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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.
 
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.
Meanwhile guys were airing down and having a few as we waited for the rest of the gang to arrive.
 
 
Lewis was having fun taking shots at a frozen core from the garbage can that we dumped out.
 

 

 

   
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.

 

 

 

 

   
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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