The good, the bad, and the ugly - of the new ATV! But first, about the day of riding.

It wasn't too bad. Certainly better than working or laying on the couch. Ran into a couple showers, but nothing terrible. I actually learned two things about the weather that never occurred to me before. First, there is a good side to sleet - it's drier than rain. Second, you're not really cold - until your crotch gets wet.

Ok, I really don't want to jinx this thing, which usually happens when I'm happy with something, but I was very impressed! It ran perfectly and no wheels fell off! There. I said it. Now it will probably break in half or something like that.

Bear in mind that this ride was on the routes and was not a trail ride. It was quite cool and we rode about 50 miles or so. The following may change somewhat when it warms up and I take it on an actual trail ride, but we'll see. If a comparison can be made, I am comparing it to the old Sportsman unless otherwise noted.

It used about a gallon of gas or so, which is on par with what I have come to expect from the Sportsman. Riding the routes doesn't take very much gas.

It rides good. Not the "Cadillac" smooth of the Sportsman, but more like a Jeep, which is ok. Kind of a sporty feel. Certainly not the old solid axle lumber wagon feel. Yuck. We'll see if the stiffness is a plus or minus once I've got some offroad hours on it.

It's LOUD! I see this as both good and bad. But it's not just the exhaust that's loud. The engine itself sounds like a frickin' diesel. I swear, you can hear the injector pump knocking and the turbo whining just like the big rigs! Of course, it has neither of these things, so who knows? As for the exhaust noise, I like it because it sounds like race day! Well, maybe not quite that loud but it sounds cool. Unless you want it to be quiet, then it's not so cool. Both good and bad.

The engine revs high, especially at slower speeds. Even the dealer made me aware of this when he loaded it up for me at the dealership. It's due to the new clutch design which eliminates the need for a low range in the transmission. It seems like the thing isn't going to go anywhere, but point it where you want it to go and hammer the throttle. It goes. I never opened it up to see what top speed is, but it will run between 30 and 40 mph all day, which is plenty good enough for me. It seemed like it had a lot more to go too. I suspect it will run 50 mph without much trouble.

It looks smaller than the Sportsman, but it feels very roomy. I never once felt cramped or crowded on it. I only rode one-up, but I'm sure two-up will be ok too. It's about the size of the old Explorers. Not a tiny machine by Japanese standards, but certainly smaller than most of the obese US models. As long as it doesn't feel small, I don't care if it looks small.

On that same note, I put it in the back of my little pickup truck, slam the tailgate shut, and drive away. Just like the old Trail Boss. Unlike the old Sportsman that I had to leave hanging out and strap it in. I like being able to shut the tailgate.

The steering is light and easy and it handles very nice. It hooks the ruts and bounces side to side a little more than the Sportsman, since it's so light. Not too bad, just different.

We found a little mud on Josie's trail. It crossed it with ease. Not with rock solid feel and authority, but more or less skipped across instead of sinking down and powering through. The new AWD is nice. You can't even feel it kick in like the old design. And you don't end up with one hub sticking in gear!

On the routes there were some puddles that I hit quite hard. The splash protection is awesome! I didn't get one drop of water splashed onto my boots or pants. Normally, I would have been wet from the knees down, but not on this machine. I really liked that little surprise!

It's really fun to ride it! I can't wait to get out on the trails and try it. It sucks that it's another month and a half before they open. In the meantime, I'll have to stick to the yard, woods, and routes. Hmmm, maybe I'll head over to Necedah again today? Or maybe Easter Sunday!

Looks like I'm going to try to get in a little riding today. The rain will hopefully hold off until later this afternoon. I'll have my rain gear just in case!

The miniature calf is so far doing good. My daughter has a bunch of pictures of her, and I'll post some soon. She's not standing as steady as I would like to see, but being so small might cause her to take longer than the others to get it. Her eyes look a little funny too, but hopefully she's not blind. The poor thing, I think she was born a bit too early. As long as she doesn't get sick within the first week or so, she should make it. If they get the shits and/or a bellyache in the first week, they're usually done for. I'll be away from the farm for the next two days, so keeping my fingers crossed that she'll be properly cared for.

