Old Ironmaker

Sure would be but like when my truck was brand new I was afraid to scratch the inside of the box with a 2X4. For 80K you can get a lot of car and a beater pick up. There are a few vehicles as is at Haldimand Motors that just might fit your bill and budget. https://www.haldimandmotors.com/list.html?kw= asis

Some make all of their money from repairs. A GM dealer once told me he loses money selling new cars and trucks. I told him "Then you must have sold that mansion with the guest house bigger than the shack I live in along with the 100 grand boat you were bragging about." Idiot. I may have even said idiot inside the quotation marks. We don't like each other. We sit on the same board and I have to put up with him once a month.

I promise to drive by Haldimand Motors as is lot for you. If they have something you may be interested in I will let you know. There are always vehicles we wish we never sold, I have many. I did get a price to do up my Sierra. The only thing that was saveable was 1 fender, the hood and chassis, which needed some patches and welding, the drivetrain and 350, the rest was scrap. They wanted $10,000.00 to bring it to near new not including interior. Interior wouldn't be much as there is hardly any interior to it. Even if I had to drop a small block Chevy crate engine in it I would have had a head turner. There are a few redone 80's and early 90's era short box step side trucks around and they turn heads. Plenty of new 1/2 ton 4X4's around these parts that go for up to 80 grand and they don't turn heads.

If there is a degree available from Universities in Scotch Whiskey some of you guys here should be given Masters. If you are a collector of fine Scotch Whiskeys and they sit on your top shelf how do you know it's any good if you don't open them? I know a guy that collects fine cigars. He will take them out of his huge humidor the size of a small fridge to show you but never once will offer you one. That's being hoarders more than collectors. A pal was given a bottle of Louis The 13th Cognac for his 40th. I think the empty bottle goes for 300 bucks or some silly thing. He opened it and gingerly poured us all a flame heated snifter, then his father in law Gus "the Mule Skinner" poured cola in it, not even good Coke a Cola. Ivan was about to cry.

Yep throw away pop cans, a great analogy. Ask any car dealer what they will give you for a vehicle 5 years or older and they will laugh. For the big dealers they won't even accept a car that old as a trade in. Check Haldimand Motors as is vehicles on their website in Cayuga. I take a ride around the huge lot regularly to see what ridiculous prices used cars and especially trucks go for and they have many as is vehicles there, sometimes not many on the lot. A pal bought a beautiful BMW there for as is for 1/2 what they go for and it worked out great for him Anything as is is a crap shoot. I was actually sad when GM took my 89' GMC Sierra short box 4X4 as a trade in on my then brand new 2011 Silverado. An offer I couldn't refuse, $3500.00 as a previous GM owner thing. I only used it to trailer the boat and haul building materials a few times and towing Ford F-150's and Dodge Ram 4X4's out of the snow. It actually towed an old Ford 8-N out of a snow drift once. The bed had more holes than a fishing net but I couldn't kill the 350 and tranny. Only 1 door worked and couldn't roll down the windows depending on what day it was. Some kid threw dual exhaust on it sometime and the sound of a real deal V8 sounded like a truck is supposed to sound like, not like a Prius. If I did drive it somewhere it actually fit in the parking spaces. Of course it didn't get a scratch on it when I had it, I don't think I could tell anyway. Never washed it in the 4 years I had it and I changed the oil when I remembered to. Never put a penny in it over 3 years other than gas. That would be perfect for you. Cisco, the only way my wife would be caught dead in a mini van is when they take her from the morgue to the funeral home. She's a gear head, gotta love a woman gear head. Not all wives are the same.

I was told 12 years ago at The Service Canada joint that a tax request may follow by mail. 8 years later sure enough they wanted their pound of flesh. It wasn't by registered mail. I'll pay it if I ever sell it, that is if I'm still alive. Better sitting in my pocket than theirs. Trailers are provincial, hulls are Federal. I can't remember what the engines are under. There is supposed to be 3 bills of sale, one for each of the above. It sounds complicated but nothing like registration in some of the states in the USA for boats and vehicles.

