Well another project bites the dust. I recently finished my latest literary work titled "The Sledders Bible. I have been snowmobiling for many years, all the way back to 1970 when I got my first snowmobile a 1968 Chapparel 440, a low to the ground and very fast sled. This was quickly followed by a 1969 Ski-Doo Nordic model, much less powerful, but it was a two up, and I had a family of four. So here I was with a wife and two kids and two snowmobiles to ride on, enjoying the winter.
In order that we could all go out together, I enlisted the help an old farmer that lived nearby. His name was Wally Marquedt. Wally was an old school craftsman. He built things by hand the old school way. Wally made for us a tow behind sled, kind of like a long dog sled, completely out of oak, so we could put the kids in it, cover them with blankets, and take them every where we went. The two of them were about three and four years old at the time.
The winters were very cold, and the old sleds did not have heated thumb grips or hand warmers on the handle bars like we have today. Snowmobile suits were one piece, and gloves were simply that, gloves. Snowmobile boots, not very well, as far as protection from the cold. I usually wore my Chippewa waterproof hunting boots. Helmets were usually motorcycle helmets equipped with a snap on full face clear plastic shield. If you were fancy, you could get one tinted yellow to help with the sun. Pocket warmers were filled with lighter fluid, lit, and carried around your kidneys in a belt contraption. But they were not reliable and the pouches we know of today were not invented yet. So riding out on the primitive trails for extended periods of time were almost non existent. Short rides, frequent stops usually at a local bar.
When I first hooked up that dog type sled to the back of the Nordic, and put the kids in it and covered them up with a mountain of blankets and took off down the frozen river, I could hear over the roar of the engine the two of them yelling and screaming for me to stop, which I immediately did. When I turned around and looked back at them I could see the entire sled completely filled with snow. They were covered from head to toe. Well, it seems that I did not have a snow flap on the snowmobile hanging over the back covering the track, and as the track picked up the snow it completely buried them.......I never heard the end of that one.....
My first ride on a snowmobile was in the winter of 1969 in Lynn Massachusetts, when we were snowed in after a terrific snowstorm. We got two feet of snow the first day and it was followed with another two feet the next. The power was out, and there was no heat. I had my car parked under a sort of lean too. It took me about four hours to shovel. I started at the road and shoveled back towards the car. Snow had entered into the edge of where the car was parked as there were no doors on the opening of the covering. So I had to shovel out around the car too.
Once I did that, I started the car up and tried to back up, but it would not budge. I got out to look at what the problem was, hindering its movement, only to discover I had two flat rear tires. We were not going anywhere......and to make matters worse, there was no heat, no electric, and my wife was seven months pregnant at the time. The tires were flattened because of the cold and the expansion and contraction of the wheel rims and the seals breaking.
We were living on Sluice Pond, in Lynn Massachusetts at the time. We were both cold and did not know what to do. The snow was so bad that Buffalo NY sent in crews with heavy front end loaders to help clear the streets. The General Electric company was hiring people at $4.00 per hour (good money for me at the time, as I was only making $1.80 an hour at my real job, working in a hardware store) to shovel off the roofs of their buildings. At about ten AM a neighbor came over to our house on his double track, one ski in the front, Ski-Doo Elan, and transported us over to his home to get some warmth. He was my wife's boss at the time, and his home had a fireplace and so we could get warm. He owned a construction company and hired me n the spot to work the GE roofs. It was during that first ride across the lake, that got me hooked on the sport, and except for a fifteen year hiatus, I have been snowmobiling ever since.
So with all that experience, both good and bad, and living up here in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, the snowmobile capital of the world, I got involved with two snowmobile clubs, got a new machine, quickly got a second one, and picked right up where I had left off. But one of the things I noticed, while volunteering at a snowmobile safety class, was that there was not any comprehensive snowmobiling guide for newcomers to the sport that would prepare them for what they were getting in to. There was a booklet the students got during the course, but it mostly covered safety and not experiences, or survival techniques. So I decided to write one of my own and make it available to the masses. It is called the Sledders Bible and it contains most everything I know about the sport of snowmobiling, and I am passing this valuable information along to the readers.
I wrote this book with the intent that anyone who reads it cover to cover would know all of the practical aspects of what can and will happen when they're out on the trails. It contains information on how to survive if stranded, what tools to take with you, the history of the sport and many many other valuable insights, lessons and anecdotes, that you can use to keep you safe and well when you are out there, which allows you to have more fun. Portions of the proceeds of the sale of each copy will be given to the Soldiers on Sleds project. The book is available through Amazon, Kindle, Barnes and Nobel Books, Google Books and from the publisher Lulu.com. The cost is 19.95. It is also available for downloading directly to your tablet, laptop or PC. So get your copy today. You will not be disappointed..... ISBN978-1-312-61248-8
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