I've got the new quad all loaded up and ready to take her on her maiden voyage tomorrow. Although, the weather sounds kind of crappy. The noon weather guy said not an all day rain, but a chance of showers off and on. If it looks like a soaker in the morning, I'll stay home and ride some other day. We'll see.

I hope it turns out ok. I'm itching to get out and see if I'll be in need of some warranty work or not! Yikes, hope not. I've read a few stories about them being jetted wrong from the factory, but so far mine runs like a top. Also read some stories about the back brackets that hold the A-arms on failing and the wheels falling off (OH SHIT)! Gosh, it looks to me like they are built pretty tough and bolted in several places besides being welded all around to the subframe. It isn't the thickest material, but should be sufficient as long as it's good moly steel. I guess I'm not going to worry about it, especially since I heard the same thing about the Sportsman when I bought it and look how far it went. Besides, I only read that from two or three people, and they could be all the same guy! And nobody ever posted a single picture of it or anything, so I imagine it's all bullshit. Hard to say, but if it is true, the guys that posted about it also stated that they either:
A. rolled it
B. have oversize wheels on it
C. both A and B
D. are morons

I really did it. I had to. I had no choice. After what, three or four days? I finally had to light a fire in the stove again! Oh well, it won't be long now, maybe another few months, and I'll be able to leave it out for the whole summer! What's that consist of? 3 or maybe 4 months of not heating? Kind of a strange place we live in, 9 months of heating your house and 3 months of sweating stickiness until you start heating all over again!

We had the tiniest baby calf I've ever seen yesterday (alive anyway). It's all perfectly formed and seems healthy so far, but isn't really any bigger than a large fawn. Hopefully she makes it ok. I worry about the little ones like that.

What a day! Up into the 80s! Really, too hot too soon. We have plenty of time for a lot of winter yet. Let's hope not, but I'd be surprised if it kept this up until next fall!

Went to the dealer today to get some oil and a filter for when I change the break-in oil. He said they don't have the 0w50 that it calls for, they just use the regular 0w40. And, even though the filter on it has a different #, he said the same old Polaris filter is the one to use. Well ok then. If he says so. That makes it easy, because by the time I change the oil again it will be out of warranty and I'll just get the oil and filter from Wal-mart for half the price like I always did for the old one.

Tilled the gardens up today. They'll have to be tilled again before planting, but I wanted to get the old cornstalks and pumpkin vines ground up good so they start to break down. Looking forward to another bumper crop of my secret special sweetcorn this year! This time I will plant it a week or so at a time so it doesn't all ripen at once! My carryover onions are already growing like crazy. I'll be eating them before it's time to plant new ones.

I had a trailer full of wet sand behind her today. That made the rear end squat a little! My little trailer didn't seem to notice though. We'll see in a week or two how well it will do with a load of firewood. I'll be needing to move more out of the pile for burning in the stove, unless the weather stays like this! 68 degrees yesterday. Yee haw!

I have yet another birthday coming up in a couple weeks (yuck) and I realized something the other day. If this ATV lasts for as many miles as the old one, it will be the last one I will ever have to buy in my lifetime! Growing old saves so much money, because you've already bought a lot of the last things you'll ever buy! Isn't that a comforting thought?

I lowered the springs on the new quad down to the middle of their adjustment. All the way up was just too stiff. I should have tried it before I tightened them up in the first place. It still rides a little stiff, but better than it was. I think I'll leave them in the middle for now.

I'm up to about 20 miles, all from bombing around in the woods. Can't wait to go riding next Saturday and see how it does on the routes. Hopefully the weather stays nice like today. A motorcycle just went by!

So far the only things that I don't like about it, and those things are pretty minor, is it starts weird and it's kind of loud compared to the old Sportsman. I guess I'll have to learn how to start it. Turning the key like a car will take some getting used to. I'm used to pushing a button. And I can never quite figure out how it wants to be choked (or the lack of) and if it wants to be given a little gas or not when I start it. Sometimes it takes right off with full choke and no gas, the next day it will only start with partial choke and no gas, then the next day I may have to give it a little gas to getting it going at all.

