08 March Muni Ride

The 8th Annual TY Munising MI Ride March 7-9th , 2008

Click on smaller images to enlarge

Our final Totallyamaha ride in Munising Michigan turned out to be a hit. The trail conditions have never been that flat and fast to my knowledge since we have been having rides in Muni. Our group logged over 300 miles in 2 days and a few other riders logged over 500… you could cover a lot of ground very quick.

Friday started the day with some breakfast in Shingleton as usual and then south on the Haywire Trail all the way to Manistique. It felt like a 30 min ride as the miles totaled fast crossing the bridge and rolling into Manistique. With the trails being so perfect we couldn’t just head back so we proceeded to the west taking trail 411 back to 7 past the Buckhorn and then onto Alger Falls. Once back we hung out the garage for awhile and then ran over to Shooters for a few cold ones…..

Saturday morning we awoke to hungry bellies….. guess were we ate?? LOL, Back over to Shingleton for the best breakfast in town!!!!! We talked over breakfast about the direction we wanted to ride and decided to drive west to Gwinn. On our attempt to head west on trail 8, a Skidoo rev that was in our group blew a belt and had to pull over. I went past and pulled off to the side to help and started to walk back and saw the group was coming up fast …..There was a chain reaction of hard breaking into lots of snow dust along with quite a few near misses…… but there was one unlucky sole in the bunch…. Dajudge coming thru the dust and seeing the abrupt stopping tries to take the snow bank… well at 2 foot plus of hard packed banked snow it tossed him back onto the trail into Chadg almost knocking him out..…. with some very miner damage to the sled (more to their pride) and a shaken up bunch of riders we preceded to catch up with the front half of our group.

Not that I want to blame anyone but I want to take a moment to say a few things. Please do not just stop after a long high speed run on any trail with out warning. Be aware of your surrounding and care for all of those that ride with you by pulling way past the group that has stopped, give every one enough time and warning to stop safely…also get those arms up so we know everyone is stopping and for safety sake stay back far enough to let the dust settle to see….if anyone every gets hurt badly or something happens on a ride that we have a fatality, I will never have another ride again. I would feel responsible and it would make me sick to know that I have lost someone or someone was injured badly due to a Totallyamaha ride. Trust me I may act like a goof or harp on riders but I really truly care about my fellow riders …. We need to treasure life as it is very fragile!!! Also these thoughts above are not being directed at any one specifically it is a general statement as these near misses happened way to often.

After catching back up with the group we were separated once again at Chatham as some of us needed to take a bathroom break. Once in Gwinn we came across a bunch of fireman on the trail telling us that we could not go any further as there was a accident up ahead that involved a bunch of riders from Marquette. It was making me sick thinking it could be our group. We gave it sometime and gassed up and took a side route to go around the problem. As we attempted to get back on the main trail I saw a ambulance sitting at the road crossing and Corey from our group hauling someone out on his sled …. I tell you, it was really really making me sick to think we had a mishap once again. He crossed the road to speak with me and shed some light on the accident. Our group had drove up on a accident that involved a women from Marquette that missed a corner running her sled into a bunch of trees and she was hurt bad enough to not be able to get out of the woods on her own. The TY guys did everything in their power to get help and keep her comfortable until she could be taken out and off to the Hospital. Thank GOD there was no fatality and I was proud to hear how compassionate our group was to help. I know I didn’t say this before but you guys did a great job helping out!!!

After that eye opening event we headed towards Marquette (Corey stated the rest of the group should be able catch up)… we came into town near the ski hill trail and up over Marquette Mountain. Took a quick stop at the over look and then back on the trail west along the lake shore and then south to Chatham and onto Alger Falls. Once back we gathered a few riders for some dinner at Foggys then back to the garage for a quick one. We went back over to Shooters until close and then back to the Garage for some pool, pizza, good company and a long final night for the season. Thank you to all the attended the rides this year it was one of the most memorable years to date.