There is a question I get fairly often on the snowmobile side of my job that is pretty darn easy to answer.
“Where’s your favorite place to ride?”
The answer is usually, “Anywhere it’s steep and the snow is deep.”
If asked the same question for the dirt side of my job, well, I can’t answer as succinctly as I can for snowmobiling. If I were forced to come up with something, it might be, “Lots of places.” Yea, that’s lame.
The fact is, I love to ride all sorts of places on all sorts of terrain and in most conditions. I love to ride the dunes, through mud, across rocks, in the mountains, through the desert, in the tight woods—really anywhere, anytime.
Whereas I am very picky about snowmobiling and prefer mountain riding in deep snow, I’m probably equally as unpicky when it comes to off-trail riding on ATVs and side-by-sides.
Okay, I’m not overly fond of riding in someone else’s dust cloud but other than that, I’m good to go. My issue with dust is ironic in light of the title I chose for my column. But that’s a story for another day.
I have been asked a time or two, “Has there ever been a ride you didn’t like?” Honestly, right off the top of my head, I can’t think of a ride where I would rather have stayed home or been in the office. (Yea, like that’s rocket science.)
There may have been parts of a ride or two that I, well, umm, would rather forget. Like that time I broke an A-arm at a media intro in North Carolina (sorry KYMCO). Or the time when one of my co-workers sliced a tire and we spent the rest of the day trying to find a replacement and finally had to abandon our ride for the day.
But there were none that I would have said, “Man, that sucked. I wish we hadn’t gone.”
That’s the beauty of going off-road riding. I won’t say always, but nearly always, it’s a great time. And it certainly beats the alternative.
I count myself lucky and blessed to have been able to ride as many great places as I have since we started Dirt Toys Magazine four years ago. Honestly, there are too many to count. And helmets off to the manufacturers who continue to find amazing places to ride for new model intros. We have had some epic adventures at media intros—epic enough that I have returned later to ride some of those same areas on my own time and dime.
I almost hesitate to mention any, but here are just a few that come to mind: the Paiute Trail in central Utah; Moab, UT; Hatfield-McCoy Trails, WV; Hidden Falls Adventure Park, TX; the Arizona desert; the Oregon Dunes; Glamis, CA; Randsburg, CA; Vancouver Island, BC; and the list quite literally goes on and on. (Side note: After finishing this column and rereading it and thinking back over all my rides, this list is pretty small but I had to stop somewhere.)
A few magazine issues ago I listed some of the criteria I use to determine where I’ll go riding as part of my responsibilities as editor of Dirt Toys. How I developed at least portions of that criteria is a direct result of some of the new model intros the magazine has been invited on.
So, if we happen to run into each other somewhere out on the trail and you ask me where my favorite place to ride is, I just might give you two answers: “Just about anywhere” and “When are we going?”
