'doo blues

Two years ago, I could safely say I had been on a snowmobile only a handful of times in my entire life. All that changed quite quickly with the purchase of my first ski-doo (the one on the right) a Bombardier 380 Fan Cooled Grand Touring Ski-doo. It was on that machine that I discovered the joys of snowmobiling. Being in the Northwest Territories at the time, ski-dooing was easy, you parked the ski-doo in your driveway and drove off from there. In 10 minutes you were out of town and onto the lakes.

Two years and two ski-doos (a Polaris 550 Fan Cooled Touring which was stolen, and its replacement a Sport Formula 500 LC Ski-doo - pictured on left) later, I'm hooked, which made today that much worse. I am currently ski-doo less having sold the Formula 500 when I went off to law school. It's a glorious day here, about 0 degrees, sunny, clear and is a fabulous day for riding. Unfortunately, in Saskatoon, you just can't hop on your ski-doo and drive off, it takes a lot more work.

As if the sled gods were tormenting me, I was meeting with the study buddies and we took a lunch break in Louis' the campus pub. Well what's on the TV but a ski-doo show. Watching these guys riding along as they tested the new Yamahas made me long for riding across some frozen northern lakes and even missing the bumpy portages.

As we talked about ski-dooing, I explained my theory of the zen of snowmobiling. There's something about jumping on one of these machines and just going. You mind clears, you take in the scenery and you focus on the ride. All those nagging little details of life just get blown away as you fly across a a frozen lake. At the time I had a pretty stressful job and I'm pretty sure snowmobiling was one of things saving my mental health. One of the study buddies compared it to scuba diving, it's an activity you do as part of a group, but when you're doing it you're in your own space. It's a great comparison.

So, until school's done and I'm living back in the frozen north, I'll just have to remember fondly my riding days and scope out what my new ride will be when I'm back.