Greetings Sledders and Happy New Year,

It just dawned on me that I needed to get up and ultimately sit back down and write this deal as I was setting in the easy chair gazing at the tube with these glassed over nine mile stare groomer jockey eyes of mine. Been a long, long week with three of us carrying all of the load. I’ve been in a Deere everyday and have three more to go before a brief respite of one day kicks in and we then go into maintenance mode for a couple of days then back at it. Good God I love driving heavy equipment through the woods.

It’s also been a busy week here at the motel and we would like to thank all of you that were here to help us keep electricity running through the wires and water running through the pipes and of course the occasional piece of beef running through the, well you know what I mean. You are appreciated very much.

OKAY, ENOUGH ALREADY, FIRE IT UP DUDE:

GROOMING:
We are hard at it until Tuesday in order to keep up with the weekend traffic. I’m taking the daytime lead run the next three days which is the Lovells and Hanson Hills segments and that run will be about 8 hours, two other nut cases like myself will then jump in and do the tandem run on the main trail to Frederic over to the Blue Bear back down and across to the airport and back here. We’re doing the best we can to keep up.

TRAILS:
We’ve had lots and lots of sledders in this week and no complaints with all saying good to great rides. That is saying something considering that it is still early season riding out there. We believe that if you tell people that you are going to see some snirt stretches, some good stretches, etc that they are then not surprised with conditions and are for the most part okay with what we have to offer at the present time. Not optimal conditions by any means but certainly not terrible. Or tuuurrible as Sir Charles Barkley would say. Off trail continues to be a viable option as well.

WEATHER:
The weather wizards are calling for some snow over the next few days and temps look to behave for the next week and beyond. Nothing major on the horizon good or bad. Keep everything crossed because history tells us that a slump is going to happen at some point during the season.

Next report Monday as long as these eyes of mine don’t deteriorate and go from glassed over to crossed which could lead to some interesting reading on your end.

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,
Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.

Greetings Sledders,

I hate seeing two ambulances heading in either direction on Old 27 in front of our place, in this case Southbound, which could easily be another sled accident. Which is what just happened as I sat down to write this, the ambulance part, not sure if there’s been an accident. Let’s hope not we’ve already had a fatality and three young ladies from Ohio injured and the season is young. Please be careful.

Sorry for the delay in getting this out tonight seems that I’m back in the Grooming saddle once again and this stretch through the weekend will be double duty due to a lack of drivers because of people visiting for the holidays. Come on now I ask you (well not YOU per se as none of you are groomer jockeys that I know of) what’s more important, grooming trails or setting around shooting the bull with someone you may or may not want to shoot the bull with to begin with? Although one of the guys did mention that he’d like to take his Mother By Law out for a tractor ride and possibly not back.

LET’S DO IT, TIME FOR A COCKTAIL AND UNWIND:

GROOMING:
I found out today that rubber and ice don’t like each other much and it doesn’t matter what configuration the rubber is in, tracks or tires. Some parts of one’s anatomy tighten up and other parts like the heart work faster when you’re in an eleven foot tall, fifty foot long, 22,000 pound machine and it starts getting squirrelly on an icy road. It doesn’t have to move too much to trigger the aforementioned bodily things.
We are in full swing with the schedule. Everything will be back in shape by the end of the day tomorrow with the main segments already done and those segments will get hit daily for the rest of the week.

TRAILS:
About the only mildly negative thing that I can say about the trails is that the heavily travelled segments still show some snirty stretches and those are healing with each new snowfall we get and will improve. There’s a fair amount of traffic locally and much more around Fredericanville. So we will have to contend with that aspect for a few days until the holiday stretch concludes.

WEATHER:
Nothing bad here. Temps are supposed to hold and drop by Thursday and a shot of snow on a daily basis. We don’t need tons at a time which really doesn’t do squat, just a few inches here and there to keep things fresh, thank you very much.

Next report Thurs. evening.

Ride Often and Please Be Safe,
Keith, Sandy and The Girls

At Fay’s Motel enjoy direct access to the Grayling Area snowmobile trails.