Shake and Bake Baby!!

Paul and I just got back from a weekend trip to my hometown for a little snowmobiling action! We met my friends Josh and Candice at the airport and stayed one night in Reno at their place then headed to Quincy the following morning. We gathered the troops (me, Paul, josh,Candice, Candice's brother Ben, Josh's friend Keith, and Candice's friend aurora) and hauled six snowmobiles to Bucks Lake. Bucks Lake is like a miniature version of Lake Tahoe....it's awesome. I've been spending summers up there since I was twelve.

Anyways, once we arrived at the mountain summit we had to park and unload the snowmobiles and ride the rest of the way in on them. We made our way about a mile and half to Bucks Lake Lodge. In the winter this lodge is only accessible via snowmobile. It is a restaurant/bar and a bunch of cabins. We had rented one of the cabins for Fri/Sat night.

Friday night we did a night ride and it was incredible. For those of you who aren't familiar with snowmobiles, they are a lot like jet skis but on the snow. You can get them up to about 140 mph and they can climb pretty much anything! They also have headlights for night riding. So we took a trip around the lake in the light of a full moon, it was beautiful!



The next day we all woke up around 9:30 and went for another ride. It great because you can bring beer with you for the ride and take beer breaks every 20 minutes or so! After a couple of hours of riding we were headed back to the lake to meet up with Candice's family at another cabin. On our way back, Josh, Ben and Paul cruised up the side of a steep hill to goof around. After about 10 minutes both Josh and Ben had returned, but no Paul. They went back up to find him and find him they did....with his snowmobile stuck vertical, head first in a tree well. Paul observed the "ownage of the tree" but was basically uninjured otherwise.

It took about 30 min to dig out the snowmobile, luckily it was unharmed as well because it was being borrowed from Candice's cousin Chris. We finally met up with the rest of the family and all of us (about 12 people in all) took off once again to explore the countryside. We all stopped at a hill that was pretty cool for goofing around and hung out there for about an hour, trading snowmobiles and cruising around. Well, once again everyone returned to the bottom but no Paul. So a couple of us went up to look for him. I found him with his snowmobile stuck in about 3 feet of slushy snow (it was about 4:30 in the afternoon by now and it had been sunny all day) on a very steep hill. I ran up the hill to help him dig it out and was soon joined by some others. In Paul's defense, there were other tracks going up the hill so it wasn't a completely crazy attempt! Once we got him unburied we realized that in his attempt to free himself he had burned up the belt and the snowmobile was no longer mobile. The first incident Paul was riding Chris's snowmobile, this time he was riding Chris's wife's snowmobile. So it took us about a half an hour to replace the belt and we were on our way once again. Needless to say, Paul had established quite a reputation for himself by now! :) Once back at the Lake it was time for some Tree Smackers!!




Bucks Lake is famous for it's Tree Smackers. It's a concoction similar to a Long Island Ice Tea but more fruity. They are VERY dangerous and called a Tree Smacker for a reason. So we ended the day with a few drinks and then hung out in the cabin playing Whales Tales for the rest of the night. We headed home the next morning. By this time, I was so sore I could barely walk. Every muscle in my body hurt and I actually fell down once b/c my legs just gave out. A lot of people don't realize what a physical sport snowmobiling is. But you are pretty much standing up the whole time and throwing your weight around all day.

All and all, good times were had!