| Outdoor enthusiasts rejoice, another way to have fun/blow your mind/kill yourself will soon be here.
A new piece of extreme outdoor backcountry equipment will hit the market, ensuring the most daring participants rush down a hill or mountainside at breakneck speeds. This new device is called an airboard.
If you’ve never heard of it, you’re in good company. Phone calls to all kinds of outdoor, backcountry, boarding and ski shops were met with comments like: "Never heard of that. It sounds cool but I haven’t seen one."
Here’s an example of how it could work if you’re in the mountains. First, you strap the new piece of equipment to your back. Second, you strap on a pair of small snowshoes and head in an upward direction on a slope that hopefully has few trees, small-country-sized open space and lots of snow.
Once arriving at the desired height, wipe the sweat from your brow, take the airboard off your back and pull it out of its case. Next, inflate the airboard, close the case and strap it on your back. The board itself is made of Zodiak-like material, has a handle on each side and has three hard runners on the bottom.
The last step is easy. Grab onto a handle, jump chest-first onto the airboard and away you go. It’s kind of like the sport of skeleton, only with trees for obstacles and no ice track to follow. If the synapses aren’t firing quite right, you might even wind up with an inadvertent audition for the next Jackass movie.
When these boards become more readily available locally, don’t expect to be able to use them on the ski/boarding hills any time soon. Remember the controversy on the hills when snowboarding first became popular? Let’s just say skiers were less than happy at the thought of sharing the hill with their snow-loving brethren.
It will likely take a big lobby effort to get this new piece of death-defying equipment out of the backcountry on onto mainstream slopes.
TEAM NAMES
So what is it with soccer players? Are they the most boring of all sports participants?
Perhaps that’s not a fair spear to throw. Let’s blame it on the Brits. And this isn’t a comment on their horrible cuisine. It seems sports in Canada that are heavily influenced by the British are the most uptight and Victorian when it comes to choosing team names.
Let’s look at rugby, where you have teams called the Hornets, Saracens, Tigers, Leprechauns, Irish, etc. Then look at the local cricket league, with the United, Cavalier or Titan cricket clubs. And then there are local soccer teams with names such as United and the Rangers.
If these were the only sports you knew, you might think the English language was short of words.
But turn to the names of teams from other sports and you’ll find a stadium full of creative, juvenile and mildly humorous handles. A few from a local beach volleyball league serve as good examples, with clubs called Phat Bastards, Heathen & The Apostle, To Kill a Blocking Nerd and The Sand Slugs. A Calgary men’s basketball league has team names such as Profit Matters, Cell Block D and the Flaming Moes.
Turn to the ice and there are ringette teams dubbed Sk8ergirls, Babes on Blades, Checking Chicks, and hockey teams named the Pylons and Fat ’N Lazy. Some are more creative than others, but the point is that they’re at least having a bit of fun. Traditional names in the Brit-influenced sports are simply boring.
If anyone knows why – it’s the same people playing in these various sports don’t forget – let me know. Better yet, send in the name of a soccer, rugby or cricket team you’d like to see. |
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