2/9-10/2008 National Toboggan Championships

Did you know there was such a thing? It takes place in Camden, Maine, which is near the coat. But somehow they get enough snow to have a resort called "The Snow Bowl" which has a variety of snow-related sports available. One of them is a toboggan chute and for the past 18 years, they have held The National Toboggan Championships. (If you go to their website, you can see a video of a toboggan going down the chute--think luge only silly and slower). Apparently, it's quite a blast, all in good fun. Folks come from as far away as California and Georgia.

UMF actually had two teams entered comprised of faculty and staff. Costumes are encouraged (as long as they don't interfere with safety) and since UMF's mascot is the beaver, that was the theme for both teams. They had beaver teeth and long-sleeved UMF beaver t-shirts (over many other layers, I assume). It was going to be quite the event. Unfortunately, there was an accident where one toboggan had turned on its side at the bottom of the chute and as they were setting it upright and clearing the ice, the next toboggan came down the chute and crashed into the first one. People were injured, though the news report says none were life-threatening injuries.

I really wanted to attend. I told the instigator, err, I mean, the organizer, that I would love to be a fly on the toboggan and she replied, "Weanie!" Then it turned out it was going to happen during the time I was scheduled to be returning from Boston, so I put it on my to-do list for next year.

No UMF folks were involved in the accident, but they were disappointed that they did not get to compete. Here's to 2009's event!

I dowloaded these photos from the Ashley's Flickr collection: