Capsule Review: Ski-Doo MXZ

Jack Baruth
by Jack Baruth

The navicular, or scaphoid, bone, is a little bone in your wrist. About fifteen years ago, I broke both of mine during practice for a BMX National. Since my father was flying in to see me race that day, and since I didn’t want him to travel a long way for nothing, I wrapped duct tape around both my wrists and went out for the first heat anyway. When I landed the first jump, a modest fifteen-foot gap with a steep face to the landing, I nearly vomited from the intensity of the pain. Needless to say, things went downhill from there and as a result I’ve had trouble with my wrists ever since.

In the song “Twilight Zone”, Golden Earring sang, “You will come to know / when the bullet hits the bone.” I have come to know when I’m about to re-break one or both of my wrists. As I went flying through the air at fifty kilometers per hour, a tumbling snowmobile behind me and a hard sheet of ice ahead, I knew what was about to happen…

* * *

“It’s called a Can-Am Spyder,” I said. “It’s basically a snowmobile on wheels.” There was silence on the other end of the phone, but I imagined I could hear the wheels turning slowly in Vodka McBigbra’s head.

“You,” she opined after a few moments, “should take me to Canada to ride a snowmobile.”

“It’s September, you know.”

“Why are you changing the subject?” Why, indeed? I contacted my old pal Brian to see if he could find some Canadian snowmobiles, and four months later we were saddling a pair of Ski-Doo MXZs up for a tour of the Georgian Bay area. Brian was on one of the Ski-Doos, with Vodka riding behind me on the other. Looking back, I should have considered that

  • I had never ridden a snowmobile before;
  • I don’t like to lose any kind of race, whatsoever;
  • Any situation where someone else is anywhere near me on similar machinery feels like a “race” to me.

I think Vodka expected that our snowmobile tour would be a nice, leisurely ride down a long, tree-lined trail, but from the moment Brian disappeared around the first corner it became a full-throttle race down a long, tree-lined trail.

We should take a break at this point to explain how snowmobiles operate, just so TTACers who actually know something about snowmobiles can enjoy the pleasure of correcting me. There’s a little Rotax V-twin engine — I believe ours was a 440, although it could also have been a 600 — that connects to some kind of centrifugal clutch and turns a rolller. This roller moves a belt studded with paddles under the snowmobile, which digs the snow out from under you, creates a hole into which the snowmobile sinks, and causes you to have to dig the snowmobile out of that hole so you can continue on your way.

Our Ski-Doos couldn’t quite do 100km/h on flat ground, er, snow, but down the six-foot wide trail that had been bulldozed from three or four feet of snow and which was lined on both sides with the aforementioned trees, that seemed plenty fast. As with the Can-Am Spyder, some sort of leaning into turns is required, and some finesse with the throttle is also necessary to balance the thing so the rider is not constantly fighting understeer. My non-scientific impression of the MXZ’s acceleration was that it was roughly equal to that of a 250cc motorcycle with one passenger.

Two hours into our ride, the pace had gotten fairly hectic. The kids on bright pink and green machines who had zipped away from us at the beginning were now moving over for Brian and me as we continued to turn the wick up. V. McB had resigned herself to silent mirroring of my increasingly desperate hang-off moves. More and more of our turns were being taken flat-out. I was starting to consider myself quite the natural at snowmobile riding. I imagined myself on a bright green racing snowmobile, jumping a big set of snow doubles, pulling a no-hander, and possibly catching the eye of some Palin-esque young Alaska mother. The gap between us and Brian was down to perhaps twenty feet when we rounded a long, fast corner and I felt the handlebars go slack on the ice.

A snowmobile rider with experience would have perhaps hit the brakes to reduce the speed of impact. I treated the Ski-Doo like a race car and held constant throttle waiting for the traction to return, which resulted in me striking the angled wall of the dug-in trail with the left front ski. As I jumped clear, the sled began to tumble. I struck the ground about twenty feet later, rolling on impact but breaking my right wrist. Vodka was pinned beneath the upturned snowmobile. I crawled back and pulled the yellow-and-black machine off her, dragging her up the waist-high wall of snow and then returning to get the MXZ out of the way of anybody behind us. Brian continued without us, having no mirrors on his Ski-Doo.

