Hot Summer Night Riding
It’s been a really hot and dry year in Minnesota where we go riding and this weekend was more of the same! We luckily had some friends up this weekend – their summer weekends are pretty packed but they had this last weekend free so they came up to go “yachting” as they like to say and do some night riding. It was too hot to plan a really long ride during the day so we decided to go floating in the lake and go for a pontoon ride with our lake neighbors. It was the perfect day for the lake and we finally got to spend some time with the folks on our lake that we’ve been meaning to hang out with. We had a blast on the lake listening to music and floating in Boobie Bay.
After the day of floating and then taking the doggo for a boat ride we made it back to the cabin and made some dinner and then headed out on the trails. We only went down a couple trails since it was later in the day but it was still a really fun ride. It was cool for me because I got to drive my friend around – she had never rode with me in my machine before so it was super fun! We went down the trails that are the closest to our cabin. We didn’t go out riding too long but we did hit a couple of trails and also got to meet some ladies on the trail and give out some stickers!
My over prepared-ness really paid off this weekend too! We ran into a group of ladies that were out on the B trail and they had a low tire. My husband stopped them on the trail to let them know and I thankfully had and air compressor in my trunk. I have this entire kit in my side by side for almost anything we could think of happening out on the trails from our Ladies Only Ride last year. The ladies we ran into on the trail were super happy that we helped them out!
As we were wrapping up our ride our friends machine got a little hot and the way back. It looked like he was a little low on coolant and his machine let him know. I also thankfully had water in my machine that he added to his radiator and then threw some ice from the cooler in there too and it cooled down. We hit the county road to get home and everyone made it there.
I feel like this was a good lesson this weekend on having some things in your ride for anything that may come up when you’re out on the trails. I have a bunch of things in my kit in the trunk like a strap for getting a tire back on it’s bead, I have a couple cans of fix-a-flat just in case we have any tire issues. I also have jumper cables and an air compressor. We pre-rode the Ladies Only Ride last year and one of our friends popped their tire off the bead so we learned a lot from that experience. The jumper cables were something that none of us had but we definitely needed since the air compressor killed the four wheeler’s battery.
It’s always good to be over prepared I think and have the right stuff in your machine to make sure if anything happens you have some tools and tricks to get your machine back home or back to camp. It’s also great to be the guy or gal on the trail that can help out a fellow rider. It really made me happy that we flagged those ladies down and had the ability to help them get back safely.