02 Base for my son

[Snowbound]

You might have some of our equipment in that plant. If you do continuous blow down on that boiler you may have our heat recovery system for the make up water. And the plant may use our samplers at different points of the process.

We don’t have a closed loop system. It’s the stupidest thing, we dump our condensate to the ground. The money to run return lines back to the makeup thanks would be crazy. Besides that, we have 2 boiler tied to the the same header and sometimes only run on one. So if the condensate runs to one boiler that isn’t running it’s just gonna overflow anyway. And we would have to heat trace and insulate the return water and have pumps in every building. Their thought process at the time was, we are on a quarry and don’t pay for water so it wasn’t cost effective. Only thing we waste is chemicals but we also use RO water for boilers so it’s so clean anyway it doesn’t take much chemical.
We don’t have continuous blowdown. Skimmers are pinched way down and we manually blow down the boilers once a week.

 

[Snowbound]

Short video of last year lake drags. Lining up 4-5 wide to get thru the 40 racers for test and tune.

This is his new ride for this season.

 

[Snowbound]

Home sweet home. 3hr drive one way and left this morning at 7am. Got home at 1:30. I don’t know why but I always have anxiety after making big purchases. I’m sure it will pass when I feel what a 300hp pull feels like.
Didn’t get a picture before I covered it so I did a screen shot off my ring camera.

 

[Snowbound]

My heart is broken and it hurts.

 

[Tonyrodz]

My heart is broken and it hurts. View attachment 387329

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Sorry Jim. Sux to lose a faithful friend.

 

[Sam Harris]

So sorry brother. I lost both my boys to my ex wife in March. Tried to fight it, but it wasn’t gonna happen. Worst part of my divorce without a doubt.

 

[Snowbound]

Excuse my absence, having to put Lola down was ******* the entire family. My daughter looks for her in the stars almost every night still. Can’t believe how bad it hit Jess, she does not want another dog after having to go thru that.
Lola got pretty bad rather quickly there at the end. It was as hard of a decision to make as most would think but I couldn’t see her in distress any longer. Made a call for vet to come out to the house for an emergency euthanasia and had Jess’ mom come pick up Julianna. She didn’t want to say goodbye to Lola, just buried her face in Jess’ stomach and said she didn’t want her to go as she cried.
Been dealing with my boys shit since early November, their mom let them do whatever they want and dad puts his foot down so I’m the A-hole and they decided not to come back here anymore but they did come say goodbye to Lola before it happened. Long story with that mess and gonna spare you all the details.

Cooked my Lola her own steak that night. Nice big fat ribeye, bloody just the way we like it. Jess spoiled her with some treats as well all the way up until the doc showed up. She first gave her a sedative and Lola was snoring in a matter of minutes. Gave her the shot and my poor girl’s breathing increased a little for about 6 seconds followed by one final exhale and it was over. The vet and I slid Lola over onto her favorite blanket that was on a stretcher and as she’s strapping Lola in Rosie (our cat) came over to Lola and smelled her head and rubbed her face against Lola’s paw like she was saying her goodbye. Jess lost it at that point. We carried Lola out to the the van for her trip to Cozy Acres where I had her individually cremated so I could keep her ashes. Picked them up 3 days later.

Julianna cried herself to sleep for about a week after. She wrote in her journal every night how much she hoped Lola wasn’t feeling alone in heaven.

A note to her Elf to take to Santa.

It was tough. Just as it was with Peanut. Buried myself in work like I always do and only made matters worse for my foot. Had a limited snowmobile season due to weather but made the most of it as often as I could but not enough. Other than work and going up north I haven’t gotten anything else done due to this foot throbbing and not being able to stand on it. Finally made the call to schedule the surgery and I’m going in on 4-24, Julianna’s birthday. I’m gonna be down for about 6 weeks they say but I say, challenge accepted.

Hope everyone has been safe and healthy during this time and I have a lot of catching up to do here so bare with me as I read what I’ve missed out on.

 

[Tonyrodz]

Excuse my absence, having to put Lola down was ******* the entire family. My daughter looks for her in the stars almost every night still. Can’t believe how bad it hit Jess, she does not want another dog after having to go thru that.
Lola got pretty bad rather quickly there at the end. It was as hard of a decision to make as most would think but I couldn’t see her in distress any longer. Made a call for vet to come out to the house for an emergency euthanasia and had Jess’ mom come pick up Julianna. She didn’t want to say goodbye to Lola, just buried her face in Jess’ stomach and said she didn’t want her to go as she cried.
Been dealing with my boys shit since early November, their mom let them do whatever they want and dad puts his foot down so I’m the A-hole and they decided not to come back here anymore but they did come say goodbye to Lola before it happened. Long story with that mess and gonna spare you all the details.

Cooked my Lola her own steak that night. Nice big fat ribeye, bloody just the way we like it. Jess spoiled her with some treats as well all the way up until the doc showed up. She first gave her a sedative and Lola was snoring in a matter of minutes. Gave her the shot and my poor girl’s breathing increased a little for about 6 seconds followed by one final exhale and it was over. The vet and I slid Lola over onto her favorite blanket that was on a stretcher and as she’s strapping Lola in Rosie (our cat) came over to Lola and smelled her head and rubbed her face against Lola’s paw like she was saying her goodbye. Jess lost it at that point. We carried Lola out to the the van for her trip to Cozy Acres where I had her individually cremated so I could keep her ashes. Picked them up 3 days later.
View attachment 395373

Julianna cried herself to sleep for about a week after. She wrote in her journal every night how much she hoped Lola wasn’t feeling alone in heaven.
View attachment 395375

A note to her Elf to take to Santa.
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It was tough. Just as it was with Peanut. Buried myself in work like I always do and only made matters worse for my foot. Had a limited snowmobile season due to weather but made the most of it as often as I could but not enough. Other than work and going up north I haven’t gotten anything else done due to this foot throbbing and not being able to stand on it. Finally made the call to schedule the surgery and I’m going in on 4-24, Julianna’s birthday. I’m gonna be down for about 6 weeks they say but I say, challenge accepted.

Hope everyone has been safe and healthy during this time and I have a lot of catching up to do here so bare with me as I read what I’ve missed out on.

I'm so sorry for your loss brother. Always hard to lose a good friend. Hoping she felt no pain. Would've been selfish to NOT do it. Still....such a hard decision to make.

 

[Fosscore]

Lots of good work on that garage floor and the sleds. Sorry for the loss of Lola. We lost our little chocolate dog, Charlie, at Thanksgiving. He passed in my wife's arms. I feel for you all. Be well.

 

[Sam Harris]

Damn man. It’s so hard to let them go. I know how you felt about making that decision though. It’s so tough, but you don’t want them suffering anymore, and you know it has to be done. I did that back in 2020, and still have Todd’s picture on my wallpaper of my phone, so see him every day. Bless you and your family.

 

[pwtr02ss]

I'm sorry for your Loss buddy. Sounds like you had too much going on at the same time. Again, I'm sorry you and your family are going through that.

 

[Snowbound]

I’m having a hard time catching up with everything that’s happened here. Even reading as fast as I can you guys are going non stop. I try to take about 45 minutes to an hour before I go to sleep to read up on things but end up smacking myself in the face with my phone as I pass out while reading. Or I have 20 minutes before I have to go do something like run daughter to school or to play, pick her up or before the wife gets home and it takes me 10 minutes just trying to find where I left off. I’m trying though. And now I have some downtime so I will be able to see what everyone has been up to.
My updates will only take a few minutes so I’ll squeeze that in real quick.

 

[Snowbound]

As you know, we got the garage moved and all set up and then I picked up another sled. And of course I couldn’t leave it alone after I got it. Did some clutch work to it, checked it over and replaced anything that showed signs of wear in the suspension, changed the fluids and filters, added a cold air intake, replaced the windshield, put on a better flowing exhaust and added 220 studs to the track for traction.
Also got my other sled ready for the season.

The first trip up we brought both my sleds up, my buddy Nick’s new sled and my brothers. Nick bought a sled deck for his dually so that helped considering I only had my 2 place home with me.

His poor truck he ordered new in ‘15, never seen rain or snow, only used it to pull his race car trailer to the track and back but now is going to get some abuse. Only had 7200 miles on it when we left that day! Haha. He did have it undercoated in November knowing he was gonna be driving it this season.

Nick said he was jumping back into sledding, he wasn’t kidding. $23k for a new sled, $2500 in accessories for it, about $2k in all new gear and that sled deck was $8k! Guy is crazy if you ask me, but that’s Nick!

