Bayou Buggy

I repeat that I bought a second-hand 1995 Kawasaki Bayou ATV yesterday.  It seems to be in great condition, and I expect to be able to once again make small journeys through woods and fields to Grandmother’s house.  Today I decided to test it some.  It started right up as expected, shifted into first gear and then second, and off I went on an excursion to the beaver pond.

There was a wind coming from the north which I was facing all of the way back there, but I rejoiced that it would be at my back for the return trip.  The beaver pond is completely frozen over, snow covered, and appears little different than the surrounding land.  I looked that over for about 10 seconds, turned around, and with my back to the wind finally began my return to my nice warm home.

As I left my neighbor’s land, passing through a gap in our old fence line, and reentered my own woods, I made a decision.  There are two ways to get back to my house.  The first was to backtrack the way I had came, while the second led through the woods, over a frozen creek, through a different part of the meadow, and thence home.

As my newly acquired ATV has brand new oversize rubber that look like little farm tractor tires, I had great confidence they would go through any amount of snow I might encounter.  So, like Robert Frost’s two roads diverging in a yellow wood, I chose the least traveled.  All was well and good for a couple of hundred feet until I came to the frozen creek.  It’s about a foot deep and twenty feet wide.  Somewhere out in the middle of it, it wasn’t near as frozen as I had surmised.  Yes, the ATV and I found ourselves with the two wheels on the left side still on the ice while the right side wheels were in the very muddy bottom of the creek.  This is a very embarrassing situation.  There is no traction on those two wheels up on the ice, while the other two kept digging deeper and deeper into the soft oozing mud.  If I didn’t stop attempting to free it, sooner or later this thing was going to be up on its side.

I walked the ¼ mile to my home.  My wife called one of my nephews who lives a couple of hundred feet away to come and aid my situation.  He did not understand I was at my house so went directly back into my woods until he found my poor stuck ATV.  He hooked his ATV to mine and ignominiously towed mine the entire way back to my yard.  After thanking him I started my Bayou Babe, and drove it into my barn.  It isn’t as clean as in the photos now.  Somehow it got muddy.  So went my first excursion on my latest mode of travel.