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Published: February 7th 2010
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Steve at His Cabin
Frontage on Big Lake With Jan and I heading to Cabo San Lucas in Mexico next week, I wanted to get in one more trip up north to get in some riding. My friend Steve built a beautiful cabin on Big Lake, one of the lakes on the Cisco chain just west of Land O' Lakes this year and he and some friends were up riding since Friday. I arrived on Saturday and we planned to ride together Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.
Steve's friends who were up for the trip and staying at his new cabin were: Jim from near the Twin Cities in Minnesota and Jamie and Dale from near Delavan in southern Wisconsin. Steve also had his two sons up for the weekend, Jack and Collin. I've ridden with Steve, Jamie and Jim a couple times in the past 2 years and they are a great bunch of guys. They really love snowmobiling and can ride all day and then some. I arrived at The Gateway Lodge on Saturday afternoon about 1:30 PM. Steve, Jim, Jamie and Dale had ridden to Lake Gogebic with Jack and Collin and were having lunch at the Root Cellar on the east side of the lake
when he called me on the phone. We decided to meet at Hoppy's Bar in Kenton, a ride of about 40 miles for each of us. I arrived at Hoppy's a little ahead of them and soon they showed up with the boys. Jack is 9 years old and Collin is 6. They were riding double with Steve and Jim. These young guys are great troopers. They had already ridden about 90 miles when they got to Hoppy's. They were happy and enjoying the riding. It won't be too long until they'll be riding solo with their Dad. Jamie and Dale decided they wanted to continue north from the Root Cellar to the Porcupine Mountains, so they did not go to Hoppy's with them.
When Steve came in, steam was rising from his head when he removed his helmet. Now, anyone who has ridden with Steve knows that this is a pretty common occurrence. He sometimes resembles the Creature From the Black Lagoon when he takes off his helmet on the trail with the steam rising from him. It may have something to do with the many, many layers of clothing he wears when rding. Anyway, this time the
steam was caused by the fact that his oft troubled snow machine had developed yet another problem. It blew a fuse that was on the circuits for his instrument panel, tail light and hand warmers. Not a good thing when it's about 10 degrees out. It was particularly angering to Steve since he had just had his engine replaced for the third time in little over a year. He was now convinced, if he wasn't before, that this machine was a lemon. He asked around Hoppy's if anyone had a spare fuse and two helpful guys each gave him one. He put one in the sled and kept the other for a spare.
When we saddled up to leave and got the sleds running, the new fuse blew before we left the parking area. He put the other one in and that blew again before we had gotten very far. It was pretty cold out, probably in the single digits and when I stopped on the trail, his hands were pretty cold. He was riding with gauntlets over the hand grips that block the wind and help keep your hands warm, but without the hand warmers it still gets
cold. So he said he would ride until his hands got too cold and asked if we could switch sleds for a while so he could ride mine with the working hand warmers. About halfway, we switched and he rode my new Renegade Etec 600 to Land O' Lakes where we switched again for his 12 mile ride to the cabin. At each stop, we asked the boys how they were doing and they were doing fine-as I said, real troopers.
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