3B Limo

Archive for the ‘General’ Category

When I was younger and tougher (in other words, broke and ignorant) 1 enjoyed roughing it when I hunted and fished with my friends. Our camps were bare-bones affairs, and 1 still remember my old $2 chicken-feather surplus Army sleeping bag that had no warming properties whatsoever and a canvas tent (also surplus) that leaked like a sieve in a light mist. We preferred the romance of the open fire (we didn’t have a gas stove), so cooking meant impaling channel cats on green sticks and then squatting and coughing over a smoky fire.
Later there was a short-lived minimalist stage where I slept out in the open wrapped in a cheap plastic tarp. On clear nights I marveled at the white smear in the sky we know as the Milky Way; on cloudy nights I learned to fear the first faint drops of rain.
I still have buddies who enjoy backpacking or striking off to a spike camp, and they willingly sacrifice certain creature comforts because of a lack of adequate carrying capacity. Not me. Nowadays I camp out of the back of a big truck. Why? Because my rig lets me indulge myself. I take what I want and treat myself to all the luxuries of a new found five-star hotel.
By big, I mean full-size pickups and sport utilities, vehicles with the necessary room to store all your gear.
You’d be amazed at how even a half-truckload of the right items can move the pleasure needle into the ahh-yes! zone. Oversize captain’s chairs, a camp kitchen, thick airbeds, cots, a folding table, and coolers full of your livorite eats and drinks are some of the extras that are worth their weight (and space) in gold.
The fellow who taught me the virtues of abb-yes camping is Jim Reid, director of public relations for The Coleman Company. I first spoke with him about truck camping after a disastrous three-day outing in which I had elected to sleep in the bed of the pickup because the tent could not accommodate three adults, one of whom snored loud enough to wake the dead. At the time Jim and I were comfortably ensconced in his camp after a long, hard day of quail hunting along the Kansas-oklahoma border. He had just made the appetizer— fresh quail soup—and was preparing the main meal—grilled Kansas City strip steaks—as we enjoyed a libation. I noticed that for the first time in camp I was warm, comfortable, and completely relaxed.
“Yeah,” Jim said. “Basically, the happy camper is the one who sleeps well and eats well. Add convenience and comfort while loafing in camp, a righteous cocktail hour, and a big campfire, and you have all the ingredients for a world-class camp.” ‘So, how can you make sure you get a comfortable camp?” I asked.

Once you’ve decided that everything else about the condo is to your liking, how do you decide whether it’s worth what the seller or the developer is asking for it? As with any kind of real estate, the “fair market value” of a condo is whatever a willing buyer will pay a willing seller. But before you open your wallet, remember that there are some objective ways of measuring value. First, look at the prices of comparable units in the same building and in the same and similar neighborhoods. There are publications in some areas that report real-estate transactions on a regular basis, and these are good sources of information on comparable values. You can also obtain such information from the registry of deeds or the town clerk’s office, where all real-estate transactions are recorded. If the seller is asking $100,000 for the unit you’re considering and an identical unit across the hall sold the previous month for $80,000, then you have a serious problem with the price. A look at recent seffing prices of comparable units wifi give you at least a general sense of the market and a basis for deciding whether the price being asked for the unit you’re interested in is reasonable.
One way to compare the price of different condos is to look at the cost per square foot. Just take the selling price and divide it by the total number of square feet in the unit. But make sure you use only the figure for livable square feet, which is not necessarily the same as the total number of square feet. A 1,500- square-foot unit is not as spacious as it sounds if that area includes a 500-square-foot hallway. When you’re looking at condos, it’s not a bad idea to have a tape measure with you, since developers are sometimes imprecise about such distinctions. Suppose you’re looking at two comparably priced condos. Each has 2,000 square feet, but condo A has a 200-square-foot hallway and condo B doesn’t, so you’re getting more living space for your money with condo B. At $100 per square foot, you’re paying $20,000 for that hallway. You have to ask yourself whether it’s worth it.
You also have to consider that size is not the only determinant of value. A 3,000-square-foot unit will not usually cost twice as much as a 1,500-square-foot unit in the same building. This is because some basic costs (the building infrastructure, for example) will be the same for both units. On the other hand, a 1,500-square-foot luxury unit with a water view will undoubtedly cost more than a 3,000-square-foot unit in a renovated warehouse on the wrong side of town.
When you’re comparing one unit with another, you’re obviously going to have to consider factors other than simply the cost per square foot. Don’t mix apples and oranges when weighting the footage values of the dwellings you consider.
If you’re buying a unit in an existing building, you’re also going to want to have some idea of what the resale experience has been for other units in that complex. How rapidly have prices increased? When units go on the market, how quickly do they sell? Remember, you may want to sell your unit one day, so you’ll want to be sure that the appreciation rate for condos in this building has been in line with the general appreciation rate for condos in your market. You can check on recent sales by doing some research at the appropriate registry of deeds or town hail, wherever the property filings are recorded. You can ask other unit owners in the complex for a reading. Or if you’re really concerned, you can hire an appraiser to analyze the market for you. General economic conditions have everything to do with the rate of appreciation of real-estate values, but if condo values are soaring everywhere except in the development you’re considering, you need to wonder why. It’s possible that you’ve stumbled onto a big bargain, but it’s also possible that you’ve stumbled onto big problems.

