by Dave Barry
A snowmobile is a high-performance motorized vehicle mounted on a track and skis that enable it to travel rapidly deep into remote snow-covered wilderness areas, where it gets stuck. Of course I didn’t know this when I rented one. I knew nothing, which is why I also rented snowmobiles for my fifteen-year-old son, Rob, and his fourteen-year-old friend Ryan. It was going to be a fun thing for us three guys to do together; that is what I was saying to myself as I signed the legal release form (“… the undersigned further agrees that he has not actually read this form and just wants to get on the snowmobile already and would in fact cheerfully sign anything placed in front of him including a document granting us the right to keep both his ears as souvenirs”).
We rented our snowmobiles at a place called the Smiley Creek Lodge, which is in a place called Smiley Creek, which pretty much consists of the Smiley Creek Lodge. We also rented helmets and jumpsuits so that we would look as much as possible like the Invasion of the Dork Tourists from Space. A very nice man showed us how to make the snowmobiles go. He seemed extremely calm, considering that he was turning three powerful and expensive machines over to two adolescent boys and a humor columnist. I thought he’d give us detailed instructions regarding where we should go, but basically all he said was that we should make an effort to remain in Idaho.
This did not prove to be so easy; not with Rob and Ryan at the controls. They are wonderful and intelligent boys, but they have the common sense of table salt. It’s not their fault: Their brains have not yet developed the Fear Lobe. If you give them control over a motorized vehicle, they are going to go at the fastest possible speed, which on a modern snowmobile turns out to be 14,000 miles per hour. They were leaving trails of flaming snow behind them. I tried to exercise Adult Supervision by yelling “HEY! GUYS! BE CAREFUL! HEY!” but they couldn’t hear me, because sound travels only so fast.
So off we went, into the snow-covered wilds of Idaho, with the two Flaming No-Judgment Blurs roaring ahead, followed at an increasing distance by the Rapidly Aging Shouting Man. We would have been inside the Arctic Circle by nightfall if Ryan had not driven into the creek. It was not his fault. He didn’t see the creek. Some idiot had failed to put up the freeway-style sign with fifteen-foot-high letters saying “CREEK,” and so Ryan naturally drove in to it.
Since your model snowmobile weighs as much as a freight locomotive, we were unable to pull Ryan’s out, so he got on the back of mine and we all rode sheepishly back to the Smiley Creek Lodge. There we learned that another tourist party was also having problems: A man had gotten himself and his son stuck in deep snow, and they couldn’t get out. The man’s wife, who had not been wild about the snowmobiling idea in the first place, was informing the lodge personnel that she wanted her son back, but as far as she was concerned, they could leave her husband out there. (She was kidding.) (Sort of.)
While this drama was unfolding, another group of tourists returned and announced that they, too, had planted a snowmobile somewhere out in Idaho.
None of this bothered the nice snowmobile-renting man. He calmly called in some local Idaho men—soft-spoken, strong, competent-looking men, the kind of men who never get their snowmobiles stuck and could probably survive for weeks in the wilderness by eating pinecones. They went out and rescued the father and son, and then they went and pulled out all of the stuck snowmobiles. I realized that this was routine for them; on any given winter day, probably two-thirds of the Idaho population is busy pulling tourist-abandoned snowmobiles out of creeks, snowbanks, trees, mine shafts, condominiums, etc.
So it all ended well, and the boys thought snowmobiling was the coolest thing we could have done short of blowing up a building. I, on the other hand, was looking for a more restful mode of snow transportation, and I’m pleased to report that I found one: It requires no gasoline, it goes at a nice safe speed, and it doesn’t get stuck. On the other hand, it emits an amazing amount of weewee.
NEXT WEEK: Dogsledding.
MUSH!
This is the second part of a two-part series titled “Recreational Winter Sports That You Can Do Sitting Down.” Last week, in part one, I discussed snowmobiling, with my key finding being that you should not go snowmobiling with adolescent boys unless your recreational goal is total cardiac arrest. Today I’ll discuss a sport that is more relaxing as well as far more fragrant: Dogsled-riding.
