We spent last Saturday up at Gould doing demo rides with the new sleds at a Poker Run, which was fun. It’s always cool when you can put folks on the new product and see what they think of them.

Spending time in Gould always reminds me of all the time I got to spend riding at Gould and around the Walden area in general. Mom and Dad owned a small house in Walden for many years and my grandparents also moved up there when Grandpa retired, so we spend lots of time in the North Park area. We got to Gould by mid-afternoon on Friday, so Jon and Kellie (Bayne, who had come along to give me a place to stay in their camper and to help with the demo rides) and I figured we’d better take a ride for the afternoon. We had heard and could tell during the drive up that there was lots of fresh snow, so a trip up the trail to Jack Park seemed like a good idea. I had talked to my good friend Kenny Huismann (from Walden), and he was free for the afternoon as well. We had a good ride in some really nice snow. We took our M8 RMX, the ’08 Rev XP, our 700 Dragon, and Kenny’s Summit 800 up the hill. The ride from Gould to Jack Park goes from right at 9,000’ to just over 11,200’ at the top of Jack Park, so it’s always interesting to watch and feel the performance go away as the altitude increases. The new Rev was fun to ride again and really does feel like a lightened up Rev Summit. Even in the really fluffy snow that was doing its best to plug all the air intakes, the EFI equipped M8 and Dragon ran absolutely flawless in the deep snow. We’ve also been continuing to run our RMX kit, along with a Maverick 162 track on Kenny’s sled, and it also worked well in the steep and deep. As the dyno predicted, Kenny’s RMX Summit climbed the best in the snow, but all the sleds were great fun to ride and you can definitely feel the extra throttle response of the RMX heads, especially when the altimeter climbs to 11,000 feet.

After the ride, we stopped at the Cookhouse in Gould for dinner and were talking about how long we’d all been riding and how much a part of our lives the sport is. There is no doubt that getting involved in a business that revolves around your favorite hobby is a good way to take the fun out of those activities, but when you get to the hills on a Friday afternoon with two foot of untracked snow in front of you, it’s still hard not to enjoy the sport. I can remember as a kid just learning how to ride in powder that Kenny gave me some good advice about not getting stuck. He said “just don’t ever let off.” Funny thing is I’ve followed that advice a lot and a few times getting stuck would have been cheaper! At any rate, I got my first Kitty Kat when I was three, which means that snowmobiling has been a part of my life for about 30 years now. We took a couple of years off from snowmobiling when I was in elementary school, but we went back to riding in late 1985, when I was in fifth grade. That means that this winter is the 21^st in a row that we’ve been riding sleds, which does seem amazing to me. I can remember my first sled back then was a Polaris Colt. The first winter out I was chasing Dad through the trees at F ox Park and hit a tree dead center and literally broke the hood in half. Since they were fiberglass back then, Dad glassed it back together and painted it a cool Burgundy color which was neater than stock anyway. After that, it was a pair of TXLs (not Indys!), and finally an Indy 400. The first major purchase I ever made as a semi-adult was when I bought a shiny new Indy 440 SKS in 1993. When we purchased the store in 1994, that ensured a steady stream of cool new sleds to ride since then.

Sometimes, it’s easy to get distracted with the business side of snowmobiling. I really have wrecked more sleds staring at the tach than for any other reason. With all those hours spent working on clutching, reading the tops of pistons, testing stuff on the dyno, and just plain riding to make sure what we’re selling really works, sometimes it’s difficult to just go ride for the fun of it. However, it’s days like Friday afternoon that remind me why we ride. There’s simply no substitute for a day of fresh powder with good friends along. The exhilaration of tipping the sled over on one ski, turning out just before you’re stuck, or sidehilling between two trees with snow blowing over the hood is a feeling and experience you just can’t match. In a lot of ways, snowmobiling is fun because you can make it a challenging as you want, but it doesn't have to be. At times, just pinning the throttle and racing across the meadow is all it takes to enjoy the speed aspect of riding. Other times, pointing the sled uphill through a group of trees where you have to sidehill out is fun, because you know it’s going to be a lot of digging if you don’t make it. The risk of getting stuck (or worse) makes it all the more fun when you do make it. Finally, there’s nothing like the camaraderie when you’re back at the lodge or out to dinner with your riding buddies talking about the day. How’d the sleds run, who was faster, who got stuck the most, did you see me just miss that blow hole? Our dinner Friday night was just another dinner that followed another good day of riding, really unremarkable except for that it got me thinking how cool it is that I’ve been on sleds my whole life. A couple of years back I put together some slides that chronicled some of our adventures over the last thirty plus years that you can view by clicking the link below.

Slide Show Video

Here’s hoping the next 30 are just as much fun!

Thanks,
Donavon