You read the headline correct... we are back live in Mt. Laurier Québec for our next DarkSide Adventure! After taking 2014 off from the Frost Bytes Blog and the daily thinking inside my helmet for ideas all day, editing, and critiquing from the peanut gallery that I ride & live with for 10-20 days at a time before publishing, I am back to chronicle the daily adventures and mishaps of our saddle bag ride through the Bush of Northern Québec. Plus the "overwhelming" requests from our followers for our daily recap (I think there were 5 requests and my Mom (Thanks Mom, love you)).
Currently, we are in Mt. Laurier Québec at our familiar and hospitable lodging at the Quality Inn, that our friends Michel & Renee' own, and is run by their beautiful daughter Mariane. Unfortunately, Michel & Renee' aren't joining us, as they have chosen the beach in Southern Florida versus the current 8 degrees with a forcasted low of -13 tonight! Thank you Michel and Renee' for the excellent accommodations (Renee' be sure to rub extra sun tan lotion on Michel).
This year's DarkSide Adventure team consists of the usual cast of characters (jokers on my left and clowns to the right) of Craig Willour & Jim "Jimmer" Olender fearlessly leading us, with Jim from Connecticut (Jim has brought a friend that we will profile later) and Dan from Grand Rapids MI in the middle, and R.S. Young, Vinnie "The Driver", Stick, and to my left, rookie Alex "Big Al" Young from Flint MI bringing up the tail end. Of course, we also have the legendary Video Mike from SnowTrailsTV.com filming our successes and misdeeds for your viewing pleasure. Shameless Plug: Be sure to check out SnowTrailsTV.com, either online, on your local cable network & FaceTube (Facebook for the rest of you), as he actually does excellent coverage of all snowmobiling genre's. (Before I hit the "Post" button he wanted me to also inform you he "tweets" now!)
Our ride out begins on Thursday morning (January 29), with the 10 riders heading to Meekos Lodge. It is currently sunny and warm (8 degrees, see above) in Mt Laurier. We actually left yesterday around the noon hour and spilt our trip into 2 legs, overnighting in Kingston Ontario. We chose to do this differently in 2015, then the normal 11 hour straight thru ride, so we would be at our launch site early today for final preparations for our 12 day saddlebag ride. We arrived at the Quality Inn today around 1pm. We apparently have gotten pretty good at our pre-trip preparations, as it's now 3:05 and we are enjoying a tasty adult beverage at the hotel, and ready for departure (even after losing my first draft of Frost Bytes to cyber space).
I need to give a SUPER DUPER shout out to our Command Central back in Flint MI, our eye in the sky, peas to our carrots, white on our rice, Mrs. Mitchell (Thanks Steph!) Stephanie has worked endlessly for the last 36 hours, fueled by Starbucks, to get our new website up and running and providing me the good fortune (sarcasm) to bring you Frost Bytes 2015! Stephanie and her staff at Command Central are also working right now to bring you the live tracking of every moving moment or our trail ride live to you via our Spot Tracker GPS. So check in often, tell your friends, and follow along, we're taking you on the DarkSide.
Catch ya tomorrow, Cheers...
"Stick"