Financing a condo is similar in most respects to financing a detached single-family home, but it’s more complicated. The secondary-market requirements for condominiums fill several volumes. I can’t go into all those requirements here, but I can tell you that with the number of it’s that have to be dotted and it’s that have to be crossed, you shouldn’t attempt a condo purchase without hiring an attorney to represent you.
The most basic question to ask about any condo you’re considering buying is whether it has obtained the approval of either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, or is capable of being approved. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the two key entities of the secondary market. They purchase many of the mortgages that local lenders originate. Condo developers will often obtain Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac approval before they begin marketing their dwellings. Some existing condos already have the approval; some have not received formal approval but meet all the requirements needed to do so.
If a condo hasn’t been and is not capable of being approved, you may have a hard time finding a lender willing to finance it. And even if you obtain a mortgage now, financing could be a problem for any subsequent buyers you might want to sell to in the future. All in all, it’s easier to buy and sell a unit that meets secondary-market requirements than one that doesn’t.
Among the hundreds of secondary-market requirements that condos have to meet, there are two that are especially critical and that buyers can check out on their own before getting too deeply into the purchase process.
First is the number of units that have been sold in a new development. Typically lenders won’t approve a mortgage on a unit unless at least 25 to 30 percent of the other units in the complex have been presold. That’s an obvious problem in a new development in which sales have just begun. So what often happens is that the lender providing the funds for the construction or the renovation will also agree to issue mortgages to the buyers of individual units. That ensures the availability of financing for early buyers, though those buyers may find the rate available from this lender to be a bit higher than prevailing mortgage rates in the market area.
The second secondary-market rule you should be aware of is that at least 70 percent of the units must be owner-occupied. A development in which more than 30 percent of the units are owned by investors who rent them out to tenants is not likely to pass muster with most secondary-market lenders.

A condo is insured differently from a single-family detached dwelling. If you’re insuring a single-family home, you buy a policy that covers the structure as well as its contents. In a condo, you need two separate policies — one to cover your unit and its contents (known in many areas as an H. 0. -6 policy) and another, the master policy, to cover the condo’s common areas.
The most important thing for prospective unit buyers to find out is exactly what is covered by the master policy and what is not. You want above all to avoid a situation in which the master policy coverage and your unit policy coverage fail to come together, leaving you potentially vulnerable to serious damage claims. The nature and extent of the condo insurance already in place are two of the things your attorney should be able to tell you after reviewing the condo documents.
Some condos have what is known as a “bare-walls’ policy. It covers only the building’s shell and the areas — the lobby, the grounds, the pipes, the roof, the electrical master wiring, and so on. Unit owners have to buy coverage for structural elements within their units (bathroom fixtures, built-in cabinets, etc.) as well as for their personal property. If a condo you’re considering has bare-walls coverage, then be sure to determine precisely where the master policy ends and where the unit owner’s policy must begin. One way to avoid any question about whether or not something is insured is to obtMn your unit policy from the same firm that issues the master policy.
Some condos have opted for what is known as “single-entity” coverage. This covers essentially everything that’s a fixed part of the building, regardless of whether it is in the common areas or inside the units themselves. With this approach, the walls, cabinets, fixtures, and so on inside individual units are covered by the master policy. Unit owners need only insure their personal property.
If you encounter single-entity insurance in a condo you’re interested in, be sure to find out what happens if individual owners make improvements to their units. These improvements raise the value of the whole complex and thus increase its insurance costs. You want to make sure that this increase will be paid by the particular owners responsible for it. It’s not an expense that should be shared.
These are the most basic issues you have to consider under the heading of condo insurance, but there are many other aspects that vary with local conditions and state law. Because it’s so important to be adequately insured, and because the whole area of condo insurance is so complicated, you shouldn’t buy a condo without the advice of a competent and trustworthy insurance agent.

