Winter in Spring

Looks like we are about to have the biggest snowstorm of the season. It’s the very tail end of the season, but there you go. I thought I’d post something before the storm hits. Once it does we stand a good chance of losing utility services. Such is life out in the woods. We are in a little pocket that could get close to a foot and a half of snow. 

On the bright side I really don’t have to go anywhere this weekend. By the way, does anyone know why people buy up all the milk before a storm? Why does it seem like a good idea to stock up on something so perishable? Maybe everyone mixes up white Russians during a storm? 

I’ve been taking a friend to Vermont a couple times of week for radiation therapy. I’d agreed to drive him two days a week. It’s been six weeks and he’s got only one more treatment left. I’ve been lucky that I haven’t had to drive through any major storms during that time. We did have some snow and ice on the roads some mornings, but it didn’t last. 

Right now we only have one vehicle available for errands. During a warm spell my driveway turned to mud. One of my cars sunk in the mud. Then it turned cold and froze it in place. Lovely. After this next storm warmer weather is predicted. I think I just might wait for the driveway to thaw before trying to move the car. 

This sudden shift back into winter has been very unwelcome.

-Sixbears

Eclipse Circus?

I’ve friends who are coming to my place for the solar eclipse. They locked in staying at our place about a year ago. That’s about when all the local hotels were booked up. 

My friends would really like to hit up some nearby restaurants the day after. I guess we’ll discover if the crowds are going to be nuts or not. A lot of locals have doubts about us being able to get into a restaurant by then. We shall see.

However, I’m going to have plenty of food ready just in case. 

The eclipse will be visible over a large part of the country. To me, that should help with keeping the crowds down in one specific area. A person from New Mexico probably won’t come to northern New England for the event when they can see it in Texas. 

The eclipse is happening at a good time for local businesses. The winter sports crowd is gone and it’s too early for the warm weather tourists. I’m hoping that it being during the off season the area will be able to handle the crowds. 

-Sixbears

Solar Storms

Solar storms could kill civilizations. We go about our lives worried about this and that. None if it matters if the sun blows off a big CME and fries everything. The sun has been particularly active lately.  There have been some serious bursts but mostly they’ve missed us. It doesn’t help that the earth’s protective magnetic field is weak right now. 

A strong CME from the sun could take down all our modern electronics. The more advanced  the electronics the more sensitive it is to solar interference. The things that hold society together would fall apart. 

It’s good to realize that most guns will work just fine. Some fancy electronic sights might get fried but iron sights work. A situation where the infrastructure fails but the ability to kill each other doesn’t has plenty of potential for disaster. 

The less your life depends on high technology the more likely it will continue. 

-Sixbears

Internet Disruptions

 

One of the area’s biggest Internet providers is having a lot of outages. The details aren’t important so much as the effects.

I noticed issues at restaurants. Apparently some businesses can’t do basic billing without an Internet connection. Cash is king. 

I’m not sure if it’s related but gas station loyalty cards are hit or miss. Sometimes they work, other times they don’t. 

My small Internet provider is currently being swallowed up by the bigger company. The changeover won’t be completed until the second week of April. In the mean time my service is still mostly up. 

When it does go down my cell phone’s hotspot is a decent substitute. For many years we didn’t have cell service here. Then a company put in a new tower that isn’t blocked by the mountains. 

Think of all your services that rely on the Internet besides your computer connection: VOIP phone service, movie streaming, music streaming, cameras, security, etc..  The more “advanced” the household electronics the more vulnerable to disruptions they are. 

My household is not so advanced that I can’t do most things the old fashioned way. I also like to keep some cash handy. The one thing I no longer have is an old fashioned land line. Should the Internet and cell towers go down I could always text using a Garmin InReach’s satellite connection. Or I could write a letter and mail it.   -or I could keep my thoughts to myself. 

-Sixbears

Snow slowing me down

Yeah, I still have fresh snow on the ground. It’s melted some but we still have plenty of the annoying white stuff. Our mild winter has me yearning for an early spring. It’s not that we didn’t get precipitation. We got plenty but it was often in the form of winter rain. Not only that, our snow, instead of being light and fluffy was dense like cement. 

Okay, it’s not that the snow is really that bad. This is still March in New Hampshire after all. It’s just that I’m a bit more eager to get the scooter out of storage than normal. I’ve a lot of new parts that came in. There’s actually nothing broken on the scoot. It just makes more sense for me to change these parts at home. If I don’t I’ll be changing them on a back road late at night -in the rain. Let’s avoid that. 

