Well, we had a very relaxing evening at Domaine Valga. We dried out from the day long rain ride in the comfy leather chairs and couches around the wood burning stove until our scheduled dinner time of 8pm. It was a much more subdued evening, than the night prior, when we kinda tore up Moose Valley.
Dinner was a chicken kabob, without the kabob, over rice and mixed veggies. Very nicely done, as they served us at the 12 person dining room table, with bread rolls in baskets, and a couple of nice bottles of Cabernet. They topped it off with a piece of vanilla cake with chocalate frosting as dessert, over which we sang Happy Birthday to Hedgehog.
This morning , breakfast was at 8am, however, everybody was already gathered at our table from the night before, pretty much in the same seating order, by 7:30am. After breakfast, when we all went upstairs to gather our gear from one of our respective 5 bedrooms, with 2 beds in each, it sounded like a Hair Blow Dryer Testing facility. Each room came with a blowdryer, but nobody was coifing their hair. The dryers were laying on the floor in each room blowing into your choice of gloves, boots or socks. Until one blew up, and then another blew a breaker.
By 9am we had our sleds out of the heated garage that they dried out in the night before, in front of the lodge and saddlebags packed and attached and ready to roll. It should be a good day, as the groomers are beginning to catch up after the prior weekend’s snow storm, and our gear is dry.
6 miles in, the first of the day’s issues rears it’s ugly head. Chip’s new Yamaha Vector is in limp mode, and won’t accelerate much pass an idle. In the trail, in the middle of a prairie, with wind howling and the snow covering the ground, whipping around us viciously. An error code 84 was flashing on his electronic dashboard. Apparently each of the Yamaha riders knew that was a throttle override code, perhaps an issue from yesterday’s rain. There was a gas station less than 1/2 a mile away where we were going for fuel, so we towed Chips sled into the 60’s era gas station with the attached, heated, 2 bay repair garage.
Craig and Connecticut Jim jumped right into pulling the plastic panels off Chip’s sled and figuring out the throttle cable issue. Within a 1/2 hour, the sled was fixed, for the first time today, and we were back on the trail. But not before Rob discovered he had left the blow dryer on his helmet visor a little to long, and warped the hell out of it! It was like looking thru a kaliedoscope for him. Since it was a dual pane viser, they cut away the warped, outside viser, and told him thats as good as gets, suck it up, lets go. BUT not before Action Dan jerry rigged his helmet, as the drop down face shield latch had broken some time recently and he was getting cold air on the face, on the trail. Finally, after all these little nuances, we were back on the trail.
Everything was going good, smooth groomed trails, and after about 45 miles we came up to the largest snow drift I’ve only seen on Facetube. While we were doing photo ops in front of the drift, Chip came up to the front of the pack, sled limping again. We decided to take his belt off, and tow him up the road to see if there was a more hospitable place to work on his sled.
About 2 miles up the road, we came accross a crew of “linemen” working on a wind turbine, in a field of dozens. We pulled up next to their walk in tool shed (which they had set up as lunch room, with a large heater blowing warm air inside, while they ate their lunch around a work bench. We pulled up beside it, as a wind block, and the tear down process got going. This time they chose to just disconnect, and bypass, the sensor causing the troubles. No problem there, as long old Chip doesn’t get whiskey throttle, and let’s her eat!
It was now around 12:30pm, only 45 miles in, and another 140 to go. We needed to roll. The next stop was about 2 hours later, at a gas station. Action Dan made the call, “sorry boy’s we are not stopping at that club relaise your looking at for lunch, grab a snack out of your pack, and we are going to keep cracking.” Ron busted out some sausage and crackers for the group, we ate like mongolians, and got “cracken”. But not before Jamie told the group that his helmet viser was fogging/freezing and his visibility is about 25%, basically a little hole on the side where he was looking sideways out of, and driving Bird Box style (if you don’t get the Bird Box reference, google it, or rent it on Netflix). Obviously vision is a necessity, and if you are familiar with Joe Snowmobile, he doesn’t need any other detriments to his riding game. Unfortunately, there was no solution on the trail to his dilema, and we would just have to stop periodically to let him clear his viser manually.
We cracked it pretty good, too. We made a few stops to stretch, or smoke em if you got em, but pretty much kept at it. We made Hostellerie Baie Bleue by about 6:15. We have been here a few times before, and we quickly checked in, unpacked, showered, and headed to the pub for the “snowmobiler dinner”. Good food here, I’m partial to the baked chicken breast and 1/2 slap of ribs entree’ myself, but there was some good looking burgers put down at the table as well.
We retired by 11pm, some a little earlier, a few a little later, and breakfast call time was 7:30am. We are anticipating even more grooming activity for our next day’s ride, and are looking forward to day of riding, and hopefully no issues.
We shall see.
Bye for now…
Stick
PS. you only get one picture because I am at dinner and want to eat warm food tonight. Beat it.
PSS. I couldn’t resist, you get 3 pictures, proceed with caution…
PSSS. Today’s headline was lifted from Dylan.
