mileage

A Test of Progress « A Town Square

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Sad that we can’t even come close today with modern Combustion engines.

A Test of Progress

November 14, 2011 by aandh

Almost every day as I wander around this place in images of times gone by, I find signs of who we once were. Perhaps these signs also point to what we may hope to become.

Witness this:

July 13th, 1913. The automobile is a Franklin. That’s Jimmy Feeney at the wheel – service manager for Franklin. City Sealer John Stephenson is about to pour a measured gallon into a glass container. Officials look on – after all, it’s a National Efficiency Demonstration.

And the answer: 57.2 miles on one gallon of gasoline.

Franklin Automobiles went out of business in 1934.

via A Test of Progress « A Town Square.

The New Polaris

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The new 2012 Polaris snowmobiles were just announced and I couldn’t be less disappointed. I’d love to trade in or sell my 2006 Supersport so I could get a liquid cooled two-up trail machine that gets good mileage but it’s not gonna happen.

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The new sleds are just plain ridiculous. They’re either one-person snow-cross machines with no protection or they’re giant behemoths with all the amenities of a Cadillac. Almost every model is $10k or more and the trail cruisers are all but gone. The new machines have almost no resemblance to the sleds of old, like the 1974 colts my parents bought and rode all over the adirondacks and to camp miles into the back country (pictured).

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Our family has always stuck with Polaris and they’ve always been beautiful machines. That might need to change now. There’s no way I’m spending $10k on a snowmobile. Skidoo makes a nice 600 with a two-up seat, a larger windshield and better mileage for about $7k and even that seems ridiculous.

Perfect Snow & Perfect Bonfires

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Delayed Post: written 2/14/2010

I don’t know what the Inuit word is for this type of snow (yes I know that myth isn’t really true) but I know mine: Perfect. It’s nice and grainy, packs just a little, blows just a little, isn’t wet (until it melts). Just perfect.  We haven’t had a ton of snow up here lately, nothing like what they just got down south. But the stuff we do have is just right.

We ran into a nice couple at the intersection of 81 and the (new?) trail towards Degrasse. A few minutes of discussion informed us of a big bonfire being put on by the Cranberry Lake Snowmobile Club just down the trail from our original destination (the Windfall).  Cheap lunch and supporting the club? Sounds good. We said thanks and headed on out towards the bonfire.

Whoa! Talk about fire! And the hot chocolate and hot dogs were free to boot! Met a nice guy named Randy Paige (sp?) who told us about a new 4-wheeler association which is going to make most of the trails we snowmobile on accessible by 4-wheeler this summer.  Sweet!

They had 2 groomers there open to let people climb in and check them out. About. 100 sleds, tons of raffle tickets for a gun, a 50/50, and the state raffle tickets for new snowmobiles. Was a good time, put some money in for the 50/50 but they were out of gun raffle tickets. Ahh well, one thing we probably don’t need more of anyway.

After the (free) lunch we headed for the open trail and made our way home.

Miles on the sled this season: 336

Horseshoe Lake

~ randyaa ~ 1 Comment

Man I love it up here!

There’s three ways into Horseshoe Lake but I can only recommend one of them in good conscience. Riding the railroad tracks is no fun. Not unless they’re groomed. The first few miles from Conifer to Horseshoe were groomed and beautiful. 55mph was nothing. Then the groomer turned around and holy cow, forget it! We toughed it out but I almost wished we’d turned around right there. Washboard the whole way.

If you want to go to Horseshoe I recommend taking 7A right to the front door.

On our way back up 7A (the way we should have come in) we met Wes and Donald. Kinda funny meeting someone you know miles and miles in the middle of nowhere.  We stopped and said hello for a few minutes and then went our separate ways.  Back to Diamond by way of

Not sure what I think about possibly taking the railroad to Tupper Lake to get us to Lake Placid for that trip… we’ll see. might have to wait for a day with some fresh snow and hope for a groomer.

A good day of riding, around 100 miles. Horseshoe is a pretty little lake, but I’d stay off the railroads to get there if I were you.

Miles on the sled this season: 198

Mile 0 2010

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Snowmobiling season has begun, and with a frenzy. The Adirondacks have been good to us this year. The snow came a bit later than usual but there hasn’t been a major thaw yet which makes for some ideal conditions, with a good solid frozen base and constant snow.

Mile zero started right where it should, the Toy Shed. Didn’t put on a whole lot of miles today, just 25 around the diamond property, but the riding was phenomenal and it felt good to be out again.

Having the shed will make things a lot nicer. Now that we can properly store at least 4 sleds we can leave them up here all season. Needless to say, I’m prepared for a lot of riding this year.

Plans are in the works to make a (snowmobile) trip to Whiteface Mountain from camp. It’ll be a long ride, but very beautiful I’m sure.

Cant wait for tomorrow’s ride, wherever it takes us.

Miles on the sled this season: 25

A Vehicular Crossroad

~ randyaa ~ 5 Comments

Rachel’s car has finally hit that point.

The point at which we need to choose to keep it till it falls apart or get rid of it now.  For the second time in the roughly 60,000 miles that we’ve owned it, it needs a head gasket.  The car is a 2000 Chevrolet Malibu with a 3.1L v6.  From what I’ve heard this is an extremely common problem with this engine.  Awesome.

So, our dilemma…

The car is paid off.  Irregular maintenance has not yet turned into regular maintenance, so monthly costs have been negligible for the better part of a year.  It’s in good mechanical condition (besides the recent development), although it’s in extremely poor cosmetic condition.