A dogsled is—follow me carefully here—a sled that is pulled by dogs. And if you think that dogs are not strong enough to pull a sled, then you have never been walking a dog on a leash when a squirrel ran past. Even a small dog in this situation will generate one of the most powerful forces known to modern science. In some squirrel-infested areas, it is not at all unusual to see a frantically barking dog racing down the street, wearing a leash that is attached to a bouncing, detached arm.
Historians believe that the dogsled was invented thousands of years ago when an Alaskan Eskimo attached a pair of crude runners to a frame, hitched this contrivance to a pack of dogs, climbed aboard, and wound up in Brazil. This taught the remaining Eskimos that if they were going to build another one of these things, it should definitely have brakes. Today, dogsleds are mainly used in races, the most famous one being the Alaskan Iditarod, in which competitors race from Anchorage to Nome, with the winner getting a cash prize of $50,000, which just about covers the winner’s Chap Stick expenses.
I took a far more modest dogsled ride, up and down a smallish mountain near Hailey, Idaho, on a sled operated by Sun Valley Sled Dog Adventures. This is a small company started by a very nice young guy named Brian Camilli, who plans to win the Iditarod someday, and who bought his first sled dogs five years ago with what was going to be his college tuition (“My parents still aren’t sure how they feel about it,” he says). He now owns twenty-seven dogs, which as you can imagine makes it somewhat tricky for him to obtain rental housing.
I was part of a two-sled party, which required eighteen dogs. A highlight of this experience—in fact, a highlight of my entire life—was watching Brian and his partner, Jeremy Gebauer, bring the dogs, one at a time, out of the truck. Because of course every single dog, immediately upon emerging, had to make weewee, and then every dog naturally had to sniff every other dog’s weewee, which would cause the following thought to register in their primitive dog brains: “Hey! This is WEEWEE!” And so naturally this would cause every one of them to have to make MORE weewee, which every other one would of course have to sniff, the result being that we soon were witnessing what nuclear physicists call a Runaway Chain Weewee Reaction.
Eventually Brian and Jeremy got all the dogs into their harnesses, at which point they began to suspect that they might be about to run somewhere, which caused them to start barking at the rate of 250 barks per minute per dog. I would estimate that at that moment our little group was responsible for two-thirds of the noise, and a solid three-quarters of the weewee, being produced in the western United States.
These dogs were rarin‘ to go. We passengers climbed into the sleds, and Brian and Jeremy stood on the runners behind. The sleds were tied firmly to the front bumper of the truck, but the dogs were pulling so hard that I swear I felt the truck move; I had this vision of us disappearing over the top of the mountain—dogs, followed by sleds, followed by truck, all headed for the Arctic Circle, never to be heard from again.
Quickly Brian and Jeremy untied the sleds and WHOOOAAAA we were off, whipping up the trail at a very brisk pace, the dogs insanely happy. Brian and Jeremy shouting traditional dog-team commands (my favorite traditional command, shouted by Brian, was: “BE NICE!”).
These guys know their dogs; they watch them carefully and talk to them individually. Every dog runs a little differently, has a different personality. For example, on my sled’s team, Sprocket was a good hard worker, a steady puller with a real nice gait; Brian hardly had to tell him anything. But he had to keep talking to Suzy, who was definitely not pulling her share of the load: She was more waddling than trotting. Brian would shout “SUZY!” and
she’d start trotting for a while, but as soon as she thought he wasn’t looking she’d go back to waddling. You could just tell that if Suzy worked for a large corporation, she’d spend most of her day making personal phone calls.
But most of the dogs were off to the races. In fact, the hard part is getting them to stop. Brian told us that one of the cardinal rules of this sport is that you never, ever get off and walk behind the sled.
“They’ll leave you behind,” he said.
We trotted briskly up to the top of the mountain, then Jeremy and Brian turned the sleds around in a maneuver that had all the smooth precision of a prison riot as the two teams of dogs suddenly decided this would be a good time for all eighteen of them to sniff each other’s private regions. But they got straightened out, and we roared back down the hill; even Suzy was in overdrive. The sun was shining, the valley was spread out below us, the wind (not to mention the occasional whiff of dog poop) was whipping past our faces. It was a wonderful moment, and I felt as though I never wanted to get off the sled, even if there had been some way to stop it. I’ll write when we reach Brazil.
