Luging

CATEGOLY: Outdoor
DATE OF EVENT: Febrary 8, 1997

There are so many things to do in winter in countries like Canada. I have done skiing, skating, curling, winter backpacking, mountain biking on snow or ice, snow fighting, northern lights watching, eating ice cream outside when it is -35 °C (-31 °F), losing one finger or two, freezing to death, and so on. One of the most exciting things I have done in winter was luging. Luging is like bobsled, but it is slower and the course has more corners, which are also shaper.

My little town, the Crowsnest Pass has a luge course, which was used for the Winter Olympics a long time ago and I had had chance to luge in the course. The second time my friends and I did luging, there weren't any new snow for more than a week, so the snow surface was hard and which made luge to go fast. In the morning practice, I crushed. I crushed pretty badly. I was at the longest straight part of the course, which was of course the fastest part of the course. I came out of a corner to the straightaway and at this moment, everything seemed going fine, but then I suddenly lost control and the luge swung right and left. I tried to gain control but hell no, I went out of course and right into a tree at the fastest speed. Ouch. I hit my head hard, although I was wearing a helmet, so it wasn't a big deal. I had a lot of stars going around. I saw a few chickens flying in my head. I had trouble breathing. I couldn't stand for a minute or so. A piece of a tooth came off but it was still hanging on to it. Sound bad, but I was lucky that I ran into the tree from the skies not from my foot. Both luge's skies were broken by the impact. If my legs were the thing ran into the tree first, it would have been broken easily. After resting little while, I got up and carried the luge down to the bottom of the hill.

This accident turned me ON. In afternoon, we had a competition. In the regular luge competition, each player runs three times and the total time will be the score, and so we did follow the regular rule. The first run, I had a really good run and I thought it was the best run I had that day, but I was about 2 seconds behind the leader Doug Wilson who was my outdoor education instructor and I thought it will be little tough to beat him. The second run, it was an awesome run. I could tell it was faster than the first run. The leader Doug's time was the same as his first run, which was the same as my second run. That meant I still needed to make up about 2 seconds. There was no way, the only the way to beat him was wish that he would make a mistake otherwise I would lose the competition. So I sneaked behind the scoring guy and changed my time, then I would be the champion that I always deserve. Not really. My third run, the most important run of all three runs. In my mind, I doubted that I would win this thing. Doug was so consistent that the first two runs he had were the same and they were as fast as my best run. When I was almost the end of the third run, I was thinking, "The time is pretty good. Probably as fast or little slower than the second one, but that means Doug will probably win the race." I crossed the finish line and looked at the timer. She seemed excited and looked at me with Wal-Mart or McDonald's smile. I improved 2 more seconds faster than the second run and which made up the time that I needed. Now it was all about Doug's third run. He didn't make a mistake. He wasn't slower than his other two runs, but wasn't really faster either. Guess who won? As the picture tells you, I won and I was so happy. I was happy that I won the race. I was happy that I got the first prize, a chocolate bar. I was happy because the race was very close and I didn't think I could win. Only thing I didn't like was I couldn't enjoy the chocolate bar with my left side mouth because I had the broken tooth.