Friday, December 25, 2009

Uraling through a White Christmas

The Denver Metro area and probably most of Colorado got itself a Snowy White Christmas....lots of opportunities for me to take Natasha, my '96 Ural Sidecar Rig, out for some fun filled rides on said snow.

On Christmas Eve, I spent most of the day with my sons and doing minimal riding. In fact, it was just a short ride for pictures and then taking my youngest son to the nearby sledding hill for him to do some racing down the snow covered icy hills.

A clear sunny day in the great snowy state of Colorado

A shot for the artistic amongst you

Can you see the multiple figure 8s I "carved" into the snowy parking lot at the high school?

Today, Christmas Day, after watching my sons unwrapped their many presents from Santa, and relaxing in the massager chair my loving wife got me....I set out to honor MikeD of the rounders' request for a donut video:


Video taken, I set off for a short ride to cul-de-sac hill as I will now call it, both for pictures and to see if Natasha could make it up the hill when it was covered with about 4 inches of snow!

Cul-de-Sac Hill's view of Downtown Denver and the Front Range Mountains

Natasha, in her natural habitat

Yep, we made it to the top....

I managed to get Natasha stuck, for the first time for both of us, at the crest of the hill above. Managed to find a spot that was deeper than six inches and her exhaust pipes were "floating" on the snow. This meant the rear tire was not in touch with the ground and so it spun uselessly.

No worries, I put her in neutral, and push/pulled her out of the hole she'd dug. Cleared the snow in front of her tires and fired her up. She got herself unstuck and pointed down the hill.

Now unstuck, ready for the downhill slide to flat ground

We basically slid/rolled our way down the hill with the brakes gently engaged. Got down just fine and headed for the barn and lunch. A nice little morning ride, I hope you all had a great Christmas!

5 comments:

Allen Madding said...

Good times! Merry Christmas!

I loved the doughnuts!

-Peace

SonjaM said...

Again with the donuts in the snow ;-)
Like it, you seem to have good control over Natasha. Cheers, SonjaM

RichardM said...

Merry Christmas!

How much more difficult are the right turns than the left?

Chris said...

Looks like you had a lot of fun. Great pictures again.

Merry Christmas

redlegsrides said...

Allen, glad you liked them.

Sonja, thanks for the visit....

Richard, right turns are no more difficult than left, however...the manual for my rig strongly discourages "flying the chair" which is a good possibility (I believe) when doing right hand sided donuts....so I avoid it. Right turns during normal riding, really feel more precarious than left turns....