either. (I just checked a few minutes ago and now it has some "Recipes R Us" logo on the top of it - good riddance to the crappy thing with it's weird haunted logo changing problem and blah blah blah) Not worth the time and effort to check it day after day after day for the small handful of use. I won't miss it. Yuck! If anyone else wants to start one up, and/or needs to copy some of the old posts from it, let me know within this month. The software will automatically delete itself after one month of no posts (which is why I always posted the weather on it, and was the only thing keeping it alive sometimes).

Thanks,

quads :-)

webmaster note

2/1/07
This is a sad day for ATVers in the local area, and possibly the state and beyond. Sandy Stanley has reluctantly decided to resign her position as secretary (and many more unofficial duties) of the Castle Rock Family ATV Club. Her many years of "heart and soul" dedication will be greatly missed. The people that allowed the situation to go this far, and a few bad apples that possibly provoked it, should be ashamed of themselves. If only more of us "regular members" had seen this coming sooner, but then the last "regular member" meeting was months ago. Maybe, just maybe, we could have.....................

Anyway, almost all of the information that this web site contains was direct copy and paste of Sandy's own words and work. I had never intended to build a web site for the CRFAC, but Sandy kindly asked me, and after much deliberation (because I had been stung in a similar, unrelated situation before) I decided to do it as a favor to her. I figured if she thought this club was worth the effort, then that was good enough for me too.

Now, I fear for the future flow of the information used to keep this web site current. I normally like to do a little Spring Cleaning and trim here and there as I see fit. This year I cleaned up early and tried to slim the site down to a simple conveyance of the bare facts in preparation for the possible "Drying Up Of Information". If it's up to me to come up with things to type on my own (especially anything that makes sense), we can forget it!

Thanks,

quads :-)

The little duck with four legs!

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/02/17/duck.legs.ap/index.html

If it won't idle - check the battery!

My wife's SUV was having idle problems. Sometimes it wouldn't idle, usually when the engine was warming up. It would idle cold, and hot, but usually not in between. This had gone on for a few months, summer and winter didn't make any difference, and I still couldn't figure it out.

Anyway, the battery had been weak for a long time. It acted like a dead cell. It would turn over real slow, but the engine always started. As the weather was expected to be below zero (the coldest in years) I decided it was time to put a new battery in it. Now it whirls right over, like it should. But, a surprising result, the idling problem has gone away completely!

So, if your car doesn't want to idle sometimes, and the battery seems to be going to hell, change it and see what happens!

Where's my dollar?

We went for a day of riding our ATVs on the ice. Decided we would park at one of Ad Co's boat landings and unload there. Well, when we got there, we stopped at the stop sign in front of the park office. Nobody there, so we continued on to the boat landing parking lot. Of course you wouldn't have to pay one of your own local parks to park at the boat landing for a few hours in the dead of winter, right? Wrong!

After a great day on the ice, we noticed pink pieces of paper stuck under the wipers of our trucks. What's this? Well, it was a note stating we should pay BEFORE we use the park (where when nobody is there?). It had our license numbers scrawled on it, some scratching about how the fee went up to four dollars after the first of January, and some vague scribbling about the north side of the office. Well, we go to the office and of course nobody is there. Look around on the north side, and no sign or anything, but we did find a small mail slot half hidden in amongst some magazine racks and other crap on the outside of the building.

We each only had a five dollar bill. Now what? I scribbled on my pink slip that I wanted one dollar mailed to me (they had my license number, figure it out where to send it themselves). So far I have yet to see my one dollar in change! How about you JR?

Chase all the money-making stuff away from the county and then squeeze the rest of us for every penny they can! Stupid.

Drill holes in the struts?

The front struts on my Sportsman must have a little water in them. For the last few years, in the winter, they freeze in the down position and the front tires rub the fenders. I made some stops to wrap around the shafts so they can't go all the way down, and that keeps the tires from rubbing. But, it sure rides rough when the struts are froze and won't move!

I might someday buy new ones (at over $100 each!), but first I think I will try drilling holes in the bottom of the strut cartridges. That way any water will drain out, hopefully. I don't really care if the struts do anything or not, because I'm sure the oil has already been gone for a long time now.

My truck did it again!

A year or two ago I had a problem with starting my truck. I had backed it out of the garage, one winter day, then pulled it right back in and shut it off without warming it up. The next day, it wouldn't start! Apparently flooded. I changed the plugs, then pulled it down the road and it started. JR told me that if I had put a little oil in each one of the plug holes, it probably would have started on it's own. I had an old Chevelle that I had to do that to in the real cold weather, so I assume he's probably right.

Today, I pulled my truck out of the garage, and was messing around with it between the wood pile and the house when I killed it! Then it wouldn't start. Ok, now what do I do? Nobody to help pull start it, and it's squeezed in the yard with the house and wood pile on each end. I was just about ready to take the plugs out and try the oil trick. I had already tried the gas pedal all the way to the floor with no luck, thinking I had heard somewhere that it stops the flow of gas. Guess not. Before pulling the plugs, I decided to try to stop the flow of fuel somehow. Ah ha! Pull out the fuel pump relay and it fired right up, until it burned the flood out of course. Put the relay back in and away we go!

Whew, now I know.

High Strangeness

From Earthfiles.com

In October 2005, high strangeness descended. Torrey Briese found one of his cows dead that coyotes would not touch. In April 2006, 16-year-old Evan encountered a wedge-shaped craft emitting blue beams at the water pond not far from the dead cow. Afterward, the Brieses found an odd disc-shaped pattern cut into the dead cow's hair. By June, Torrey Briese and one of his neighbors watched a blue light make right angles in a midnight sky as if looking for something. In August, Torrey and the family saw several lights over their ranch making a grid pattern as if searching.
Then on September 11, 2006, Evan encountered tall, thin, non-human creatures in the pig corral dragging off his sister's dead, pet sow. A couple of weeks later, a neighbor raising sheep found his breeding buck mysteriously dead without signs of blood, tracks or struggle. A veterinarian was hired to do a necropsy and found that one of the testicles had been surgically removed through a straight line in the bottom of one testicle sac. On December 5, 2006, a large male boar disappeared from the Briese pig corral..............................
The Rest of the Story