Snowmobiling
2003
My brother Ed just bought a snowmobile this year and joined a club,
the Brookline Icebreakers.
That prompted me to register ours and we joined the
Bow Pioneers.
My brother Bob also has a machine and he visited for
the Martin Luther King holiday weekend.
Our first trail ride was Saturday January 18th,
probably the coldest day of the winter,
at least until that point.
It was just above zero degrees at our house
while Ed had minus nine degrees or something at his house.
Luckily it was around ten degrees when we started our ride.
We took a nice 18 mile loop through Weare. Here are two pictures from the top of Mount William:
On Sunday January 19th, we were going to ride the power lines
down to Kimball Pond and them maybe into Bow,
but Bob couldn't get his sled to start.
(Did I mention it was even colder than Saturday!):
On Monday January 20th,
we went down to Brookline and road the local trails.
We did about 9 miles on various trails that left from Lake Patanipo.
(Note the dent! Bob claims a giant rock jumped
out in front of him and made him veer into a tree!):
Then Bob and Ed gave Nate and Emily rides around Ed's yard:
On Saturday March 8th, Bob came up for another day of trail riding,
on probably the hottest day of the winter, hitting the high 50s.
Quite the contrast to the coldest weekend of the winter on our previous outing.
This time the three of us were getting braver so we decided to
make a big loop through Bow, Concord, Hopkinton and Weare.
Here are photos along the powerlines when we stopped for a break:
Unfortunately, my '77 Arctic Pantera didn't make the whole 52 mile trip.
About half way through the trip it started loosing power
and then wouldn't run at all.
Bob towed me and the sled about a mile to the next road crossing.
We left it there and I rode on the back of Ed's sled for the rest of the trip.
After puzzling over what the problem could be,
I pulled the head and saw that it had burned the edge of a piston:
I had been running it with a gasket leak on the other cylinder,
so when the piston burned on the good cylinder, it just didn't want to run.
On Sunday March 16th, Ed came up with Emily.
He brought Bob's sled for me to use, since mine was still out of commission.
We took Emily and Abby on their first trail ride, a short 9 mile loop ride.
It was another warm day, but only in the 40s.
The snow was melting fast and this would be the last ride of the year:
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