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Wheeling in da Shmootz
Weekend of Damage and Recovery
| Every weekend that had been spent up here in the the
Appalachian mountains is usually remembered for something.
Two things will stand out in our memories about this trip.
The freakishly warm weather and the string of bad luck
several of us had with our vehicles. The date of
this trip was in the middle of January, the 12th through
the 14th of 2007. By our experience up here, the
temperatures typically hovered somewhere between negative
10 and 30 degrees above zero Fahrenheit It's usually about
5 to 10 degrees colder up here on the mountain than down
below in town and snow is quite normal for this time of
year. Sometimes a lot of snow. This year
however, there was no snow, not even in the shadows of the
mountain. Instead we had a constant temperature of
50 degrees just about all through the weekend, day and
night. Much of the time it was raining, drizzling or
the fog was rolling in. Sometimes fog so dense that
we were making the wrong turns on dirt roads and trails
that we are very familiar with. But the warm
weather was a good thing because we spent a lot of time in
recovery mode. With issues like a snapped front axle
u-joint, a punctured radiator, a near flop-over in the
rain and fog, a bad wiring job on a Winch causing a dead
short on hard bumps that killed the engine, a flipped
Quad, and various lost parts like a muffler and bumper, we
might have been wet but we weren't cold. Still
though, you take the good with the bad. And even
though our Football team lost Saturday night, we had fun.
You make the best of a situation and have a laugh, a beer
and a good steak dinner.
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| With a highly anticipated football playoff game
between Philadelphia and New Orleans coming up on Saturday
night, it seemed much of the planning prior to the weekend
of 4 wheeling was centered around whether we would be able
to get good reception of a station that would carry the
game. A little research on the web found the
CEA's antenna mapping program where we were able to
determine a lot of good information about channels,
distances, direction and antenna requirements. We
make a trip to Radio Shack for a decent antenna and later
to Lowes for a good antenna mast. We just have to
make sure we have enough gas to run the generator long
enough into the evening. |
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| Meanwhile guys were airing down and having a few as we
waited for the rest of the gang to arrive. |
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| Lewis was having fun taking shots at a frozen core
from the garbage can that we dumped out. |
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| Within the hour a group of guys and their Quads
arrived. They had a nice big truck but it seemed
they could have used a larger trailer for the 4 quads they
were hauling. |
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| After a little preparation we were on the trails.
Our first stop was an old pit that is a lot of fun to
crawl around in. It's close proximity to the cabin and the
steep off camber hills to get warmed up on make it a
common first destination. |
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