The 'Ol Bubbletops - > From Russ Swenton - a "Bubble Top-less" story

"Larry, Russ here in CT. Your topic brought a smile to my face,so I want to share a "Bubble Top-less" story.

During the winter of 1988-1989, I invited a friend of mine who was new to the sport to join us for a weekend of trail riding in southern New Hampshire. This was his first adventure into the wilderness on his newly acquired 1983 Polaris Sport 440 fanner. Temperature that weeked was around zero during the day.

We rode on Friday night when we got there until around midnight. On Saturday,we rode most of the day, west of our camp and returned around 5:00 P.M. and called it a day. While sitting around the fire that night, my friend questioned why there were not many other sledders out that day riding like we were. We explained that up here, the locals don't ride every chance they get like us visitors, who only show up on weekends.

On Sunday, we decided to head out east of camp for one last ride before heading back to CT. On one trail we circled back around thru the woods and came out in a field behind the town maintenance garage. We shut off the sleds and just decided to sit back on our sleds and take it all in. The dead silence of the cold grey day was broken by the sound of what seemed like 4 or 5 two strokes heading in our direction comming out of the woods.

My friend said "Alright! here comes a couple of guys, maybe we can ride with them for a while, and explore some new territiory. Imagine the surprised look on our face when we spotted the lone, one lunger hood-less bubble top, with 12" of flex pipe bolted to the exhaust port swinging in the breeze(no muffler required) being driven by a teenager wearing nothing but jeans, pac boots and a ripped"Megadeath" tee-shirt.!!!

He was carving thru the deep powder like a knife thru butter, making figure eights and circles. The noise coming out of that thing was painfull. He finaly stopped next to us by pulling the plug wire off with kite string that was attached to his bare skin exposed wrist. He said: "Dudes! Alright if I crash this party and hang with you guys?" It was amazing to see this '68 vintage Doo still going strong, being held together by bailing wire,wire ties and rope.It was even more amazing to see no frost bite on his arms or face. We figured he left his coat at home because he didn't want it to smell like gas!

Russ"