Running Bear's January 2026 Coffee Shop

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Bruette said:
The hills grow steeper, the walk stretches longer, and the snow gets deeper. 🤪
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I will opine that it's not just the snow getting deeper.... ;)
Well, the snow has hit, looks like we have 4-6" so far and still coming down. 12F here as well. I have coffee and we are snugged in. Happy that my G'niece Kenzie's boyfriend has a plow on his truck, so if he wants to see her, he will have to clear our driveway [she's staying with us during this mess]. So far, it's just snow here, no ice or freezing rain. So I'm enjoying my coffee and LadyC is locked into the weather Channel.
 
I was right, we have 2" east of Wichita. They are talking another 2-4" maybe?
Cold is still ridicules. Just heard the weather guy just say the first wave underperformed.😂

Driveway is mostly clear without intervention. I still need to do the front walk, but waiting for it to get warmer.
 
Good Morning again. Temperature has dropped to 16° and the snow has stopped. Still looks to be sleeting about 10 miles south and on into the DFW area. The predicted rain here never happened that I can really tell. While I don't think that we're done yet, it appears that the worst precipitation has dodged my location; not so much for other nearby areas though. Now to brace for the predicted cold. Not expected to get out of the low-20's today with single digits possible for the next few nights.
Now that it is light, I can see the ice on the trees, so there was sleet last night.

Other than the weather, not much going on here. I don't really plan on even opening a door until much later today; no need to yet. I did run the dishwasher last night, so that gives me something to do this morning. Maybe I'll do some more organizing of my library of digital photos. That's a project that never ends.

I did make it out to the train shed yesterday for a brief visit. I added a figure to a '75 Chevy pick up truck that I got for Christmas. It's a Mini-Metals model from CMW. Nicely detailed, but I wonder about really needing the cup holders modeled in the interior?
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Lonnie - Painting the exhaust of those Farmalls is a definite. Rims look to be a bit tricky but I intend to give it a try. I expected to see black seats, but all of the pictures that I have seen show them to be red like everything else.
Jerome - I know that beans in Chili are standard for much of the US, but not in Texas or other parts of the Southwest. And there are specific rules against beans for Chili in the competitive cook-offs.
Bob - I am also a cat person, but only the ones that live in my barn. I believe that there are two feral cats living out there now. I occasionally leave meat scraps near my woodpiles to entice them to the rodents who also live out here in the country. They do not come near me.
Kusojiji - As Bill already posted, yes we get black ice on gravel roads. However it just crunches when driven on. it's the transition to the asphalt roads that are treacherous.

Singer Neil Diamond is 85 today. Some good stuff from him over the years even though his music genre didn't overlap with mine too much. Today is also the 91st anniversary of the first beer can. I can actually remember when they were still made from steel! I don't think that aluminum came about until the early 60's.

Everyone have a great Saturday. Stay safe and warm.
 


Good morning Crew from the really frozen tundra of Wisconsin. -14f degrees but the shocker is it only feels like -14 so it may feel warm out there compared to the last 4 mornings.

The Wisconsin Badger Women are playing at home for the 1st since the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Senior Day today at 1pm with 9 seniors being honored. They’ve won 2 NCAA titles and finished 2nd in the last 3 seasons. Doing it today because 5 Badgers are playing in the Olympics and will be gone during February. They are still #1 ranked in the NCAA and the conference has 5 teams ranked in the top 10 and 7 of the top 15. They’ve been playing on the road.

Best laid plans and all that crap… I botched seriously the start of the building process on one of the Paper Mill structures. I laid out the base for the floor of the shipping department 7.5” x 20.5” of a 2 piece structure that is overall 30” and honestly the cold must have frozen my brain
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The pencil indicates where a wall needs to go to support the removable roof and that is right in the middle of the doors of 50’ box car. The cars in the picture are 60’. I grabbed the wrong car dimensions when drawing the plans. Rookie mistake! The supports under the styrene are also located incorrectly. I looked and can add multiple support trusses and more support beams but it’s not worth it. There are already 4 trusses I’ll be making but they are time consuming and now that I’m ticked off need to be avoided. I’ll start over this afternoon after hockey and a LHS stop for material. I’ll figure something out for the floor I have here. It looks like it’s destined to be the base for a cold storage facility by cutting it almost in half. I may do that since it’s a flat roof structure that’s 4” deep and 48” long by 6” high with 5 dock doors. 20.5” here is ok as I need to build it in 2 pieces anyway. Great a plan…

Be well stay warm
 
Good morning all!

Not quite as cold as Tom, but still cold here. Currently -4 with an expected high of only 3F. They do have a winter weather advisory up for some possible snow late tonight thru tomorrow. Maybe 2-5" January is not going to go without a fight.

I do have to venture out today in the cold. Weekly grocery run has to be done later this morning after my wife compiles the list. If not for that
I would not be going out again today.

Much like yesterday, not a whole lot planned for today.

