Happy

Merry Christmas

'Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night.'

Snow pictures from earlier this month.  Right now we have a foot of icy snow; but at least have power.   100,000 'customers' in Maine do not have power tonight. 

Chicken head in the air

Carols everywhere

Olden times and ancient rhymes

Of love and dreams to share

Christmas meat is here
we'll be drawing near
oh that we could always see 
such spirit through the year, 
such spirit through the year

 

Christmas Meat is here

Happiness and cheer
Fun for all that children call
Their favorite time of the year

36" Snow, Low temp. -21

30 inches of snow in 3 days! And -16 degrees as this weeks low.

Throwback Thursday

Here are some pictures from 1977 to 1978:

 

This one was labeled, "CAT YELLOW 1977"

Happy birthday to Chris!

6 months!

 Someone turned 6 months old on Sunday!

Previous weekend: train with two BNSF, one Norfolk Southern, and one Kansas City Southern locomotives hauling mostly military equipment.

Thunderhill, Cont'd

Mazda NA with some dealers prepped three 2014 Mazda 6s with diesel engines from basically cars off the lot. The word is that they completed these cars about two weeks ago and never raced them until this weekend. They stayed out of major trouble, turned decent, consistent lap times (2:02 to 2:05 I think Update: timing says their best laps in all of the three cars was a 2:07 to 2:09, I guess I made up the first numbers) and all three finished the race.

25 Hours of Thunderhill

Saturday was cold, but mostly calm and sunny at Thunderhill. Below is a picture of the overall first (Rotek Racing Audi TT RS with headlights on in back) and second (yellow Barrett Racing Porsche 911 GT3 Cup) place finishers (both ES class) with the second place ESR in front (Factory 48 Radical SR3) . The Rotek ran a consistent race with a pretty fast front wheel drive car with professional drivers (Rob Huff, Robb Holland, and Roland Pritzker). They were not the fastest car out there (mid to low 1:50 laps), but finished with about a 30 lap lead ahead of Barrett Racing.

The GMG Racing Audi R8-LMS had mostly amateur drivers. They were quite fast at times (hitting the mid 1:40s), but also had at least 30 minutes of penalty time over the course of the race (and caught on fire in the last 20 minutes). This is the Pirelli World Challenge car, not the GTD. Here they are passing the Nixon Prosports 2 Honda Fit that mostly acted as a slow moving road cone (but I believe did finish the race).

Overall third place and first place ESR Radical West Racing on the starting grid:

On the right is the JFC Racing Wolf GB08S driven by Ivan Bellarosa and Al Unser Jr & III. This car had the quickest qualifying time and race lap time of 1:37. Very fast but they had lots of challenges. They looked like they could make a come back after the first setbacks, but then didn't finish.

These guys caught fire on lap 3 repaired the car overnight and rejoined the race in the morning:

Other people working on cars:

(I counted at least 3 people under the Davidson Racing 1 DR Eagle.)

Overall, it is a very laid-back facility and a great place to watch some racing. Saturday daytime was nice, but over night I heard the temperatures went to 19 F and didn't warm up too quickly in the morning, then got windy. Next time I would see about bringing a smart phone to stream the race broadcast audio and live timing (T-Mobile had a mobile cell tower there and Verizon had patchy coverage: the track isn't exactly in a developed area).

Tree up

Tree from Dayton Maine

Road

Removed three rusted 2 foot culverts and replaced with new 4 foot culvert this weekend.   4 foot over flow culvert still in place.

Chris

"Radiant Orchid" is the 2014 color of the year. Beautiful!

25 Hours of Thunderhill

Endurance Radio will be providing a live streaming broadcast of the 25 Hours of Thunderhill this weekend. GMG Racing has two Audi R8-LMSs, which may or may not be their GTD cars for 2014. Entry lists are available here: http://www.nasa25hour.com/. The grid will be capped at 64 cars.

In other news, I think one of the hens (Other One) is going broody.

Cornelia Bedelia

?-December 1, 2013

♥

Christmas Gift Exchange

Elliot says, "Be sure to check the Christmas gift exchange matrix at the bottom of this blog post."

Thanksgiving

Whee 

Too much Thanksgiving 

More Thanksgiving 

Luxury Thanksgiving 

Pandaface

Balloons

Elliot's hat was used for the Christmas drawing, all complaints must be directed at him.

This Christmas	Christopher	gives to	Joel
This Christmas	Christine	gives to	Noah
This Christmas	Noah	gives to	Paul
This Christmas	Kate	gives to	Christine
This Christmas	Philip	gives to	Kate
This Christmas	Rachel	gives to	Cyndy
This Christmas	Joel	gives to	Rachel
This Christmas	Paul	gives to	Christopher
This Christmas	Cyndy	gives to	Philip

Old Cyndy photo of Colonie Shale Trails in October

Someone decorated it, she liked that

NYC Transit Museum

Whee, we walked there and back

Circles

Museum Platform

Christmas Spectacular

Grand Central Cupcake and Palisades