Dustin, Rocky and I would all pile on and go to the fort we built in the shelterbelt every day after school. I’d take it to all the local farm ponds and the river. I pulled a little homemade boat trailer that I put Duke’s 10’ John Boat on and took it to Floyd’s pond countless times. One summer, other than a few days when it was raining I fished every single day. I rode that 3-wheeler as far north as Little Sherman and Eldon’s pond as far east as Taylors ranch and the tower east of Dannebrog. As far west as the loup and south all the way to I-80. The only time I ever got caught was once with Gregg when he and I were dove hunting and a Game Warden pulled us over. He checked us for our Hunter Ed cards, and made sure our shotguns were unloaded. Maybe because Gregg had a school permit, he decided not to ticket us and just told us to go straight home.
I had some pretty brutal wrecks on that old dog. One with my uncle Bill when trying to climb a dam in the pasture, that one scared Grandma enough that I was taken to the emergency room in St. Paul. And another bad one with Eric and Jason in my dad’s pasture, that one took most of the skin off my face as I skidded on it with the 3-wheeler on top of me and left a scar on my arm from the hot motor.
By the time I turned 16 and got a pick-up the 3-wheeler was shot. Not long after moving to Palmer I realized it must be a city ordnance that everyone have a ATV there. Palmer didn’t have a cop and everyone just drove ATVs around town. It doesn’t take long for a weak man like me to realize that I too needed one. I decided an old 3-wheeler would be just the thing to bring back my childhood. I bought a old Honda 200. It didn’t start real well and I sometimes had to push start it. Before long, my carpet cleaning guy was telling me about Headworks and Nohva and about riding the trails at Halsey. He wanted to sell his 2-wheel drive 300 Kawasaki Prairie 4-wheeler outfitted with a camo cover, front and rear rack bags and gun scabbard. I bought it. It was a big step up from the 200 Honda that I quickly sold. We discovered Headworks near Genoa and Nohva’s infamous jamborees. Soon we added a Kawasaki 220 Bayou for our oldest. We started going to Halsey too. That was our favorite place. I sold the Prairie, then bought a new Honda Rubicon 4X4, I put a front bag and rear rack box on it. I loved that thing and put about 2000 miles on it before selling it.
My grandma Elaine then passed away leaving me money that we used to get the whole family riding. I bought a used Yamaha 660 Raptor and the wife and oldest got Suzuki LTZ 250s and the two youngest got Eton 90 Rs. About this time we also rode in Kansas and kept going to Halsey and Headworks as well as building a trail at my mom’s cousin Larry’s place outside of Palmer and riding on my dad’s loup river ground. Before moving to Lincoln I sold the Raptor. Headworks was only 40 min from Palmer and it was easy to go for a few hours in the evening after the kids got out of school. We tried to avoid going on the real busy weekends. But made it to every Jamboree we could, not so much for the riding but more for the camaraderie and to support Nohva. It was always cool to see some of the really souped up ATVs that would be there.
We haven’t gone riding since moving to Lincoln. We all really loved riding and miss going. In all the time we spent riding we never had a wreck. We all wore protective gear and the kids were usually more timid than aggressive, I’m sure that helped, but we’re still grateful that it was such a safe and fun sport for our family. We need to get back into riding, but since we haven’t found a good (free) place locally and we’re so busy, we haven’t got to it yet.
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