A big question to ask about any condominium is, are its finances in good order? And one way to answer this question is to look at the condo’s budget. You don’t have to be a financial expert; all you’re looking for is evidence that the condo association collects its fees, pays its bills, and regularly sets aside funds for reserves to cover unforeseeable common-area expenses. If it’s a new development, you’ll have to rely on the developer’s estimates for maintenance costs and other common-area expenses. But you can compare these estimates with the costs you see in other, similar condos to ascertain whether they appear reasonable.
Look with particular interest at the monthly maintenance figure. Some developers establish the base fee far below what it should be in order to attract buyers. Once they’ve bought in, the new owners are faced almost immediately with the need to increase the fee to a more realistic level. Be wary if the developer quotes a monthly fee that seems too good to be true; it probably is. The range of variance is wide, so once again, the best advice on condo fees is to look at the fees charged for comparable developments in the same market area.
If you’re looking at an existing condo, you’ll want to find out how frequently the condo fee has been raised in the past. If it’s gone up 50 percent a year for the past five years, that’s a bad sign. On the other hand, if the fee has never been raised, that could be an even worse sign, since it may indicate that the necessary maintenance is not being done and that a huge increase in the fee, or a special assessment to cover emergency renovations, is likeLy in the near future.
One indication of how well or how badly a condo is being managed is the size of its reserve fund. The monthly maintenance fee covers regular maintenance and operations; the purpose of the reserves is to finance major capital expenditures — replacing a roof, for example, or paying for common- area damages that aren’t entirely covered by insurance. Every condominium should have a regular program through which owners contribute to its reserve fund, but the Community Associations Institute estimates that 10 percent of the condos in the country don’t have any reserves at all, and that another 30 percent have reserve programs on paper but don’t follow through on them every year.
Why should you be concerned about the reserves? Because if the roof caves in or the heating plant has to be replaced, the unit owners are going to have to cover the costs. Such special assessments can amount to several thousand dollars per owner. It’s far better to be in a condo that saves for rainy days than in one that has to soak the owners when the inevitable crisis occurs. One final point about reserve funds: secondary-market regulations require that condos have “adequate” reserves in place. What constitutes “adequate” is left undefined, but attorneys I know who handle real-estate transactions say they base their assessment on the individual condo. An older condo, where more things are more likely to go wrong, needs a larger reserve fund than a newer one, which in theory should face fewer problems involving expensive replacement and renovation.
In any case, if the reserve fund seems low, find out why. It might be because the condo association has not made a contribution to it in five years. This would be a bad sign. It also might be because the association just drew on the fund to finance a needed repair. This would be a sign that the condo is being responsibly managed.

The condo’s bylaws are its constitution. They establish the ground rules according to which this quasi-democracy is governed. The bylaws set up the structure of the condominium’s board of directors, specifying (among other things) the number of directors and the length of their term in office, and they detail the board’s responsibilities and its powers. Those powers typically include the right to collect the maintenance fee, the right to impose penalties if the fee is late, and the right to levy a lien on units whose owners fail to pay their fees. In some condos, the unit owners collectively have the right to veto any decisions made by the board. In others, the only way to overturn a decision you don’t like is to vote the offending directors out of office.
One thing to look for as you read the bylaws is any evidence of undue control by the developer. As a general rule, the sooner the developer is out of the picture and the unit owners are in control, the better. In a new condominium, the developer typically retains a fair amount of control until all or at least most of the units have been sold. But some state laws set a time limit beyond which the developer has no choice but to turn over control of the condo association to the unit owners, even if a large number of units remain unsold at that time. I think that’s a good idea. It’s language I’d want to see in the bylaws of any newly constructed or newly renovated condo I was considering buying.
Watch out also for situations in which the developer retains the right to select the management company that handles the maintenance and general day-to-day operations of the condo. Not all condos have management companies, but many of them do, and probably more of them should. It’s entirely possible that the developer or his brother-in-law can do a great job of managing the complex, but it’s equally possible that some other company can do the job better and cheaper. I’m not saying you should walk away from a condo in which the developer has taken on the management role, but you should look carefully at the terms of the management contract. Do the costs seem to be in line with the management costs at other comparable developments? What about the term? A one- or two-year contract is one thing; but if the developer has written himself a ten-year contract with a no-severance clause, you’d be wise to start looking for something else.

