Earlier this year I bought a quad! I used to go quadding with friends a lot when I was in high school but my family never had one growing up. I found the exact quad I wanted for a great deal, and I knew the owner so I knew how it had been treated!
The first few months of owning the quad I went on multiple rides with family members. We'd ride (quite quickly) through the trails and explore many twists and turns that we hadn't been down before. One of my favorite things to do is pump the throttle a little bit making my passenger fall backwards shooting their legs up in the air, it's especially fun to do to my mom and dad. I usually get a smack across the helmet from Dad and a loud squeal of laughter from mom. I do it mostly for my own entertainment but also to teach people to hold on since there isn't a seat on the back.
Dad didn't have a quad helmet yet so I made him wear his ski helmet. Safety first dad. He protested saying "I don't need one, I never wore a helmet growing up and look how I turned out!!" "Look how you turned out, I rest my case put on the helmet and lets go!!"
As you can tell from the look on his face he wasn't all that impressed with me!
We were off! I drove first, flying down the trails going 40-50km/h. I pumped the throttle making him fly backwards legs in the air, then I would immediately hit the breaks making him lunge forwards; all the while I was laughing at his expense. The whole time he was yelling in my ear "slow down!!", "I have a family, please don't kill me!!", "you're such a jerk to me" followed by a smack across the helmet! I finally stopped and hopped off for him to drive, he declined saying "no, no, I don't want to break it. You drive!". With a little coaxing he took the reigns, I was so excited to see what he'd do and where he'd take me; after all dad grew up in these fields. I hopped on behind him, wrapping my arms around him with a "bear hug" grip; when he took off..... very very slowly. 10km/h to be exact. I heckled him tying to get him to go faster but he wouldn't, so we puttered along down the trail while he told me stories about his childhood. --- To this day dad tells people not to go quadding with me because I'm too "dangerous"
The first time I got stuck I was with M. We were driving around by our favorite hill "Look out point" and decided to go down some trails we had never been down before. We got slightly lost and picked a direction which looked like it lead to a road. It was spring time so the ground was very wet and sloppy; the seemingly normal field we had driven on to turned out to be a swamp.. a swamp which had very tall dry grass, how deceiving! I hit the throttle hard trying to make it across to the other side. We got about halfway when we suddenly sank. The wheels spun and spun with no hope of moving us anywhere. I was about ready to abandon the quad in place and treat it as a lesson learned when I remembered I had a winch! The only problem was there was only small little poplar trees and willows around us, and they were pretty far away from where the quad was stuck. Luckily I was wearing rubber boots, holding onto the winch like a life line I trudged across the swamp to the nearest tree. The tree was about the thickness of a water bottle, it was our only option and it wasn't looking so good. I was at the very end of the winch line and only had enough slack to wrap it around the tree once, not exactly a good grip. I hollered back to M to start reelin' her in, when suddenly the tree snapped in half!! Getting desperate I called Mom and Dad to warn them that they may need to bring the Jeep out to come rescue us. I wrapped the winch line around the trunk of the poor tree which we had just mangled and went back to the quad to make one last attempt at pulling us out. I floored the throttle and reeled in the winch at the same time, the mud went flying raining down on M and I; when suddenly I started moving!! I wiggled back and forth trying to get the quad to grip onto anything it possibly could before our little stump was pulled out of the ground. Finally the quad lunged forward out of the mud pit just in time for the poor little tree to snap again; sending what little amount of tree was left flying through the air. WE DID IT! We made it safely home, covered in mud and drenched in sweat with a good story to tell.
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