Tag Archives: bobsled track

Long ago in a neighborhood far away

April 30, 2018 Gill Trotman 1 Comment

Long ago in a neighborhood far away, I was just a young lad with a burning desire to enter the world of commerce. Ever since I can remember, I wanted to build something that people could enjoy, but at the same time earn a few dollars. The youngest age I remember thinking this was when I was probably 10. I wanted to open up my own dog and cat hospital. I had a cat named Purry. Somehow, Purry had been shot by a BB gun and his front leg still had the BB in it and was bleeding. In the garage we had this white porcelain cabinet that looked to me like something that belonged in a doctors office. I took my cat and using my own belts I stretched him out with all 4 legs tethered to each corner of the top. The poor cat looked like he was doing the splits. I remember shaving the area of his leg that had the wound, using tweezers to remove the BB, then putting anti-bacterial ointment on the wound and bandaging it up.

That was enough to convince me to open my own veterinary practice. I put a sign on the front of the garage that said “Cat and dog hospital”. Fortunately, nobody saw the sign as not a single dog or cat was given into my care and my parents were not sued for malpractice.

My second attempt at commerce was opening a bicycle repair shop. I put out my shingle and actually had a customer the first day. The training wheels on my neighbor’s bicycle were coming off. My task was to make sure that they stayed on the bike. I promised to have the bike repaired by the end of the day. I went to my dad’s tool box and found 3 tools, a screwdriver, an old pair of pliers and a hammer. There wasn’t a single wrench in the whole box. What was I going to do? I took the pliers and tried to tighten the bolt that held the training wheels on, but all that did was to round off the corners of the bolt.

A screwdriver wasn’t going to help and a hammer was out of the question. With my head hung low, I had to return the bike with the realization that to start a bicycle repair shop, you needed actual tools. Wilbur and Orville Wright would not have been pleased as they graduated from a bicycle shop to inventing the first engine powered plane. I removed my sign and now had 2 failed businesses before reaching the age of 11.

My next business venture involved a go-kart that my dad had built from an old self propelled lawn mower and a pedal car. He chopped the pedal car in half and chopped the handle of the lawn mower. Somehow, with only a pair of pliers a screwdriver and a hammer, he was able to take some wire and fasten them together. He attached a wire to the throttle of the gas engine and you pulled it with one hand while steering it with the other. The neighborhood kids saw me riding up and down the road, onto the dirt path, circling around and heading back down the road. Of course their first question was, “Hey, can I ride it?” I said “Sure”. After a few kids were taking their turns riding my go-kart, I was starting to get annoyed so I came up with the idea to sell tickets. I charged 25 cents per ride. Kids were going home to empty their piggy banks. After a couple of hours, I guess one of the parents called and complained to my parents that I was charging the neighborhood kids to ride my go-kart.

My dad came out and told me to stop charging the neighbor’s kids and to let them ride for free. Busted again! With everyone riding my go-kart, I wasn’t getting much time riding it. The next day, before anyone woke up, I figure out where the governor was located on the go-kart and found that if I played with it, I get get about 25% more speed. This worked great for a couple of days until the poor engine, revving past what it was supposed to, blew up and refused to run.

As a kid living in the country, getting around by bike was the only way to travel. Every kid had a bicycle and since my bike repair shop was a bust, I decided to make a bike track. My yard was pretty big for our neighborhood. We had a ditch that went from the front of the yard to the back. In the middle, during the summer, it was more of a recess than a ditch. I figure out that if I created a bike track around the next door field, through our yard, then down and up the ditch it would make a great bike track, one with interesting curves and bumps in the field to give a little excitement. I spent the next couple of days with a shovel and rake, smoothing out the really rough areas, creating signs to direct people where to go. I thought about selling tickets, but this didn’t go over too well with the go-kart, so I figured I would just do this one pro bono. I told a couple of neighbor kids what I had built and within an hour or two, there were 7 kids riding their bikes along the bike track having a great time.

We were having a blast until my dad found out that we were ruining his beautiful lawn with bicycle tracks. My dad was very proud of his lawn and still is to this day. That was the end of the bike track.