The cost of repair is approximately $1200.  We can safely assume if we were to buy a new (to us) car to replace the Malibu we’d be looking at payments somewhere between $200 and $400 a month and a minute trade in value.

At those costs it would only need to last us another 3-6 months before the benefit of repairing it outweighs the cost of a new car payment.  Of course, this assumes that we don’t have any other major issues with the car in that 3-6 month time period which is big possibility.  On the other hand, we haven’t had to do anything to the car (and it’s been paid off) for almost a year, so really it’s already earned the new head gasket.

It’s a gamble, we either bet on our car to last another 6 months or we bet against it, and move on with our lives without the complication, but with a little added cost.

One last thing to consider: We only drive 1 car on a regular basis as I ride the bus to and from work.  Therefor; having one unreliable car has been something we’ve been prepared to live with for a while.

What would you do?

We haven’t decided but if someone decides they want to give us an offer… let us know in the comments.

Iceberg Lake

~ randyaa ~ 1 Comment

It just wouldn’t be right to go to the backpacking paradise that is Glacier National Park without doing some hiking.  To that end we decided to hike the 10 miles (round trip) to Iceberg lake.  The trail starts near Many Glacier Hotel which happens to be on the opposite side of the park from where we were staying, a mere 2 hours drive over the Going to the Sun road.  There was a Ranger guided hike at 8:30 in the morning so we went for that.

flowersOf course, the scenery from the road was beautiful but we also saw plenty of animals.  A herd of Elk were grazing in a field and 2 Coyotes were hunting mice or rabbits or something.  When we got to the trail head, we were a few minutes late so the Ranger and the group had already started off.  Not a big deal, we’d just meet them on the trail.  We grabbed our packs and off we went.  First thing we see? A bear, just a black bear but only about 50 ft off the trail and very startling.  Then we caught up to the group about a tenth of a mile in.  The group with the Ranger was about 25 strong and included an 80 something year old man and his family.  He had hiked this same trail about 30 years earlier and was looking to see how things had changed (or remained the same).

Iceberg LakeAbout a mile in we took a break and the Ranger started a game featuring the local flora.  She’d tell the person immediately behind her the name of some wild flower and that person would tell everyone that passed the name of the flower.  Then she’d tell the next person… and so on.  It was fun!  There were so many different flowers, we cycled through everyone about twice and only covered about half of them!

As with everywhere we’ve been, the scenery was amazing throughout the entire hike.  The hike itself was incredibly rewarding and the lake was the prettiest lake this side of Crater Lake.  I can now say I’ve stood on an Iceberg for the first time, although Rachel was afraid to jump across the small gap of glacier runoff water to join me.  I have to admit, the thought it would get bumped and float out into the lake leaving me stranded was definitely there.

A hike back, another bear and a restful evening.  A great day in Glacier!

Under 40

~ randyaa ~ 2 Comments

Rachel and I ran our first race today. We participated in the JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge, a 3.5 mile corporate team race around the RIT campus.

I’ve been to the Corporate Challenge but this is the first time I’ve participated. Last year I was just a cook/photographer.

This year Rachel and I decided to run and so we’ve been “training” for the past month or so.

We completed the race, running the entire distance and we both posted times under 40 minutes (Randy – 39:42 & Rachel – 39:52). Pretty darn good for our first time!

From what I heard there were almost 3k less participants this year but there was still almost 10,000 runners! That’s a lot of feet… To give you an idea, check out the video from the starting line last year:

Next year’s goal? 30 minutes, 9 minute miles. Wish us luck!

2 of 46ers – Cascade and Porter

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Cascade Mountain SummitThere’s 2 more people on the Trek to becoming 46ers.  We’ve only just begun but we’re in it for the long haul.

We were spending the weekend in Lake Placid due to a great deal on the High Peaks Resort.  We booked the trip a few weeks ago and while the weather was great Friday and Sunday, rain was expected for Saturday afternoon.  Despite that we decided to hike up some of the 46 High Peaks anyway.  After all, we were staying at the High Peaks resort.

To start our journey on the 46er goal we climbed two peaks.  We’ve climbed mountains before, Hunter mountain was the highest so far with an elevation of 4,040ft and that was last summer.  We’ve now successfully summited 2 of the Adirondack High Peaks, increasing our highest mountain’s elevation to 4,098ft.

We took the Cascade/Porter mountain trail up from route 73 just east of the mt van hoevenburg recreation area and just west of the Cascade lakes (in case you’re trying to find it).

Porter Mountain Summit

The trail goes steadily up for about 1.8miles where it Y’s.  From there it’s .3 miles to the summit of Cascade with an ascent of a 292ft and .7 miles to the summit of Porter with an ascent of 270ft.  While the rest of the Cascade trail was relatively easy, only a few hundred feet to summit Porter is a bit missleading.  First you descend several hundred feet through what can only be considered a mud slide, then you cross a valley and travel back up the hundreds of feet you descended plus the original 270ft.

The top of Cascade Mountain felt more like the top of Mount Washingtain than the top of one of the smaller Adirondack High Peaks.  Winds were constant at easily over 60mph with gusts probably topping 80mph. The wind caused the slight rain coming down to feel like your skin was getting sand blasted.  Porter Mountain wasn’t quite as bad since it wasn’t as open, but the wind was still incredibly strong.

This isn’t the first mountain we’ve climbed and it won’t be the last, but it is the first one we’ve hiked up and down in the rain.  Having the right gear is vital for hiking and we made use of some new equipment, our new Eddie Bauer RipPac jackets, for the first time this trip and it made our experience enjoyable despite the bad weather.  They will certainly remain a staple in our hiking packs.


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