Wednesday, January 19, 2011

#46 Bobsled on an Olympic Track


Who hasn't seen the age old classic Cool Runnings. I remember when I first saw it when I was I kid. Who wouldn't want to feel the rhythm....feel the rhyme....give it up it's bobsled time? Putting together this Bucket List I thought about things I never thought I'd be able to do but would love to do someday. Well, this past weekend someday finally came. Every year we have a father and sons ski trip in Park City Utah. Normally we spend time on our trip hitting the slopes, playing video games and watching the STEELERS dominate the AFC championship time and time again. This year when planning the trip we thought back to last year's trip and how great it was and spit ideas back and forth about what we could do to make this year's trip more epic than it's ever been in the past. The idea of Bobsledding came up but was dismissed because who actually goes bobsledding...really? Anyway, time passed and it became a possibility that bobsledding was going to actually happen. Long story short we booked our reservations. It was probably one of the most anticipated activities in ski trip history and rightfully so. All day saturday while we were conquering double blacks and epic falls the olympic track couldn't be removed from anyones' minds. Finally the end of the day came and we got to go to the track in Park City. When we got there we were immediately ushered to sign our lives away through various waivers. We sat through an orientation of the many ways death could possibly happen. Following that we were shuttled up to the top of the track. We were assigned to different sleds and went over even more safety rules, it turns out this stuff is pretty dangerous I guess. When we got to our sled, my dad and I decided to ride in the back. The driver packed us into the sled and we were off. My dad tipped the guy at the starting line to give us an extra little push. It didn't feel like much at the beginning as we started off pretty slow. As the track progressed though we went...fast. Holy crap did we go fasst. I couldn't see much as I rode in the back but oh man could I feel the 4 g's that piled down on me with every turn. We reached a top speed of 78 miles an hour and finished the track in 54.01 seconds. It felt like a lot more than that but it was honestly one of the greatest rushes of a life time. The craziest thing is that it was like ten times more intense than any roller coaster I've ever been on and I didn't even wear a seat belt. We found out that Michael Howarth and Chris Wood who also rode with us in a different sled rode with a celebrity driver, Pat Brown. Pat was the coach of the Olympic bobsled team from Jamaica that Disney based their hit movie Cool Runnings after. It was cool to say we were amongst so many olympic gold medalists. Honestly, this was one of the coolest things that I've ever done in my life. It showed me that really nothing is impossible and that anything on a bucket list can be checked off as long as you stick to it and work hard to cross things off the list. I would recommend this experience to anyone! I absolutely loved every minute of it! Thank you to those who made it possible.


This is just before we head in to orientation and sign away our lives.

Just before we got into the sleds. The girl with us is an olympic gold medalist in luge. She rode with Michael and Chris.



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