Friday, January 27, 2006
Life in the Fast Lane!
It is Saturday morning and you are all snuggled up in a nice, warm bed and not quite yet in what you would call a conscious state. You are vaguely aware of a voice: “Get him, Winkie!” And before you can gather your senses and mutter “Crud!” there is a little black and white dog running painful circles over your torso—an experience that could never be described as a soothing message. Such was the life of a teenager back in the fifties.
That experience would in no way prepare you for what was to befall Daryl Hollingsworth in January at Chugiak. He was breezing along in the 28-mile Chugiak Dog Mushers Association's Eagle River Classic when his dog team suddenly veered off course in an unexpected detour. Determined to get them back on course, he overturned his sled and then everything went white. The huskies, unable to grasp the meaning of this maneuver and unable to distinguish “Whoa!” from “Go!” put the peddle to the metal so to speak. Hollingsworth, who now was hanging on to his sled for dear life, looked “like a loose rug blowing in the wind.” After being dragged about two miles, he finally decided discretion was the better part of valor and let go of his sled. While he was still lying flat in the snow, thankful to just be alive, he felt paws bounding over his body and then wham! Another musher had just run over him with his sled. Such is the life of a competitive musher here in Alaska trying to pick up a little pocket change.
A similar fate befell Nero in 67 AD. Somewhat bitter because the masses were beginning to believe the rumor that he had fiddled while Rome burned, he decided to take extraordinary measures to redeem his reputation. He pressured Olympics officials to stage an off-year version of the Olympic Games. Not content with a single laurel wreath, he introduced new forms of competition to ensure that he would pad his win total. He won the artsy competition sweeping the prizes in drama, oratory and poetry reading. Although no one had ever heard of quidditch and the rumor that quidditch referees who missed a call were mysteriously vanishing—only to show up months later in the Sahara, the officials of the first century AD knew quite well on which side their bread was buttered. The six-horse chariot race was supposed to be the grand finale of the games. The referees probably suspected that something was not quite right when Nero showed up with a ten-horse chariot. However, they never questioned the fairness of his souped-up racing machine. He was after all paying all their expenses and then some. Soon after the race started, Nero became dislodged from his fancy new set of wheels and was busy plowing up the dirt in a not so tidy little furrow with his all too bountiful body. When he finally crossed the finish line a tad behind the other competitors, the judges were in a quandary as to what to do. They conferred and decided to award him the first place laurel wreath. They ruled that on the basis of a technicality that he would have won had he not fallen and therefore he was deserving of the prize. Naturally, none of the other participants filed a protest because they too knew on which side their bread was also buttered. Thus Nero returned triumphantly to Rome with five first place finishes in his own Special Olympics. And the judges lived comfortably as well until they were compelled a few years later to give back their officiating stipends.
After almost two thousand years from the time of those tainted games, I was engaged in my own titanic bicycle race with Hoyt on the rarely used old El Dorado Highway just west of his house. He had a new three-speed bike and was determined to show me just how fast it was. There were to be no referees or other officials there—just the two of us. This was to be a gentlemanly competition. To make matters slightly fairer, he agreed to spot me a 20-yard lead on my traditional bike. As I neared my 20-yard headstart, I discerned a distinct wobble in my front tire. As I glanced down it became obvious to me that my front tire was going to fall off the bike in the next few seconds. As I grappled with the decision of what I should do under the circumstances, Hoyt came flying by on his three speeder. In the process of leaving me in his dust, he struck my wobbly front tire. My bicycle careened widely out of control. I too careened wildly out of control as I flew over the handlebars and saw something flash before my eyes. No! It was not my all too brief life. It was flying pea gravel. It was everywhere! And I was body surfing slap dab through the middle of it. We somehow or the other made it back to his house with my flesh-deprived body barely in tact where his mother proceeded to remove the remainder of the embedded pea gravel. She tore up a sheet and bandaged me from head to foot. When she finally finished, I looked a bit like a disheveled mummy. Thus is life in the fast lane.