Ahhh, Classmates.com - boooo hissssss! Many years ago I signed up with Classmates.com. It sounded like a neat thing, but once I signed up I found out that you can't contact any of your classmates or see their e-mail addresses etc. unless you pay for it. And it wasn't cheap either. No way. Booo! Anyway, I just let it go and never visited the web site again. Every so often I still get an e-mail from them bragging about some wonderful new service or begging me to pay for their service. The other day, I got a message from them saying that they were going to make everyone's profile viewable by the public for free (which it should have been from the beginning), but for a limited time only. Well, almost immediately the amount of spam I receive exploded! Went from maybe one a day or two, to 100+ spam messages a day this last week.

So, if you have noticed a sudden increase in spam messages to your e-mail address, and you are a member of Classmates. com, don't forget to thank them for another wonderful service! Hissssss!

I like this review:

"We didn’t have an opportunity to test its towing capacity but we are told that it is significant. We heard a story from a reliable source where a salesman locked the brakes of a Yamaha Rhino then tried unsuccessfully to pull it with two different entry level ATV’s. They then strapped those ATVs to the Rhino and pulled all three vehicles with a Hawkeye. "

http://www.4x4review.com/quads/polaris/Hawkeye_wrapup.asp

Well, I've got about 15 miles on the new quad now! Just around the yard and crashing through the woods a few times. It feels quite powerful and will get up and go when needed. I'm surprised actually. Mrs. Reverend and I rode around double a little bit, while I tested the power for riding double. No problem. It powers up the hill like nothing, with both of us on it. I think it will do just fine.


I read a review about it, stating that it vibrates quite a bit. Yes, it does. It's because the engine is not mounted with rubber mounts like the Sportsmans. It's bolted solid to the frame like the Japanese ATVs. It doesn't really bother me, anymore than it ever bothered when I used to ride motorcycles. One thing I did do though was I took the ball mount out of the receiver hitch and hung it in the garage until I need to pull a trailer. The racket that thing makes when it vibrates did bother me!


I noticed that the front end has very little protection. There isn't much to protect, but there is a couple wires going to the front gearcase and a couple vent hoses. I wonder about those when I'm out in the woods. I once had a limb get into the Sportsman and rip a hole in one of the radiator hoses and that thing had much protection, plus the winch, grill, etc. And yet the limb still got in there somehow anyway. The dealers offer a grill for the front of it. It's not too expensive either, less than 40 bucks. So, I might just get that and put it on there. Anything to keep the sticks from ripping those wires and hoses off, I guess. I'll have to think about it.
One thing I will not be getting is the winch for it. They say that there is only one winch/mount combo made to fit it and it is only 1500# for $450! No way. I've got the old 2500# Warn off the Sportsman, and since this machine has a receiver hitch, I might make a removable mount and wiring harness for it. I know they offer receiver mounts for winches, but I think I can make one myself pretty easy and for a lot less money. We'll see.

I went for my first bike ride of the spring last night. Not a very long one, only about 3.5 miles. It helps to clear my lungs, and since I've been feeling congested lately, I thought no better time than now to start in on the biking season.

Tires needed a little air and the crank bearings were loose again. Made a few modifications to my tool and equipment carrier (that's a "basket" to you less manly folks). Should be ready to rock for the summer. Can't wait to hit the bike trails again!

The spring rains are finally on their way! They will draw the last of the frost out of the ground and when the sun comes out again it will dry everything up. This time of year always sucks. It was two years ago today that I wound up in the hospital with pneumonia from moldy silage and hay. I avoid the moldy stuff now like it's the plague, but I always feel kind of crappy anyway. Everything is so wet, filthy, and moldy during the transition from winter snow to late spring sunshine. The cows have it on them from eating it and rubbing the bales, the barn has it floating around in the air, the calves have it in their bedding, YUCK! It's hard to avoid it altogether. About all I can do is hope for drier weather and pray I don't get too sick this year!

Sniffle, sniffle, blow my nose again.

My first impressions of the new quad:

I'm still not going to say exactly what model it is (so far JR is the only one to find out) but I will say that it is 4x4 independent suspension and 800 cc, give or take. ;-) I haven't ridden it hardly at all yet. In circles around the house a few times, then up through the woods where I cut firewood, to the neighbor's and back. A grand total of about 3 or 4 miles so far!

