Chris Kirby's Inner Monolog : Local

Welcome to the jungle

Chris Kirby — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 17:13:11 GMT

Been a pretty crazy weekend...on Thursday night around 8:20pm a Tornado plowed through my Grandmother and Dad's property in northern Michigan. Creating a path of destruction 14 miles long and 1/2 mile wide. My grandmother's and our property were quite fortunate, considering no one was hurt and the main house had no major damage. My dad and I arrived to the following scene Friday evening, almost 24 hours later.

I apologize for sub par quality but I had to take them with my blackjack camera phone...I wish I would have had a real camera, but I think you can get a good idea. As you can see, we had a LOT of trees to cut and clear, but thankfully, we had help from friends and neighbors.

Snowmobilepalooza

Chris Kirby — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 18:36:00 GMT

The story begins at 8 am last Saturday morning with smiling hung over faces and hopes of a fun and snow filled ride. Our ultimate destination for the day was Paradise, which is roughly a half days ride from our base camp in St. Ignace. Little did we know that the powers that be had already smited our little trip across the UP, not only preventing us from reaching our destination, but only allowing 50% of our snowmobiles to return whole. Let the adventure begin:

8:30 am: All is well as we are unloading our sleds at the drop off in town and begin to head out on the trail. Though, as i would find out a few hours later, both my wife and my dad heard a strange and loud noise coming my sled as it was unloaded from the trailer.

9:15 am: We are 10-12 miles out when i hear a loud crack directly below me as a approach a stop sign on the trail. As i proceed forward from the stop sign, assuming that I had hit a rock, the entire sled begins vibrating forcing me to stop and pull of the trail. As we were diagnosing the problem we discovered that my rear shock was torn from its housing and appeared to be snapped in half! Essentially putting me out of commission for the day.

9:45 am: I attempt to salvage the day by trying to locate a rental sled while on the side of the trail. In the mean time, both my dad and my friend Steve are heading back to get Steve's pickup, so that we can haul my busted sled back to base camp, when tragedy struck again. I got a call from Steve saying that his engine has seized on his brand new Renegade and that he was now stranded 5 miles from our location towards town! So, that's 2 sleds down in less than 2 hours and we've only traveled 10 miles from our starting point.

10 am: I get another call from Steve saying that he was able to get his sled started and moving VERY slowing toward base camp, and that he would meet us there.

10:30 am: We load up my sled to the back of the pickup and send the rest of the group on to Trout Lake (20 miles north) where they will hold up and wait for me and my dad to meet them with his sled an my new rental. We estimate that we can meet them if roughly 45 mins if we trailer to their location.

10:45 am: Steve calls it a weekend. We load up his sled and he starts his 3.5 hour trip home.

11 am: Before we can trailer anywhere, we have to create a harness adapter that will allow the trailers lights (brake, blinkers, etc) to work with my pathfinder.

11:45 am: After 3 trips to the auto parts store and 10 trys later, we finally get all the lights working properly and are ready to go pick up the rental and head to Trout Lake.

12:30 pm: We arrive in Trout Lake just as the rest of the group was about to leave after their 2 hour wait fest in the restaurant.

1 pm: We're finally off towards our destination, with 1 man down and me on my rental.

2:15 pm: We arrive in a small town called Hulbert to gas up and grab some lunch after some fun riding. The gas line takes about 45 mins to get through.

3:30 pm: We're fed with full gas tanks and decide as a group that it's too late in the day to continue farther out. So, it was time to start our 3 hour trip back to base.

3:40 pm: All the sleds start up except the brand spanking new 1000cc Ski-Doo. We proceed to try just about anything over the next 2.5 hours to try and get this thing started including plugs, fuses, even kicking the damn thing. But unfortunately, all end in failure. The worst part is, that sled was carrying not one but 2 people (Jerad and Elizabeth) who are now stranded.

5 pm: A snow storm begins as the temperature drops and daylight begins to fade.

6:15 pm: A bartender at the bar where we were held up offered to take the 3rd broken down sled of the day back to Trout Lake in her pickup, along with anyone who was stranded. At this point, this appeared to be our best option, especially considering the weather and the 3 + inches it had already dropped down on us since it started. So, we load up the sled and send Hayley and Elizabeth off with our friendly bartender to Trout Lake.

