by: Brad Phillips
photos by Kinney Jones and Adam Campbell
I walked outside to my truck and began scraping the ice off my windshield. Normally this wouldn’t be a fun experience, this time was different. This time my Winter-in-Iowa-moral was greatly improved since I was scraping the windshield so I could drive to the airport to catch my flight to sunny Phoenix to ride test the 2009 Kawasaki Teryx 750FI Sport. All my winter woes seem to go away as my flight took off down the runway.
After a quick one-way three hour flight I was picked up at the Phoenix airport by Kawasaki’s Agata Formato and Lauren Oldoerp. After a short drive I arrived at the beautiful Royal Palms Resort in Phoenix, AZ where I was greeted by other members of Kawasaki Motor Corp as well as other members of the ATV media. Like me, they were also appreciative to be in warm weather to test drive Kawasaki’s coolest side by side to date, the new and improved 2009 Teryx 750 Sport.
On Tuesday morning the other half of our test riding team, Mike Robinson, who is also my future brother-in-law, arrived from his home in Scottsdale, AZ. Soon after, we all made the drive to the Boulders OHV Park, which is northwest of Phoenix. As we rounded the corner we saw several Kawasaki semi trailers and about 15 brand new Kawasaki Teryx machines gleaming in the desert sunshine. We wasted no time finding our assigned machine and heading into the desert to put the new Teryx through its paces. Not even a mile into our ride we ran into one of those bumps you cringe at. You know the kind, the one that you know could go either way… We had no time to slow down so we clenched our teeth and held on tight. We expected to bottom the machine out at minimum, but it never happened; the machine and the new fully adjustable suspension soaked it all up in stride. We were amazed! It only caused one problem however as we were no longer scared of hitting stuff fast! The Teryx seemed to swallow up everything we threw at it with ease. The only issue we were having was a little bit of bucking in the rear end. This was addressed at the lunch break, and quickly fixed with a simple flat blade screwdriver when a Kawasaki mechanic simply slowed down the rebound on the adjustable shocks. This completely fixed the bucking problem we were having.