I grew up in northern New York, just 14 miles from the Canadian border, where the winters were harsh, and the snow was plentiful. We would often get snow in November, but when the calendar turned over to December, that’s when the farm ponds froze thick enough for skating, Hockey Night in Canada was on TV (CBC or CJOH) every Saturday night beginning at 7 p.m., and snowmobiling filled most of my weekends.
It was the 1970s, and snowmobiles were in their heyday. Virtually every motorcycle brand, agricultural implement manufacturer, and outboard motor company had snowmobiles in their product lineups. Ski-Doo, Arctic Cat, Polaris, and Yamaha were the most prevalent, but there were also Moto-Ski, Sno-Jet, Harley-Davidson, Suzuki, Kawasaki, John Deere, Mercury, Skiroule, Ariens, Boa-Ski, Bolens, Massey-Ferguson, Rupp, Scorpion, Johnson and Evinrude snowmobiles just in my little part of the North Country right along the St. Lawrence River. One of my neighbors even had a Raider Double Eagle, which was a strange, rear-engine, twin-track contraption that you sat in instead of on. It was weird-looking then, and it’s still weird-looking now.
All told, there were more than 250 brands of snowmobiles being manufactured in the U.S., Canada, Japan, and elsewhere, and at one time, I could name every brand from Alouette to Yukon King. Back then, even mail-order companies like J.C. Penney, Sears, and Montgomery-Ward (remember “Monkey Ward”?) had snowmobiles that you could order from their several-inches-thick catalogs.
My father got us into the snowmobile thing when he bought a pair of used Moto-Skis: a Zephyr and a Capri. The Zephyr had a lonnnnnng track on it with a seat that looked like it could practically carry every kid in our little hamlet all at once. The Capri was smaller than the Zephyr, and thereby a little sportier. Both snowmobiles were equipped with single-cylinder, two-stroke Hirth engines (300cc for the Zephyr and 200cc for the Capri) that were good for about 45 miles an hour topped out.
In fairly short order, that pair of bright-orange Moto-Skis gave way to a pair of bright-white Yamahas: a GP643B and a GP292F. The 643 had a twin-cylinder, twin-carburetor, two-stroke engine that put out about 50 horsepower and was nicknamed “The Hammer” by Yamaha themselves. The 292, nicknamed “The Little Giant” by Yamaha, had a single-cylinder, two-stroke engine that produced about half the horsepower of the 643, but the lightweight chassis and wedge-shaped seat delivered twice the fun as long as you rode it solo.
Like the two Moto-Skis, both Yamahas had rope-pull recoil starters on them but “Yamalube” oil injection meant that our primordial days of having to mix the gas and the oil together in a big red plastic jug were over. Woo-hoo! Welcome to the 1970s.
Right about now, you’re probably wondering what this nostalgic trip down the ol’ snowmobile trail has to do with motorcycles. Well, as it turns out, those two pairs of snowmobiles that got me through the long winters actually started my motorcycle obsession. For my 16th birthday, my father went in “halfsies” with me on my first motorcycle. A one-year-old 1975 RD350B that was bright-orange like the two Moto-Skis we previously had, and it was a Yamaha like the two snowmobiles that were our current winter fun machines. And, yup, the RD350B was a two-stroke with Yamalube oil injection. No rope-pull recoil starter, though. You kick-started this Yamaha.
On December 8, Dad will have been gone for a year. I still have my RD350B, though. I remember December.
