Torsdag 6. januar 2022

Another Confessional

    Okay, okay, OKAY, I admit it. Although my tractor amply powers a seven-foot snowblower through some pretty deep snow (if it starts), it’s not nearly as much fun as pushing snow with my 2011 Polaris Sportsman 500 HO four-wheeler and its five-foot blade. 

I enjoy pushing snow with my four-wheeler now

    I did not want to buy this machine; it being entirely my wife’s idea, and so I did not watch these videos prior to purchasing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-ysvh46GY4, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttIdDpDv918, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLtljP3D1dE and so ended up spending an additional $800 to get it running up to snuff before I had owned it even six months or put 30 or so-miles on it. 

Grandpa and Ozaawaa were going for a four-wheeler ride in July of 2021. We got a half mile away from the farm when it started to stall and we had to turn around. It was another few weeks before we were able to get it fixed. Very disappointing.

    But that’s old news, and so far things are working as they’re designed. (Knock on wood) I’ve learned about its operation after consulting the on-line owners manual that I bought after the fact, and familiarizing myself with potential problems by following ATV Forums on-line.

    I know, I know, I used to scoff and call them toys when people said they used their four wheelers for pushing snow; when at the same time my neighbors owned gigantic four-wheel tractors that dwarfed my 1960s-era, two-wheel drive, ‘pony-sized’ tractor (as the late Layton Oslund used to call it) Massey-Ferguson 180 diesel similar to the size of a miniature rider lawnmower.

    Although I found them noisy, intrusive, and damaging to the environment right from the beginning of my experience with them, jobs up here in the early 1980s were hard to find and I ended up working at a factory for over 30-years that manufactured four-wheelers (ATVs) and a host of other global transportation products, including boats, and later electric vehicles.

    During all those decades I never owned an ATV except to help family members to acquire one, but to do so I had to take an ATV Rider Safety course required by the company. It was educational for a person my age who didn’t grow up riding four-wheelers and snowmobiles as had the majority of the employees did as kids, so it was purely second-nature to them by the time they got to be in their early 30s.

    Snowmobiles too had proven unbelievable in both public and military theaters as they can access remote areas otherwise inaccessible. Scott and Amundsen would’ve used them had they been invented, as Edgar Hetteen of Roseau did in Alaska in 1960, demonstrating the first use of Polaris snowmobiles during a 1200 mile trip on the Bering Sea coast. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2011/02/14/hetteen-obit

    Vehicles like that are so prevalent in this part of Minnesota that local people used to say that you could tell who the riders were by the clothing they wore. They were outsiders if they were wearing factory-brand name riding suits, boots, gloves, and helmets; locals, if they wore Carhartt coats, overalls, and chore gloves, stocking caps, facemasks, and Sorel boots.

    My anti-ATV sentiment began changing on a four-wheeler ride I took with some co-workers through several miles of swampy ground from Fourtown to  Grygla, Minnesota, years later. One of the co-workers kindly arranged a four-wheeler for me to use, so I could see first hand their amazing capability to go where they were pointed whether up, or down, through water, or over standing saplings and brush, proving quite the benefit for use in wilderness emergencies such as life-threatening situations or distribution of manpower and equipment during wildfires.

    A few year later, when again on a departmental ATV ride, someone had offered me a smaller less-powerful 350cc two-wheel drive model to ride; that was fine by me. But later in the day, one of of the guys insisted I ride his brand new 500 cc four-wheeler. (It may have been the same year model I bought, eleven years later.) I told them I was quite happy with the one I was riding and having all the fun a fifty-plus year old man could have sliding around corners and stuff. But he carried on about how wonderful this ‘big’ four-wheeler was and how I just had to ride it ... so I relented.

Off the others sped, leaving me sitting on the quietly idling 500; pep, pep, pep, pep, pep, pep ...

It’s quiet steady idle lulled me into thinking it wasn’t much different from the other as the noise of the other machines died away in the distance and I was left alone in the woods there, sitting on its big wide comfortable seat trying to insure all the gauges were reading what they were supposed to, etc.

    That's when I put all my fear aside and gunned the right-hand thumb throttle like I had been doing all day on the little 350 -- then slammed the four-wheeler solidly into a tree trunk not three feet in front of me; the tree didn’t move a bit.

    Feces!

    There was no slipping with four wheel drive and four big wide all-traction tires under it. Backing farther away from the vicinity of the tree, I immediately heard a clicking-clacking noise in the front end that I knew wasn’t supposed to be there. I was just sick. As hard as I hit, I fully expected to see the front rack or grill broken; but couldn’t see any easily visible damage. I swore at myself for giving into peer pressure. For dumb!

    Another of the guys rode back to see where I was when I didn’t show up. He laughed pretty hard about it, as I was later prone to do then. He found a plastic A-Arm bushing on the front right axle that was broken, but couldn’t see any major damage. I insisted the other guy ride it back and I'd follow. The four-wheeler’s owner was very understanding and a good sport about it. He later learned the broken bushing was a warranty issue so its replacement didn’t cost anything except the time the machine was idle during the week. No big deal.

    At that point I was years away from feeling happy about riding one. I hope this feeling continues for a long time.