Broke Down...

                                 

I am sure you are asking why the title of this post is broke down?!

I recently got the opportunity to travel to the UP to snowmobile with a few friends.  On the first day of the trip we rode about 100 miles and in the process Jordan blew up his belt in the middle of Lake Gogebic with no spare. He was the first one broke down and was not prepared. We are 40 miles from where we started, 10 miles out in the middle of a lake and it is getting dark. Not where you want to be when you blow a belt. When I say blow I mean he totally shredded this thing and it wrapped all up in his secondary clutch making a huge mess.

Hard to see here but his clutch was wrapped up in a mess and had belt stuck between the sheaves. Not a good thing.

Jordan dug at the wrapped belt with no success, we eventually towed him to shore to find tools. Fortunately for us we were able to find an ice fisherman that was a mechanic; he had tools and fixed him up. He borrowed a belt from another machine and nursed it back to the casino.

This was our only stop before we were already towing Jordan's Arctic Cat back to shore to be worked on.

The next day brought great riding conditions but we really didn't get started until 11:30 because we had to drive to Eagle River Wisc in the morning to get Jordan a new belt.  Once we got going it was a great day of riding.

This was our first stop of the day and it was in Kenton at a great little bar where we stopped for lunch, played a little pool, and chatted with the locals.  After leaving the lodge we headed for Bruce's Crossing. 

Talk about small town and a slow way of life.  Welcome to Kenton Michigan.  The owner told us that her payment was $286 a month!!  I mean seriously that is insane.

We never did see a bar with anything but snowmobiles in it.  Maybe they just shut down in the summer?  They really depend on the snow and the snowmobilers up there.  It was fun to see and to ride through all these small fun towns. 

This was the last photo we took before Jordan was broke down again.  After about 100 miles of riding hard on day two Jordan once again was broke down.  This time it was his secondary clutch sheaves blew apart.  The bolts that hold them together just broke off.  I think he is a little hard on his machine and the throttle.  So once again we were towing him back to get worked on.  After getting him back and doing a bit more examining we realized there was no fixing it.  He needed to get a new clutch.  So we packed up the next morning and headed home.  I never had one bit of problem and have to say that the couple hundred miles we did get in were a blast and a good break from the frozen lakes.