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handyandy1100 said:
75 degrees F in Raleigh North Carolina today. A week or so ago the low was 16F a couple of nights.
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Yep. It's in the 60s here in PA today, and less than a week ago we were in the single digits. Planning to drive home from work with the top down.
 
Well, it warmed up for one day and rained hard. Flooded my shop as the ground is frozen and the water had no where to go but inside. That night it got to the single digits again. I used a big bag and a small bag of salt to get my shop doors open and there is 3 inches of ice freezing everything to the shop floor. It has been in the single digits ever since. This morning it was +4F and now it is +6. It's going to snow and get to to 20F today. My shop is kaput until spring when I will have a super mess to sort out and clean up. It is like a skating rink and dangerous walking in there. I had a hard time freeing my snowblower from the shop floor ice. We have been having a lot of winter weather advisories, minor blizzards. My truck was buried for several days and I blew snow yesterday. All ready for more snow. I should put on my skates and skate the two miles to my mail box, just to say I did it. If I was younger I would. In fact, I could skate the 15 miles into Wetmore as they didn't bother to sand the highway. It's rutted ice that throws the truck around so you can only go 55 MPH or 40 on the curves. Don't try to stop, useless. When it was -25F I backed my new truck into a snowbank and shattered the plastic bumper and tail light. I'll get a new tail light lens but the plastic bumper is useless. Backing up in the woods in tight areas, with a trailer, will cause the trailer to fold against the bumper and bust it again. I''m going to look for a steel aftermarket one. I'm going to the Mississippi Delta in a few weeks, taking a folding bicycle with me. I'm doing a blues tour, that will cheer me up.
 
WOW!


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LukeTheJoker said:
Blues tour sounds like fun!
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Maybe I'll post some pictures of my bike rides down there. I have never been to the Delta but I have a friend that winters down there and he is a blues musician. He said I can stay as long as I want. He lives in a pole barn that has no windows so I'll have to see how long I can stand a sleeping bag and camping mattress. He lives in a rural area in the hot bed of where the original blues as we know it came from. I want to visit some graves of famous blues legends and go listen to live music. It's another winter weather advisory again today with 15 to 20 mile per hour winds and expecting 10 inches of the beautiful white stuff. Right now we are having a heat wave, 16F so its time to break out the Margaritas. I drove 80 miles west yesterday to help a friend work on a vintage bicycle. I found out that the snow has been coming down faster than they can groom the snow bike trails and it is very soft, 5 miles is a strenuous ride. Snow doesn't pack when it is so cold. The rain storm was so heavy that it bent hundreds of trees across the 50 mile trail for this weeks Polar Roll fat bike race they are putting on. They are expecting 500 riders so they have the whole community out there clearing trails but their concern now is that it is too soft and more snow is coming for the week. It's a brutal ride anyway with lots of big hills. I thought about riding in it until I saw a map of the course. I would die out there in the middle of nowhere, I could never make it. Ice cover on Lake Superior is currently 70%, a little above average for this time of year. Ice cover will peak in the next few weeks.
 
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Been snowing ever since the post above. There is a blizzard and winter storm warning now. We had Valentines Day lunch 30 miles away and our waitress brought her overnight bag so she could stay in the restaurant. She sleeps on the floor, but has a camping mattress. Her house is 5 miles away but the road to get there runs along Lake Superior and they will end up closing that road again as it drifts shut. It's real nice and warm out, 27F. It's supposed to stop snowing for a few days on Saturday. Time to sharpen the shovels. The restaurant is open for business, they stuck a sign in the snowbank out front as you could not otherwise see if it was open. I had fish, wife had a salad.
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Wow, this makes New England sound like Costa Rica.
 