I’m also adding a motorcycle rated Garmin GPS. That will get hard wired into the electrical system There’s a lot of body plastic that have to be removed just to get to the wiring. The top box doesn’t thrill me either. The solution could be to build my own. 

There are times I miss not having a decent heated garage. Who knows what would roll out of there after a long winter of tinkering?

-Sixbears

March is a teaser.

Another Stormwatch

Friday’s weather was nice and spring-like. That’s not at all common in northern New Hampshire this time of year. The weather was so nice that had I not made other plans I would have taken the motor scooter out of storage. 

Today is a different story. The weather forecast is for 4 to 8 inches of heavy wet snow. That’s storm will also bring high winds. That’s just the sort of thing to drop trees over utility lines and block roads. Flooding will also be an issue. 

My usual preps were put into motion. The solar electric batter bank was charged up from the grid. Energy intensive chores such as laundry have been done. Dishes are washed. Fuel for the woodstove is sitting ready. We’ve plenty of food and other necessities. 

The best part is not needing to go anywhere during or right after the storm. It always feels better to watch falling snow while next to the woodstove sipping coffee.

-Sixbears

Taxes?

It had been over a decade since I last filed income taxes. It is totally legal too. Really. 

So this year I found myself in a situation where not filing taxes would be leaving money on the table. That wasn’t going to happen. 

Normally I’m a do it myself sort of guy but not this time. My tax status is weird in normal years. Two years in a row I was audited by the IRS. Eventually we sorted out the fact that I don’t have to file taxes. The first time I was nervous. The second time I wasn’t intimidated at all. 

Side note: I had an uncle who looked forward to fighting with the IRS every year. He was an independent businessman who took outrageous tax deductions. He was such a PITA to the agents that they’d eventually give up and he’d keep a lot of his sketchy deductions. Any man who could intimidate the IRS is some sort of hero in my book.

Anyway, my lovely wife had gathered all the proper paperwork and the tax pro sorted out our situation. It was money well spent. We are getting all our money back, so that’s good.

-Sixbears

It had been over a decade since I last filed income taxes. It is totally legal too. Really. 

So this year I found myself in a situation where not filing taxes would be leaving money on the table. That wasn’t going to happen. 

Normally I’m a do it myself sort of guy but not this time. My tax status is weird in normal years. Two years in a row I was audited by the IRS. Eventually we sorted out the fact that I don’t have to file taxes. The first time I was nervous. The second time I wasn’t intimidated at all. 

Side note: I had an uncle who looked forward to fighting with the IRS every year. He was an independent businessman who took outrageous tax deductions. He was such a PITA to the agents that they’d eventually give up and he’d keep a lot of his sketchy deductions. Any man who could intimidate the IRS is some sort of hero in my book.

Anyway, my lovely wife had gathered all the proper paperwork and the tax pro sorted out our situation. It was money well spent. We are getting all our money back, so that’s good.

-Sixbears

On the Ragged Edge

It’s easy to look down on those less fortunate. If they are poor they must be lazy or deficient in some way. 

I’m living a comfortable life now, but it wasn’t always that way. America has some big holes in its social safety net. Prepping was always a thing I did and it got me through a couple of bad years. However, the bad years kept coming. Year three was tough. Year four was impossible. 

My wife and three kids were living with the knowledge we two weeks away from being homeless. Then I won a four year legal battle and received enough back pay to bring everything up to date. 

It affected my kids. They’ve gone on to live successful lives. They’ve also never forgotten when times were so tight we didn’t through out potato peels. They have compassion for people in tough situations. They’ve started programs for the homeless in their community, taken in political refugees, and hired poor immigrants. 

Being in tough straits with kids to feed is a real test. During that time I found myself with $3000 cash accidentally given to me instead of someone else. I could have kept it but made sure it ended up in the right hands. Another time a bank sent me all the credit card details of over a dozen people. There was everything needed to run charges on other people’s cards. Instead of doing that I informed the bank of their error -and fried up those potato peels. 

Frankly, it was a near thing -not to make my life more comfortable, but for the kids. I understand the tough decisions people on the bottom have to make. 

-Sixbears

Photos of Wreckage

I buddy of mine happen to be in Southwest Florida recently. He took a boat tour out of Ft. Myers. It’s surprising how much hurricane damage is still evident. I was last in that area in 2019. It doesn’t look like it did back then.

