Life on the Road
September 8, 2014 9:57 am Leave your thoughts
One would think that spending hour after hour driving a quad on rough roads would be physically exhausting. I find that it is a lot more mentally draining, though, especially when I am center-lining roads. To get accurate GPS data, I have to quad pretty slowly (anywhere from 2 km/h to about 15 km/h, depending on how open the road is). This makes for long trips down fairly short roads, often with the sun beating down on me. It is hard to stay properly hydrated when out on a quad all day, and it is even harder to stay focused.
All of that aside, I actually kind of enjoy having to go so slowly. It gives me a lot of time to think about random things (such as what to write for my next blog, or that I should stop and eat some of those raspberries on my way back); it lets me enjoy the weather (or have something to complain about if it’s too hot); and I can take the time to properly appreciate my surroundings (like the coyote I just about hit on my quad today; the silly guy didn’t hear me coming around the corner). I also get to watch the clouds drift by and can see storms coming in from a long ways off.
There are, of course, some roads that are both mentally and physically draining to drive. Muddy roads, for instance, are tough to drive with a truck but end up being a lot of fun on a quad (as long as you the mud doesn’t stick to your tires and stop you from being able to move). Reclaimed roads are one of the worst things I’ve come across with my quad. These are usually temporary roads built to access timber, but then deactivated when no longer needed. The ground is all torn up and covered in coarse woody debris in the form of random logs and stumps hiding in the tall grass. Often, there isn’t even a path or a clear direction for the road, and I only know where I’m going because of my GPS unit. I know reclaimed roads aren’t really meant to be driven on anymore, but sometimes you just have to. I’ve had a case or two where there was a perfectly fine road on both sides of a cut block, but the section of road within the block got reclaimed for whatever reason. That made for an interesting experience on what I thought would be a relatively nice road.
If you tell someone you drive down roads all day, they automatically assume that your job is boring. This summer, though, each day has been a new experience, and I’ve had a lot of fun. Forestry roads aren’t ever simple. There is always something going on with them, and often multiple things at the same time. Wildlife, flowers and berries, traffic and weather have all kept my summer exciting, and I can’t wait to see what happens in these next few days of work.