First ride on my Arctic Cat Cougar, November 2008
On New Year’s Eve, I arrived home after skiing the resort, and waited for Frank to return from his epic powder day in the backcountry. When he opened the door, I promptly asked, “How was it?”
Frank responded, “Top worst 5 days ever.”
“You’re lying. It was really good, wasn’t it?”
“No. It was awful. I caught your snowmobile on fire.”
“What?!!!?”
Frank sat me down and explained the story from the beginning…. He had started the day using his sled. But, it was giving him some problems, running really rough, backfiring frequently, and stalling out. So, he turned around and decided to grab my sled instead. As he was riding my sled, he found it to be sluggish, but didn’t think much about it…. until he started seeing smoke coming out of the hood. He quickly stopped the sled, popped the hood, and 2-ft flames immediately ignited. He began throwing snow on the fire to extinguish it. But, the damage was already done.
Long story short, when Frank started my sled, he forgot to release the locking brake lever. This caused the disc brakes to overheat which in turn caused the oil reservoir to overheat and then catch on fire. To top things off, the brakes then welded from being overheated, so the snowmobile could not be towed out. He had to leave it sitting on the trail.
All I could do was laugh, in complete shock, about the whole situation. This was the icing on the cake to the money pit that this sled has been. Last January, I broke the pull-cord. I took it in to get repaired, and also asked for a leak in the anti-freeze to be fixed. The “mechanic” basically said he knew where leak was originating, but was obviously wrong. He replaced three different parts before the antifreeze leak was fixed. I have a pretty good feeling the first two were completely unnecessary. In the meantime, I tore my ACL, so I could no longer use my sled for the rest of the season. After investing $1000 in these repairs last year, I took it out for the first time in 11 months on Dec. 30. On Dec. 31, Frank caught the snowmobile on fire.
So, what can you do? Laughter is the only mechanism of relief, despite the fact that I am incredibly bummed and feel completely screwed by the whole situation. After all, it is kind of a funny story. Frank will never live this one down 
[...] The next day, Frank caught my snowmobile on fire. [...]