Duchess said:
Wow, this makes New England sound like Costa Rica.
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Update, sun for a while on Saturday then cloudy with some snow later on Saturday and another storm on Sunday. My neighbor on the next lake came back from Florida Tuesday because the hurricane caused the condo rents to sky rocket to $3700 for two weeks, school kids in old folks condos retreat causing chaos, gas 50 cents more than anywhere else and gridlock traffic. They came back to escape Florida but he said this is the worst winter in 25 years. I saw him shoveling and snow blowing. He said the boondocks of the U.P. in winter are better than Florida this year. Dang, I have to pretend like I'm not antisocial and talk to neighbors. This is usually a very painful experience that occurs in April and May. We have to pretend like we are neighborly. We usually have several interconnecting lakes pretty much to ourselves in the winter. Yes I am armed to the teeth, anxious to defend our home, and I hope everyone knows it. I'm thinking of putting a human silhouette on my gate that is riddled with bullet holes.
 
After years with a degenerate neighbor maybe 40' away, we moved to a place with a fairly hidden 1/4 mile driveway, 30+ acres of woods in back, and heavily-vegetated ponds on each side of the driveway (I joke that we have a moat as there's a bridge over the connection point between the ponds where a beaver lives. Unfortunately, the bridge does not lift up, though it does alert the house when crossed.). We're thinking of putting in an automatic gate with plants tied to it so it looks like a wall of vegetation when closed. Got the idea from Batman. I haven't even seen most of what neighbors we have.
 
Duchess said:
After years with a degenerate neighbor maybe 40' away, we moved to a place with a fairly hidden 1/4 mile driveway, 30+ acres of woods in back, and heavily-vegetated ponds on each side of the driveway (I joke that we have a moat as there's a bridge over the connection point between the ponds where a beaver lives. Unfortunately, the bridge does not lift up, though it does alert the house when crossed.). We're thinking of putting in an automatic gate with plants tied to it so it looks like a wall of vegetation when closed. Got the idea from Batman. I haven't even seen most of what neighbors we have.
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Cool, I had a gate made out of 2 RR ties on each side, with a pipe drilled between them on each side, a long log across the driveway with a heavy cable stapled to the log, counter weights made out of RR plates, a pivot where the log goes through the log and another pipe drilled through the other 2 RR ties with whole drilled through it where I have a lock. When you remove the lock the log goes up and a rope is attached so you can bring it down. Everyone thinks I'm an engineer, but I just want to limit access. I put up this gate and my neighbor put up huge Christian religious vinyl signs on our property lines but I don't care. It's a free country. The gate is to keep him out, he likes to walk in front of my cabin when I'm looking at the Lake Channel. Nothing keeps him out. He also likes to cut down tress on my property. I caught him trying to cut down a 200 year old white pine. I got a land survey and put up a fence. He is not a Yooper, the lower Michigan, Ohio and Indiana folks try and shut off access and cause a lot of problems, too many no trespassing signs are now required. I never remember seeing one in the 60s. He is older than I am and hopefully will be gone before long.
 
That gate sounds like a great idea!

The only neighbor I've met was one walking his dog on our driveway (and the guy has a large back yard to let the dog run in). I don't think he expected me to be coming home that early (I start early) and made up some excuse that he was following a couple guys in cammo with guns up the driveway, but there were no vehicles parked anywhere around, only bow hunting is legal in the woods out back, and if this brave guy was following these dudes, WHERE ARE THEY?! Like, Oh, I'll follow these guys, but just let them go about their business. As we just moved in and didn't want neighbor problems so soon, I was conversationally discouraging, but restrained polite-adjacent (Or so I think—I've been told by others that I actually come off as a bit psychotic . . . I think it's that I can't pull off a convincing fake smile, but maybe it's something else. I'd work on being less scary, but it's much too helpful in keeping unwanted people away). I haven't seen him since.
 
Oh man, usually a blizzard makes it so I can't see across our lake. Right now I can't see the 100 feet to the lake, it's really snowing hard but fortunately there is little wind. If the wind comes up we will have a blizzard with drifts to shovel. can't wait, the next one is coming Sunday. Yeah. No work on bikes today.
 
feb 2019 bike shed.jpg


Well, created a work space in the basement by the wood burner, but ran out of places to pile the snow. so doesn't look like i'm gonna get to some of my project frames in this shed till the "Big thaw", whenever that is. And ditto, another storm due this weekend. This stuff is really heavy, tractor bucket strains lifting it and after it sets overnight it is like concrete. :(
 

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