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Snowmobiles News Center > Ski-Doo, Can do; 88-year-old Biwabik woman still loves to ride
Ski-Doo, Can do; 88-year-old Biwabik woman still loves to ride
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 Mesabi
Daily News
Sunday, January 15th, 2006 05:39:11 PM By LINDA TYSSEN Staff Writer
BIWABIK — The sofa doesn’t suit Angie Hayden. But a
snow machine is a different story altogether.
The feisty little firecracker is right at home on her 2000 Formula
Deluxe 500-cc Ski-Doo. At 88 years old, she shows no signs of stopping.
“I’m going to go as long as I can,’’ said
Hayden, who didn’t let a hip replacement or bypass surgery
on her leg get in the way. “When I’m crippled, then
I’ll quit.’’
Her fondness for snowmobiling started years ago when she and her
late husband, Clark Hayden, owned Biwabik’s Hayden Marine,
a frontrunner in the snowmobile and boat business for many years.
“Everybody knew Hayden Marine,’’ said her son
Corky Hayden.
The Haydens started their business in the heyday of snowmobiling.
They once sold 300 machines in a season. Truckloads of snowmobiles
would arrive three times a week, selling as fast as they could be
taken from their crates and assembled. Besides Ski-Doo snow machines,
the Haydens sold Mercury motors, Starcraft boats, McCullough chainsaws
— and were the first dealers to sell Lund boats from New York
Mills. They operated the business from 1965 to 1986.
Adventure was a natural with the Haydens. Angie Hayden remembers
the “brainstorm idea’’ her husband had to start
a motel. “Not on your life,’’ she told him. “We’re
going to be tied down seven days a week. That was dropped.’’
She also put the kibosh on owning a resort. Then he said, “Let’s
sell boats,’’ and they did, putting up a building next
to their home on Biwabik’s main street.
Hard work was nothing new for Angie Hayden. She worked at the shirt
factory for 40 cents an hour. She cleaned whitefish they netted
from Lake Vermilion. She drove gravel truck for her husband, leaving
the male drivers in the dust with the speed she worked. She didn’t
even waste her lunch break — she’d haul a load of gravel
into town every noon hour. She even hauled the first truckload of
Lund boats from factory in New York Mills, Minn., owned by friends
Howard and Effie Lund.
At Hayden Marine, her husband was the sales general manager and
she was in charge of parts, warranties and the office. “I
had to know parts,’’ she said. Hayden Marine had the
biggest inventory of parts for the Bombardier factory’s Ski-Doo
machines in the state. “My husband would tell me, ‘I
need this piece.’ I said, ‘Where am I going to find
that?’’’ To this day she still remembers parts
numbers — ask for for a 399-cc piston and she can find it
in her inventory in the basement. “Her memory is unbelievable,’’
said her son.
Two years ago at age 86 Angie Hayden bought herself a new machine
— the 2000 Formula Deluxe Ski-Doo — and put on 350 miles
riding with her 19-year-old great-grandson, Travis Koller. A few
mishaps didn’t stop her. A while back she hit a paved road
and “really took a flyer,’’ her son wrote to officials
at the Bombardier headquarters in Quebec, asking if they might be
interested in having his mother do a promotion for the company.
She does all her business with the Virginia Bombardier dealer, Larry
Schechinger.
“She was plenty bruised up all right,’’ her son
wrote, “but I told her not to be afraid and to ride again
— and she has done just that. Last winter she accompanied
her great-grandson on an unplanned ‘water-skipping’
adventure... she really does ride.’’
Angie Hayden describes her Evel Knievel stunt like this: “All
at once I hit this bank. The road is down below. I punched the throttle
and landed on my machine right side up.’’ Great-grandson
Travis wanted to take her to the doctor, but instead she “sat
at home and had a couple beers and toughed it out,’’
dismissing it as a “little accident.’’
Corky Hayden himself has a history with snowmobiles, having raced
Ski-Doos from 1966 to 1976, first riding for Hayden Marine and then
for Staver Racing, John Staver of Staver Foundry and Performance
Products of Virginia. He raced with such champions as Steve Ave
of Halverson-Duluth and traveled the pro circuit with John Luc Bombardier,
who with Ralph Plaisted of the Plaisted Polar Expedition visited
Hayden Marine. Corky Hayden was the only American on the Bombardier
Factory racing team, a career ended by a shoulder injury.
Now Angie Hayden and her family spend time snowmobiling on Embarrass
Lake, where her son lives. She proudly displays a plaque reading,
“Angeline Hayden — Snow Machining on Lake Vermilion
December 2003. God made the littlest angel and named her Angeline.’’
She’ll keep riding as long as she can, never mind that some
of her contemporaries think she should opt for the sofa instead
of the Ski-Doo. She’s still up for a ride from Tower to Ely
— it’s just second-nature for her, having made trips
across Lake Vermilion many times when her family owned a place on
an island.
She looks “like a little kid on the machine, all 100 pounds
of her,’’ said her son.
Angie Hayden just smiles and fires up her Ski-Doo for another ride
across Embarrass Lake.
http://www.zenwaiter.com/quebec%20snowmobile%20news%20articles.htm
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