Running Bear's July 2026 Coffee Shop

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Siting in my car at the Buena Park HS in Buena Park CA. Game supposed to start in 50 min. We’ve been here a little over 10 min. Got here a min before the half hour. Wife and daughter are in by the pool. I was finishing my breakfast of mobile champions. Had a parm cheese bagel with butter and cream cheese at the resort and a store brand pop tart pair and some bacon in the car. Unfortunately her second game is too close to the first so we’ll be staying here between games. Made sandwiches for lunch and brought them with. If they win both they play again tonight around 7:30pm. We’ll see.

I’m just looking forward to a nap this afternoon.

It’s mid 70s. Feels humid but not overbearing. 76% with dew point 66 F. AQI is 54. Supposed to get to around 86F.

Not bad but I’d rather have 50-55% humidity. Us dry air types don’t like this stickiness.

I’ll report back.
 
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They lost the first game. 3-13. The other team was Sacramento. They were physically aggressive. It looked like they were grabbing suits and all sorts of illegal stuff but weren’t getting called for it.

We were in the sun but eventually the overhead screens starting providing some relief.

I think the next game is in 2 hours. Should be the last of the day. They’d need to win both games today to play tonight as I understood it.

So bright it’s hard to see the screen and the phone gave me a temperature warning. I was supposed to be taking pics.
 
Good Morning All!
45F @ 58% high overcast - probably smoke.
Looks like we have fires almost all around us.
View attachment 270227
Libby is just above those lower center; line dip then bump. Cabinet Mountain Wilderness is the fire line up, Troy the little dip to the immediate left, top of the fire line. SR56 is from Troy down, SR2 is Libby down, then East to Kalispell. The dark(er) line is BNSF; Libby to The Fish. Have been seeing CH-46 choppers fly over from South to North with BIG bladders of water. Suspect the Kootenai River is the filling station. Hmmm, wonder how many fish get fried in the process?

@TLOC What wonderful pictures to work from! AI is not perfect though - Aspen/Birch usually stay in the dips/valleys/canyons where the moisture is. Sure, some on top of hill/knolls/bumps but not that many. You have your work cut out for ya!

Damn dishwasher died day before yesterday - no pump water any mo. Heck, we do not even have a dish drying rack anymore so dishes on towels all over the place drying. First look is $170ish for a pump. Since this is the 2nd failure, pull it, trash it, get another. Place in Sandpoint looks to be the best prices; so lunch on Monday or Tuesday there. We checked out Freds Appliance site - what a POS. Shows price on the splash page, but when you click on the make/model you want - different price - and higher, and on top of that there always seems to be a disclaimer - "Prices starting at". Go Figure.

The Bison flier went through surgery without a hitch. Come to find out the Bison is not going to be ...um... punished - Nature at work as he is in Rut. That does seem a little early for Rut though; happens around here later in the season.

Keep cool!

L8r
Re: the birch and aspen tree pplacement. Ai is only as good as the information given. I fed the data from the National Forest Service regarding trees in the Negaunee area of the UP.

The UP is a pretty unique place. Lots of moisture all year round but the snowfall especially is epic! The area around Negaunee has hills but no real peaks, deep valleys or a tree line!

Negaunee is a few miles maybe 2 inland from the Lake called Superior. Uts about 25 miles from Lake Michigan so there is lots of lake effect weather

Here are the placement suggestions from Ai based on the Forest Service data for the UP

Paper birch (white) is a "pioneer species"—it cannot grow in the dark shade of mature maples. It needs wide-open sunlight to sprout. In the UP, you will find them clustered tightly in these specific areas:

The Railroad Right-of-Way: When railroads clear-cut a swath of forest for tracks, paper birch is almost always the first tree to jump into the open space. Plant your hand-twisted, multi-trunk white birch clusters right along the edges of the ballast and rock cuts where the sun hits.

The Riverbanks and Bridge Overpasses: They love the sunny openings created by water drainage and river paths. Placing a few dramatic white trunks leaning out near your bridge overpass is 100% prototypically accurate.

The "Transition Zone": Put them right on the border where the steep basalt rock croppings meet the deep dirt. They thrive on disturbed, rocky soils where heavy maple canopies haven't taken over yet.


Yellow birch is a completely different beast. It is highly shade-tolerant and loves moisture.

The Low-Lying Valleys: Instead of the high, sunny edges, yellow birch grows inside the forest mixed directly with your 112 maples.

Damp Hollows and Ravines: If you have a low spot on Deck 2 or a dip near a drainage culvert, that's where the yellow birch hangs out.

The Clue is the Stumps: Yellow birch seeds almost exclusively sprout on top of rotting logs and old pine stumps (hemlock and white pine). As the tree grows, its roots wrap around the dead log. Decades later, the log rots away, leaving the mature yellow birch standing on weird, stilt-like roots!

As you know for the bridge threads and paper mill threads your help was immense to keep me on track because Ai was leading me astray. I have really learned not to trust but check and verify first before postings

While I have run only an overview of the quaking Aspens and the maples as to over-all placement. I have not done the deep dive yet. Aspens from personal experience of the UP though seem to be everywhere the Maples are and the maples are everywhere. They are a rememberance I Ithink because of the trunk color. After the Maples the conifers are 30% of the overall tree makeup where the Aspens are 18% and birch 15%.

