After we bought the ATVs last week, Traci and I kept trying to plan a day when we could take them out and get the engines through their break-in period. The weather was supposed to have been bad all weekend, so we had resigned ourselves to waiting another week before we could go for a ride. However, the weather on Friday actually turned out to be halfway decent, despite the forecast, so late Friday night we decided to see how the weather looks in the morning and make a decision on whether or not to go on Saturday. It was somewhat clear on Saturday morning, and the heavier clouds were hovering over the top of the Wasatch Plateau to the west and the Book Cliffs to the north and east, but nothing was spilling over into the valleys below. We decided to risk it and just go.
We went to the Grassy Trail Creek/Price River area (centered roughly in this area) because it was fairly close to home and the roads were good but not too good. The Honda recommended break-in guidelines call for slower acceleration and varied RPM operation for the first 15 miles, so we took it really easy and drove on a variety of road surfaces, but nothing too rough or steep. It took us several hours to get in enough mileage to consider the engines “broken in,” and while the odometer on the ATV read about 18 miles, my GPS showed that we’d gone closer to 20. I tend to trust the GPS over the ATV because I’ve got years of experience with it and it’s never once been wrong.
We got back to the truck and loaded up the ATVs just as the wind really picked up and a tiny bit of snow started falling. We didn’t see any more snow during the drive home, but as soon as I got the ATVs unloaded and put back in the garage, the snow really started falling, and we got almost an inch overnight. I guess our luck held out perfectly as far as the weather went.
Now that the ATVs are broken in, I think the plan for this coming weekend is to head out with my sister and her family to do some riding. Since we’ll be sharing two machines among 10 people, it’s not worth driving a really long distance just to do some short rides on the ATVs, so we’ll have to pick a place close to home, but hopefully far from the huge crowds of people that tend to converge on the desert on Easter weekend.