Sidelined by a stick, second swamp ride

So I had big plans for my President’s Day, none of which involved doing home labor.  I wanted to go out on my EUC and do some filming with my Mavic at the same time.  I had ideas of doing a long ride that could cover multiple locations.  My first stop was north collier regional park.  I thought this would be a good spot for me to do an auto follow test with the drone.  I had already done a similar test but this time I wanted to try to have the drone lower and closer to me as I rode.

So I got all the gear up and running and took off slowly on my wheel with the Mavic in pursuit.  I immediately heard a noise coming from my wheel that concerned me.  It was a nasty rubbing sound that changed depending on speed and angle.  The EUC noise concerned me much more than flying the Mavic so my drone air time used only half of the battery before I shut it down.

I rode around the wheel some more to see if I could get a better idea of what was going on.  The noise sounded bad.  Now when I rode at the Greenway off road with Katie the day before there was an incident where something got sucked up into the wheel, it sounded like a vine, I never saw it.  However after that happened I rode another mile or two without a problem.  Why I would be hearing a noise the next day baffled me.   I threw the wheel up on the tailgate of the truck and did my best to look inside for any sort of debris.  I saw nothing.  I was bummed out that my big riding plans were cut short but there was no way I was going to keep riding with that noise going on.

So as soon as I got home I did further diagnostics with my wheel.  I utilized the LED light on my phone to try to get a better look inside the wheel.  I finally spotted what looked like a piece of wood jammed at the very top of the casing above the wheel.  I was relieved to see I found the problem I now just had to find a way to get it out.

I spent at least a half hour digging inside the wheel with a straightened wire hanger, trying to push the wood towards one of the openings so I could grab it.  Even once I got it to the edge I had to pry it out with a needle nose pliers.  The piece was so big I wondered how it got up there in the first place.  Once the wood was removed I took the wheel out in the driveway for a quick test which verified the wheel was now noise free. I was very happy my beloved MSuper was intact.

So I played some WoW during the afternoon before deciding to take the now wood-free wheel back to the swamp.  Instead of driving my truck there and wheeling from the parking lot I decided to ride the wheel the three miles to the trail instead.  I planned a much shorter trail ride this time, without venturing into the heart of gator country.

There were only four or five vehicles in the parking lot but I passed no less than a dozen people on the trail which surprised me.  It looked like a number of the holes in the boardwalk were fixed since my last ride, I saw a lot of fresh lumber in place.  They also removed the large tree that was blocking the path rather early on.

The ride itself was nice.  I had one close call when I spotted a striped snake at the last minute and had to dart suddenly to miss it.  I was right on the edge of dumping it.  I decided to only go into the path until I saw my first gator which happened around the two and a half mile mark.  I saw what I assume was a mother gator with two 1 foot long babies right next to her.  That was enough reptile action for me for the day and I back tracked from there.

On my way out a guy that was taking wildlife photos asked if I could pose for a picture.  He thought the EUC was pretty amazing and couldn’t believe I was able to ride it on a trail.  The ride back home was smooth.  At one point I was actually going fast enough that I started to feel mild tiltback on the wheel, something I hardly ever feel with the Msuper since it’s top end speed is so high.

Even with the stick incident early in the day it was a very enjoyable day off where I just got to do my own thing pretty much all day long.  I could use more days like that.