snowmobile

The New Polaris

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

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.

Zemanta Related Posts Thumbnail

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).

img4132

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

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

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

Mile 0 2010

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

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

Im not anti-social, Im just not user friendly

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

If you want to know how to get the best deal on your Cingular plans and phones, Take a look at the 7 Confessions of a Cingular Sales Rep. It’s worth a read, and some of the tips would probably work with more sales reps than just Cingular.

A while ago I wrote about how Toshiba was going to be including solid state drives (or SSD’s) in some of their laptops. The biggest drive they had thus far was 32gb. Samsung just released a 64gb drive with some crazy performance specs. Check it out.

Continuously Variable Transmissions (or CVT) have been around for a long time. In fact snowmobiles have been using them since they were originally created. Just recently some incredible advancements have been made. I just read about a new implementation on a Bike by Ellsworth. They call it the Continuously Variable Planetary Drive. Be sure to watch the video, it’s very interesting.

If you’ve got money to burn I suggest you either throw it my way or buy one of these million dollar laptops.

Matt was talking about how he wanted to have a conductor game for the Wii. A while ago I saw a video with people conducting using the Wii. Yesterday I ran across the Wii Loop Machine. Pretty interesting the amount of stuff it can do and how easily.

Youtube has announced the winners its first official Youtube Awards. My favorite is the following:

how to freak out other drivers:
[ifilm]2732160[/ifilm]

A Few Things

~ randyaa ~ Leave a comment

1. Snow
Where the F expletive deleted is it? Ok sure it snowed today but fairport only saw a dusting and my parents place got only a few inches. What they did get is fluff not enough to really ride (snowmobile) on. AND to top it off the rest of this week it’s going to be in the 40’s. I was calculating the other day and my snowmobile has cost me somewhere around $15 dollars per mile ridden not counting gasoline (which at 10 miles to the gallon and 3 dollars per gallon out on the trails…. adds up quite a lot). Let’s figure that in real quick shall we? just for fun…Ok so the gasoline has really only added 33cents per mile but still!!!!???

Thank ‘YOU’ global warming! (for those of you who get the Chuck Norris reference)

2. Goals

I’ve decided to start keeping track of my personal goals. This is my first post on the subject and I will most likely expand upon it later. I think the system society forces you into of working your whole life and saving everything you can so that you can enjoy that last 5% of your life is retarded. That being said, i’m going to try to ‘screw the system’ so to speak. Steps to completion:

– Gain 100% financial independence.
This means no loans, no debt. all transactions paid for with cash (where appropriate). Not to say that i’m really that far off, but a car, student loans and a house all subtract from that
– Retire after 10 years. This may seem impossible but i’m already taking steps to make this a possibility. Rental property being one of my key proponents.
– Learn to Fly. No not by flapping my featherless wings. I’m not on LSD don’t worry. I mean with a plane. Its something I’ve always been interested in but the barriers to entrance are large. lots of time with an instructor which means lots of money. given step 1 and 2 this shouldn’t be as large of a problem as it is now.
– Buy a (pontoon) Plane. This may seem silly to you if Flying is just a weekend Hobby but see what i want to do next…
– Start a Shipping Company that runs cargo to northern Canada. by now some of you are probably thinking I’m off the handle. That may be so. Even more so when I tell you I want to do this in the dead of winter and north of the Arctic Circle if there’s anyone up there.
– Buy a professional (DSLR) camera setup with some very high mm lenses. This will be what I use for wildlife/nature photography on the trips north. Lately Photography has become sort of a hobby and I’d really like to make use of that. Plus it’ll keep me from getting bored on the long long flights.

So that’s it. Now you know at least part of my crazy plans. Maybe you can help make it happen? Maybe you know some people you can get me in touch with to help it along? Maybe you think I’m absolutely crazy and will never talk to me again because of these crazy ravings? Who knows?

To sum it all up: This “working for the other guy” BS is crazy and I cant believe so many people just put up with it. I’ve got 3 ideas for companies (well 4 really but the 4th I’ll talk about some other time) and I just wish I had some capital to get it all started. I’ve started on the 1st (Real Estate/Rental) and I’m going to look into classes to start on the 2nd (photography).