Amazingly enough, the damage was limited to the nose cone, which I tossed out of the way as we prepared to continue. (Even more amazingly, the damage only billed out at $275 when I got the total a month later.) Vodka’s right foot was broken in at least one place but she was determined to continue, so we followed the trail for another three hours at a somewhat reduced pace before arriving back at the free-standing little building sans electricity or heat that served as the snowmobile rental office.

While my companion elevated her bright-purple toes, I provided my plum Amex to the cheerful fellow who operated the agency. “You know,” he said, “there’s a bit of a ramp to the edge of the parking lot of there. Didn’t you say you were a BMX rider at some point? Did you want to try jumping one of the Ski-Doos?”

“Would you,” I inquired, “happen to have any duct tape?”

* * *

Ed’s been very tolerant of these non-car reviews this week, but I promised him I would save my other articles, on a jet-ski and a Goodyear Blimp, until another time. Still, it’s been fun writing about subjects on which I have no qualifications whatsoever. This must be what it’s like to be a GM blogger! — jb

Jack Baruth
Jack Baruth

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  • Nrd515 Nrd515 on Mar 04, 2011

    When I read the thing about the wrist injury, I immediately thought back to what happened to me years ago. in 1985, I was talked into taking a puppy by a woman who worked at the Vet's office. Someone had brought in a bunch of mixed breed pups with a skin infection, and they never came back. The day before I got him, I had bought a new 1985 Caravan. Huge mistake. He caused about a thousand bucks worth of damage in the first couple of days. It was obvious he was a Pit Bull mix, his jaws were amazingly powerful, and as he grew, it was just as obvious he wasn't going to be lightweight. And his immunity to all but the worst pain was just as obvious. By 2 years old, he was an amazingly compact 75 pounds, with a huge head that was about 16" long, with back teeth the size of my thumbs. But it wasn't the teeth that hurt me, it was the top of that amazing head. We were out driving around, and I decided to stop for ice cream. He got all excited when he thought he would get something to eat, so he began bouncing around. I had my right hand on the wheel, just resting it on the spoke, and Gus slammed into the back of my upper arm. My hand had no place to go, so my wrist bent, and bent way further than it wanted to. It made a huge "crack", and I screamed. The pain was unbelievable! I finally got the ice cream, and by the time I got home, it didn't hurt all that bad. Until the next morning. When I woke up, my right wrist was about twice the size of my left one and it was all purple, and I answered the phone, and practically passed out from the pain. It's one of the worst things I've ever felt. Off to the ER I went, and they said it was just a severe sprain, but I had tore a bunch of ligaments, so it would be a long time to heal up. They gave me some kind of wrist brace, an aluminum thing that helped a lot. I wore it for about 3 weeks, and finally took it off. About a week after that, I was sitting on my basement floor, hooking up my stereo, and the cat and dog were playing. The cat got in front of me, and Gus lunged, and this time, my hand was on the corner of the rack my stereo was on, but the result was the same, it bent way too far, and I was rolling around on the floor in agony. On went the brace, but my wrist, 20+ years later, and about 12 years after Gus checked out, has never been the same. It clicks, pops, grinds, and mostly just hurts a little all the time, and if it bends a certain way, out comes the brace again.

  • Itsgotvtakyo Itsgotvtakyo on Mar 04, 2011

    I once dated a girl whose family had a place in the middle of a hundred acres in rural Vermont and a couple of snow mobiles. The first time we went out we shared a sled and needless to say being on the back of a sled piloted by a madwoman who I weighed twice as much as wreaked havoc with the handling dynamics and she threw us inside of five minutes. Valuing my life and the continuation of that relationship I decided I knew everything I needed to about driving a snowmobile and opted for my own sled. You know what's not overrated? Sex on a snowmobile in the middle of the woods on an unusually warm and sunny winter day.

  • MaintenanceCosts It's not a Benz or a Jag / it's a 5-0 with a rag /And I don't wanna brag / but I could never be stag
  • 3-On-The-Tree Son has a 2016 Mustang GT 5.0 and I have a 2009 C6 Corvette LS3 6spd. And on paper they are pretty close.
  • 3-On-The-Tree Same as the Land Cruiser, emissions. I have a 1985 FJ60 Land Cruiser and it’s a beast off-roading.
  • CanadaCraig I would like for this anniversary special to be a bare-bones Plain-Jane model offered in Dynasty Green and Vintage Burgundy.
  • ToolGuy Ford is good at drifting all right... 😉
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