As owner of a detached single-family home, you’re the king or queen of your castle. As the owner of a condo unit, you still have your crown, but then so do all the other owners. Even royalty, when pressed into coexistence, must acknowledge some restrictions as to what can and cannot be done with the condo unit itself, as well as with those areas that are owned in common with other kings and queens. So you can arrange your furniture however you please and use any wallpaper you like in your living room, but you may not be able to paint the outside of your windows the color of your choice. When you buy into a condo community, you also buy into its rules and regulations, so it’s a good idea to find out what they are before you commit yourself to buying.
Many condominiums prohibit pets. Some, as noted before, won’t allow owners to rent their units, even for short periods of time. Some even limit the amount of time visitors (including relatives) can stay. Still others have detailed rules governing what an owner can and cannot do to the outside of his or her condo.
So if you’re planning to run a mail-order business from the spare bedroom, or see psychiatric patients in the study, you’d better make sure there aren’t any rules prohibiting nonresidential uses of the unit. And you’d better be sure that the owner of the unit you’re planning to buy hasn’t made any unauthorized changes — installing windows different from those in place elsewhere in the building, for example. If such changes have been made without the board’s permission and have not been corrected by the time you buy, you could get stuck with the cost of undoing the previous owner’s damage.

When the Atlanta-based rock band REM. went on tour in 1995, the first time the supergroup had played so extensively in five years,
much of the promotional effort was focused on the Internet. The dates for the North American portion of the band’s tour were posted on the World Wide Web (WWW) in Januaiy, just days before the first concert in Perth, Australia. Fans could look in the REM. folder created by MW News not only for the schedule but also for audio and video interviews with band members, as well as concert footage. Want more? Well, just tap into the WWW for the entire list of R.E.M. bootleg records, band photographs, all the song lyrics, and even the sounds from some of their famous guitar riffs.
And coming soon? Click on your favorite hit from any singer, sit back, and enjoy the video. The marketplace for R.E.M. is an electronic one— Na! Can it be long before R.E.M.’s distribution system is the Net as well? What will happen to their current publisher, Warner Brothers Records? What is the role of a record store in this new world? Or what will happen to the radio station when REM’S music can be accessed from the Net with the push of a button from the digital radio in your car? What will happen to MW itself when you can say to your television, “Play me the first cut from REM’S new album?”
In music, and in everything, the times they are a-changing. A new age is upon us and no one can halt its progress. Unlike revolutions of the past, however, the opportunity to share more fully in the largesse of this revoluHon is huge. Aspects of this new age already exist; the rest is being born daily. Amid the apparent chaos of change, there are rhythms at work, and patterns are beginning to appear.
We are at the dawn of an Age of Networked Intelligence—an age that is giving birth to a new economy, a new politics, and a new society. Businesses will be transformed, governments will be renewed, and individuals will be able to reinvent themselves—all with the help of the new information technology.
There is a vast new promise but also new perils. A looming dark side holds the potential for severe social stratification, unprecedented invasion of privacy and other rights, structural unemployment, and massive social dislocation and conflict. The future will depend on what we as businesses and as a society do—on our decisions and our actions.
Look at what happened in April 1995 immediately following the blast at the federal government building in Oklahoma City. The Net became a focal point for all sides of the debate. Some messages went so far as to allege that the FBI was to blame. Others, posted by extremist gun cults, exhorted fellow members to more rebellious acts. But the Net was also the focal point for helpful information. The FBI, using its Home Page, quickly posted descriptions of the suspects. And the Net was used to spread pleas for heavy equipment that could be used in the rescue operation. The promise and the peril.
Even Newt Gingrich, the Georgia Republican who became speaker of the House of Representatives in 1995, made the disruptions of the new age a major theme upon taking office. “The most accurate analogy to what is happening to us now is to look at the period between 1770 and 1800, when America was changing from a rural to a manufacturing society,” said Gingrich in a speech. “What is happening to us now—the transition from the industrial era … is forcing us to ask very similar and profound questions about ourselves.” But how can companies transform themselves for the new economy? In the 1980s, the main management tool for change was quality. The total quality and continuous improvement movement helped many companies respond to the newly emerging global situation.