6:20 pm: We head out on the remainder of the snowmobiles to rendezvous with the girls in Trout Lake.

6:30 pm: We slow to a crawl on the trail due to the worst visibility any of us have encountered in our many years of riding. We could literally only see a few feet in front of us with low beams and even less with high. This, on top of the trails being in extremely rough condition after a day full of traffic and the constant stream of fresh powder snowing down on us.

7:45 pm: We arrive in Trout Lake with our nerves shot from 1.5 hours of near death experiences.

8 pm: We off load the ski doo from the pickup and manually push it on to the trailer. We also load up my dad's sled so that he can tow the trailer back to St. Ignace in the snow storm, being that he is the most experienced tower in the group.

8:15 pm: My dad, the girls, and the trailer head back to base on the road and Mark, Jerad, and I head back on the sleds. At this point, the snow is still coming down very heavily make both road and trail travel extremely treacherous. However, the 3 of us have pretty much had all that we can take...so, the shittier the trail, the harder the snow, the faster we went! If I'm going to die, it might as well be going 90mph in to a tree on a rental sled... without the insurance!

9 pm: Still alive.

9:30 pm: We arrive in St. Ignace and load up the sleds. We also discovered a few minutes later that we arrived in town at roughly the same time as my Dad and the girls. It turns out that the roads were barely passable and it took them over an hour to go 20 miles.

10 pm: Reflect on one of craziest days any of us had ever had on the trails...while eating pizza and getting hammered.

Burning Crusade In Hand!

Chris Kirby — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 08:08:20 GMT

I never knew a tiny EB Games store could be so packed at 12:01 am...there must have been over 100 people nut-to-butt in there. Nevertheless, I was out of there by 12:30 and installing by 12:45... I can't wait to see 2,000 lvl 1 Draenei Shaman when I log in ;)

Google coming to Michigan

Chris Kirby — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 19:27:51 GMT

<<Google Building Huge Research Center in Michigan

Looks like Google is creating a new international headquarters for its AdWords unit in Ann Arbor...The good news is, this will bring over 1000 good jobs and a hundreds of millions in tax revenue to the depressed Michigan ecomony; the bad news is, it will be located in Ann Arbor, the evil dwelling of "those we don't speak of".

Location aside though, having a multi-billion dollar company like Google come in will be a welcome change to our automotive saturated economy. Now...If i could only get Google to start using .net ;)

Overtime hell in East Lansing

Chris Kirby — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 17:46:00 GMT

Can't we, just once, beat those Michigan bastards in overtime! Last years triple was bad enough, but its really hard to swallow two in a row! I would rather had Michigan make that last field goal in regulation, because the sudden death overtime rule is only cool when it works in your favor...when your on the losing end, it almost feels like you've been cheated. So now, after four straight losses, I think we may just have to accept being on the losing end of this rivalry...This must be how Notre Dame feels each time we kick their ass ;)

Theres still plenty of football to be played, so now its time to move on and just win the rest! Go State!

Its that time again...

Chris Kirby — Sat, 03 Sep 2005 18:33:00 GMT

For another season of MSU Football and tailgating festivities! I'm especially looking forward to the UofM game this year which is back at Spartan stadium...It's time we redeemed ourselves! Especially because I'm tired of losing to those bastards. So, come october 1st, the streets of Ann Arbor will be painted Green and White (metaphorically speaking of course...put the can of paint down Dave ;).

Tailgating, however, is a different story. This year MSU has decided to initiate the final stages of their evil plan to banish tailgating. In order to get a spot in the normal area, or "the pit", as I affectionally refer to it, you will have to be enrolled as a student or have to donate a considerable amount of cash to the university in order to even have a chance at reserved space. Students must enter a lottery for a chance and the dontaters are issued a space based on the amount of donation, the more cash, the better the spot (as if my 40k in tuition wasn't enough)...complete bullshit!! And this crap isn't even the half of it...check out all the gory details here.

Anyway, on to more pressing things... The Spartans kickoff the season in about 30 minutes against Kent State in Spartan Stadium.. Go State!