Took the machine to one of our favorite riding places we call the mountain. It's a climb and descent through about every situation you could think of. There's some wide trails for the bigger machines and several quad trails. All have long hill climbs, whoops, mud, rocks, tight switch backs and low hangers. You're going to get bumps and bruises regardless of how you drive and honestly, everything I've done to Ironsides was to conquer this trail.
We were sitting at the bottom, where everyone gathers, munching on some leftover chicken the wife brought. She puts it in one of those disposable bread pans and wraps it in foil. (Tuck it behind the shield and it keeps it warm.) Anyway, there was some ass clown and his mean ol' hound dog down there standing on a stump, hollering at everybody that he'd bet anything that his sxs could beat any other up and down that mtn. He was an evil looking bastard too, small goatee and I swore he had fangs, but you'll find some bad dental work when you get into these areas of backwoods. I took a look at his machine, don't know what it was but it looked big and fast and had shiny gold nerf bars on it. I was checking those out, looked just like mine but with a longer front tube, was pondering how easy it'd be to cut and fit them on mine. He kept flapping his jaws and it was really getting out of hand, insulting people and being rude. Told him to pipe down or I'd smoke his ass up and down that mtn. He started yelling directly at me, telling me to put my money where my mouth was. Told him there was nothing he had worth anything to me, other than maybe those nerf bars. He said "you're on and I'll race you for those boots". My boots? They're brand new Irish Setters that the wife just bought me for Christmas. Would've said no way, and I know I shouldn't let it, but his jabs and insults got under my skin. I told him "it's on"! Felt the wife poke me in the ribs, turned to her giving me a glare and said that if I lost those boots I was cut off for a month.
When I brought the P5 up to the line, he and his minions were yukking it up. No way was that junk ass little Honda going to beat his turbo'd racer with 20" of suspension travel. What he didn't know is that the 50" trails cut quite a bit of distance off the run so I had a legitimate shot. When we fired up the machines sparks flew from his snorkel tips and it was intimidating but I had too much riding on it to be scared. When the shotgun went off he threw rooster tails bigger than I'd ever seen. He was way ahead of me when I broke off into the quad trails. The extended A arms and BH 28's gave me the clearance I needed to get through the rocks and deep mud. The WE's ate up the whoops and when I took it airborne. The HMF, K&N and Dobeck were giving me that mid range power I needed and the torq locker was chewing its way through everything. Never been through there that fast and the nerfs really saved my hide, bouncing and sliding off trees, they kept me from getting hung up. It did take its toll on them though, bending one of them really bad.
When I came screaming into that last stretch I could hear him behind me. He came rolling in with his head hung low, he knew he'd been beat. His minions unbolted the gold nerf bars and were apologizing as they loaded them in my bed. Told him I'd be around if he ever wanted to try it again but "don't forget you sum b****, this is the best 50" sxs there's ever been".
P.S. Bolted the new nerfs on, looked just like the old ones except gold. Didn't care for the color contrast so painted em black. 😏