In the 1990s the attention shifted to business process reengineering (BPR), a management technique that swept through corporations and governments around the world. It is true that the old business processes, management practices, organizational structures, and ways of working have become inappropriate for the new volatile, global, competitive business environment. Clearly, many large companies needed to reengineer to reduce their cost base.
However, by all accounts, BPR is in trouble. A survey by Systems Reengineering Economics, a newsletter published by Computer Economics Inc., of Carlsbad, California, found that companies will spend $52 billion on business reengineering by 1997. Of that, $40 billion will go to information technology. Will corporations be satisfied? According to Inform.ation Week, two-thirds of such projects fail. According to management consulting firm Arthur D. Little Inc., only 16% of companies are “satisfied.” Of the rest, 45% are partially satisfied and 39% are dissatisfied. Other companies have simply wasted money; Citibank has frankly admitted that the $50 million it spent on reengineering produced no results.
The idea behind BPR seems to be a good one. So, what’s the problem? The number one culprit on everyone’s list is resistance to change. A study by Deloitte & Touche listed 60% of respondents as indicating resistance to change as the main factor behind the failure of BPR. Among the top five reasons, three were variants on resistance—lack of executive consensus; lack of a senior management champion; and unrealistic expectations.
Old business processes die hard. They have built-in resistance to their own transformation. But scratch the surface and you’ll find that much of this so-called resistance is rational—at least from the perspective of the human subjects who are reengineered. Notwithstanding the lofty stateinents of BPR theorists about improving customer service, the real goal of most reengineering projects is to streamline processes and reduce costs— specifically head count. People, having heads, reflect that theirs might be one of those to be counted, and decide to resist. They openly resist. They passively resist. Or they superficially comply rather than buy in. But resist they do. And such resistance is basically rational.
Don’t get me wrong. All companies need to control or reduce costs. )ld 1tocesses, from the old economy and old enterprise, are an obstacle to competitiveness. They need to be reengineered for efficiency and high performance. This becomes especially clear when your customer calls on Friday and says that you must reduce prices by 10% by Monday or they will no longer do business with you. The 10% isn’t going to come from reducing margins, which are already razor thin.
But increasingly BPR will not be adequate for success. Although downsizing may be laudable in some situations, it is not a strategy for the future. A vision for transformation beyond “neutron bombing” your enterprise is required. Success in the new economy will require inventing new business processes, new businesses, new industries, and new customers— not rearranging old ones.
For the 1990s and the next millennium, corporations need to get beyond reengineering to the transformation of the corporation enabled by information technology (IT). The goal should not just be cost control but the dramatic and profound transformation of customer service, responsiveness, and innovation.
Business process reengineering does not a strategy for the new economy make. Like quality, reengineering is a necessary but insufficient condition for competitiveness. The reason is that the world, the economy, and all the rules of business are changing.

B&M offers a full line of transmission performance accessories, but five are of particular interest to hunters and fishermen. All are designed for easy do-it-yourself installation.
1. Auxiliary transmission oil cooler. If you want more than
100,000 miles out of your transmission, get one of these. For what it does, it just may be the most inexpensive performance product on the market. ($60)
2. Deep oil pan. In a nutshell—more oil, better cooling. This is a must for 4×4 owners who tow. B&M deep pans also offer a drain plug that allows easier service of the transmission. The pan has a filter extension, which places the filter down toward the bottom of the pan where it can draw in the coolest oil.
($45—s 125) 3. Remote Transmission Filter.The other transmission killer is contamination of the fluid. A remote fIlter makes it easier to access and change the filter. ($30)
4. Temperature Gauge.The optimum operating range of the transmission fluid is between 160° and 200° E Above that, the fluid starts to lose its lubrication qualities.The B&M gauge is an analog model that displays temperatures from 100° to 3500 F. ($45)
5. Valve Body Recalibration Kit. Improves shifts. More important, it helps reduce slippage, which reduces heat. (Shift Improver Kit: $30; Transpak: $55)