SOMETHING IN
THE AIR
When you’re forty-seven years old, you sometimes hear a small voice inside you that says: “Just because you’ve reached middle age, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take on new challenges and seek new adventures. You get only one ride on this crazy carousel we call life, and by golly you should make the most of it!”
This is the voice of Satan.
I know this because recently, on a mountain in Idaho, I listened to this voice, and as a result my body feels as though it has been used as a trampoline by the Budweiser Clydesdales. I am currently on an all-painkiller diet. “I’ll have a black coffee and 250 Advil tablets” is a typical breakfast order for me these days.
This is because I went snowboarding.
For those of you who, for whatever reason, such as a will to live, do not participate in downhill winter sports, I should explain that snowboarding is an activity that is very popular with people who do not feel that regular skiing is lethal enough. These are of course young people, fearless people, people with 100 percent synthetic bodies who can hurtle down a mountainside at fifty miles per hour and knock down mature trees with their faces and then spring to their feet and go, “Cool.”
People like my son. He wanted to try snowboarding, and I thought it would be good to learn with him, because we can no longer ski together. We have a fundamental difference in technique: He skis via the Downhill Method, in which you ski down the hill; whereas I ski via the Breath-Catching Method, in which you stand sideways on the hill, looking as athletic as possible without actually moving muscles (this could cause you to start sliding down the hill). If anybody asks if you’re okay, you say, “I’m just catching my breath!” in a tone of voice that suggests that at any moment you’re going to swoop rapidly down the slope; whereas in fact you’re planning to stay right where you are, rigid as a statue, until the spring thaw. At night, when the Downhillers have all gone home, we Breath-Catchers will still be up there, clinging to the mountainside, chewing on our parkas for sustenance.
So I thought I’d take a stab at snowboarding, which is quite different from skiing. In skiing, you wear a total of two skis, or approximately one per foot, so you can sort of maintain your balance by moving your feet, plus you have poles that you can stab people with if they make fun of you at close range. Whereas with snowboarding, all you get is one board, which is shaped like a giant tongue depressor and manufactured by the Institute of Extremely Slippery Things. Both of your feet are strapped firmly to this board, so that if you start to fall, you can’t stick a foot out and catch yourself. You crash to the ground like a tree and lie there while skiers swoop past and deliberately spray snow on you.
Skiers hate snowboarders. It’s a generational thing. Skiers are (and here I am generalizing) middle-aged Republicans wearing designer space suits; snowboarders are defiant young rebels wearing deliberately drab clothing that is baggy enough to contain the snowboarder plus a major appliance. Skiers like to glide down the slopes in a series of graceful arcs; snowboarders like to attack the mountain, slashing, spinning, tumbling, going backward, blasting through snowdrifts, leaping off cliffs, getting their noses pierced in midair, etc. Skiers view snowboarders as a menace; snowboarders view skiers as Elmer Fudd.
I took my snowboarding lesson in a small group led by a friend of mine named Brad Pearson, who also once talked me into jumping from a tall tree while attached only to a thin rope. Brad took us up on a slope that offered ideal snow conditions for the novice who’s going to fall a lot: approximately seven flakes of powder on top of an eighteen-foot-thick base of reinforced concrete. You could not dent this snow with a jackhammer. (I later learned, however, that you could dent it with the back of your head.)
We learned snowboarding via a two-step method:
Step One: Watching Brad do something.
Step Two: Trying to do it ourselves.
I was pretty good at Step One. The problem with Step Two was that you had to stand up on your snowboard, which turns out to be a violation of at least five important laws of physics. I’d struggle to my feet, and I’d be wavering there and then the Physics Police would drop a huge chunk of gravity on me, and WHAM my body would hit the concrete snow, sometimes bouncing as much as a foot.