I’m building to fit the numbers plus the 10% extra Intry to build on. Actual tree placement will come the owner and the landscaper. I the tree builder, track painter and helper on this project

Tom
 
There's nothing like the smell of burning electronics...
A month ago, I got an NCE Pro Cab system to replace the Digitrax system I was using. A week after it went into service, the decoder on the Piko 65 tonner failed.
Today, a new Digitrax decoder I installed to replace a Lenz decoder failed. I then started running other trains, and the Digitrax decoder in an Intermountain Tunnel Motor went up in smoke. It was bad enough the smoke detector in the house went off. Since the first one wasn't a Digitrax decoder, but is of questionable quality, and the next two were Digitrax, I'm leaning more toward something janky with the power system. I'm suspending operations on the layout until I can bring testing equipment home to check voltages, and see if there are spikes taking out the electronics. While the one I installed this morning could have been installation error, the factory decoder, and the decoder I installed several weeks ago probably weren't. The Piko decoder had been working for a couple of years, and the one in the tunnel motor had been installed weeks ago, and was simply sitting on the layout.
 


IMG_7623.jpeg
 
Good Morning All!
45F @ 58% high overcast - probably smoke.
Looks like we have fires almost all around us.
View attachment 270227
Libby is just above those lower center; line dip then bump. Cabinet Mountain Wilderness is the fire line up, Troy the little dip to the immediate left, top of the fire line. SR56 is from Troy down, SR2 is Libby down, then East to Kalispell. The dark(er) line is BNSF; Libby to The Fish. Have been seeing CH-46 choppers fly over from South to North with BIG bladders of water. Suspect the Kootenai River is the filling station. Hmmm, wonder how many fish get fried in the process?

@TLOC What wonderful pictures to work from! AI is not perfect though - Aspen/Birch usually stay in the dips/valleys/canyons where the moisture is. Sure, some on top of hill/knolls/bumps but not that many. You have your work cut out for ya!

Damn dishwasher died day before yesterday - no pump water any mo. Heck, we do not even have a dish drying rack anymore so dishes on towels all over the place drying. First look is $170ish for a pump. Since this is the 2nd failure, pull it, trash it, get another. Place in Sandpoint looks to be the best prices; so lunch on Monday or Tuesday there. We checked out Freds Appliance site - what a POS. Shows price on the splash page, but when you click on the make/model you want - different price - and higher, and on top of that there always seems to be a disclaimer - "Prices starting at". Go Figure.

The Bison flier went through surgery without a hitch. Come to find out the Bison is not going to be ...um... punished - Nature at work as he is in Rut. That does seem a little early for Rut though; happens around here later in the season.

Keep cool!

L8r
Damn dishwasher died day before yesterday

If that happens at my house it means I am no longer around. :oops:

John
 
So they won their second game. In a nail biter. They pretty much traded goals throughout the game. We were ahead at the end 6-5 and they ended up scoring with 13 seconds left. So tied 6-6. We pulled our goalie and pressed with a man advantage and scored with 1 sec left. They put everyone in the goal and the other team lobbed it from half court in the last second and it almost made it through the wall of hands but didn’t. So we won 7-6.

IMG_1697.jpeg
 
Sorry, but while that looks fun and funny, an operational flightdeck is not the place to be doing sh!t like that. He's causing a distraction in a dangerous function that everybody needs to be concentrating in. If anyone gets hurt, I hope that he's the only one and the air boss gets a letter that could end his career for allowing that to happen. The white shirts should have shut that cr@p down.

Edited to take my initial harshness out.
Having extensive experience on operational flight decks I will agree with how dangerous it is, but I also know that long deployments generate boredom and a need to bleed off excess energy. Pilots did stuff in and with the aircraft. Officers did stuff, as we saw. If enlisted had tried this they’d get a 90 day stint in the galley, but enlisted are enlisted and officers are officers. This was likely cleared by someone all the way up to the air boss and probably higher. The appropriate safety checks were all done, they just added the dance moves. 🤷. If I were to guess I’d guess morale might have had something to do with it.
 
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Good evening all, still 94 here with a Heat Index of 104 after a high of 98. Gonna be pushing 100 the next couple of days too.
Had a good day at Church, both services. My G'niece Nataley and her best friend Paisley sang a really beautiful special this morning. After services got home and relaxed, listened to the Cardinals blow a 7-0 lead to lose to the Diamondbacks in 10 innings. Ugh.
Anyway we are taking it easy tonight watching some old TV.
Plan for tomorrow is to get up early and try to quickly shovel some gravel back onto the parking area that was washed out by a gully washer storm last week.
You guys have a good evening.
 
It looks like their first game on Monday, tomorrow, isn’t until 1pm. So maybe we get to miss rush hour traffic Monday morning. Haven’t heard yet where it is.

Wife and daughter went to a beach tonight with some other parts of the team. I wasn’t ready in time so didn’t get to go with.
 


Good evening all, still 94 here with a Heat Index of 104 after a high of 98. Gonna be pushing 100 the next couple of days too.
Had a good day at Church, both services. My G'niece Nataley and her best friend Paisley sang a really beautiful special this morning. After services got home and relaxed, listened to the Cardinals blow a 7-0 lead to lose to the Diamondbacks in 10 innings. Ugh.
Anyway we are taking it easy tonight watching some old TV.
Plan for tomorrow is to get up early and try to quickly shovel some gravel back onto the parking area that was washed out by a gully washer storm last week.
You guys have a good evening.

I can't believe they threw away that lead. When the news came on it was 7-5 in the 8th. We didn't get the game here. Next one I can watch is on the 24th vs Cincinnati.
 
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