Winter here on the east coast of Newfoundland has once again been very slow to start. We had our first decent dusting of snow back in November which quickly melted, it didn't start to become consistently cold until the last two weeks of December. Our first significant snowfall of the season finally arrived Christmas Eve.

Snow has been pretty steady ever since and with a blizzard forecasted for tomorrow I decided to hit the trails on what could be Project Foreman's last trail ride until spring! (fingers crossed anyway!)

In December my new favourite trailside tool arrived, a CS 2500 top handle chainsaw. It's a 25cc 2-stroke saw with auto oiler and a 12" bar. Everything on the saw looks decent and it started right up out of the box using quality Sthil premixed fuel. The best part is it's small enough to carry in my short ATV cargo box no problem.

I left the house and hit the trails around the airport fence in Torbay. It was great riding, the trails were well packed down but even when breaking seldom used side trails the snow was not deep enough to stop my brand new 27" ITP (not a sponsor) Mud Lite XTR radials.

Project Foreman continues to run well and looks absolutely awesome after its refresh earlier this year. It's a shame I haven't had the time to ride more often and show it off!

I headed up a seldom used side trail where I knew there were a couple trees blown down across the path. This is exactly the type of situation I was excited to have this new saw for.

The CS2500 fired right up and made short, easy work of this trail obstacle. I'm super stoked to have this unit in stock for trail repairs and gathering firewood for trailside campfires & boil-ups.

Later in the day I began having electrical issues on the bike. First the hand warmers gave out followed by the LED light bar. I diagnosed and determined the regulator gave out so the bike was not charging the battery. Since I always keep the bike on a battery tender, it simply ran on battery for the last three hours straight! 

At this point it was getting dark so I turned around and headed for home with all accessories & lights off saving the last of the battery power to run the headlights for the quick run down my street. When I got home I confirmed my diagnosis on the 20 year old regulator and ordered an OEM replacement from Honda One.

Cheers, MIKE

Copyright © 2025 Michael Smith