Florida has always had problems with abandoned boats. The coast is littered with wrecks. Judging from my friend’s photos there are a lot more of them. Places that used to have them removed appear to have given up. 

There’s also a lot of infrastructure that hasn’t been rebuilt. It appears they are still cleaning up debris out of the water. To be fair, some areas were hit pretty hard. A marina we used to stay at had all their boats and docks dropped into the parking lot. It doesn’t look like they recovered. 

We see areas in the news that are hit with disasters. Then we forget about them. New stories drive out memory of the old stories. For the people who live in those places the nightmare doesn’t end so quickly. Sometimes the money to rebuild just isn’t there. 

The more disasters that hit an area the less likely recovery becomes. Hurricanes are getting worse and doing more damage. Flooding is an issue. When places have “100 year floods” every other year something is wrong. Forest fires can quickly decimate thousands of acres in very little time. 

Add in things like higher insurance rates, tougher zoning laws, and outrageously expensive building materials and it’s no wonder places remain trashed. 

-Sixbears

Best Bombing Run

The US just did their best bombing run in a long time. They dropped pallets of badly needed food and supplies into Gaza. It’s not enough, but at least it’s a start. They are also plans to bring food in by sea. 

What’s really needed is a truck corridor as air drops and sea landings are not very efficient. Okay, what’s really really needed is a peace deal. It would beat the heck out of what’s been going on: exchanging war crimes. 

Smarter people than me claim only a two state solution will solve the problem. Maybe they are onto something. I don’t know. What I do know is that there are a lot of innocent people suffering and my heart goes out to them. 

The current eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth response will leave everyone blind and toothless.

-Sixbears

Rubymar sinks

A Houthi attack has sunk a bulk carrier, the Rubymar. I believe it was carrying fertilizer. It was thought  that the Houthi would not attack low value bulk carriers. Apparently they are trying to sink anything that floats. 

Before that attack traffic through that area was projected to be on the increase. Since the sinking that thinking has come into question. If even bulk carriers are targets that doesn’t bode well for transportation. If low value commodities have to take the long way around Africa delivery costs will seriously impact prices. 

Guess what’s considered a low value bulk carrier item. Grains. The price of food is about to go up for someone. In rich countries they’ll be able to absorb the higher costs. It’s not going to look good in poorer nations. They will be unable to buy as much food and/or have to charge more for it. 

Food instability is a major cause of unrest. We may be seeing political turmoil in countries far from the Red Sea. That illustrates how dependent the world is on free and safe access to the sea. The Houthi are not particularly sophisticated or technologically advanced. Imagine how badly things could go should a major power get serious about disrupting shipping. 

Actually, Russia upset world grain markets for a time when they prevented Ukraine from exporting. These days the shipping lane from Ukraine is open due to successful drone attacks against the Russian Navy. 

There’s another danger from the sinking of the Rudymar. It went down in an area where a lot of International communication cables lay on the seabed. They are unprotected. Communications hold the world together. 

It just goes to show how some incident in place nobody normally thinks about can cause bigger issues.

-Sixbears

Waiting for the rebates

I’m getting more and more annoyed at my heating oil delivery company. The woodstove does a fair job most days, but the when it’s really bitterly cold the furnace kicks on. It also keeps it from getting too cool in the morning after the woodstove dies out. 

The furnace is getting on in years. However, like a car, it’s not the years, it’s the mileage, or usage in this case. There were quite a few winters when the furnace didn’t run at all or ran very little. Those years we shut the house down and did the snowbird thing. Even so, the years have added up. 

A decent heat pump system would do the job, supplemented with wood heat. It would be very nice to say goodbye to the oil company. Right now a heat pump capable of doing the job would be pretty expensive. That’s an issue. Eventually the State of New Hampshire is going to get its act together and offer rebates. Only a fool pays retail when they don’t have to. 

With that in mind the house is going to limp along on what it currently has. With any luck nothing major will need to be replaced in the mean time. 

-Sixbears

Chimney Fire Season

On my way home I could smell the creosote in the air as I drove through town. That’s a chimney fire waiting to happen. This is the season for it. 

Those who heat with wood have been burning for months now. We just had a spell of unusually warm weather. Woodstoves were turned down to a slow smolder. That creates even more creosote. Then, like yesterday, we had a bitterly cold and windy day. 

That’s when stoves are cranked but up. Those are perfect conditions for a chimney fire. The hot blast ignites the built up creosote. Then the fun begins.

So if you heat with wood it might be a great time to check your chimney. 

-Sixbears