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Spring Break, Part I

First, this is going to be a long post. Hopefully a good, long post, but I’m not promising anything here. Second, I am typing in the dark. So if anythcing is mispeeled, plese ignore it. Tank you.

Third…well, the post itself. So where did we last leave off? Oh yes, my Spring Break has just started. And I was staying up all night to prove to myself that I was an idiot. I did an excellent job. Instead of grabbing a few hours of sleep, I foolishly thought I could stay up 30+ hours and anybody that knows me knows that I need sleep. I ended up paying for it though since I slept on the flight to Oakland and missed the inflight Star Trek movie. Damn.

Anyways, I arrived at the Columbia airport around 7AM and after going through my grueling preflight interview (I still say security is a joke, but that is for another post), I was waiting for the flight when I ran into a guy from my English class last semester. Turned out we were both headed to Chicago, so we hung out and talked for a while. He’s in the Navy and was telling me about his assignment this summer since he won’t be in classes and just some of the training he went through. It sounded like some fun, but tough as hell shit. He was a pretty cool guy too. Jess made fun of me when she realized I “made a new friend” =) If you don’t know already, I can’t stand many of the people here at USC. Too many ignorant, southern drunks for me. And I grew up in this state. Go figure.

Wow, that last paragraph was pretty boring. I’m not funny at 3AM. Anyways, after I got to Chicago, I went to the Oakland gate and got the last seat on the plane. See, my mom works for the airlines and therefore her family flies for free….as long as there are seats open. If the plane is sold out, tough luck. You have to find another way. It’s fun sometimes and stressful as hell other times. But I made it on this flight and slept the whole way. When I got to Oakland, my aunt picked me up and we headed to her house to hang out for the day. My uncle was at work for most of the day, so we hung out and talked for a while before he got home. She just married my uncle this past summer, so we had plenty to talk about and it was cool getting to know her. She’s 8 months pregnant too! It’s weird thinking I’m about to have a cousin who I will be 20 years older.

The next morning my uncle woke me up and we packed up and headed to the mountains to go snowmobiling! But before I get into that, let me describe my uncle. He’s about 45, looks 35, and can act like he is 25. He is a blast to be around and just an all around great guy. So after about a 4 hour drive, we finally get to La Porte, California. Population: 35. I’m not joking. There are more people on the floor of my dorm. Let’s see, the mom and dad owned the hotel, restaurant, and bar (which are all the same building), the daughter owned the general store, and the son-in-law owned the gas station. Quite a “rustic” town if you know what I mean. So anyways, we got up there around 2 and so we figured we could head on out that afternoon for a few hours of sleddin. But there was a problem. I had never worked one of these things before =)

He gave me a quick crash course in what I needed to know. Brakes on left, gas on right, point where you want to go. Oh yeah, and don’t run into anything. And with that vast knowledge of snowmobiling, we were off. The first thing you learn is that these babies can cook. I have never seen a vehicle that goes from 0 to 20 as fast as a snowmobile. You hit the gas and there is a one or two second pause as the engine gets going and then *POP*, you are instantly going 20 MPH. So after learning the first thing about them going fast, you quickly learn a second little tidbit. Hold on for that pop. Otherwise, you go flying off the back end. So we are cruising along at 35 MPH which seems pretty damn fast at first. My uncle was riding a Polaris 700. I had a Polaris 550. The only difference is one goes faster and it’s pretty obvious which one that is. So my uncle flies by me and I figure why not hit the gas and see how fast this thing can go. 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, oh shit a turn. That about sums up the next 10 or 20 minutes. I would go as fast as I could and then slam on the brakes for a curve.

Folks, I cannot stress enough the amazing, raw power you feel when you are riding a snowmobile. Flying through the wilderness at 60+ MPH, going wherever you please, however fast you want. It is just an amazing feeling. You put so much of your body into steering and controling it that it almost because a part of you. An extra limb if you will. You learn your sled. You know how it will react in given situations. And best of all, you command it. It’s a feeling that I cannot describe. This paragraph doesn’t even begin to give justice to the feeling I had when powering this baby through the mountains. It was something that I have never felt before. When you are riding around, no matter for how long, you are going on pure adrenaline and excitement. Your heart never stops pounding. You never want to stop. You want to push it as far as it will go and then some. I just can’t explain it. But god, it was wonderful to feel it pumping through my body.

Ok, has anybody heard of the “buddy-system”? Well my uncle had said to make sure to not lose sight of him so incase anything happened to one of us, the other would be there to help. So what does he do 10 minutes into our journey? Zip around a corner ahead of me and pull into the woods without telling me. What do I do? I fly by and he doesn’t see me go by. For the next 10 minutes I figured he had flown ahead and was just going to be waiting for me, laughing, and giving me a hard time for taking so long. When I arrived at a sign that said “WARNING, AVALANCHE AHEAD”, I realized this buddy system had fallen apart =) We eventually found each other, but it was pretty funny having lost each other after only 10 minutes.

After a few hours, I had gotten a feel for my sled and we were cruising around at 60 MPH. There was hardly anybody else out on the trails, so we stopped every hour or so for a piss / beer for him, coke for me break. Now I had no idea, but snowmobiles are apparently regulated like cars. So beer + a snowmobile = ticket for drunk driving. What a lovely thought to have when the freaking SNOWMOBILE POLICE PULL YOU OVER FOR A STICKER VIOLATION! I’m not joking folks. Out of nowhere, these two cops pull us over to let us know that we need to have our registration stickers on the left side. Blah, blah, blah. Luckily, the wind was blowing into my uncle’s face, so the beer smell never made it to the cop’s nose =)

Around 7 we made it back to the lodge to get some dinner and rest before heading back out for a night run. We were the only guest’s staying there, so we basically had our own kitchen cooking for us. But they were a little low on supplies, so our choices were limited. But after dinner, we wathced TV in the bar for an hour or so and then decided to head back out in the dead of night to ride for a while. We rode up into the woods and damn it was amazing. It was so dark and lonely out there. We shut off our sleds for a while and just looked at the stars and told guy jokes and then cruised back into town (if you can even call it a town) and called it a night.

Well, this post is long enough as it is, so I am going to stop here and type up the rest tomorrow. Peace.