Happy Labor Day weekend Americans..(and Canadians)!

We have labour day stat holiday here in Canada too.

Kind of sad time - end of summer.

Happy Labor Day!! 🇺🇸

It’s hot and humid here today. We’ve had a bizarre summer down south. May and June were dangerously hot. July was wonderful, and August was wet and humid. I saw early signs of fall around July 31st, but the past few weeks have been hot and humid with an abundance of rain.

Reminder for most of you US residence.

This will be the last fall that most states will turn the clock back to standard time. Forever.

Next spring , when the clocks are turned forward to daylight savings time it will be that way forever unless they change the law again , or if some states just decide they do not like it.

So this may possibly be the last time in my life that is gets dark at 3:45 on December 21, 2022, the shortest day.

That same day in 2023 it will get dark at 4:45, .....wow! But it will also still be dark at 9 AM in the morning, as there is only a little more than six hours of daylight on that day.

I think coffee sales will go up! I never liked mornings anyway......seeing some sun at the end of the day should be a mental boost in the winter!

What younger kids still take the school bus will be standing there in the dark though, just like high school kids always did who start school earlier.

Post Edited (astroman) : 9/3/2022 3:23:09 PM (GMT-7)

The dreaded Alberta clipper!

That’s something you never get used to! It’s just awful, sounds like you know about it since you know what it’s called.

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Non lyme Story time:

I had a chance to buy my uncles lake place a couple years ago - really cozy , simple, still affordable , year round lake home/(cabin style). But ....It can get to 40 F below there and it was 52 below there in 1996. Nice to visit, kind of hard to live there many winters.

Well....It was 40 below that same morning where I was 50 miles away, and we were snowmobiling overnight on an island.( A roadless island cabin). It warmed up to -30 F at noon the next day and we went riding to grandmas..... It was not so simple.

I had the newest, modern fuel injected sport snowmobile of the group which actually started; the others were slightly older early 90’s carbureted machines ...and pull start too; which took an hour to get them all running (Parked down at the frozen dock).

It was pretty brutal. Of course it was unusually windy too, it’s more common for super cold air to be dead calm. So it was the coldest lake ride snd wind chill I’ve ever experienced in my life. I already knew what -35 still air was like, but not on a lake with wind. This was before modern cell phones ; we knew it was gonna get to 20 below but It got to 40 below instead. (So I don’t know what windchill was, probably 60 to 70 below? When it’s like that you duct tape all the seams between your helmet, jacket, gloves and even duct tape over your gloves to make them thicker....while still inside of course. As long as you peel it off that night before it fully warms up to room temperature, it won’t screw up your Riding attire. Can’t pull it off outside as it basically gets frozen.

When we hit land, we met another part of our group at a small motel, only to find out one of the guys road into a springfed marsh on the same lake that the cabin is at in the previous nights blinding sideways snow and got stuck and left it there overnight; Riding back on the back of someone else’s sled.

We rode back the following later afternoon when it warmed up to a high of 20 below, with a chainsaw and portable propane Plummer’s torch to cut the sunk frozen track out of the ice. Starting the torch was a major ordeal on the cold wind swept lake lol. We started and warmed up the chainsaw in grandmas attached garage. We first had to adjust the air settings so it would actually run in denser cold weather versus warm summer, ....we made it work! That’s a few days I will never forget. It seems comical now but at the time it really sucked.

I have since given that up and only go snowmobiling when invited to use somebody else’s...,which also gives me an excuse to go slower, cause if you wreck it you fix it.! Plus, It’s not proper to wreck other peoples loaned stuff lol!

Post Edited (astroman) : 9/3/2022 6:18:01 PM (GMT-7)

Temperature in Copper Harbor, U.P. Of MI currently is 57 degrees F…winter comes early in those parts. Amazingly too population is 138.

That was some good problem solving. It takes a logical, methodical mind to work out problems of that sort. Do you still snowmobile? A neighbor of mine used to work for Bosch. He would bring home some pretty slick snowmobiles compliments of Bosch fuel injection systems.

Astro: “ Reminder for most of you US residence.

This will be the last fall that most states will turn the clock back to standard time. Forever. “


I believe BC (my province) is following suit with that.

“Nov 6, 2022 - Daylight Saving Time Ends”

Margarita lyme-

I sold my last snowmobile in 2005 as my fluctuating Lyme symptoms were getting really bad then and my back was very fragile. I could not ride.

Then as things got even worse around 2010, I could barely ride a bicycle. But now I can do that probably every day if I wanted to.

I have since been invited to ride other people snowmobile‘s and it went well. Most of the people I knew were pretty hard-core and have several machines.

As far as fixing things that’s a sport /hobby that if you go out into the boonies , you need to know how to improvise /fix things or at least have someone in the group that knows how.

At one point we were all involved in that industry with the other closely related ones in one way or another, and outdoors people at the same time. I met some pretty interesting people involved in that industry , that’s when you realize how small the world is. This is where they were first designed in the late 50’s and are still are.

I did enough of it that I really don’t miss it, Well maybe a little bit when I’m on my fat snow bike out on a frozen lake and there’s snomobiles going by. I always chat it up with the ice fisherman. That hobby is more about drinking in their ice shack than it is about catching fish though, ha ha.

Ive enjoyed people powered stuff more now: bicycles, canoe, skis, snow shoes. always liked that stuff too, now I just have more time for it. Don’t get to experience as many miles of terrain though.

My most miles on a sled was about 375 miles in one day, Including night time, was about 15-20 hours worth with gas stops and snacks/gas station food lol. We were on a roll with perfect conditions, and nothing broke. Lots of nice smooth lakes and no wind blown “white out”. ......Things you do when you’re young. I could barely move for a week after. Never again. Been there done that.

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Post Edited (astroman) : 9/4/2022 4:10:51 PM (GMT-7)

Love the nostalgia, Astro. It comes with growing up in Minnesota and Michigan.