Ron is a man's man. He's also part sales-man. Once, a couple of years back, Ron needed some help--pronto. Part of the sales-pitch was: "Come on...you're my little buddy..." Thus, until we come up with anything better..."The Skipper" will be his handle!

Ron always has the spirit to experience everything possible, catch the moment, take advantage of opportunities and make sure you live life to the fullest. He never wants to be in the position of saying "I wish I woulda", "Shoulda", "Coulda", etc.

For example, you never want to make a 6 hour car trip up north any longer--unless--there happens to be some local takent at a club that you may drive by. Afterall, you can't just stop for gas and food alone...those dancers need income, don't they?

Another example of taking advantage of every moment happened on a trip to see Joey in 2000. During a 6 hour trip, sometimes you need to find conversation and sometimes that conversation leads to complaining about your buddies. Part of Ron's concern was Jay's and Ted's habit of drinking too much at night and missing quality morning riding time. Ron's argument sounded right-on and who can disagree with getting up early and taking advantage of quality, non-beaten trails?

The part of the story we've left out to this point is the fact that as Ron was criticizing for discussion purposes, he was also drinking a bottle of rum. To make matters worse, we were about 2 miles away from our destination (a good 5 hours and 55 minutes into our 6 hour trip) when Ron saw a bar. (Keep in mind how close we were to our destination and that it was probably 12 midnight at this point.) "Let's stop for a drink..." I believe we closed the bar at 2:30 am and headed to Joey's house. After making a total ruckus and falling down on the icy driveway multiple times, laughing hysterically--we decided we should go straight to bed to maximize our riding. Based on the conversations earlier, Jeff kept telling himself that no matter what, he was getting up and going--Jeff gets enough crap and didn't want to add to it.

Fast-forward to the next morning when everybody was sitting on their sleds, ready to go...all except one--Ron. When we got back for lunch, Ron was sleeping but he reassured us that he was not sleeping the whole time--he said he got up several times...to throw up.

Now, if this story doesn't paint a clear picture of our buddy Ron--The Skipper--maybe Jimmy's story from earlier days might help...

"When I first started talking about the U.P. snows in the late 70's, everyone wanted to go. But knowing this area and its tricks and challenges, I told the guys that they would have to have new machines before I would take them. So Ron went out and purchased a brand new Arctic Cat 440 Jag.

Ron's pride was gleeming since his sled was so new and because he could take advantage of some of the best trails and snow he'd ever seen. A bit into the trip, we came to a part of the trail that was a logging road just shining with hard packed snow. At that point, having experienced what a Cat with cleats can do on hard packed snow, I stopped, walked over to Ron and warned him: "DO NOT hit the brakes--instead, back off on the throttle around corners."

Sooooo off down the road we raced!! Now, this trail is fast but has twists combined with down hills so I kept watching Ron and he was doing well until we reached a particular very difficult corner. ..."How difficult?" you ask? Well, lets just say that as I negotiated it, I used the WHOLE width of the road and the side snow banks to recover and make the turn. After I had a very exciting trip around the corner I stopped and looked back because I knew what was about to happen--and it did. Here comes Ron on his brand new Cat, first straight--then side ways--then upside down, taking out the windshield. It was totally destroyed...but not as bad as Ron's pride.

In retrospect, Through that poor Cat's hundred or so lives, it had MANY windshield replacements, went for a swim, hit a fence, several trees and had the insurance companies rebuilt it so many times they canceled the policies.

Maybe Ron will have better luck this year.

 

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