There seems to be no end to the snow this winter so I’ve decided to embrace the cold weather and spend more time snowmobiling. Not sure that I would like snowmobiling, I bought an older ’96 Polaris Indy sled a couple years ago – it was nothing fancy, and at 500cc it wasn’t really the fastest thing on the trail. This year I stepped it up a bit and bought a newer 2002 Yamaha Viper – its been so much fun that I’ve picked up new gear so that I can ride more and not get so cold. The new sled is a bit faster too; at 700cc I haven’t found out how fast it will go but I stopped trying when the speedometer hit 97 mph.
It snowed so much this weekend we parked the sleds under a pine tree to keep some of the snow off the seats. The Polaris is in the front, the Yamaha is in the back and the SkiDoo on the left is Mark’s.
This past weekend I joined my brother and friend at the cabin for a weekend of riding. We had record cold temps, Friday when we arrived it was under 10 degrees. Once we were all settled in, had the water and heat turned on inside the cabin (its usually winterized) we decided to ride to get dinner. After dinner we kept on riding until my old Polaris that my brother was riding blew a sparkplug that was loose, at the same time the pull rope used to start my snowmobile broke so we rushed home before anything else could go wrong. Saturday morning we ran to the repair shop and spent a good part of the day “wrenching” on the sleds until we could go back out later that night. I always thought the older snowmobile steered poorly, and I found out on Saturday that the carbides (strips under the skis that bite into the snow) were worn on one side and missing on the other. Good time to replace them I suppose and wouldn’t you know it was like brand new when done.
I’m hoping to get back to Tawas one more time in the couple weeks, but in any case we’ll be back on the trails again during the annual Perchville festival.