Earlier this season I made my very first snowmobile purchase,  a 1997 Skidoo Grand Touring 500, and French picked up a brand new Yamaha Venture 700 triple. With January on our door step and no sign of snow here on the East Coast we were getting a little antsy for our first ride! Sick of waiting, Saturday morning Sooley, Maffer, French, Bill & I loaded up the sleds and headed out over the highway to Port Blandford where they did have snow!

We unloaded our machines near the entrance to Terra Nova Golf Course and hit the old railway line West towards Gambo. Unfortunately we hadn't gone more than 1/2 a mile before trouble set in. One of the rear shocks on Bill's '97 V-Max 700 let go and got twisted up by the rotating track. Thankfully we managed to limp it the short distance back to the trailer, we were happy it didn't happen later in the day. Not one to leave a buddy stuck, Bill hopped on with me and we re-started our adventure.

It was a pretty decent day. The track wasn't groomed but it overall wasn't too bad, there were a few large drifts that would catch you on this overcast day if travelling too fast. We made it to Gambo without incident and headed up a woods path to find a place for lunch. When we stopped we were met with wet snow flurries which soaked everything and precluded our poor attempts to start a fire. Maffer started to eat his sandwich and found that the gas can he was carrying in the rear rack of his Scandic 503 was leaking. Fuel soaked completely through his knapsack & sandwhiches. Sooley was getting frustrated with his '89 Enticer 340 which was now running rough. A cracked ignition coil caused one cylinder to intermittently loose spark. We tried drying it out and wrapping the cracked housing with electrical tape which helped only a little.

Since the weather was turning poor we decided to make our way back to Port Blandford, all of us followed an increasingly frustrated Sooley on the Enticer. The old beast would struggle to run 40 km/h but every time the 2nd cylinder cut in the beast speed right up. After an hour of this Sooley was getting pretty pissed and pinned the sled wide open with both cylinders catapulting the machine to a blistering 75 km/h. (pretty hairy on an un-groomed trail on a sled with 2" of suspension travel!) Unfortunately one of those large snowdrifts caught the sled and sent Sooley skyward holding onto the handlebars in a Superman like pose. He landed hard and rolled across the trail moaning in utter discomfort while the rest of us cried with laughter assuming (correctly) that he was alright. We fixed up a broken throttle and finished our trip at a more reasonable pace.

When we got back to town, we stopped to Maffer's house to unload his Scandic. The sled fired right up but soon started to sputter. French grabbed the primer button to no avail and we all assumed he flooded the engine. The machine would not start. We burned out the cylinders, changed the spark plugs, checked for spark all to no avail. We then realized it was simply out of gas! The sled ran all the way to Gambo and back and only ran out when we tried to unload it...that's cutting it pretty close!

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