It’s a good thing the mattresses were extra puffy WITH a box spring, instead of the thin, hard mattress on a piece of ply wood like the last 4 nights. It was a welcome upgrade for the Team. Or we blew our breakfast money already… No Snowmobilers breakfast for you. It was your choice… Rice Crispies or Brand Flakes , a hard boiled egg or the optional deviled egg, make your own toast, white or brown, with fruit.
Anyway, we were on the trail by 9am, and the sunshine was shining. But before long, Indiana Jeff’s Arctic Cat is overheating, on the frozen groomed trails. Hedgehog let him cool down, both literally and figuratively, and and at the proper time said, how about we get going and you ride in some open snow whenever it’s available. Aparently the next opportunity was at the stop sign at the road crossing… in a snow filled off trail ditch, He promptly got stuck from there. Chip Nasty grabbed a snowbungee, as well as Indiana Guy, with Connecticut Jim in hot pursuit… at least I got the picture in time! We gave it a few tugs, and made little progress.
Indiana Guy generously offered to back his Superior Bombardier Product to the arctic cat, so I asked Connecticut to move is YAMAHA out of the way. No problem, he states.
Yamaha won’t start. Will turn over, but won’t fire. Now this is funny. Connecticut promptly starts ripping every side panel and hood piece off the YAMAHA. I got pictures. He reaches into his warm coat pocket and pulls out a ziplock bag full of black 4 prong fuses. Interesting. He promptly goes thru the fusebox, pulling looking, pulling exchanging… let’s give it a try. Nope. Goes thru the process again, but also now thru the little two prongers…. let’s give it a try. But to back up a bit, during his second run thru of the fuses, I innocently inquired why some fuses had a sticker and some not. “It’s a known problem with these…” I let him finish and my only response was “and you just told me that?”. I write the blog, bro. About this time Indiana Guy walked back up and said “did I hit something on your handlebar when I lost my balance walking by?” Yep. Accidently hit the kill button. I can’t make this up. In Connecticut’s defense, he does’nt normally use the kill button, and just uses the key. But did I enjoy it.
Bout the time Connecticuts sled was running, Bond was coming back to check on the group. He backed his big Ski Doo tanker up to the skis of the arctic cat, hooked up the snowbungee, and popped the sled out.
This was all within the first 15 miles, I might add.
After that we rolled along on some nice “irish hills” trails, rolling hills, sweeping turns, fun, nice pace. Good ride… some patchy areas, some mogul areas, not shabby, but the sunshine shining.
Before long, we landed at a local club’s relais for luch of all dressed cheeseburgers, grilled cheeses and vegetable soup.
More nice trails, sunshine shining, rolling along. If you haven’t noticed, I’ll point it out. If you look at our between overnight stays, by road or trail it’s not very far. There a lot of local club trails along our route that bounce in and off of the Trans Quebec trail that is our main path in our 10 day adventure. But sometimes the local trails are not as well marked as the Trans, as it’s mostly club members using these trails and they don’t need Rand McNally to figure out where they’re going. This has allowed us to get our 140-195 mile days, but not the worry that our daily Tom Foolery will make us miss a scheduled overnight. Or so Fearless Leader says. We still had a nice loopy loop, across the road, down the trail 100 yards, and back across the road, but back where we just came from.
Some head scratching took place at the front, and before long someone decided to cross the bridge that was to our right, not across the road, and back on the trail we were.
We did about 140 Ski Doo miles, and we are at Auberge Eva. Beautiful lodge with a 6 person bar to the right of the entry, and directly across from where Fearless Craig was checking our group of 13 in. Munising Matt and I decided there was no reason for this bar to sit empty. Before long Indiana Guy, Bond, Fearless, Hedgehog, and Action had joined us for Big Bud Lites, at the bar. It was a crapshoot if this blog was going to even be started tonight.
After a couple, our old friends Gaf and Dan came walking around the bar. Our buddies on the trail from New York are staying at the same place. We have crossed paths and stay overs at the same places over the years, and it’s always a good time catching up. We just missed Ed! Next year buddy!
Dinner is the customary 7pm, but was pushed to 7:30 due to our early check in… at the bar.
Double Double, Same Ole Same Old, bye for now…
Stick
