February! You know what that means, Sports Fans? (No, not the Super Bowl. Though I suppose that, too.) It’s time for the U.S. National Toboggan Championships!
Never heard of them? You somehow missed the recent spread by Keith O’Brien in the New York Times travel section?
Oh. You don’t read the failing NYT? Here, let me help you.
The Toboggan Championships loom large in my life. I stare at the chute all year long from my dining table. It rises from Camden, Maine’s Hosmer Pond like gigantic straw through which Ragged Mountain sucks turtley goodness. In reality, it’s more of a glorified trough topped by a gallows. We’ll get to that later.
Hosmer Pond during the Toboggan Nationals is like the French Quarter during Mardi Gras, except on ice, in Carharts, with a lot more dogs. A carnival atmosphere prevails. There are costumes, food and copious drinking.
So grab a beer (or coco, schnapps optional) and let me tell you the story of a toboggan run gone wrong.
It all started innocently enough. The night before, there was a pre-championship dinner for a local 4-person team, eating being the only training regimen. Weight is a winning strategy.
At the start of dinner, one of the team announced that, alas, he could not compete on the morrow, casting about the room for a volunteer to take his place.
That’s the thing about the Toboggan Championships, no experience is necessary. There are no qualifying events. This is the only organized wooden toboggan race in the US, perhaps the world. You could be undiscovered talent. All you have to do is find a sled and get your application in before the field is closed.
The gaze of the party fell on my then boyfriend (now husband). He’s a good sport. “Why not?” he said. “It’ll be a blast.”
Merriment ensued. Then someone introduced a note of caution. “Will you all still fit on the sled?” The original team had consisted of two tall guys and two of average height. Now there were three talls and a medium.
“Let’s find out!” someone interjected. The toboggan was ceremoniously carried inside and plopped in front of the fireplace. The team climbed on in order of ascending height. It was a scrunch, but everybody’s backside was on the boards.
The crowd cheered. Photos were taken. Then it was time to turn in. Athletes need their rest.
The day dawned clear and cold, minus five. The multitudes assembled on the ice, stomping feet and huffing into gloves, sending up clouds of crystal breath. I wandered through the throng, keeping an eye out for our team. It was an hysterically incongruous group.
The 400 foot long toboggan chute, originally built in 1936, had, just two years previously, been resurrected from rot. Some wiseacre sussed out that no national toboggan championship existed and jokingly claimed the distinction for our town. And that’s how the locals treated the the brand new race, one big jest. Teams gave themselves comic names and dressed in outrageous costumes.
Then there were the people who hadn’t been let in on the joke. How they found out about the race was a mystery. They’d come from “from away,” as we say, traveling great distances from places where winter is serious business, places like Minnesota. They’d arrived in matching spandex outfits and aerodynamic helmets to be greeted by unseemly displays of irreverence.
I finally found our crew in a long, long line of 4-person teams waiting to have a go at the chute. Our team wasn’t in costume, nor were they what might be called spiffy. Lumpy parkas, flannel-lined jeans, windpants, and wooly hats were their style. Just uphill of them was Minnesota in their form-fitting, blue-and-silver bodysuits looking down on our cohort with disdain.
“Are all of you going to fit on that sled?” one of the pros asked. His compadres snickered.
Our cannonball of a front man puffed himself up like a pigeon and snapped back, “Of course we are. We tried it in the living room.”
“I want to watch this,” responded the blond giant. “Why don’t you go ahead of us.”
The teams switched places, no one on our side willing to admit that someone in spandex might have a valid observation.
Meanwhile, I could see the line was crawling. At this rate I would be waiting hours in sub-zero temperatures to wave my hankie for my man. Determining I was worth more alive than dead, I apologized, said my goodbyes and left with a, “Good luck! Let me know how you do.”
This is not the tobogganing of childhood where you push your sled over the crest of a hill and jump on. Sleds start on a platform. Like a hangman’s gallows, the platform has a hinged trapdoor that drops, starting the run. Toboggans fly down the iced, pressure treated, pig trough of a chute, reaching speeds of 40 mph.
Speed depends on sled quality, wax job, weight, wind resistance, and how straight the sled rockets down the chute. This is not the luge. There’s not a heck of a lot of control.
The chute tails out onto the ice where timers wait at the finish line. Depending on speed and ice conditions, sleds can travel far out onto the pond. Four-person sleds can be heavy enough to cross completely. It’s a long walk back.
By the time their turn came around, our heroes were fairly frozen. Somehow, they managed to bend themselves onto the toboggan, the cannonball in the front with his feet tucked under the curl, the three daddy long legs behind, each with his stiff limbs wrapped around the man in front of him.
Maybe the sled was a little short. Maybe their knees were sticking out a bit far. But, they were damned if they were going to admit it.
The trap door dropped, and they were off to a bad start. The sled hadn’t been square on the platform and tracked off center. My boyfriend felt a pain in his leg, but flying down the mountain at 35 mph, there was nothing to do but hang on.
They made it to the ice and rolled to a stop.
Everybody stood up. The patrician of the group wrinkled his nose and sniffed the air. “Are our brakes burning?” he asked.
“Toboggans don’t have brakes,” a teammate pointed out. “It’s you boot.” Everyone looked down. Sure enough, his L.L.Bean boot was sizzling on the ice, the rubber sole melted by friction.
“That must have cost us time,” they all agreed.
But there was another smell mingling with the burnt tire aroma. What was it?
My boyfriend looked down at his left leg. It wasn’t pretty. It had rubbed up against the chute the whole way down. The friction had burned through two layers of windpants, pair of long underwear and his skin. Hundreds of pressure treated splinters were embedded in the raw flesh like so many porcupine quills. Beads of melted nylon adhered here and there. Thanks to the friged temperature, he felt nothing.
“Oh my God!” he said.
“Stay right there. I’m going to get the camera from the car. We need a picture of this,” enthused the cannonball cheerily.
“Forget the camera. I’m going to the hospital.”
“But we have another run. If you don’t stay, we’ll be disqualified.”
“Find someone else,” my boyfriend said. “I’m leaving.”
And so they did. Someone shorter.
It all turned out alright. After being read the riot act by a scold of an ER doc — who, after a lecture on grown men doing stupid things, pronounced pulling splinters a waste of his medical expertise — my boyfriend and his second-degree burns were sent home with a tub of silver sulfadiazine cream and wound-care instructions.
We had dinner in. I cooked. We picked out splinters for weeks.
We hear the race committee now recommends against synthetic clothing, but we don’t know that for a fact. My husband says one run was enough to last a lifetime.
photos thanks to the Camden Snow Bowl, Penobscot Bay Pilot, and Village Soup.
Because I needed a mental Margarita (and TeriJo asked)