First thing I did, while it was still in the back of my truck, was jacked it up and took the back wheels off. I'm not as slim and trim as I used to be, so the springs generally need to be adjusted up for me and the easiest way to get at the adjusters is to take the rear wheels off. This machine has adjustments on the front too, so up they went also. After riding it, I almost think I might have set them up a little too much! We'll see after everything loosens up some and, if needed, I will turn them down a click. I was kind of surprised that I could adjust them that high. The old quads only had adjustments on the back and then all the way up was still kind of mushy feeling.

This thing was absolutely brand new. It was in the showroom and had been put there right from the crate. Never had a battery in it, and the inside of the gas tank didn't even smell like gas. After I unloaded it and puttered around the yard a minute, it seemed to me like it idled too slow and stalled once in awhile. I turned the idle up a bit, and that cured it. Of course, later on it idled too high and then I turned it back down. Now all is well, and my burnt knuckles from the exhaust pipe are already healing.

It does not have low range, and I was a little concerned about that with all the wood hauling I do. Turns out I was worried for nothing. On my rides around the house, it seemed to be geared/clutched well for power at lower speeds, but then gets up and goes when you need more speed later on. It's almost like having a two speed transmission, even though it really doesn't. Kind of hard to explain any other way. I have no idea yet what it will have for top speed, but it seems like it will easily do 35 mph which is all I ever need. I'm guessing, but I think it will be good for 50ish. The old Sportsman would easily run 55-60, but this one doesn't feel like it will be that fast. The Trail Boss runs 50. This one feels like it will be in the ballpark or a hair slower. Like I said before, 35 is plenty anyway.

I'm surprised how roomy it seems. Mrs. Reverend jumped on it with me and she said she was just as comfortable as on the old Sportsman. For some reason, that I can't quite explain, it feels more comfortable than the Sportsman. I'm sure the seat is smaller, I can tell that just by looking at it, but it feels bigger. Hmm. The only thing I noticed different in the fit and feel department, it has a big long shift lever (like a frickin' Kenworth!). When I have it in reverse, I have to hold my knee out away from it to make room. Not a problem though, because when you move it to forward gear, the lever goes away. Way far away to be exact! Anyway, it's very comfortable and roomy. Only a long ride will tell me exactly how well it does on the ooohhhh ouch scale.

There was still a lot of snow in most places out in the woods. I didn't want to work it too hard, but I decided to take a little ride. There are spots where the old drifts are two feet deep yet. Places where the Sportsman would have had me worrying. The Sportsman would have broken through and been really digging in the snow. That thing was a tank, one of the many reasons I loved it! Not this thing though. I was surprised at how it's so light that it just kind of floated over the snow. And it really didn't sink in very deep when I followed the same tracks on the way back. The snow is kind of hard and crusty, but I know without a doubt that the Sportsman would have sunk like a rock and been scratching it's way out. I never spun a wheel on this trip.

Only time will tell. I worry that it might be too small and light for long rides and especially riding double, that it won't have enough power for hauling wood, and that it won't have enough speed for decent-paced trail riding. My first impressions have told me that it will do ok at all these things. Of course not as big, bad, or fast as my favorite old quad was, but damn! For 59 bucks a month and less than what I paid for my '96 Trail Boss 250, how could my wife go wrong by buying this for me? ;-)

Eek-eek, eek-eek, eek-eek, eek-eek! That's what Mrs. Reverend's Cherokee says when turning a corner. I haven't looked at it yet, but by guessing, my diagnosis is a front axle u-joint is saying goodbye. Today I will look at it and see if I can tell for sure which side, and confirm my diagnosis. No stores around here are open on Sunday. I'll have to wait to buy parts tomorrow, and the Mrs. needs to drive it until at least Thursday before I can tear it apart.

What next?!

Here it is, my newest ride! (my oldest ride is sitting on it) The old Sportsman is gone. I will really miss it, after more than 10,000 miles of fun and hard work. It was an awesome machine, but it's time was running out.

Today is our wedding anniversary. Mrs. Reverend and I have been together 20 years, married for 16 (1991). Here's to another 20! :-)

63 degrees yesterday! Keep it coming. Noticed the crocuses are popping up too. Won't be long now.

Here it is, all torn apart again!