It is Saturday morning and you are all snuggled up in a nice, warm bed and not quite yet in what you would call a conscious state. You are vaguely aware of a voice: “Get him, Winkie!” And before you can gather your senses and mutter “Crud!” there is a little black and white dog running painful circles over your torso—an experience that could never be described as a soothing message. Such was the life of a teenager back in the fifties.
That experience would in no way prepare you for what was to befall Daryl Hollingsworth in January at Chugiak. He was breezing along in the 28-mile Chugiak Dog Mushers Association's Eagle River Classic when his dog team suddenly veered off course in an unexpected detour. Determined to get them back on course, he overturned his sled and then everything went white. The huskies, unable to grasp the meaning of this maneuver and unable to distinguish “Whoa!” from “Go!” put the peddle to the metal so to speak. Hollingsworth, who now was hanging on to his sled for dear life, looked “like a loose rug blowing in the wind.” After being dragged about two miles, he finally decided discretion was the better part of valor and let go of his sled. While he was still lying flat in the snow, thankful to just be alive, he felt paws bounding over his body and then wham! Another musher had just run over him with his sled. Such is the life of a competitive musher here in Alaska trying to pick up a little pocket change.
A similar fate befell Nero in 67 AD. Somewhat bitter because the masses were beginning to believe the rumor that he had fiddled while Rome burned, he decided to take extraordinary measures to redeem his reputation. He pressured Olympics officials to stage an off-year version of the Olympic Games. Not content with a single laurel wreath, he introduced new forms of competition to ensure that he would pad his win total. He won the artsy competition sweeping the prizes in drama, oratory and poetry reading. Although no one had ever heard of quidditch and the rumor that quidditch referees who missed a call were mysteriously vanishing—only to show up months later in the Sahara, the officials of the first century AD knew quite well on which side their bread was buttered. The six-horse chariot race was supposed to be the grand finale of the games. The referees probably suspected that something was not quite right when Nero showed up with a ten-horse chariot. However, they never questioned the fairness of his souped-up racing machine. He was after all paying all their expenses and then some. Soon after the race started, Nero became dislodged from his fancy new set of wheels and was busy plowing up the dirt in a not so tidy little furrow with his all too bountiful body. When he finally crossed the finish line a tad behind the other competitors, the judges were in a quandary as to what to do. They conferred and decided to award him the first place laurel wreath. They ruled that on the basis of a technicality that he would have won had he not fallen and therefore he was deserving of the prize. Naturally, none of the other participants filed a protest because they too knew on which side their bread was also buttered. Thus Nero returned triumphantly to Rome with five first place finishes in his own Special Olympics. And the judges lived comfortably as well until they were compelled a few years later to give back their officiating stipends.
After almost two thousand years from the time of those tainted games, I was engaged in my own titanic bicycle race with Hoyt on the rarely used old El Dorado Highway just west of his house. He had a new three-speed bike and was determined to show me just how fast it was. There were to be no referees or other officials there—just the two of us. This was to be a gentlemanly competition. To make matters slightly fairer, he agreed to spot me a 20-yard lead on my traditional bike. As I neared my 20-yard headstart, I discerned a distinct wobble in my front tire. As I glanced down it became obvious to me that my front tire was going to fall off the bike in the next few seconds. As I grappled with the decision of what I should do under the circumstances, Hoyt came flying by on his three speeder. In the process of leaving me in his dust, he struck my wobbly front tire. My bicycle careened widely out of control. I too careened wildly out of control as I flew over the handlebars and saw something flash before my eyes. No! It was not my all too brief life. It was flying pea gravel. It was everywhere! And I was body surfing slap dab through the middle of it. We somehow or the other made it back to his house with my flesh-deprived body barely in tact where his mother proceeded to remove the remainder of the embedded pea gravel. She tore up a sheet and bandaged me from head to foot. When she finally finished, I looked a bit like a disheveled mummy. Thus is life in the fast lane.
