Sunday morning came early. After the country & western night at the downstairs bar, we had the same John Hammond taxi driver from the night before, make the 4 trips back and forth to get us and our gear all back to our sleds.
By 8:30 we were all back together having breakfast and sharing our stories from the night before. The guys who has the brothel rooms definitely has better stories, like the mother/daughter combo team that was trolling their hotel bar. But this is a family friendly forum so I will leave those stories on the trail.
By 9:30 we were rolling. North bound now. Trails were great and fast for the first 80 miles. Apparently too fast. So fast that Video Mike's pocket zipper opened up along the trail and his cell phone fell out. In my 20,000 miles of sledding, I've never had a pocket zipper do a Houdini opening on it's own, but it's his story, I just report it.
At one warming station stop, Metro Dave got out on the frozen snow covered lake across from where we were all sitting on our sleds to dazzle us with some of his mountain skills trickery. He was riding his wing WOman's sled, Big Booty Moody Judy's, and putting on a bit of show, when all of his skills mustered him into rolling her sled over and ripping the mirror and windshield side deflector off her machine. He must have thought his playing it cool as he returned was working, until Tina Bear pointed out the missing accessories and promptly sent him back to the lake to retrieve and re-install the missing pieces.
We were back on the trail. We stopped for lunch at a trail side Clubhouse that was made of pre-manufactured log walls and was very impressive. By 3:30 we were back on the trail. Mostly good trails, that allowed us to open them up for quite a while and make some good time. Until another Darkside issue cropped up.
Vinnie the Driver's Polaris's clutch began malfunctioning. Apparently the clutch would not DIS-engage, and every time he stopped he had to shut the machine off, manually adjust the clutch, close the hood, and restart the machine. For the next 80 miles! Needless to say, we took many fewer breaks from this point on.
We ran about 205 miles and arrived at the Auberge 21 a little late, around 7:30pm. We had a fabulous gourmet meal with the choices being rack of lamb, trout or a filet. And I think about 5 bottles of a delicious Cabernet wine. The adult beverages were flowing pretty easily, as we knew Vinnie had to go to the local Polaris dealer at 9am when they opened to get the parts for his sled. 11am was going to be our departure time. Perrrfect.
Happy hour went well after dinner, until our waiter told us he was cutting us off, he wanted to go home. Yes sir, we're out.
And that pretty well sums up Day 4 on the Darkside, tune in later and I will have Day 5 posted, and a Day 6 Special Edition.
And do it again,
Cheers,
Stick