My Cannondale experances started out a little over two years ago. We needed to replace my sons race quad. We just finished up a awesome season with 20 wins in the "B" class on a Banshee. Changing from a 2 stroke to a 4 stroke was going to be a challenge especially in the "A" class, and I had heard the Cannondale was about as close as you could get to a 2 strokes powerband without being a two stroke. After calculating what it was going to cost to duplicate the Banshee, the Moto was going to be cheaper. So we ordered a Moto and to tell the truth, it is the most reliable quad I own. Last November I purchased a "02" Speed. To give you an ideal of my riding ability, I am 47 and a "tad" over weight and in my motocross days you had to beg the track officials to put a jump on the track, and you got something about 3 foot tall with at least a 10 foot approach ramp. Since I bought the Speed I have been riding as often as I could on my sons practice track. This track is not what you might see at National event, but we have 4 tabletops, 4 sets of doubles, woops section, rhythm section and a wide variety of turns. Anyway, this track was giving me one heck of a workout. My son weights 130 and I was never able to run his quad on the track, so the Speed was my first serious run on the track. With this said I will start with the review.

I started out just rolling the doubles and worked on distance on the tabletops. I could not believe how well this thing handled power was way more than I needed, but it was fun having that much. Within a few sessions on the track I was clearing the smaller set of doubles, This thing was so easy to ride. Its like you have a choice of three gears in any particular spot on the track, it pulls hard at low RPMs and seems to rev until the hair on my back it standing up. by the time I was getting my confidence up the rain came and came, then I wrenched my back doing household chores, and the Dale sat four about 5 weeks.

Time to get the Kold Cutters out. We got both quads done up and headed out to the bay. Not much fun, we were the only 2 quads out, and except were somebody plowed the snow it was to deep to really ride a quad. Last Saturday checked out a nearby river I used to snowmobile on. Looks good, so went home to get the quads. Wow what a ride. As you get up stream its like a trail ride. I was again amazed on the fact that this thing pulls so hard and the power never seems to die off. We did keep our speed down because we were not familiar with the area and we spent about 3 hours riding until the Moto got a flat. We went home and done the repairs

Sunday, what a BLAST. We went up and down that river several times. Found myself looking for sixth constantly, running 4th and 5th most of the time even out of some pretty tight bends. With trees down you have to climb the banks to get around them so we had some small hill climbs and you can cut some of the corners to get a little air off the shoreline and a few islands in the middle made some small jumps. My first confrontation was a snowmobile on the first return trip. We had caught up to him and as he saw us coming he seemed to try and out run us. Well I don't believe this quad is a match for a properly set up sled with a good rider on it, but I wasn't going to just give up. I was amazed that I was able to keep up. The straits were not that long so he couldn't just out run me with the topend them machines have. Now I wasn't going to start racing side by side on this river because traffic runs both ways, so I just tailed him to let him know he wasn't leaving me in the dust. He must have gotten tired of hearing that mighty 4 stroke barking in his ear because he finally just pulled over and flagged me by. The next encounter was a group of machines sitting on the side as we past. When I looked back they were jumping on there machines and coming after us, so I slowed a bit. When the 250r three wheeler caught us I started pushing a little, we lost him, no problem. I kept looking back to see if he was coming and the Banshee had caught us, so hammer down again. when he caught me I let him by then tried to hang with him I was holding good for quite a while until a I made a mistake and ended up in the brush. Stopped and talked with them for a while and the Banshee guy was a young man and the Banshee had pipes and maybe more. All I can say is this quad made me look pretty good. As we loaded up some more people were unloading and they came over to check out the Dales. One guy made a comment he heard there was a couple Cannondales out yesterday and they were really moving, If that’s what they are saying about our Saturday ride I can't wait to hear what they say about Sundays. We loaded up and decided to head to the bay. I had noticed earlier a bunch of quads running a oval track, so that’s were we headed. There was several nice 250Rs set up low for the track. I went out and found I did not have enough Kold Cutters in the front tires for this but figured I would just try and stay out of their way. Most of the Kold Cutters came out of my sons front tires, so he was pretty much done. I went back out behind the pack and figured I would just get out of the way when they were about to lap me. It never came, instead I found myself just cruising behind them until they pulled off. I was getting winded by now and was going to leave. Then a Scrambler 4x4 pulled on the track I chased him around for about 8 maybe 10 laps and couldn't catch him, but he never lapped me.

That was the end of a great weekend and all I got to say is " MAN I LOVE THIS QUAD":