License to Slide
13 November 2003

Not only did I survive the Skeleton Driving School this past weekend, not only did I enjoy it, I'm twitching like an addict going into withdrawal. I need to do this again - soon. Skeleton is the crack cocaine of winter sports - one run off the top and you want to sell your house, quit your job, desert your family and spend the rest of your life sliding head-first down bobsled tracks.

In a few days I'll have my handy wallet-sized Skeleton Driving License. What could be cooler?

The course was hugely fun. Okay, it was also terrifying at times, but in a good way. On Friday night we met at the ice house for the introductory lecture then walked up to Junior start, halfway, just above Kreisel (German for "circle" - it's the 270 degree turn where the track crosses under itself). Two runs from Junior, pushed off, dead easy. This was exactly what we did for the "Discover Skeleton" evening last winter. Fun but not especially difficult or thrilling (see map).

On Saturday we practiced running starts in the Ice House then moved further up the track to the women's luge start. This brought us above Turn 6, our first attempt at the 6-7-8 left-right-left sequence. Turn 8 is critical because you need to come off it perfectly to have a clean run down the long straightaway into Kreisel. Screw up the exit a little bit and you'll bounce off the walls a few times, losing speed. (Unlike luge, this does not hurt because the sleds have bumpers slightly wider than you are. Do this too severely on a luge and you will break your arms and legs. Hence my potent slogan: "Skeleton: Safer Than Luge!") Screw it up a little more and you'll hit harder, throwing the sled into a skid and, almost inevitably, shooting into Kreisel low, angled up the track, resulting in a hugely uncomfortable tail-whip when the G-forces hit. Screw up 8 really badly and you'll come out of the turn so late that you'll drop onto one runner and will either roll the sled - painful - or ride down on your shoulder until you instinctively flop back on top, then rattle down the chute like a pinball (see photo).

The experience of starting higher on the track was quite, quite different. 90 km/h in the straight, up from 60 km/h the day before. Double the G's in Kreisel. I had a bad skid and tail-whip on my second run and the impact knocked the wind out of me; also a good chin-bounce but that's why the helmets have chin guards. But I was consistently clean coming out of Kreisel, avoiding the traditional left-wall hit before 10. The lower labyrinth, Turns 10 through 14, flies by an awful lot faster. There's just no time to react. Afterwards I described the sensation as something midway between flying fighter plane and being a baby seal laying helplessly on an ice floe whilst being whacked to death with a club.

Sunday was the big day. Sunday we went Off The Top. From the bobsled start. The full track. Were we scared? Absolutely. Scared shitless, every last one of us. I woke up feeling sick, and stayed queasy all day. Like a convict on the morning of his execution: you don't want it to happen; you just want to get the damn thing over with. I was not alone in having these feelings. We were all deathly silent in the truck on the ride up to bob start, slowly climbing the hill, watching the finish get smaller and smaller. I grinned and turned to my companions: "It's awfully quiet in here, gentlemen. We look like paratroopers crossing the Channel the night before D-Day." We'd been pretty chatty after our runs the night before, but not any more. The nerves settled down a little when we put our spikes on and walked down through the uppper portion of the track, looking closely at the corners, finding the optimal entry and exit points (much easier to do when you're standing still). Then back up for the first runs.

The top...

Luckily I was seventh in the start order, so I could be reasonably assured that up to six of my partners in fear had survived before it was my turn to go. As the first victim laid himself down onto the sled, looking rather like Robespierre awaiting the guillotine, he asked plaintively if he would get down in one piece. I smiled and helpfully said, "That, my friend, is between you, God and Isaac Newton."

The run was actually not bad. Once I passed the first couple of turns the sickness left the pit of my gut and I began to enjoy the ride. At turn four I discovered that my helmet was too large - the G forces pulled it down over my eyes and I could barely see. This probably helped because I forgot about looking down the track and just steered by feel. I came into 6 in decent shape, shot down the steep slope into 7, was respectably early out of 7 and into 8, and completely avoided the late-exit runner drop leaving 8. I had a few minor hits on the straightaway but nothing serious and entered Kreisel more or less where I should have been. The extra G in Kreisel was something new, however. I had another chin bounce and the helmet slid down again so I really had no idea where I was in relation to the exit. I didn't get the right toe down in time to steer away and took a good shot from the left wall. My head and shoulders came up for a second then I forced myself back into position and shot through the labyrinth in reasonable condition. Out of 14 and up the finish runout I screamed at the top of my lungs, mostly out of relief.

