A couple years back I was hunting east of the mountains in Washington with my buddy the wirehair pointer. We had rode up in a area the I often find grouse and ended up popping a couple. It was getting near lunch time and I thought I'd head over to another ridge overlooking the mountains and range below it was sunny and getting warm (70degrees or so). I'd had a problem about a month earlier with the Rincon stalling out and ended up getting a kit to rebuild the electric fuel pump and everything was working great.
So I'm about 9 miles from my camp it was mid week so there was nobody in the campgrounds and I hadn't seen anyone while out so far. On the weekends there'd be 10 or 15 camps in the area I was parked. So I'm coming down the south side of the ridge and found a nice sunny pull off on the trail shut the quad down and proceeded to eat my lunch. Almost feel asleep I was so comfortable.
Getting close to 1:30pm and I decided to head over to another area since I'd seen bird tracks in some of the dusty roads the day before by the way it was early October a couple of weeks before deer season. Went to start the quad it turned over and over and wouldn't start. All I had was the Rincon tools that came with the quad when I purchased it which ain't much. I got into checking the simple things first.....spark plug, fuses etc looking loose connections on and on. Now it was getting close to 3:00 pm or so and I needed to make a decision to leave with the dog and shotgun and start walking I didn't have a flashlight so I wanted to get back before dark if it took that long from where I was. There's scary things out there when its dark....
Began the walk lucky I had one bottle of water I'd thrown in the quad and a candy bar. It was a pretty steep hike back up the ridge I need to cross up and over so we humped it I shared a some of water with the dog since I knew there was no creek in the area we where climbing. He was still in the hunting mode bet getting tired and thus thirsty.
In the meantime while walking I'm trying to figure out how when I get back to my truck am I going to get the quad in the back of my rig by myself. It had a small warn 2500 winch on it so I thought maybe I could maybe winch the quad up the hill a bit from the flat spot I had parked and roll it in back.
I got down to the camp/park area and there was one other rig parked about 30 yards from me so I headed for my RV got a quick bite and through some line and food in my truck and walked down towards this other camp to so if I could find someone perhaps to help get the quad in back of my truck. As I got closer I could see the only person around the camp was a guy I'm guessing was in his mid eighties. He saw me walking towards him I waved and he waved back when close I said "hey I'm broke down on my quad on the ridge by the weather station area do you think you could ride up there with me and help me get the ATV in my truck bed"? He looked at me and spoke but what he said was hardly understandable. Turned out he had no voice box he'd lost it to cancer and he explained to me as we drove up the road which was about 1hr drive on a s***y bumpy road in the Ram 3500 he did what is called "burb talk" he'd burb his words out. So we got to the rig and ended up having enough battery to winch the ATV up on the hill behind the truck and rolling it in the truck bed.
As we talked heading back to camp he explained he used to race flat track bikes professionally all over the world and made a lot of money (he didn't appear to have much seeing what he had around his camp he'd set up). He also said several woman have it now!
It was a good lesson never judge someone by there appearance I really enjoyed his company that day and evening. Next morning I heard him start his dirt bike up and watched him haul ass out of the parking lot with perfect form....
