This year's SnoBlind event was held on February 11-13 in West Branch, MI. West Branch is located about 8 hours from Chicago in the northeast section of Michigan. We had a great City Boyz/Two Rivers showing this year with 8 Jeeps carrying 10 memberships for a total of 16 people. Most of us traveled independently due to individual work schedules, but after a precarious drive, nearly everyone had arrived by 11pm on Thursday. Sparky won the coveted Lewis & Clark Award for the weekend having survived his 24 hour trip. Seems he had his share of delays trying to get on the road due to a blown fuse and loose trailer wires. (Sparky, your tip for the day: It's The Blue Wire…NOT!)

The club members present were Durrell & I, John (Margarita Man) and Rusty Murphy, Rod (Axlerod) & Paula Allen, Mikey, his twin brother Ken & Jeremy Keller, Sparky & Sunshine, Spanky & Molly, Mike Westphal, Jeff Christensen, & Jim Oldaker. As is the SnoBlind tradition, Margarita Man bought the first round of drinks on Thursday night. (Seeing as how it was margarita night, most of us opted for the beverage of the Cuervo Gods, Margaritas!)

Early Friday morning, a fresh coating of fluffy snow covered the ground. With a full tank of gas and our new 'Fuel Cell' also topped off, we hooked up with the gang for our morning lineup. Sparky volunteered to be our designated bio-hazard tech in full gear (see Exhibit A). Our six Jeeps got in front of the pack and we went out with Bill 'Spyderman' Best to tackle the trails. We had about 15 rigs total on our trail and to my surprise, all of them were Jeeps! Rooster was noticeably absent this year so Rusty flew a purple bandana on her roll bar in his memory. We hit the road at 9:30 with Bill in the lead and the rest of us trying to keep our Jeeps on the pavement behind him. It's especially tricky to maneuver on the slick ice and snow covered roads when you're driving with a brand new V-8 engine. Seems Durrell wanted to play chicken with the oncoming traffic. Every time he'd step on the gas, the Scrambler would start fishtailing wildly out of control. The poor lady in the Grand Prix didn't think it was nearly as funny as we did. When we finally arrived at the trailhead, Spanky started making noise on the radio about his 4WD. Seems it wasn't going into gear properly so Mikey the Mechanic got under Hollywood and started poking around. Yup, sure enough, there wasn't going to be any 4WD for Spanky 'cause his valve was frozen. Mikey was also having problems of his own, so he and Spanky decided to call it quits and head back to town for repairs. They spent the rest of the day looking for parts and rebuilding Mikey's carb in the hotel room.

The rest of us started out on our days adventure. The trails are not too challenging compared to what we have at home but the snow and occasional hills make it fun. Just ask Axlerod how challenging a flat, snow-covered trail can be! We bestowed the Fleeger 'OOPS' Award on Rod Friday for falling asleep at the wheel and driving off the trail into a snow drift. (At least he didn't tip his rig over…) Rusty tried to strap him out, but in the end it took the brut force of a half dozen snow covered men to push him back onto the trail. Tough Nuts learned some very valuable lessons on Friday also: More Power does not equal less stucks. That big V-8 with those big Swampers just dig in the snow and get stuck faster! We spent a lot of time trying to power our way around, only to find that it just wasn't happening. At the end of the day, we'd given our new engine quite the workout and our Warn 9000 winch got a workout too! Rusty and Sparky did great, although they did opt to bypass on a hill or two. Spyderman led a great trail and we ducked out at 2pm to head home to our hotel. Durrell tried to do doughnuts in the road again and managed to get off the road into a drift. After a 31 point turn and a hernia from laughing so hard, we finally got straightened out and were heading in the right direction. When we got back, we took a brief shopping trip over to the outlet mall before meeting for dinner at the lodge to rehash the days events.

Saturday morning the temperature was -8F but we were fortunate to hook up with Speed Racer Jim Mazzola from the Mudchuggers. Jim is also a SnoBlind tradition. He leads a great trail ride and we look forward to running with him each year. This year he was running the Hills of Montezuma and Pinball Alley, so after the obligatory parade through town, the group set out for a day of fun with him. Spanky started out with 4WD troubles again but Mikey quickly diagnosed the problem as 'Installer Error' and remedied the situation. (Seems that Spanky had inadvertently put in his new $160 part backwards...). Jim led the group out on the fresh trail with his Tracker but gave up the lead to others in the group before long. The fresh snow made it very difficult to get around and the lead vehicle always takes a beating having to 'break track' for the rest of the group. According to Durrell, he sacrificed himself and his wallet to lead for a good portion of the day. Rumor has it that he did quite a bit of backing up, plowing forward, backing up, and winching out. The weekend statistics prove this to be true as he was the King Donor to the Buck-A-Stuck bank for the weekend.

Both Sparky and Spanky got off the trail at times and had to be assisted. At one point, Spanky tried to tip his Jeep over and anxiously called for a strap on the C.B. When Mikey responded that he'd be there in a minute, Spanky anxiously called that it should be a very quick minute! Axlerod didn't do much better on Saturday than he had on Friday and he ended up owing a couple bucks as well. When everyone rolled back into the hotel at 6:00pm, it was with lots of smiles and full of tall tales from the days adventures.

After quick showers, we headed over to the banquet hall for the dinner and award presentation. Somewhere during this time, Spanky realized that he'd lost his entire collection of keys on the trail and persuaded Speed Racer to organize a night run to go look for it! Of course, the effort seemed futile because it was now snowing again and any chance of finding them would be buried before long.

As usual, the dinner was delicious and the festivities were lengthy. Margarita Man helped us all with our tolerance levels by buying another round and sketching up a prototype drawing for the new 'Jeep Bar' we're installing in our basement. We all spent the next several hours working on refining the prototype and drafting a list of the parts we need. (You can see the plans and parts list on the City Boyz web site if you're interested...).

In the annual award ceremony, Mikey was nominated for, and received, the St. Bernard Award for generously helping out his fellow wheelers on the Trail. (According to the story Durrell tells, Mikey had hair until he crawled under Spanky's Jeep and burned his head four times on the exhaust pipe!). Spanky was nominated for the SnoDummy Award for loosing his keys on the trail. Sparky was nominated for, and won, the Lewis & Clark Award for having the worst trip coming to the event. Speed Racer won the Santa's Sleigh Award for having the rig with the most 'trinkets'. As for door prizes, nearly everyone in our group came home with something - from a vehicle battery to handheld C.B. radios, t-shirts and hats. All told, there were 254 people at this event driving 117 off-road vehicles.
As for the night run, believe it or not, the lost keys were recovered. Spanky sends a big THANKS to Mikey for the last minute kick in the snow. Apparently they were calling it quits and coming back when Mikey stumbled onto the treasure. They made it back to the hotel in the wee hours of the morning and loaded up their vehicles for the trail ride home.

The Buck-A-Stuck results were as follows:
· Tough Nuts - $7 (Durrell blames this on his self-sacrifice as trail breaker)
· Axlerod - $4 (Rod blames this on his Slicky-Mickeys)
· Sparky - $2
· Spanky - $2
· Mikey - $1 (It would've been more but his Jeep quit after the first one)
· Rusty - $0 (Rusty attributes this to her purple bandana!)
· Mike Westphal - $? (Mike didn't fess up to any stucks…yet!)

As always, it was a great time and we're looking forward to doing it again next year. If you want to join us, contact us before October so we can notify you when the registration is open. SnoBlind is the kind of event that fills up on the first day so you need to be aggressive in your registration efforts. Hope to see you there next year - especially you ROOSTER!