Have a safe day everyone!
 
Morning all! British food week continued last night with Bangers and Mash. Pretty good. The sausages were mildly spiced and good. We'll be giving it a break for a while now to keep it new, but the three dishes we tried are all very good. I have a few more to try. The change of pace was nice. More work on the steamer today as it's still pretty cold here. 9 below right now. 🥶 See you over on that thread!
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Well, I ventured outside just to see what is going on. That isn't 3" of snow on the ground, but 3" of ice with a barely there layer of snow on top of it. Didn't go out to the road, but several pickups have driven by at normal speeds. The road may be clear since we had 60°+ temperatures all week.
It's a nice cozy 76° inside, warmer by the wood-burner.
 


santafewillie said:
Well, I ventured outside just to see what is going on. That isn't 3" of snow on the ground, but 3" of ice with a barely there layer of snow on top of it. Didn't go out to the road, but several pickups have driven by at normal speeds. The road may be clear since we had 60°+ temperatures all week.
It's a nice cozy 76° inside, warmer by the wood-burner.
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Its good to see you didn't loose power.

That's always my biggest concern with ice storms!
 
Good morning, all! It's a gloomy, overcast day here in Houston. Currently 52 degrees and dropping. The weather guy called it a "backwards day", where the temps fall all day rather than climb. If the predicters are right, we are on the fringe of the really bad ice storm. Possibly 0.01 of ice on trees and overhead wires. Sunday night to Monday morning has a prediction of 18. We've made our preparations, so we'll just see how it goes. I do have the N Scale Architect kit to work on.

STAY SAFE & WARM
LATER
 
Lots of blue sky with some puffy clouds. Notbyenthin high altitude ones we’ve had until they started filling out and coming lower yesterday. Still 29F though. So colder than it has been at this time of day.

Have not been out or looked out a low window that allows me to see the ground so I don’t know what if any fell over night. Neighbor’s roof looks like it has frost on it. (The window I’m look out is the higher up the wall one in the throne room).

I need to get out for my walk. Didn’t get out yesterday as I had two phone calls scheduled. One with a recruiter for Ford and one with the guy I’m doing a side project for. Neither happened. The recruiter rescheduled at the last minute as she was behind and wouldn’t be done with bother meetings in time and the project guy texted me some results and said our weekly meeting wasn’t being held (a few minutes before it was about to start). Between the meetings and lunch schedule and getting a slow start yesterday meant I was going to try and walk in the afternoon

But then the daughter reminded me she needed to get a form notarized and uploaded yesterday for a deadline for her humanitarian trip this summer. So I did that and by the time I got back it had clouded over and was colder and I needed to work on another project as I remembered we had a church thing in the evening. All great excuses to not go out walking in the afternoon.

The daughter sighed up with a group bass in Salt Lake City called HXP. They run volunteer humanitarian trips in the U.S. and around the world in the summer for teenagers (and parents who want to be chaperones). They last 2-2 1/2 weeks and they help build schools or water projects or teach English or all sorts of other things as the area they’re in need. It’s not cheap as the “builders” as they’re called cover their own expenses. My daughter got her first choice of places — Nepal— and is very excited. They stop for a day in Tokyo on the way back. (Though not officially sponsored or run by the church it’s run by LDS church members according to teachings and standards of the church and on the way home they stop at an LDS Temple. Tokyo is the easiest one in Asia to stop at due to lack of visa requirements etc for Japan compared to other places).

Her mid-payment and the notarized medical form were due yesterday. I’m glad she’s keeping track.
 
migalyto said:
Its good to see you didn't loose power.

That's always my biggest concern with ice storms!
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Surprisingly enough, even being waaay out in the boonies, we normally don't have issues with the ice buildup on the power lines. It's there for sure but hasn't ever effected us. Other than the 40 hours when the tornado of '24 sent my train shed roof and the neighbor's home into the lines, we normally don't have outages lasting longer than 2-3 hours.
I noted this morning that there are downed lines in the Dallas Metroplex.
 
Afternoon folks, its 34, windy, misty, and very wet. Had a lot of rain last night and this AM. We're expecting it to get below freezing this evening.

Ended up getting all the track pieces in that I ordered, gonna stay inside and start laying them all out to see how well my track plan holds up.

westtexjohn - IMO, goulash has noodles while chili doesn't.
Willie - Could paint one or two of the tractor seats black. I know nowadays they offer seat covers, though not sure if they did back in the era you're modelling.
 


Up to 09°F now with a soupy dewpoint of 05°F. Now we just need snow. Should start again around 1700-1900 and then snow all night into tomorrow afternoon. There is about 1/2" on the ground and has stopped snowing for now.

I'm listening to local law enforcement on the radio. A 10-79 occurred about an hour ago on a welfare check. Coroner and local Medstar was called. Didn't say whether or not it was health related or weather related. In that part of town it could have been either or both.
 
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