It sure was getting tough to run a business, let alone an amusement park. The bike track gave me another idea. In Suffolk, we had a couple of good snow storms that covered the hill behind us with snow. To me, as a 12 year old, the hill seemed huge, but now that I think about it, I’m sure it wasn’t that big. For kids my age, it was big enough. Having watched the winter Olympics the previous winter, I marveled at the bob sledders. I so much wanted to ride a bob sled. What if I were to create a bob sled track on the hill behind our home? Since it was fall, I had plenty of time to create a bobsled track. There were two tall trees at the bottom left of the hill. There was about a 24″ gap between the two trees. It was the perfect spot to ride our sleds through, but on the other side of the trees was a ditch. Big problem. You wouldn’t want to end up in icy water, so I built a wooden bridge over the ditch. I then took dirt and built up a banked curve right before the trees so that it would lead you between the trees and over the bridge to end the run. I made sure that all of the sticks and underbrush were cleared on the hill. I imagined the start gate with a digital timing system and someone to record the time at the end of the track. All I had to do was to wait for the first snow.

That year, snow did not seem to want to appear. What was I going to do. I had publicized my bobsled track to my friends and now I didn’t have any snow. Since I was into model rockets, I had hear that scientists were experimenting with silver iodide crystals to make it rain. I figured I would give it a shot. I somehow convinced my mom into convincing the local pharmacist to sell her a bottle of silver iodide. She brought it home and said, “I don’t think this is going to work, but go ahead and give it a shot.” I thanked her and ran to the garage to fill up the nose cone of my rocket with the precious silver iodide crystals. I waited for just the right afternoon to launch my rocket. When the clouds looked promising, yet holding back their moisture, I took my rocket outside and set it up for the historic launch. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 lift off! It sailed into the winter sky. Just at the right moment, at apogee, it released it’s snow making crystals. Slowly the rocket floated to the ground with it’s parachute waving success, at least in my mind. I went to bed that night, hoping that I would awake to a beautiful blanket of snow. As dawn approached, I ran to the window, yet found that the clouds had not released their white crystals of snow. I was disappointed, but 3 days later, snow appeared. In my heart, I believed that I was responsible for the snow.

School was cancelled due to the heavy snow and it was time for me to get outside to inspect the bobsled course. The snow had covered my bridge and the banked curve that led between the two trees. I remember that the newscaster during the Olympics talking about how icy the bobsled track was, so I made sure to pack the snow super tight and to pour water on the curve and between the trees so that it would be fast. Around 10 AM, my friends started to show up at the top of the hill. They were excited to see what I had made. I was the first to try it. I took my sled to the top of the hill and held my breath. I took a running start and threw my body down on top of my sled, cruising down the incline. Before I knew it, the curve was coming quickly into view. I leaned to the left and rode the banked curve. I couldn’t believe how fast I was going. The ice packed snow had made this section very fast. Before I knew it, I was sailing between the trees, over the snow packed bridge and into our yard. I finally came to a stop, raising my fist in the air, whooping it up and not believing that it was such a fast ride. Before I knew it, my friends were speeding down the hill one at a time, zipping through the curve, between the trees and over the bridge. Everyone raved about how fast and fun this new track was. By nightfall, I was pretty numb from the cold and exhausted as well. It was a fantastic day for the new bobsled track. I felt proud that I had built something that my friends and I had enjoyed all day long and went to sleep that night dreaming of how I could create something else that brought so much fun and satisfaction to not just me, but others as well. Maybe I could build a rocket ship that carried people or an underground city where we could live or……..

Short Stories

Winter Olympic Dreams

June 2, 2015 Gill Trotman Leave a comment

The light in the room was blinding. Where was it coming from? I pulled the covers back over my head. Slowly, the grogginess started to clear as I remembered that the night before, the forecast had called for snow. I threw back the covers and jumped to the floor. All of our hard work was now going to pay off!

It all started one fall day

Two months earlier, the leaves on the trees had just started to turn to a golden hue as fall had arrived. Coming home from school, the crisp fall air caused me to zip up my jacket. It was a reminder of what was to come, every school kid’s winter dream; a snow day! I loved winter. I loved the snow. Nine months earlier, the 1968 Winter Olympics had been aired. It was the first year that the Olympics had been broadcast in color; a treat for those of us that had climbed the social TV ladder to acquire a color TV. The Olympics that year featured Peggy Flemming winning the gold medal for figure skating. Jean-Claude Killy won the downhill skiing even. Lyudmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov, from the Soviet Union, had defended their pairs figure skating gold medal from four years earlier, from whom later, as an adult, my wife and I were able to meet and take a few figure skating lessons from.