It idles fine, and will run slowly, at a snail's pace. Under a load, or when trying to get more than a couple miles per hour out of it, nothing. The engine will die right out if you keep holding the throttle open - pop, bang! I've had a similar problem with it before, not so extreme, but more about that in a minute. The fuel pump seemed to be doing nothing. So, here's what you get for $40 to rebuild the pump:

It's hard to see from this picture, but the plastic diaphragm (which is the "pulse" diaphragm) was warped and stretched so bad that it couldn't possibly have been pulsing much, if at all. It was resting almost tight against the pulse fitting opening. I replaced the three gaskets and two diaphragms (40 bucks) and now the pump actually pumps fuel:

But, it runs no different! So, back to square one, and back to the problem I had before with it. The air box and cover are warped, broken, and otherwise going to hell. The bolts that hold the cover broke out of the box. The engine was acting in a similar way after that happened. I drilled holes in the box and replaced the missing bolts with bolts all the way through from under the lip. That held the cover down pretty good and made it run perfectly once again:

Now the cover is warped even further, along with the sides of the box. Plus, the bolts I replaced have begun to pull clear through the box lip. One corner was completely loose. It really looked like it was still sealing better than when I had the problem before, but maybe not. At least I'm hoping that's the problem! Especially since the air box and cover are $120. I'll know by the weekend if a new box will cure it.

Otherwise, I don't know what it could be. There's a possibility that it could be the diaphragm in the top of the carb (it's a stupid vacuum carb like junk Fords used to use - that's a bad sign right there). I was told those cost 50 bucks, but I have since looked up the price myself and they are actually $76! What a crock. If the air box doesn't fix it, then it may not get fixed. It's so old and has so many miles on it that it's not really worth putting a lot into it anymore. It's certainly paid for itself and been one excellent machine over the years, but it might be time to let it go. No better time than now anyway. I've already been planning to use other methods to plow snow, I can use my old truck or the older ATV to haul firewood with, and with ATV clubs that like to make money and fight more than they like to ride.................

To the person/persons that were/are thinking of starting a new ATV club in the area, here are my thoughts on the subject:

1. The club name should be something fun. Should actually have the word "fun" right in it. And the number one objective in the by-laws should reflect that. Something like "The Constantly Riding Fun ATV Club", or even "The Many Parties ATV Club".

2. It should not replace existing clubs, nor be their competition, but be their opposite, so to speak. The existing clubs are mostly business, or are becoming that way. The new club should be all fun. Let the old clubs handle all the trail patrolling, safety classes, route maintenance, and all the other mostly boring stuff. The new club should let it be known that it is just a riding/fun club, but that it would be willing to come up to bat as a backup if the old clubs should fail in their route/trail maintenance duties due to loss of active members. This way nothing existing would be lost, if it came to that point, and hopefully the "fun" club would never have to worry about anything more than riding anyway.

3. The new club should not endorse trail patrolling or safety classes. Entire clubs are not trained for this stuff anyway, but the individuals are. This should be up to the individual patrollers and instructors to setup and handle if they wish to do so. In which case the club could donate some money to them for safety class fees or vests, but it should not be up to the club and it's officers to handle this kind of thing. Let the "business" clubs handle it, or leave it up to the individuals.

4. Keep it simple with the main emphasis being on riding your ATVs with people that also like to ride their ATVs. Leave the "business" to the "business" clubs. Keep the dues minimal because the club wouldn't need much money. The only money needed would be to buy a couple beers or whatever for the members at their picnics etc.

That's about it. A new club may or may not really be forming, but that's my thoughts on it. Besides, the area has room for two "different" types of ATV clubs if necessary. I wouldn't be opposed to paying dues to a "business" club and a "fun" club if that's what it takes. Might actually be a good way to keep the "business" from ruining the "fun". People could belong to whichever club suits their personalities best, or to both clubs.

What a great ride! The weather was absolutely perfect. We rode from Milston to BRF and back (well, I didn't get quite all the way to BRF before I headed back due to my old, worn out ATV giving me grief again). Just check out this beautiful blue sky:

There was still a lot of snow. The weather was warm enough that if you stopped for very long with all the normal winter gear on, you started to sweat a little. But the snow hadn't yet melted enough to get too sloppy and slushy. If we had waited to go tomorrow, that would have been one day too late and it would have been a wet ride. Here's a cool little creek barely visible in all the snow:

Here's JR hunting for porcupines! You had to be there:

What a day! 55 degrees! I almost went for a bike ride, but I couldn't get the shed doors open with all the snow and ice against them. So the dogs and I just went for our usual walk.