It didn’t think me very long to learn how to tell a brown trout from a rainbow or brookie. And I easily mastered the differences
between a pumpkinseed and a bluegill. But when confronted with the redear, redbreast, or longear sunfish, things got a good deal more complicated. Even now, I occasionally consult a field guide to be sure. So it is with tires for a 4×4. With so many designs available, how can you identify the correct tire for your pickup or sport utility? Consulting the simplified “field guide” below can make things easier. Use it to narrow the choice to a particular type of tire.Then go to a dealer for information on the specific model within that tire type.
Essentially; there are four types of tires of concern to outdoors- men: 1. highway rib; 2. highway/all-season; 3. offroad/all-terrain; and 4. maximum-traction offroad.
1. Highway rib tires are most commonly used in commercial applications. (A rib is the standing tread that circles the tire.) The design provides good, even wear, low noise levels, and a smooth ride. Highway rib tires usually have a four- or five-rib design. Each rib is siped, which means the ribs have little slashes that help provide biting edges for traction in dirt, slush, and snow. The grooves between the ribs can be jagged to provide even more of a bite. The shoulders (the inner and outer ribs) are wider to help cornering and braking performance. These tires are designed primarily for highway use, but will perform adequately in light to moderate snow and on level gravel and dirt roads.

2. For the most part, unless you specify an offroad tire option, highway all-season tires will probably be original equipment on your 4×4. Sometimes these tires have low rolling resistance, which helps increase fuel economy. The highway/all-season tire maintains the rib-type look, but the ribs consist of small, independent blocks positioned around the tire, which help it deliver greater performance in dirt and rain. The zigzag sipes in the blocks also help traction on snow and ice. This type of tire is an evolutionary step up from the highway rib tire. The more aggressive tread design helps it better deal with dirt and snow, so that as loose dirt and snow are compressed into the openings, you actually end up with more traction. At the same time, the all-season design provides good on- road perfirmance. The highway/all-season tire works well on dirt roads, gravel roads, sand, and in moderate snow, and provides a quiet, more comfortable ride.

3. The offroad/all-terrain tire has much more capability off the road. The tire features an interlocking tread design, which means that before the leading tread block leaves the ground, the following tread block has already come into contact with it. This allows the individual blocks to work together to help maintain ride quality and promote even wear. The multilitceted tread blocks also help deliver traction from any direction on dirt, sand, and gravel; provide handling, acceleration, and stopping ability that helps you quickly avoid a rock or a stump; and enable the vehicle to negotiate other obstacles as well. The lugs on the shoulder of the tire and the pockets between each lug foster good offroad steering response and traction.This is a tire for dirt trails, rocky trails, shallow mud, and moderate to heavy snow; it remains fairly civilized for highway use, though there may be some noise and comfort penalties.

4. As the designation suggests, the maximum-traction offroad tire is focused on offroad travel. Nonetheless, the newest designs can be acceptable for highway travel, though you will experience increased noise levels and potential traction loss in some highway driving situations. Notice that the interlocking tread design now features large, free-standing blocks. Also, the siping has been replaced by large gaps.The goal of this tire is to bite into loose or muddy surface areas for maximum traction and propel the vehicle forward. The very large opening between the lugs helps make the tire self-cleaning: The mud is compressed as the tire gets a grip and is then expelled as the tire rolls on. (Smaller grooves allow the mud to pack in between the lugs and not be expelled.) The wide grooves also help the tire perform well on loose shale and rocks. (Grooves that are too close together can’t get a grip, like a rock climber who can’t spread his fingers.)
The tire’s shoulder area has two designs to further enhance traction on loose or muddy surfaces. The varying shoulder width offers different biting edges for traction, which makes the tire the only choice when you are likely to encounter deep ruts.To take full advantage of this feature, deliberately alternate right and left turns of the steering wheel; this will gently pinch the tire against the edges of deep ruts, which allows the shoulder lugs to claw at the sides of the rut and pull the vehicle forward. In effect, this tactic gives the impression of an additional lower gear. Though it’s probably too aggressive for deep sand, the maximum-traction tire is best on loose surfaces, mud, and extremely deep snow.