Ted's the guy to the right in the picture. We apologize that Jay is in this picture beside him. In all honesty though, its fairly appropriate since these two usually come in a package deal...

The story behind the "Gerbal Rancher" nickname really isn't snowmobile related--its just a damn funny story.

Ted is an entrepreneur and once a few years back, he was granted the opportunity to be written about in a Milwaukee/Waukesha newspaper business section. The reporter was a novice, business section writer and was excited to do the story.

If you know Ted like we do, he's serious but he doesn't necessarily present himself as serious...

So, it was the business writer's goal to be ultra professional and ask all of the right questions to get the proper information to write a revealing, fact-filled feature. She had her questions prepared and she asked them all, taking detailed notes.

At one point she asked Ted how he got to where's he's at and what other things he did to prepare himself for where he is now. Ted, with a straight face but trying to lighten things up, answered that he use to be a "gerbal rancher"...

Eventually, the interview ended and the reporter took her notes home, wrote the story and the newspaper ran it. Unfortunately, the reporter didn't realize Ted's off-color joke...and neither did the newspaper's editors. They seriously included Ted's joke as part of his past experience... Unbelievable.

Besides Ted's fixation on gerbals (for recreational use only-please do not try this at home), we do have some snowmobile-related info to share. In the words of our leader Jimmy--here-goes:

Ted comes with us to snow country one or two times a year. He owns a older Polaris and I remember one particular time that Ted complained that the sled was losing power and that he had to push it to get it going. Ted was sure that there was something wrong with drive but what we found was a drive belt that was worn down to a ½ in size--which he knew--but was to cheap to change.

Besides this, Ted does have one endearing quality that must be pointed out. The place we stay in the U.P. has cabins and there is a bar very close. Our group tries to make the bar our last stop, and by then, we are so tired that 1-2-3-or 10 beers sound pretty good. After most of us had our fill,(except for two guys) we proceeded back to the cabin for rest. The exceptions being: Ted and Jay, who did show up back in the cabin eventually, and they kept the rest of us up all night talking. Funny thing though, if you listened to them, you could not make sense out of anything they said.

To further emphasize the point, upon stopping in the bar the next morning the bartender asked us if our two friends made it home OK last night. We answered yes. She then delicately asked if either of them had any physical or mental handicaps... We answered no.

With relief, She then confessed that she listened to them all night and the more they drank the less they made sense--all the way to the point that only gibberish was being uttered... She eventually, for their sake and hers, asked them to leave...

But I do believe that they did solve the meaning of life--world hunger--all three World Wars plus the Korean and Viet Nam conflicts that night.

 

 

 

 

© Copyright 2003-2008 J3 Enterprises