I don't know what Snoopy can smell under the snow, if anything at all, but she's always like this! Head stuck in the snow. Sometimes she even starts to choke on it and coughs. She does the same thing with dirt.


There's still two feet or more of snow on the ground. The old Sportman's belly dragged a little when I opened this path up. Although, I didn't make it much further than what you can see in this picture before I had to back up all the to the driveway again. The only reason I made it that far is because it was downhill!

Rubber snubbers, will I ever learn? They always sound like such a good deal when they are on special but, as you can see by the picture, this one barely outlasted the damn sticker on it! Fortunately I don't have very many. I mostly use the other kind, bungees. I once saw a bungee come undone and the hook hit a guy right in the mouth and made his lip bleed. Ouch!

I just noticed something about Blogger and browser compatibility. If I view my blog with my favorite old version of Netscape, this page loses it's formatting. All the pictures are in a big bunch at the top of the page - not where they are supposed to be.

If this page looks that way to you, try a different browser. Blogger recommends Fire Fox, which I've had very little experience with, but I am hearing more and more that it's the browser to use nowadays. I've been using I.E. 6, not because I like it, but it's what most people use so the majority of web site programming is biased towards it.

Hey, Kawasaki!

I tried twice to reply to your message, but keep getting fatal errors from your mail server. So, here's my response:

"That's all the info I have."

It's not much! See you soon!

Wow, a new ATV club forming in the area? A club who's main concern is fun? Could it be true? From reading the by-laws that I came across by chance, it sounds like this club is only fun oriented. The way it should be. No extra bullshit to get caught up in. Just ATVing in it's purest, most natural form.

Let's keep our fingers crossed. If I hear anything further, I'll be sure to post it immediately!

I pulled the plow off, probably for the last time. I even took the mount off the frame and threw the whole works in the scrap pile. It got to be too hard to plow with it, rubbing the crap out of the tire etc.

I stopped at a few places yesterday to see what they had for snow blowers. Everybody was out. Ace had a few single stage snow throwers left (snow cone makers), but they are way over-priced for what you get. Tractor Supply Co. had a nice one setting out front, but the cashier told me it was for the store's use and not for sale. And also the only one they had.

Hopefully we won't get a lot more snow this year. If so, I'll have to head toward Madison. I'm sure I'll find one down that way.

This sounds familiar! Sure glad I dumped that damn old forum crap. Here's a few quotes on the support forum for the old forum hosting company:

"When The Server Problems Are Going To Be Fixed? If I may ask?I'm having all
sorts of problems here, server is very slow, up then down (freezes), then slow
again, then SQL errors then "Too Many Connections" then up then down again, all
this in half an hour, what's going on!?We're losing members here...Thanks for
any help in advance."

"Welcome aboard, seems like servers 2, 3, 5, 15 & 18 have those problems often. Server 1 stutters often too. I guess the servers are under a lot of stress because new forums are still registered on the old servers incl. 2 & 3 and new servers aren't being deployed to keep up with the demand. Also, old forums that are no longer active aren't being removed from the servers, I know a couple of forums on 3 that closed an year ago and they still aren't removed. They just take space and resources. Just be happy you aren't on server 3. It's offline more than it's online."

"Well, I don't know if I should be happy or not being on server 2, because lately this server is offline more than it's online too...I think Forumer staff should find a solution for this, it's causing a lot of damage to us, some members left us, simply because the forum is offline or very slow most of the time, it's not that easy to make people come to your forum but it's very easy to lose them, I've put lots of efforts to make my forum active and now this!I'm getting lots of complaints and I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel, since the support keep saying that the admin is out of town, how come a whole business is dependent on one person? there should be another person who can handle such situation while the admin is "out-of-town"...I think Forumer are going to lose most of their customers if they were not able to find a solution for this problem very soon.Don't get me wrong, I like Forumer, but the whole point of a host is to host your site and keep it online, otherwise, you can't make business with them...Thank you, At least you replied... "

