hi it's mike from the beaten trail i wanted to take this time to thank everybody for sending
in questions we do get quite a lot on a few topics so i wanted to cover a few of these
the main question that we get so much is uh dear mike we love your videos keep up the good work
thank you um we signed up for famous reading outdoors in pottsville but we don't know where
to start if you already have your yearly pass and you have your paperwork you can go anywhere
you want but yes it really depends on what your writing style is and what you're writing i'll
give you two examples if you have all your paperwork you can go to either dark water
or burma and i would say start there because for dark water the field office is there if
you have any questions there's porta-potties at every location but you can typically on a
saturday have a food truck there rojos is great but dark water can get a little busy now i would
say start out in dark water you can stay on the main hall road you can find some hills and you
can find some mud and you can find a little bit of everything but if you have younger family
members or friends you can go to burma and burma is only five minutes away from dark water it is
adjacent to dark water but there's no legal way to get there on your your atv your bike or your side
by side because route 61 and walmart basically are in the middle so you pretty much have to
trailer there and unload but burma is great because the parking lot is spacious but it also is
adjacent to a huge open field which there are some hills on the ends but you and your kids or friends
or someone just starting out can get a good idea on flat terrain not have to worry about a huge
crowd and if if that's you know too light and too basic for you you can go across the
street at burma to the other side of burma and that's where the hills are there's some mud pits
a little bit of everything for everybody and so that would be my first recommendation go to dark
water or go to burma we have some great videos that you can check out here's some links to them
so another question we get is we we love our razor trail why did you sell
the razor well first of all first of all i did have some issues with polaris warranty
the front seals failed on the differential after about i don't know 1200 miles i had the extended
warranty and the dealer was not a good dealer polaris felt it was not a manufacturing defect
i didn't agree with them you know so they wouldn't pay and you're talking about two three thousand
dollars to get a new differential installed i went to my insurance company and thankfully geico came
stepped up to the bat and they offered to pay the the money to get it fixed just after that i had a
just had a bad taste in my mouth with polaris i think i got over it i think no matter what
model you buy and what no matter what brand you buy you're going to have some issues these are
machines that we beat the hell with on the trail on rocks on dirt and mud and everything so you're
bound to have some failure but you would hope that a extended warranty would help you in this case
so i moved on to a honda uh i have had uh hondas before anything from uh little ct-70 to uh under
rancher and some other older pioneers so i felt honda was a little bit more reliable really was
between a honda a yamaha kawasaki i sat in the kawasaki it's a tank the thing is the the same
engine is this but it's 300 pounds heavier the yamaha i love it really fast i love the paddle
shifters we have paddle shifters here too i just i wasn't really comfortable in the uh in the yxz
and and the yamaha i felt comfortable in the talon and i like it and like i said we have it all
decked out and ready to go and we've been enjoying it a lot so i i do miss my trail we just sold it
a little while ago uh it went to a good home i will miss the go-kart riding zipping in through
the woods and even with the bigger tires i was still only about 53 54 inches but it was great it
was great and now unfortunately i can't go to some dcnr pennsylvania riding areas because i'm too big
but my ride is too big but that's that's pretty much it so another question that i do get is
i want to buy a side by side but how do i know what to buy well you know that's a good question
i my first video was about a razer trail 50 inch it's a class one atv was 1200 pounds or less it's
a smaller version of this of this honda really i think the best thing to do is to know what kind of
riding you're going to do to also be comfortable in the very unit that you're going to buy
you don't want to you don't want to sit in a vehicle and the steering wheel's too tight the
seat doesn't move back you want to be comfortable in that very model so if you can't sit in it
at a minimum and i know everybody wants to ride it most places don't let you do test drives at least
in the new jersey area you should insist that you need to at least drive down the street you need to
be comfortable your elbows you want to be so i can put a bag here you want to be able to know
what kind of ride you want and it doesn't matter if you want a can-am or you want a honda or you
want a polaris or you want a kawasaki yamaha be sure that one they have it in stock but no all
seriousness be sure that you know that you're going to be comfortable in the ride you want
to test take it for a test drive just be aware that when you buy a side by side that's that's
the cheapest part of owning a side by side and i joke but i don't so let's say you buy a razor
trail and you pay sixteen thousand dollars for one of the new trails that is not going to include
a windshield it's not going to include door bags it's not going to include a front and rear
bumper in most cases you can get some packages it's not going to cover any rear view camera
side mirrors there's a lot of things that don't come with a side by side so if you're going to buy
new make sure you know those costs up in your head you want to be able to be comfortable in the ride
you know be comfortable with the price as well because if you really want a speed
racing unit you could spend more than 35 40 50 000 on one of these but when we started out we
started out on a trail and the stock tires are thin you're gonna want new tires you're gonna
want a skid plate on the bottom that's really important and this all adds up i mean tires
alone could be 500 to a thousand dollars a skid plate could cost you 500 to a thousand dollars
you're going to want all these things to make your riding experience better and to also
protect your investment you'll get accessories you'll get upgrades and you're going to pay for
fuel and membership somewhere back to the original question is you know what kind should you buy do
you have a family do you want to buy a four-seater now you can buy a four-seater that's really long
and has a lot of leg room but you can also buy something that isn't a sport it's more utility
something like a yamaha rmax although it blurs the lines between sport and utility but you
can also get performance can-am units they just you want to make sure that you can fit
your unit on a trailer so that's another follow-up question when you buy a side-by-side you're not
going to get a trailer with it you want to make sure the trailer can be towed safe really super
long-winded know your machine and know your dealer where you're going to buy one get a recommendation
from a friend look online see don't overextend yourself when it comes to getting the biggest and
the flashiest if it's your first one start out with something basic see what your friends like
come to dark water you want to come to dark water or find us we'll let you we'll let you try out the
honda i probably shouldn't say that but if you have any questions please ask those are those
are the questions i wanted to cover please keep sending them try to answer all the questions when
we do a group ride i usually get individuals that come up to me and they want to ask
thank you very much for everybody who is following us on facebook on the beaten trail facebook the
reels we put out reels in the morning and at night and little short videos sometimes it's snippets
sometimes it's drone footage sometimes it's some humor but please please keep liking our reels and
our videos and we appreciate you subscribing and you know just following us and you can do that on
youtube and instagram and facebook and tick tock and yeah we're on twitter too but i really
don't tweet that much if at all but thanks for watching and we'll see you out there on the trail
you