|
Having missed the November ride to Paragon, I was really looking forward to this trailride. I know I often complained about how Wurtsboro was getting boring, but I always enjoyed the views from up there, and I knew that with the snow cover it would be anything but easy. Met up with Mark Silverback, Bulldog Pizzaman, Evan the Bear with Wrecker Reed in his passenger seat, and Bobby Two-Jeeps on the other side of the bridge, and off we went up to Wurtsboro. Before getting underway I got a phone call from Joe Spare-parts, sick at home, who told me that one of our newer members was broken down in Yonkers. I gave Bryan a call, found he was overheating, and after a few discussions he decided to limp home. Turns out his water pump was shot, and all ended well for him. In the end, he really didn’t miss much of a trailride anyway.
We got to the parking area just north of Wurtsboro, all aired down and disconnected and all that stuff, and headed on up the mountain. All seemed to be going well, nice thick layer of snow on the RR grade in to the trailheads, beautiful day, not too cold. As we reached the head of the trail that leads down to the bottom of Foundation Hill, I turned into the trailhead and stopped short: there posted on a tree was a sign stating that this land was State Forest and no motorized recreation was allowed. I backed out and we went on down the RR grade in the vain hope that one of the trailheads would not be posted. As I said, it was a vain hope; all the side trails up and down from the grade were posted as State Forest. Even when we found a side trail that wasn’t posted, we found that 100 yards down the trail it crossed into State Forest land and was posted at the boundary of the State Forest. We just kept on going down the RR grade until we came to the end of it behind a residential development, where we turned around and headed back up. We did slip down into the sand/gravel pits at the base of the mountain for a few minutes of play, some short steep hillclimbs and other little obstacles. In here I broke my rear brake line as I wallowed through a deep icy waterhole. Fortunately, Mark S. had a spare which fit and in just a short while, with the help of Two-Jeeps, I was back underway. It was in here that Mike B. hooked e-Jay to a piece of wreckage in an attempt to move it off the trail. Slipped the loop of the tow-strap into his trailer hitch and attached the other end to the detritus with a d-ring. When he gave it a yank, the wreckage was more forgiving than the ice in which it was embedded and the d-ring came flying under the impetus of the strap’s recoil. It went through the rear window of e-Jay, glanced off Mike’s noggin and out, right through the roof, right above the windshield. Luckily, very luckily for all, especially Mike, was that the worst damage was to Mike’s soft-top. I mean the one on the Jeep, not the one on Mike’s shoulders. Mike gets his first Bonehead Award for this move. And it also was a good lesson about safety standards. It is not “pussy” to follow safety standards. If that d-ring had flown 3 inches to the left, we’d have had to carry Mike out of there. Or bury the body, but it would have been a lot of extra work and time either way, and not fun or funny. Those stories about metal hooks going through the backs of seats is true, I’ve seen it happen now. This kind of sobered us all up and we decided to call it quits for the day. Though it wasn’t much of a trail ride, as I have often said, at least I wasn’t at work, or on Long Island in traffic. The day was beautiful and I do love the camaraderie of my Long Island redneck friends. It’s sad that the Bear Den Trail, close and convenient, is no longer accessible to us. The world is closing in, and we are going to have to get serious about preserving our freedom to ‘wheel. Can’t we all just get along? Anyway, this the P-bah, saying for now so long and keep it rubber down, paint up. |