One of the drive through liquor and beer stores. I love those joints. One I know of near where our Condo was even sells live bait. Only in America.

In my experience good and cheap aren't words that are used in the same sentence when it comes to vehicles. A buddy buys what he thinks is good for cheap and is constantly working on them to keep it on the road, especially 4X4's and AWD. What's well under 10K? $5000.00?

Back in the 80's a co worker turned his full size van into an ice fishing machine. Holes in the floor and chains on the tires. Nice and warm and I didn't have to go out side. Pretty simple. And he could drive it to Florida.

Now I'll post this in the right thread. I sent the pics to my cousin in the States. His group has a hunt camp in Western NY and they take young folks from the inner cities of Niagara Falls and Buffalo NY there to teach them safe gun handling and ethical hunting with emphasis on proper environmental stewardship. He asked me to thank you for the fantastic pics of the Piebald Deer (the new word of the week, maybe month.) He has never seen 1 either after 50 years of hunting.

No sign of the young lad yet. Divers were able to get into the water this morning but visibility is zero with the chocolate milk the waves turned up. They are feeling the bottom by hand after someone monitoring side imaging sonar on a vessel above gets a possible target. Man that's a job I wouldn't want for any amount of cash. No helicopters our way today. To give you an idea where Peacock Point is it forms the inner bay that has the old Ontario Hydro coal fired plant and Stelco Steel, Nanticoke Ontario. Peacock Point is not a town in Ontario that the news reports incorrectly identify it as. It's a area of Haldimand Norfolk. Folks were walking the beach this morning at 7:30 here. We stopped by the command area today and a Coast Guard member said the cold water hampers a water recovery. I don't need to get graphic. We pray the Family can get some closure soon. It must be brutal for them.

The law isn't exactly clear? Say it ain't so. That's why we have more Judges and lawyers than Doctors in this province.

Congrats, these days you don't hear the word married and 53 years in the same sentence. At 27 years we are only about 1/2 way!!! And those are fantastic pics. I just sent them to my cousin in Western NY. He and his hunting buddies have a camp upstate. They bring young kids through a youth organization from the inner cities of Niagara Falls NY and Buffalo NY to their camp on weekends to teach them safe firearm handling and the proper way of hunting emphasizing conservation of the environment and ethical hunting.

All great tales, errrrr, stories, ha. Lew I can't fathom that you married a gal that didn't fish, actually it's amazing she married you. After I started dating my girlfriend going on 28 years now I gave her the test. 5 of us shared ownership in a Hunt Fish cabin on a remote section of The Ottawa. And I mean a cabin, no running water, no shower and a outhouse but did have electricity, fancy shmancy. I figured if this non outdoors gal could handle roughing it and fishing for a week she's a keeper. She lost a dozen of my Rappala's, maybe more. She didn't catch a Musky but also got snagged many times, she would say "Johnny I'm snagged, oh the snag is moving, fish on!!!!" I love when my snags start to move.

Lew has more Musky stories than I have had birth days, that's more than a few.

My wife has been a few times but never fished, it is beautiful country. Ticha's Mom and step dad lived there for a few years in the early century. I wasn't invited!!!! A fishing honeymoon? You have yourself a keeper there Geoff and congrats on the nuptials.

An L.A. Ram?

Amazing, I have never heard of let alone seen what Cisco referred to as "Albinoism." Thank you for the amazing photos you get at your place. Did I say amazing? An article explaining "Abinism" in White Tail Deer. Albino, all white is something like 1 in over 30,000 Deer. A "Piebald" Deer is partially white. One thing I love about OFC is I can learn more than 1 thing everyday. And it keeps my noggin from going to mush. Thanks again Lew. https://www.deeranddeerhunting.com/content/blogs/dan-schmidt-deer-blog-whitetail-wisdom/just-rare-albino-deer

