Well, it's winter time and it is so funny to hear everyone complain about how cold it is and how they wish it was warmer. I do sympathize for my little brother Nathan who just got home from his mission in Africa last week because I can only imagine how much just the temperature change has been a shock to him. However, while everyone else is complaining about how cold it is, I don't think it is cold enough! New York winters turned me into a crazy person when it comes to cold. I can't explain it, but I LOVED all the days I spent out tracting in -40 degree temperatures. I can't explain why, but my favorite feeling is a nice warm body in a coat or sleeping bag and the cold air on my face. I love the bite at the tip of my ears in the cold that feels like they are being pinched by pliers. Call me crazy, and I will agree, but the one thing that I love most about the cold is the snow. I love it especially around the Christmas season when the earth looks so clean and fresh covered in a blanket of snow and everything seems to be matching up to a perfectly cliche Christmas. (Sadly, we are still waiting for that this year :P). However, the thing I love MOST about the snow is this...
and this...
Oh yeah! Snowmobiling!!! I have to admit, my first impression of the sport was somewhat sub-par. The details are sketchy, but I remember that I was young, no more than ten or so and my family went up to Daniel's Summit with a group of people, probably a bunch of people from my dad's company, and the group did a ride on a trail with snowmobiles. Well, I remember being so nervous that I felt like I was going to throw up at any moment, which wasn't helped when I heard a couple of the guides talking about one portion of the trail where one side of it was a several hundred-foot drop off. Yeah, thanks a lot guys. Then I got put on the back of a snowmobile of someone who I didn't even know and the only thing I remember about the whole trip was feeling like I was going to die and screaming "Slow down!!" like a little girl, but my voice being drowned out by the sound of the engine. I don't remember the status of my pants after the entire trip was over, but it wouldn't surprise me if they were in need of a change.
Now, flash forward another ten or eleven years or so and I am now on my first trip of the annual Ewell family winter getaway trip over President's Day weekend. Part of it includes spending a whole day out snowmobiling. What with my one and only prior experience with snowmobiles, I'm sure anyone could guess that I wasn't feeling too up to the challenge. Well, it was fun, but being an amateur on a fairly under-powered sled, I got stuck in the snow a lot, (mostly due to my own confidence issues). It was far more enjoyable than what I remembered as the screaming little wuss from years before.
Flash forward another year and now I am at the next year's winter getaway, but something is different. My brother-in-law Kyle has rented more of these sleds:
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Yamaha FX Nytro. Ballsiest piece of equipment I have ever ridden, (well, maybe minus the Yamaha R6 bullet bike I helped put into storage on my mission...). Kyle himself is a man who knows no fear. If he thinks he can ride up that hill, or take that jump, or blast through a cluster of trees at breakneck speeds, he will freaking do it. That year, riding the Nytros, I was HOOKED FOR GOOD! I can't get enough of it now and I find myself wishing like a little schoolboy that I get a snowmobile helmet for Christmas. I have soooooooooo much fun going out with Kyle and the family on excursions with these powerful toys! I'm still far within the range of "Freaking Amateur" but I dream to be able to ride like this:
First of all, the song on this trailer rocks! Next, it is just so hard to explain how freaking cool these guys are with the amount of skill they have riding like this. There is just this inexplicable exhileration that comes with cranking the throttle of an 1100 cc engine and just gliding through the deep powder of the mountains like you were bobbing along on clouds. Falling off isn't too bad either considering landing on a cloud isn't a rough gig. I remember watching the precursor to the video above, Schooled 2 with Kyle at his house one night before we went out on a ride and just drooling at the completely perfect terrain these guys were riding on and the immense amount of skill they displayed. I felt like I could have just jumped on a sled right then and rode like a pro. (I actually proved that wrong the next day going off a little jump and smacking my face against the handlebars of the sled. Thank goodness for full-face helmets).
Now, I try to "convert" everyone to snowmobiling and try to tell them of how amazing an experience it is. I'm not talking about trail riding either, but blasting through clean, untouched powder deep enough to bury several snowmobiles without a trace. Free-styling to the max and just taking in the nature and the beauty all around. I also think of how thankful I am for Kyle and how understanding and patient he is with me on our rides together. By comparison, he's Evil Kinevel when I am like Adam Sandler in "The Waterboy" trying to work up the courage to take a small, calculated risk and do something like sidehill or try to get a little air off of a bump in the snow and ending up getting stuck beyond anyone's comprehension. With this new passion, I find myself just wishing and hoping for snow to come to make everything look more Christmas-y and to put down more and more powder in the mountains so Kyle and I can go tear it up all day in the woods. So, just as the song says: "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!"
This made Kyle happy. He's excited to ride with you...once their is SNOW. Seriously, we need snow.
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