 

[Snowbound]

Season was slow getting started and would snow then warm up and melt. We chased the snow and hood trails all over the state of Wisconsin and into UP of Michigan, even ended up on the border of Minnesota and Wisconsin at one point. We put on about 2000 miles on our sleds and I didn’t even drive my black Viper.

Dad came up a few times and so did Jess and Julianna. Overall. good year even with a bad foot.

 

[Snowbound]

 

[Snowbound]

Nick was gung-** this year, but rightfully so. There were times when I couldn’t get off work until Wednesday and he went up on Monday by himself. A lot has to do with the fact that when we used to ride together in the late 90’s early 2000’s we would always have to pay for lodging. Having a place up there and not having to drag our sleds and trailers back and forth makes it easy to just head up at a moments notice. I gave him a key to the place and one time he went up he brought a load of wood with him and replaced the landing that is in garage to walk into the house. I told him I wanted to build a bigger landing and enclose it for a place to remove out gear and have shelves to store it all instead of having to all gear down in the kitchen. He built a landing that could support a dump truck and brought up all the insulation and everything. Said it was his way of contributing for making him feel welcome with a place to stay and store his sled. He’s so glad I asked him to get back into the sport and so am I. We’ll finish it this summer. And I can’t believe I don’t have a picture of it. Sorry, I’ll get one next time.

He even brought up his atv with a plow one time so we didn’t have to snowblow the drive. Now I have to get one because that made life so much easier.

We hit some off trail powder and both got stuck once. All part of the fun.

Season ended April 15th and everything is stored away until we go back up to clean the sleds and summarize them.

 

[Snowbound]

Before the season started and after the garage was back together I also did some work to the Nytro I bought for Jack and Jess. I replaced some bearings on the rear suspension, put a new set of slides on and replaced the carbides on the skis. The year prior the sled as used by Jack twice, my nephew once and brothers girlfriend. I had to yell at her because she was driving it down the bare road instead of hugging the side and just tore up what was left of those wear items. Wasn’t all her, that year we did a lot of riding on thin snow conditions and those who rode it aren’t as experienced and are ignorant to the fact that they are called SNOWmobiles for a reason.

Also replaced the driveshaft bearing, this is behind the clutch and not easy to grease without pulling it apart. So I bought this plate called “The Greaser” that allows you to grease that bearing with a grease gun instead of having to take it apart. Just makes it easier but not cheap.

Another thing I changed while I had the oil drained was replacing the oil tank. The factory is a 2 piece stamped steel thing that are guaranteed to leak at the seam. We did the one on my dads apex because it leaked so I went ahead and order the $500 billet aluminum tank for the Nytro as well. Guess I didn’t get a pic but this is the same one but on the Apex.

Then I put a taller windshield on for Jess. I knew the small one that was on there was gonna make her freeze.

 

[Snowbound]

Also did the brakes on the enclosed trailer. I wanted to do this over the summer but with moving the garage and the yard being wet every time we were up, it didn’t happen.
I did complete backing plates, shoes, drums, bearings, seals and caps on all 4. This summer the axles will be coming off and all that steel will be blasted and powder coated or replaced. It’s the only stuff that’s steel on the entire trailer.

I had one mismatched wheel and couldn’t find a replacement anywhere. Turns out those wheels were only rated at 1140lb and they are 3500lb axles. So I bought new wheels rated for 1780lbs and put new E rated trailer tires on with new black steel lug nuts.

Piece of mind knowing you’re rolling on new wheels and tires with brand new brakes and bearings.

 

[Snowbound]

This winter we didn’t get much snow here at home. Maybe plowed 2-3 times at work and only twice with the plow I put on my truck. We did get a few cold snaps and had some water lines break at work which was the reason Nick went north before I could leave. Heat trace failure is never a good thing in sub zero temperatures.

We had to replace the entire line, heat trace and insulation on 2 main lines during the coldest days of the year. I got called in to this mess.

There was 3” of solid ice on the ground so I threw some calcium chloride down and went to work in the bobcat.

 

[Snowbound]

Decided to fix some rusty side panels on our EZGO at work and it turned into a complete nightmare project. The more I removed tackling the rust the worse it got.