“Keep your knees bent!” Brad would yell helpfully Have you noticed that whatever sport you’re trying to learn, some earnest person is always telling you to keep your knees bent? As if THAT would solve anything. I wanted to shout back, “FORGET MY KNEES! DO SOMETHING ABOUT THESE GRAVITY CHUNKS!”
Needless to say my son had no trouble at all. None. In minutes he was cruising happily down the mountain; you could actually see his clothing getting baggier. I, on the other hand, spent most of my time lying on my back, groaning, while space-suited Republicans swooped past and sprayed snow on me. If I hadn’t gotten out of there, they’d have completely covered me; I now realize that the small hills you see on ski slopes are formed around the bodies of forty-seven-year-olds who tried to learn snowboarding.
So I think, when my body heals, I’ll go back to skiing. Maybe sometime you’ll see me out on the slopes, catching my breath. Please throw me some food.
WHEEL OF
MISFORTUNE
If I had to summarize, in one sentence, the major lesson I have learned in life, that sentence would be: “Sometimes you have to buy a vowel.”
I learned this lesson when I became a contestant on Wheel of Fortune, the hugely popular game show in which contestants try to figure out the hidden phrase, aided by the lovely and talented Vanna White, who smiles radiantly while turning over the letters one at a time. (Vanna, a total professional, could smile radiantly while having her spleen removed by weasels.)
The way I got on the show was, a Wheel staff person named Gary O’Brien, whose title is Talent Executive, sent me a letter asking me to participate in a special Award Winners’ Week, to be taped in March and broadcast in May.
“Famous actors, actresses, directors, writers, singers, and sports stars will be spinning the famous Wheel for their favorite charities,” Gary wrote.
I said I’d do it, and not just because I like to benefit charity by hanging around with famous actors and actresses. I also happen to be very good at word games, particularly the part where you cheat. You should see me play Scrabble.
Me (forming a word): There!
My Opponent: “Doot?” There’s no such word as “doot.”
Me (offended): Of COURSE there is. It’s an infarctive gerund.
My Opponent (skeptically): Use it in a sentence.
Me: “Look! A doot!”
My Opponent: Oh, okay.
So I figured, how hard could Wheel of Fortune be? Whenever I’ve watched the show, the hidden phrase has always seemed pathetically easy to figure out. Some contestant will be staring at the big board, sweating bullets, trying to make sense of some letters and blanks
arranged like this:
- - N - - - - - - - - N - - R - - - M-
I’ll look at this for two seconds, then shout at the screen, “It’s OBVIOUS, you moron! HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME!”
I bet you do the same thing. We all do. Each day 24 million people watch Wheel of Fortune, and every single one of them always figures out the hidden phrase before the actual contestants do.
But after I agreed to be on the show, I began to have second thoughts. I realized that it’s probably WAY harder to solve the puzzle when you’re under the hot studio lights, in front of cameras and a live studio audience, with Pat Sajak standing right there and Vanna beaming high-intensity smile rays right at you from close range.
So as the date of my taping approached, I worked on my Wheel strategy. I started asking everybody I talked to, including Directory Assistance, whether I should buy a vowel. Unfortunately, there was no consensus on this issue. Some people said yes, definitely; some said no, absolutely not, never buy a vowel. The only real expert I consulted was a United Airlines ticket agent named Rico, whom I met at Dulles airport when I was catching a flight to Los Angeles to be on the show. Rico told me that he had actually been a winning contestant on Wheel of Fortune.
“Should I buy a vowel?” I asked him.
“Not unless you really need it,” replied Rico helpfully.
In Los Angeles I was taken to the Wheel TV studio by an Iranian limousine driver named Max, who was deeply impressed by my enormous fame and celebrity.
“So, Mr. David,” he said. “You are a singer?”
“No,” I said. “Should I buy a vowel?”
“Yes,” said Max. “You have to.”
At the studio I met some of the other famous celebrities participating in Award Winners’ Week, including rap artist and actor “L.L. Cool J.” (That is not his real name, of course. His real name is “L.L. Cool M.”) I also met the two celebrities I would be competing against, actresses Rita Moreno and Justine Miceli.