"I am glad I have a large forum. Enough members come back to keep it running through these slow times. I actually thought server 2 was one of the best servers because I haven't experienced a problem since October. Then about a week ago, the forum has been off and on. It is horrible. I hope Limez can fix it. It is like he is never on. There should at least be two, if not three admins. How can a site as large as Forumer work with only one person who is always out of town? This is seriously getting ridiculous. I would move, but Forumer doesn't allow it, and my forum has already gotten so large that it would be hard to start over.Let's get it together Forumer. "

"I have been a co-admin for nearly 7 years. The past 3 years we've been with Forumhoster (which we all know was taken over by Forumer.) and we've had nothing but great service and reliability. But recently, we have been experiencing horrible service. The first time we lost our forum was in late December, into early January. The server was down for nearly 2 weeks. Limez was out of town.Now our forum is down, yet again, and Limez is out of town. Customer service on this matter has been nothing more than a copy and paste "Our admins have been notified and will resolve this issue in a timely manner." Timely manner. What IS a timely manner to Forumer? To a customer of this service, a timely manner is at best, a few hours. Not the near week of offline that many of us have been experiencing.I ask Forumer this: Why is it that Limez is the only one who knows how to fix these problems when your customer base is larger than one person can handle?There are 16 servers, if my memory recalls me, and out of those 16, I'm seeing nearly half of them have complaints in the past week. Okay, so no one there can fix our issues. Can anyone give us an esitmate as to when our issues will be resolved? We, as many have asked, are looking for a timeframe as to when we can expect our forums to be returned to their normal functioning. A few more days? Another week? A month? I hope it's not a month.Not only are we having server issues, we are having customer service issues. Being left in the dark is far worse than any answer you could ever give us. Please, instead of just telling us "It will be looked at when Limez returns," give us a timeframe. We have members we care about who would like to know when they can return to the boards.Thank you. "

And it goes on and on. I was on Forumer with their crappy service for 3 years. Yuck. I feel for these guys. I know the problems well.

My old snow plow has just about seen the end of it's life. It's bent so bad that when I plow with the blade angled to the right, I can't turn because it rubs the right front tire and it's starting to cut a groove in the tire. The welds are all broke again, the push bars are twisted and bent, the wear bar is worn down to the bolts, and the mount on the ATV is all bashed in. I'm not complaining though. It's certainly earned it's keep. It's plowed my driveway and others every year since 1996, not to mention all the dirt grading and grubbing some stumps out (mostly by accident). Now it's time to retire it.

I still haven't decided what to replace it with. A 4wd truck with a plow? Buy a plow kit for my wife's Cherokee? Another new plow kit for my ATV? My ATV is no spring chicken either. Or maybe a good snow blower? About the same price as another new plow kit for the ATV, certainly cheaper than the other alternatives, and a lot easier on the ATV. Gives some exercise, but yet not as much as a shovel (I'm not that crazy). Hmmm, I'll have to give my choices more thought. Hopefully we've seen the last of all the "plowing" snow for this year.

If the gloom and clouds ever go away, be sure to check out the lunar eclipse tomorrow evening. Here in the United States, you have to be in the eastern half of the country to witness totality. At the end of the day on Saturday, go outside and face east. As the sun sets behind your back, a red Moon will rise before your eyes! Maximum eclipse is at 6:21 p.m. EST.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2007/12feb_lunareclipse.htm

March comes in like a lion, it goes out like a lamb. I hope that old saying is correct! The end of this month will be a nice 75 degrees with warm sunshine.

What a windy, messy, bunch of crap. I just came down from the roof, after fixing my long wire antenna. I'll have to make a new one, it's in pretty tough shape from being in too many windstorms to count and at least one tornado. It'll do for now.

Lots of snow and some ice up there. Knee deep on the west side. Thought about trying to get some of it off, since this house is built so crappy, but probably more work than it's worth. And then I'd end up damaging some shingles too. If she falls in, that's what insurance is for.

It's raining quite hard now. At 32 degrees. The worst is yet to come, supposedly. Hope Mrs. Reverend makes it home from work ok. Heavy snow etc. coming later. A little lightning static in the CB right now, and many cars in the ditch according to the scanner.

I'm sick of this! I might be riding my bike in the snow. Getting kind of impatient.