Turn 5

Needless to say, I couldn't wait for the second and third runs. This time I did the full running start. I had some irritating low-speed wall bounces in the upper straights but was otherwise clean save for the normal straightaway glances after 8 (it takes about twenty runs before you have the timing down to where you can come off the turn at the correct point). I wore a smaller helmet so I could see where I was going. The times came down each run, from 68 to 66 to 65 seconds (putting this into perspective, world class men get down to 57) and the straightaway speeds went up, from 110 to 112 to 114 km/h.

There is, I've discovered, rather a lot of skill and athleticism involved in doing this well. You need to be a good sprinter for the running-then-flopping-on start. I am not a good sprinter, but nevermind. Assuming no cock-ups on the way down, your finish time is largely determined by the speed of your start push. Then the actual driving requires considerable finesse. You steer with subtle head and body movements, or less-subtle toe-dragging. The sleds are quite maneuverable. And while the track does guide you down and one can get to the bottom by laying still with eyes closed thinking of hockey and England - with the possible exception of Turns 7 and 8 - the fastest line through the track requires active driving, particularly steering into and out of corners at the appropriate moments so as not to rattle off the walls in the subsequent straightaways. As the corners tend to come at you VERY VERY QUICKLY at 110+ km/h, it takes a lot of experience and very precise timing to be able to do this correctly.

My sixteen co-sliders were a comically heterogenous lot: a few younger athletic types possibly converting from track and field or speedskating (including an Australian skater looking to make, if not simply be, the Australian Olympic squad); three loons who drove up from Portland, Oregon just for the experience (Salt Lake City was closer but who wants to spend a weekend in Utah, especially when the track doesn't have a Kreisel); a father and son team from Edmonton who both nearly succeeded in falling off their sleds; other assorted thrill-seekers and the teenage son of an experienced slider. We were all fast friends by the end. Nothing breaks the ice like the shared experience of watching it go by two inches away from your face at highway speeds.

I so want to do this again. I desperately, desperately want to do this again. I may even race this coming weekend. The sport is not particularly expensive, another two or three hundred bucks (far less than I'm about to spend on a pair of skis) would cover sled rental from the club, training time and race entries. All I'd need to buy is a helmet and track spikes. But it's the time - I'm already skating three nights a week, trying to ride my bike on weekends when the weather cooperates (it hasn't of late), then we'll begin skiing in a few weeks, plus the whole two-full-time-working-parents house-and-kid thing. I don't know how I'd juggle it without giving up a lot of skating, and it's pretty hard to justify sacrificing my primary aerobic activity for something with no conceivable fitness benefit. But I am so going to do this again, somehow, this year. I need to feel that sensation again. Soon.

Occasionally it does occur to me how incredibly silly it is to have this multi-million dollar facility (over 1500 m of concrete track, four start houses, an entire refrigeration plant, timing and control systems, maintenance crews, service roads, etc.) just so idiots can rocket down it on sleds for around one minute. But goddamn, is it ever fun.

Non-skeleton topics

Not much else to say, really. The weekend went by in a blur. We socialized. Annette sewed a friend's curtains. When I wasn't sliding I was spending quality time with the child. Thank god someone is cleaning our house, that's the best twenty bucks a week I've ever spent.

My daughter is a hypochondriac. Last week Maddy found a little splinter in her hand, a gift from the stair railing I was supposed to have sanded and refinished six months ago. She cried when I tried to take it out, refused to let me anywhere near her. She tearfully demanded medicine. I tried to give her a vitamin but she was on to me, and demanded "the little round pills" - Tylenol. Then she wanted a band-aid, but not the kind we currently have, which are too sticky. More tears. Finally she asked for an ice pack, which she took to bed with her. When it was no longer cold she got out of bed and put it back in the fridge; ten minutes later, she got out of bed again and retrieved it.

