All of us at Rox Speed FX® were hoping for another great winter for the 2013-2014 season, and that it was! We’ve had plenty of snow and a long riding season. In fact, it’s no April Fool’s joke that it’s snowing like crazy right now! We have lots of snow, so snowmobiling isn’t over yet! Even though winter hasn’t quite ended, we thought we would send out a “Winter Review” from our perspective.
We hardly had time to get ready for winter to start since last summer came and went so fast. Before we knew it September was here and we found ourselves at Hay Days, where winter officially starts as they say. Hay Days always cues the racers to start calling us to get their snocross sleds ready for the year. Our next stop was the Duluth ISOC Amsoil National SnoCross held at Spirit Mountain. It was the first time we set up a booth there, and what a blast we had! We will be back next season for sure. It was such a great time meeting racers from all over the world, and of course watching all the great races!
It was only a week or so after the Duluth race that we picked up our first measurable snow fall. We were excited with the anticipation of another great year of riding. A week after our first snowfall, another storm came through. It was the beginning of December and we were getting the sleds out and riding! It was fantastic to be out before Christmas on the trails. Although we didn’t have much of a base yet, the temps were cool enough to make the groomed trails very nice. Almost every weekend we were out riding and playing in the backcountry. The temps did hamper a couple days of riding; but with all the great gear we have, we were able to ride in most temps.
Mid January brought the Popular Pink Ribbon Riders 8th annual ride held at Sugar Lake Lodge in Cohasset, MN. The crew from Rox is always there to lend a hand and help out. We did have a bit of a sled mishap at the start of the ride, but thankfully the great guys at Thomas SnoSports helped us out and lent us a sled so we could continue on!! The ride was about as good as it gets! Temps in the high teens low 20’s and trails as flat as a table top. We all went to the Greenway Snowmobile Club clubhouse for lunch and headed back to Sugar Lake Lodge for the dinner and banquet. This year Chris, the owner of Rox Speed FX™ made a deal with all the folks that attended. He said, if we pass hats around and raise $1000, Rox would match it! All the awesome folks there raised that $1000 and Rox matched it – making $2000 for the cause in about 10 minutes! In total, the Pink Ribbon Riders event raised over $50,000 at the Minnesota ride this year for breast cancer patients. Way to go everyone!!
After the Pink Ribbon Ride, we really didn’t have any more events to attend, so it was game on to ride as much as we could! We also kept close tabs on the ISOC racing through the year. In mid February, we went up to Minnesota’s North Shore of Lake Superior for some great snowmobiling. We stayed at Crooked Lake Resort. The first day we showed up they got 14 inches of snow. We still had 3 more days of riding!! Talk about a fun ride full of solid powder all weekend! We met some great folks while up there as well. Thanks Troy, Jeremy, Eric, and Corey for showing our bunch around. I’m still laughing over the bet I was faced with from Jeremy. Thanks for the laughs there! Riding all the way through March has been fairly good. We did have one thaw that melted a bunch of our snow and made the trails a bit icy. A couple more snows made them good again until the last weekend in March where another thaw melted more snow.
Here we are April 1st and the snow is flying! We are supposed to get a total of 6 inches. We’ll see what happens…I wonder if we will be riding almost into May again…Winter will be coming to an end, but that only leads to more adventures on different machines!! Around the shop, we are switching gears to ATV and bike talk. Most of our time has been spent developing some great new parts and checking out what’s going on at the GNCC nationals. Check out our new products and future new products. If you have any questions or comments, give us a call or shoot us an email. Have fun, ride hard, and be safe!
Rox Speed FX®