There is a season - turn, turn, turn

Wow, what a difference a week makes! A week ago I posted my pictures from my Sunday snowmobile ride. I also rode on Monday, tuesday and Wednesday. On thursday the warm-up came, and now a few days later it's like a different world out there. Bare lawns are now the norm down in North Adams and into Pittsfield, the sun is shining and temperatures are in the 50s. Of course we still have a ton of snow in our yard, but I suspect that by the end of this week all that will remain will be snowbanks and a huge mound of snow on the deck.

On Wednesday I went out for my final ride of the season. I had hoped to do a nice long ride, perhaps as much as 100 miles. The trails were still fantastic, but with Thursday's impending warmup, I had decided that Wednesday would be my last ride. About 30 miles into my ride I was approaching Kelley Stand road in Stratton when my oil light started flashing on the sled. I pulled over and investigated. Well apparently when I filled my oil tank before Tuesday's ride, I never put the oil cap back on. All of my oil had splashed out of the oil tank, all over my engine bay. Brilliant! Fortunately I found the oil cap wedged down between the body panel and the exhaust can. It was half melted, but still able to function properly, so I reinstalled it and headed toward home. I rode very easily so that I didn't run out of oil. Once I got back to Woodford I called Kristin and had her bring me some oil from the garage. She was of course thrilled to have a chance to come help me out of a jam instead of sitting home watching TV. She met me with a coke and a smile!

By that point I was so pissed that I had done such a boneheaded thing, I just decided to ride right home. Since this was the end of my last ride, I rode really agressively and actually managed to get home before Kristin did. All in all, I managed to put just a tad over 500 miles on the new sled, which gave me about 750 total miles for the season. Not stellar by any stretch, but not too bad either. On Friday I washed the sled and de-greased the engine bay to get rid of the oil that splashed all over the place. When I get time I'll wax it and install the new accessories that I bought for it. Pretty soon it'll be off to PLT to get the tunnel supports installed. Once I get all of my car issues straightened out and get the Corvette out of the garage, I'll pull the old sled in and start the dis-assembly process on it. I'm looking forward to working on the sled, and I can't wait until next year when I'll finally have a 2nd sled available for people to ride.

With this warm weather, it's awful hard not to start looking forward to summer. Now I really need to get the cars straightened out so I can start driving them.