My favorite event was bobsledding

bobsled on Olympic track — *Tim Hipps via* Wikimedia Commons

The highlight for me wasn’t watching figure skating or skiing, it was the bobsled events. I dreamed of using our neighborhood hill to create a bobsled track. I envisioned us sledding down the hill, going into a steep banked curve, the G forces pushing us deep into the slats of our sled. It would be great to experience something like that! As I walked home from school that day, I tried to think of who I could enlist for a project like this. Let’s see, there was Chris, Jim and my brother Drew. Surely they had watched the bobsled events from the previous winter Olympics. I called up my buddy Jim and told him my idea. “This will be the coolest track in the neighborhood if we all pitch in and build it before the first snow!” I told Jim. He was on board. Next came Chris and my brother. I would have to convince my brother first since Chris was my brother’s friend. “You want to build a what?” Drew said. “I want to build a bobsled track. Don’t you remember watching the winter Olympics and how fast those guys were going? We can build something like that on the hill in the woods!” Drew was used to my wild and lame brained ideas. He knew that somehow I would get him in trouble as well as make him do the dirty work. Somehow I convinced him to enlist as well as talk his buddy Chris into helping with our monumental task.

The bobsled track planning and design team

School seemed to drag on that first day of construction. Didn’t my teachers know that I had more important things to do? Who needed to know how to bisect a circle with a compass anyway? All I needed was a couple of shovels, rakes and hoes, along with weeks of sweat and achy muscles. The first day of construction, we all met at the top of the hill. Now was the time to share my vision of how to turn this ordinary hill into an Olympic grade bobsled track. As we stood at the top of the hill, I explained the design. “We will have the starting point here next to this dogwood tree. After you push off from the starting blocks, you will point your sled to the right of the track. We will need a banked curve on the right to keep us from running into that big tree over there, then after the first turn we will run down the hill, gaining speed, pointed right for the center of those two sycamore trees. There is just enough room between those two trees for a sled to fit. We will build up dirt on both sides, right before you get to the trees to create a chute. It will guide you right in between both sycamores and shoot you out the back. Our only problem is that after you exit the trees, there is a ditch, so we will have to build a bridge over the ditch in order to keep going.” Chris, Jim and my brother looked at each other. “You have got to be kidding.” Jim said. “That will take forever!” “It won’t take that long if we all help. Think of how fun it will be! Everyone will want to come over and sled down our hill.” I said. “Yeah, I guess it would be fun.” Drew said. It didn’t take too much to get everyone excited as I took them through what the experience would be, that first run down the hill.

Building the bobsled track begins

We worked on that hill every chance we got, moving dirt, building banked turns, removing rocks and roots that would ruin our beloved track. I had never worked so hard and shoveled so much dirt in my life. If my dad had wanted me to hoe his garden, I would have feigned a cramp within an hour, but this was different; this was the creation of a neighborhood sensation! Building the bridge across the ditch proved to be a challenge as none of us owned a Skilsaw. We found a couple of old wooden pallets which proved the perfect width for a sled. We found a couple of 2×4’s that we used to span the ditch and fastened the two pallets to the top. Scrounging around the neighborhood, we found some more wood to fill in the gaps on the pallets. We packed the top of the pallets with dirt and smoothed the transition between each bank and our crudely built bridge. Weeks turned into months as we worked on our track. Each week that passed, the temperature dropped a few degrees at a time. We exchanged our fall jackets for winter coats as the promise of snow kept us on task.

A January snow

As January rolled around, we would listen to the weather forecast, hoping for snow. Back in the 60’s, the weathermen were about as accurate as they are now, only 50% of the time were their forecasts spot on. The chance of snow seemed to only bring rain. Our hill was waiting, our track was ready, our sleds were waxed and poised for action. When was it going to snow? This morning was different. That light that was pouring into my room was from the glistening snow crystals that had fallen the night before. As my feet hit the floor, I peered through the window to see a thick blanket of fresh fallen snow. Our wait was over. I threw on my clothes and headed down the stairs. “Looks like you have a snow day.” my mom said. “You bet, I’m going sledding on our bobsled track!” I said. “Your what?” she replied. Ignoring her question, I put on my rubber boots, gloves and my hooded coat. Out on the porch lay my sled, poised for action. I knew that my brother would head to the hill as soon as he realized what was waiting for him as he awoke from his slumber, as well as Jim and Chris. The snow was deep. Since it was the first snow of the season, it was a little wet which would make packing down the snow on the track much easier. Trudging through the snow, I dragged my sled and saw that Jim was coming down the road with his sled in tow. I have to admit that there were butterflies in my stomach as I climbed the hill with my sled. All of our hard work was now going to be paying off. As Jim arrived I told him, “We will need to pack down the snow so that the track will be fast. Let’s use these pieces of plywood. One of us can sit on the plywood and slide down the hill, packing the snow as we go.” Performing this task was an arduous one, as none of us wanted to take the time to do this. We wanted to take a run on our track, but knew that if we didn’t do this first, the runners of the sled would dig too deep into the snow and our track would not last but a few runs. After about an hour or so, we had finished packing down the snow, adding extra snow to the turns and putting a thick layer of snow on our bridge.

