Do The Things You Do

Yesterday, I saw one of those human-interest pieces on the TV newscast. You know the ones. They tell some story that either pulls at your heartstrings or makes you shake your head in that “what were they thinking” sort of way.

It seems there is a group of Swedish friends who annually, during the New Year’s holidays, get together and hold a ski jumping contest. Unlike the one you may be familiar with from the winter Olympic contests, this event is a bit low key. Our contestants find a suitable slope and then build a homemade snow ramp.

The object seems to be to rumble down the slope, gaining speed along the way. Then launch yourself up and off the ramp. However, once the contestant launches himself, is where the two events depart similarities. In the legitimate contests, the goal is to see how far the skier can sail down the hill. In the little contest I witnessed, the goal was to see who could crash into a small, supple tree and hold on.

For the three or four minutes I watched, the friendly band of skiers, who were obviously relatives, neighbors, friends and friends of friends, shot down the slope and shot off the ramp and crashed into this tree. The ones who held on were applauded and cheered. The ones who didn’t hold on, well, some did so with comic results. Other contestants, however, had the crowd holding their collective breath until convinced the contestant was still able to move. It is all done for fun, and has obviously grown out of an amusing situation that is now recreated as an annual event. Its reputation has not only expanded the participant list, but also drawn enough attention to bring out a TV camera crew to tape the fun. What it shows is what we humans will do when bored and look for entertaining way to pass our time.

It started me thinking about some of the silly pastimes I have been involved in. I can remember my friends and I on a weekend golf outing. The golf course was in an isolated part of the Cascade Mountains in Oregon, between Eugene and Bend. A couple of dozen of us would get together and pitch tents and camp out for the weekend event. After sitting around the campfire telling tall tales and ingesting various refreshments, we all jumped up and went to the golf course and played a game familiar to golfers called closest to the pin.The object was to hit a golf ball from 150 yards out and see who could get it nearest to the flag stick.

As I said, this was a rather remote area of the Cascades, so electric illumination of any kind did not exist. As bright as the stars and the moon can be on warm summer nights along the Blue River in Oregon, it was tough to see the green, let alone the flag stick. To aid our directional and distance awareness, we knotted a flashlight with the flag. I’m sure there were golfers days later who were delighted to find the few dozen golf balls that were not successfully landed on the putting surface that night.