Dear 2016

Why is the first of January so awful? Oh right, it's because we're all suffering from a severe holiday hangover. Too much time off, too much food, too many desserts, too many visitors, etc..... and now we're faced with nothing but the bleak realities of a dark, cold and grey January. I will say that even though my taste buds and brain aren't quite on board it is surprisingly refreshing to get back into a schedule and back to eating normal foods. Although to make the transition worse I went down to LA to visit my brother and his family after Christmas and was privileged to enjoy the green grass and sunshine and escape what has been the nearly daily frostbite advisories and incessant snow, but that all came to an end as all vacation do. Maybe January is so dismal so that the rest of the year looks good by comparison, who knows? Oh well. At any rate it's time for some planning and goals.

Some of you will recall the new years resolution I had to eat more bacon cheese burgers, to great success I might add. This year my planning is taking a more practical tone. For years I've been keeping track of my expenditures and income on a fairly complex spreadsheet I put together. In my mind this has passed for budgeting, but in reality it was more of a detailed report of where my money was going when it wasn't going into my savings account. Not that this hasn't served me well up to this point, but this year I'd like to do more proactive planning rather than post spending damage control. I just feel I could be doing much better. Hopefully, I'll be shocked at how much better I could be doing.

Beyond that I don't have much else in the planning dept for 2016. I need to get rid of some of the cars in my collection. Over the past year I've clearly been erring on the side of quantity and not quality in the garage and it's time to cull the heard some and make way for some projects I already have and some purchases that are certainly on the list. So this year I'd like to swap out 3 cars. We'll see how that goes. We all know I'm much better at acquiring than disposing.

In the mean time cold and grey January is yielding some this week. When I pull my car into my driveway at night and I can still hear water dripping in the rain gutter it is music to my ears. If it's warm enough for things to be melting then I am a happy man. This past week I've been in the Sno-Cat a few times up to peaks above 10,000 ft. The mountains of snow and drifts that are in the 15ft range are incredible to see. I tried taking some pictures of some of the hairier adventures, but pictures of white snow, in thick fog, surrounded by blowing snow don't really show up well. Thankfully we've made it back every time. Here's a picture of one of the sunnier trips up the mountain.

I still haven't managed to dismount this thing with out looking like an idiot. You see the Sno-Cat distributes it's weight and sits mostly on top of the snow despite tipping the scales at over 5 tons. So I get out and stand on the tracks and think "oh, it's not that far down", but as I step onto the snow my foot sinks in up to my thy and I loose my balance and am on my back pretty quick. I'll figure it out sooner or later.......... probably.