By Bark R. Woof

OK, now this is getting ridiculous, enough is enough. Every time I turn around Big Guy has spent more on his Jeep; I heard him say he was spending food money on the thing now. That I cannot tolerate. It's clear he's gone crazy, and I'm just waiting for the men in the white coats to come take him to the human-pound like they would mad dog. The Jeep has become a hole in the road into which Big Guy is pouring food money. Meanwhile, he drags me along for a day or two of sliding and bouncing around the back of his Jeep and expects me to get all excited about it.

This month the trail-ride was what the two-leggeds call the Beacon Trail. At first I thought Big Guy had said Bacon Trail, and I was all excited about that, but when I learned of my error, I shrugged in my doggie way and hauled my butt up into the back of the Cherokee for the ride off Long Island. Never failing in its iniquity, the highway system out of the metro morass was jammed. BG and I spent 6 hours finishing a 3-½ hour ride, a lot of other guys took even longer. Never the less, we had the cook fires going before it became fully dark, meat sizzling on the grills was pure ambrosia to me. We ate and drank our fills, and crawled off to bed through a haze of mosquitoes.

The dawn brought our first bonehead award of the weekend. Smiling Willie somehow managed to get his Jeep stuck, wedged between three trees . . .and he did it while he was sleeping!!!!! Wrecker Reed helped him free his Jeep, and we all hauled our bleary butts down to the friendliest little town in Massachusetts for breakfast at Carm's. BG brought me a little bacon, we gassed up and hit the road for the Bacon, er, Beacon Trail (wishful thinking?), close by the town. It didn't take long for the fun to begin. TechnoWiz himself, leading the trail this day, managed to break a front axle on the first major obstacle of the trail, called Mess-Your-Pants, a series of pretty steep, slick rock steps. Everything was slick up there, it had been raining for a week, and even the mud was muddy. Big Guy tried the obstacle three times, but with an open diff up front he just couldn't climb over the first big step, so he took the go-around (I'm not too sure what they're talking about, diffs, and lockers, but I know you can't eat them). By this time TechnoWiz was back up and running, so, taking a lesson from Wrecker Reed, he bombed up over Mess-Your-Pants and we went on up the trail.

I will tell you something about this trail. All the two-leggeds were having a great time, enjoying the obstacles. I, on the other hand, never spent so much time sliding against the equipment in the back, or against the back of the front seats, on any other trail. Talk about steep hill-climbs, and the rocks . . . my poor butt is still sore from bouncing around the Jeep. It just about wore me out.

Around 11:00 it began to drizzle on us. Big Guy got to bust his new winch's cherry when we got to the obstacle called the Pinnacle (peak, summit, tor, highpoint, crest . . .), an impossible, and nearly impassable, obstacle of several jutting rocks followed by a couple of tough rock steps, all at the top of a steep, rocky hill climb, which on this day had running water as well. Ted the Fed, Lucy's two-legged, watched Big Paul in his white Bronco hang up on the Pinnacle and suggested to BG that we take the go-around on this one. BG agreed that, as his Daddy so often has said, "Discretion is the better part of valor," (this comes up a lot, doesn't it) and we backed down to the go-around. Ted led the way up, and made it with a little bouncing. BG followed, and once again I found myself scrambling to keep from sitting on the boxes at the back of the Jeep. But there was one spot BG just couldn't get by, and he kept trying . . . slam up the hill, stop, slide back down . . . slam up the hill, stop, slide back down . . . slam up the hill, slide back down . . ..Ted backed his Jeep down as an anchor point, and BG winched off Ted 'til he got up past he pesky little hole that was swallowing his rear tire and keeping him from climbing the hill. Once again, he moaned something about getting a front locker. If he spends one more dime on that thing, well, I don't know, as long as the food keeps coming I guess it'll be ok.

While we were watching Big Paul try the pinnacle there was a loud crack, and dusty smoke puffed out from under the white Bronco. Paul snapped his u-joint, which sheared the axle too. So as Paul, TechnoWiz and Mikey the Rat worked on Paul's truck we had lunch and Uncle Bob in his yellow Scout worked on making the go-around totally impassable. Big tires on a Scout, when spinning in mud, are very effective earthmovers. Uncle Bob left his mark on the Beacon Trail that day.

After wading through the mudhole, where Big Guy followed Wrecker in, only to scare himself with how deep he suddenly was, we climbed up to the trail's namesake, an old beacon tower on the top of the mountain. We hung out there for a while, Lucy acted silly eating sticks like a young dog will, and a few of the two-leggeds tried to commit suicide by climbing up the steel ladder on the tower. We soon climbed back into our trucks and headed down the hill, only to find ourselves facing the obstacle called the Waterfall, a feature of this trail that has earned it the alternative name of Full Frontal. BG drove up to the foot of the Waterfall, but, using discretion, pulled off to watch the fun. Only TechnoWiz made it to the top, and he needed to winch.

As Wrecker Reed drove past, BG called to him, "C'mon Wrecker, don't disappoint us!!" Wrecker, who had just swapped in a solid front axle to replace the spindly IFS he had in his toy-ota, said, "No, not today, I'm a new man. No more wrecking my truck." Then Big Paul, pointing to his Bronco parked by the side of the trail said, "See my truck there? You'll be there too. No one is making it up this trail today." This disturbed the Wrecker, and he refuted Paul's prediction with great fortitude. And I'm sure he meant every word he said, however as Wrecker got up to the hump of the trail, so to speak, there came that familiar, yet sickening and loud "craack" of a snapping axle. The Wrecker lives!! He broke his new solid front axle and ended up parked right next to Paul's truck.

And then there's poor Willie. TechnoWiz asked him, "Yo, Willie you going to try this one?" and Willie said "Nah, not today," and then proceeded to try to climb up the Waterfall. Well, right near the beginning of the obstacle is a nasty little hole followed by a rock step. Willie managed to drop his left front tire into the hole and once again, "SNAP"; another axle bites the dust. Anchored off BG's Cherokee, Willie and Mikey the Rat (who isn't much of a rat, after all, as he spent a good part of the day working on other people's vehicles: good man. But then again, no cops came by, so . . .) pulled out the broken axle so Willie could two-wheel back to camp, where we all went after first sliding down the now very slick bypass around the Pinnacle. BG even got going sideways a little coming down that hill. I saw his knuckles turn white on the steering wheel. We made it back to pavement, stopped at the convenience store for necessities (ice and beer), and scooted back to camp to get the fires going. We had another feast of meat and beer (I believe there was a bottle of vodka there too) until Big Guy began to honk into the darkness from his chair, and hauled his butt back to the tent so we could bed down, at last. He is the hardest guy to convince its bedtime, I'll tell ya.

Morning came, coffee brewed, campsite packed up and another stop for breakfast at that culinary wonderhouse, Carm's Restaurant. After breakfast, a small contingent chose to stay to run Old Chester Trail, and we'll have to wait for the Prez's trail report to see how that went. I convinced BG it was time to go home, and seeing as how he almost fell asleep several times on the way home I was right. We drove through such heavy rainsqualls on the way home that the Jeep was practically clean when we got home. I was wondering if the rain was moving north, and if it was, was hoping it would spare the guys on Old Chester Trail, as it was a dense and heavy rain. We got home, and I, as usual, headed right upstairs for the big bed, while Big Guy unloaded the Jeep and hosed it off. Even with the abuse the trail handed to me, it was a great weekend, great camaraderie, great adventure, great grilled meats!

This is Bark R. Woof saying hasta la vista until next time, remember: keep all four paws on the ground and your furry side up!