Haste makes you wet!

It was time. The first run of the day was about to begin. Who would go first? We had all worked so hard to prepare the hill for this day. We decided to flip a coin. I took off my gloves and searched my pockets for left over lunch money. I found a nickle. “Hey, how are we going to flip a coin for all four of us?” Chris asked. “Good question.” Drew said. Before I could think of an answer, Jim was on his sled, already heading down the hill. “Hey!” we all yelled. Before we could protest, Jim was already down the hill, headed for the first banked curve on the right of the course. He barely kept his sled from going over the edge as he came out of the curve heading for the straightaway. He was going at a pretty fast clip, too fast it looked, as he dug his toes into the snow to slow himself down before heading between the Sycamore trees. His right hip hit one of the trees to which you could hear him yell with pain, but there was no time to rub it as he was speeding out of the chute, headed for the bridge. His left runner of the sled veered off of the bridge and before he knew what was happening, he lost control and the sled went over the edge of the bridge, into the icy water below. Splash! “Crap!” he yelled as he lay sideways in the ditch, the cold water finding it’s way into his pants. “I’m going home!” he complained as he dragged his sled behind him like a fallen warrior drags his sword on the ground after losing a battle. “Serves him right.” I thought as I watched him waddle home, only imagining how cold his legs must be. We stood at the top of the hill watching Jim head home.

Any Olympic run

“This was your idea, so I think that you should go first.” said Chris, pointing to me. “OK!” I exclaimed. This was the moment I had dreamed of. I lined up my sled in the starting position at the top of the hill, slid the sled back and forwards, imitating what I had seen the Olympic bobsled team do and tried to settle my nerves, having seen what Jim’s first run had resulted in. One, two, three, go! My chest hit the wooden slats of the sled as I cleared the ridge of the hill. Aiming my sled at the first curve, I made sure to not repeat Jim’s handling of this banked turn. I kept the sled in the middle of the curve, feeling the G forces try and pull me off of the sled. Hanging on tight, I shot out of the turn and headed down the straight-a-way picking up more speed than I dared. I wasn’t about to slow down now. The two Sycamore trees were coming up fast; at this speed I had to be in the dead center of the track or I would have hit one of the trees with too much force not to be injured seriously. The packed dirt that we had used to guide the sled into the chute was now covered in snow. The sled was being guided into the chute. The wet snow had now started to turn into ice in this area and the sled zipped through the trees and shot out the back of the chute before I could even realize it. Before I knew it, the bridge was right in front of me. I had to keep the runners on the bridge if I didn’t want to end up the same way that Jim did. I tightened my grip and leaned just enough in order to keep the sled in the middle of our make-shift bridge. The bridge shook as the sled skimmed over the water below. I had made it. The bridge was behind me. I glided onto the flat area and into softer snow as the sled slowed down enough for me to dig my toes into the snow to act as a brake. It was over, the waiting, the work and now the prize. I let out a holler that echoed through the woods. “That was AWESOME!” I don’t remember who was next. I just remember that if I hadn’t of moved, I would have been hit by either my brother or Chris who had just finished their first run.

An Olympic success

News of our bobsled track had gone through the neighborhood and anyone that had a sled or anything closely resembling one was taking a run down our bobsled track. It was a great feeling knowing that I had been part of creating something that so many were now enjoying. As the days elapsed, the snow slowly melted and our bobsled track went the way of most Olympic venues. Our bobsled track turned into a BMX bike racing course. The bridge we had created slowly rotted and had to be removed. Eventually, the lot where the hill was located was sold to a builder who built a house and we were no longer allowed to use the hill for sledding. It’s been many decades since that first snowy morning, but I still remember it like it was yesterday. Even now, I get excited at the very first snowflake of winter.