After thinking about how angry I got at the adults allowing the children to play on the ice I take back everything I said about adults not supervising them. I admit I was totally wrong, I was angry but not an excuse to blame the adults. I am truly sorry for what I said, I was wrong. We were also told not to go up the Hamilton Mountain and play in the woods because we could fall to our deaths, not to go near the TH&B tracks at the top of our street because the trains could suck us under the cars, or go anywhere near the Cope and Son's concrete plant on Lawrence Rd. and play on the huge pipes or we could fall between them and get crushed to death. We did everything we were told not to. We were kids and that's what kids do. Especially when it was taboo, if it was off limits the more we wanted to go there. We were kids. They still haven't found his body after 4 days of searching. We have 4' waves crashing on the shoreline today, no divers out for many reasons. The child has been identified, below is the latest news. I can not even start to fathom the grief this family is enduring. Peacock Point is not a town as CBC reports. It's a small area that has several seasonal cottages and a few McMansions with a Selkirk ON mailing address. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/search-peacock-point-boy-hero-opp-1.5466557

Come to think about it we did that trip on the Albany at the end of May and a few days into June, Bug season. You could hear the Moose suffering the flies all day. 70's and bugs during the day and snow ball fights in the early morning. Nothing like a wake up call from a ball of snow in the yap at 5AM. What was really neat was we took the heads off the bigger Northers, nailed the heads through the gills to a tree and stuck a few sticks in the jaw to keep them wide open. After a few days all that was left was bone white scull and those huge rows of teeth staring at you. Talk about what an Alien might look like. They make a great trophy mounted in your Man Cave. I still have a few from 40 years ago. I did the same to a massive Carp I caught here a few years back. Johnny D/Selkirk ON.

I read today that the rainy season has started in Australia, not soon enough. As far as the Amazon fires and we all know how critical the Amazonian Rain Forest is to our delicate planet. A little known fact is that the very massive Brazilian steel industries integrated plants where liquid iron is produced to make steel .At the plant we visited in 98' in Brazil used 100% charcoal to fire their Blast Furnaces. We use metallurgical coal that is used in turn to make metallurgical coke in Canada, the US and most plants around the world. The charcoal the Brazilians used was made from trees felled in the rain forests of the Amazon. That's million of tonnes of trees to make millions of tonnes of steel. Coke to Iron rate is around 3 to 1. Maybe more with basically wood. Brazilian steel production is far larger by millions of tonnes a year than here in Canada. Maybe more than integrated plants that still exist in the US. Not good and one never hears about it. I hope that plant was the only plant not using coke. I doubt it. Talk about a carbon footprint. Apparently not just Brazil. It's an old paper. However there are several countries using wood to fire Blast Furnaces today. http://www.fao.org/3/03500e/03500e07.htm

The Albany River would be my choice. Anywhere up there in the Arctic watershed. I do have to advise you to bring a 40 gallon drum of Muskall. Bugs are atrocious anywhere up there in the summer. Fall would be my choice, never the summer.

My 1st ever Musky was what I later learned to be a "Tiger Musky" caught in Lake Scugog. I have been told a 1000 times that lake doesn't hold Tiger Musky. But it was and that's where I caught it. The story is that we were trolling for Pics with a Black Fury on 8 pound Trilene, no leader. It took a while to get her in and she jumped at least 4 times, that's when I got nervous knowing I didn't have a leader on. Back then we mounted fish and paid good money to get it mounted. It still hangs in our kitchen and looks like the day I caught it. Mr. Martin from the Hamilton mountain mounted it for me back in 1982. He is or was a talented man. He would be in his 80's by now. I hope he is well. I felt guilty for years after mounting it then learned Tiger Musky are a hybrid and can not reproduced.

That photo says Canada more than anything else can. Great pic Akrisoner.

I packed in my job because I didn't need the stress of driving long distances and being on time any longer. I was putting up to 2000 K's on my car a month, or more. One way from our place to the showroom was 100 KM's, everyday sometimes 7 days a week. I don't think in fact I know that no one says this will be my last day on earth because I'm flying or driving somewhere unless they are suicidal. Hell even walking like the 9 year old that drowned playing on the ice 15 minutes from where we live Saturday. Is driving 95 in an 80 KPH zone cutting corners? A rhetorical question no answered required. Same goes for driving in the rain or snow or into a blinding east or west Sun, even sneaking through a yellow light. We cut corners in our lives continually aware of it or not.