Well I guess this is the 3rd annual Fanatic ride.
The first was just me & Bisshy and now we manager to tack on a few more guys.

This took place yesterday (Feb 3/08) which is the day after the Kelvington Trailbalzers big annual rally.

CdnRider100 posted some comments here about the fun we had...
http://www.snowmobilefanatics.com/forum/topic/77401/display.aspx?page=2

and he's got his photos & videos here...
http://www.snowmobilefanatics.com/gallery/CdnRider100/display.aspx

It was pretty nippy at first but the sun came out & seemed to warm things up a bit and we had really nice weather and some fresh snow for our day.

Trails we spent the most time were logging roads and were un-touched for at least a week or so, so Bisshy was breaking trail a bit, but they were smooth as silk.

The sides of the trail were filled with powder, and against warnings by Dad (oldcheetah) and Bisshy of the rocks and stumps, I couldn't resist boondocking where it looked smooth as glass. Nothing claimed any parts or doctors visits out of that, and it was awesome. The Dragon is very well balanced for carving and it was easy to get the hang of throwing in around in the powder.

The video on CdnRider100 is the worst of the boondocking that I did... it was only for the camera. You can see that there was a large rock that was pretty obvious, that I avoided.

It was a real blast & can't wait to get back there.

Thanks to Bisshy for the use of his shop for storage & working on the Dragon to grind down the rivets inside the tunnel that were causing some fraying on the track.

Here's a few pics that I took with my cell.... sorry for the quality....

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SWEET PICS KEV

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Good to see the pics from the ride

Well, I'm still a bit sore from the riding for the weekend..

I think it's important to give props to BISSHY and rest of the Kelvington Trailblazers, The saturday rally was a great day out. Even though it was -21 or so they managed to get 192 sleds around the 100 mile route (Shorter trails were optional). They had hot chocolate, Hot Dogs, and gas at the 1/2 way point, and put on a great breakfast, and supper after the event.

If you are into sled comparing, there was ample opportunity as I saw everything from vintage right up to the latest full mountain sleds out for the day...

Funny thing, but the SK Fanatics seem to be amazingly consistent in Sled Choice:

We had 2 Dragons, 2 XC SP sleds (My 2001 600 and my neighbour Bob's 2000 700), OldCheetah was on a Trail Touring Fan, and we also rode with a 600 Classic running the M10 suspension and a 600 VES motor ... Notice a Brand Choice pattern emerging

To be fair, we rode with a Arctic Cat ZRT600 and a 600 Renegade Skidoo... so we're not complete bigots ...


Bob managed to get a pretty dose of frostbite on his chin, didn't have his balaclava up over it and under the front of the helmet when he first rode out Sat. AM and it was pretty swollen when we finished the ride for the day.

The groomer had done a great job, and the trails did hold up pretty well to all the traffic all things considered.

I'd highly recommend the Kelvington rally to anyone who can attend next year, and I sure plan to be back.

Again, I can't thank 500FasEnuf and Bisshy enough for helping me with the suspension setup on my sled. It was amazing to me how much difference an adjustment to the front shocks to reduce ski pressure, and then a radius rod adjustment to fix one ski that was toed in made to the handling through the tighter trails.

This was my first weekend out since getting back into the hobby, and at the end of the day, its the people that do make the experience. I had a great time with the group, and most of the other sledders there were cut from the same cloth, it was great to see.

Now we did have once incident where a younger rider decided that our group wasn't running fast enough for his liking during the rally and decided to to a bit of a high speed zoom by pass on the trail. Old Cheetah had a bit of a chat with him the next time we caught up with him and reminded him of the basics of trail ediquette...


The trail system in that area is amazing, I definately plan to get back up there as soon as possible for some more exploring, and next year we'll have to work on BISSHY so he gives the rest of us more of a crack at those fresh trails ...


Now for the negative part... This weekend's gonna cost me some bucks ...

Thanks to 500FasEnuf, I'm now gonna have to go out and get myself a 136 set of rail extenders and a new 1.25 inch track, cause after taking a few mile ride on his dragon, I realized what a nice package the 136 track makes for trail riding. It's a great combination...

Thanks again for letting me do the test ride...

And while I was consistently in 3rd or 4th place on our impromptu drags for the day I'm assuming BISSHY's sled reigned supreme ?

Which one of you guys was first ? inquiring minds wanna know

I'll try and get a few more pics up tonite, I'm still sorting through them.

One last dig... Seems to me that when it comes to powder, the weekend champ was my stock tracked (121 by 1") 600 xc sp, cause as near as I can recall, I was the only one to play in the powder and not get stuck... and BISSHY took the video to prove it ... not bad for my first weekend out in the deep stuff with that sled eh?

CR100.

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Nice comments Cdn.

Bisshy and I lined up 3 times and the last race on Sunday seemed to be the most fair start.

He jumped out of the hole and got a sled length on me pretty quick... reaction time..??... maybe.
After the hole shot though I reeled him in with midrange but the track came to an end when we were side by side,
so not too sure what would have happened beyond that.

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That's what I figured, my serious challenge was traction, both of you guys would hook up and leave me behind, but once I was rolling, up I wasn't losing ground to you guys, just wasn't fast enough to make up much ground either... Great fun.

I'm thinking that the difference was his lower gearing and picked track. He had the edge on traction, and with the lower gearing launched hard, I think on a longer race, you'd have his number with your top end. But take it easy till you get a few more miles on that motor eh...


If I can get a 136 by 1.25 setup under my sled for next winter, I may give you guys a run for the money...

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