We are so doomed.

Yon Madster has always had issues with freshness. Drinks must be "fresh", though none of us are really clear on what exactly she means by that. When she was just two she would always ask for "a nice, dry, fresh juice," but now she's finally accepted that dry means the opposite of wet. Sometimes I think freshness has to do with temperature, other times with concentration (we generally cut it so that the mixture is one part apple juice to five or six parts water - given how much she drinks in a day, if we didn't dilute the stuff she'd be toothless, diabetic and fat.) So the other night, typically late, typically stalling before bed, she demands an apple juice. I make one and bring it to her.

"Daddy, is it fresh-fresh?"

"I just made it. Of course it's fresh."

At this point I am only mildly irritated...

"No, is it fresh-fresh?"

"What the hell is fresh-fresh?"

"Like this," she says, and vigourously shakes the cup (with lid, thankfully) back and forth.

"Well it is now, you've just bloody well shaken it."

She begins to whine:

"Nooooo, it's not fresh-fresh unless you do it. I want you to do it!"

Whereupon I take the apple juice, shake it twice, give it back to her, and begin yelling:

"Jesus H. Christ, Madeleine, you have no idea what the hell you're talking about. You have no idea what fresh means, do you? How the hell can you tell me something isn't 'fresh' or 'fresh-fresh' if you have no goddamn idea what fresh actually means?"

A long silence follows, then she says in a very meek, quiet voice:

"No, you're right, I don't know what fresh means. Maybe in the morning we can find a book about it."

Hilarity ensues.

The joys of home ownership

We live on a corner lot. We have a long (150') sidewalk down the side of the house. It's on the south side of the street, right against a seven foot fence, so it receives no sunlight all winter. There is a bus stop close by so it gets lots of foot traffic. Consequently any snow hitting the sidewalk, which I am legally required to shovel, is immediately packed down to a dense icy crust that will not melt off until the next Chinook (the crazy warm winter wind that comes off the mountains, during which the temperature can rise from -20° C to +20° C in six hours, which causes flooded basements and plays havoc with expansion joints but is a welcome break from the cold). Despite the near-impossibility of getting snow off of this sidewalk with anything less dramatic than a flamethrower or huge bags of expensive, nature-destroying salt, there is some cranky old bastard in the neighbourhood who calls the city and complains every damn time it snows. The by-law officer is pretty sympathetic, so I haven't been fined, but I'm getting tired of the letters and notices. After consultation with a friend schooled in legal history, I have composed the following notice, which I will staple to the fence at waist height because I'm pretty sure it's the old guy on the motorized scooter who's the grumpy one. It may not stand up in court, but it might shut him up, and that's all I care about.

TO WHOMEVER CALLS THE CITY ABOUT THIS SIDEWALK EVERY TIME IT SNOWS:

City of Calgary Bylaw 20M88, subsection 67(1) states that property owners are "responsible for the removal of ice or snow from that portion of the Sidewalk [adjacent to their property] within 24 hours." It does not state that property owners must remove ALL ice or snow from the sidewalk.

Furthermore, section 17 states that "sand, gravel, or salt placed upon icy portions of a Street to minimize the danger of slippery conditions shall be allowed under this Bylaw." This recognizes that a sidewalk (defined as part of the street in subsection 2(19)) cannot be kept perfectly clear of ice or snow. For this reason the city distributes free of charge a sand and gravel mixture for use on sidewalks adjacent to private property.

The Bylaw further states in subsection 67(3) that when "snow or ice on the sidewalk adjacent to the property [poses] an emergency situation to the public, the Enforcement Officer may direct Work Forces to remove the ice and snow." This implies that it is the dangerous condition of the snow and ice, rather than the mere presence of snow and ice, that determines when snow and ice should be ordered removed from the sidewalk.

Therefore, the owner of this property will happily comply with the terms of the Bylaw by removing as much loose snow from the sidewalk as is reasonably possible and by spreading a sand and gravel mixture on the surface of the remaining snow to ensure that the sidewalk is not slippery or dangerous.

Please stop wasting everyone's time by calling the city and complaining every time it snows. This sidewalk need not and will not be scraped down to bare concrete.