March 3, 2018

"Like all jack jumpers, her ride is homemade, cobbled together from her aunt’s old skis and foam recycled from a kayak."

"She and her father also used old kayak straps to create a sort of seat belt for the chair—a common modification that is not always popular with jack-jumping traditionalists. 'With more confidence in knowing we aren’t going to go flying off our chair mid-turn, you are therefore more capable of giving it your all and laying your whole body out at every gate,' says Huckabone."

From "The Perils and Pleasures of Jack Jumping/Vermont’s homegrown, DIY winter sport isn’t going to make the Olympics, but it looks like great fun."

And: "A Crash Course In Vermont's Head-Turning, Homegrown Sport" (NPR): "Yeah, that is a lot of the fun when everyone around you is saying, 'What is he on? What is he doing?' And even when we first started, I could hear someone saying, 'Oh he's about to go down on that thing?' Sure enough, there we went."

World championship level:



Amateur fun:



ADDED: It's not the same thing as a ski-bike, which is what you see The Beatles riding in the beginning of the "Ticket to Ride" sequence in "Help!"


Ticket to ride- From Movie Help from O Melhor dos Beatles on Vimeo.

14 comments:

buwaya said...

Just you wait.
Soon enough it will be all over the place, with manufactured equipment (made in China), etc.
With judges, electronic timers, standardized tracks and all.
And no fun or charm anymore, I think, but thats just me.
Snowboards made it.
Every sort of sled and toboggan made it.

wildswan said...

Reminds me of sledding when I was a child and bumps and swerving and falling was the best part. It's all there still somewhere in America.

Ralph L said...

How many ER visits per run?

PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...

And this is unusual how?

I saw something similar, but much more professionally made, in Tahoe in the 90s. the guy using it rolled up in a wheelchair.

Here's a video of a legless guy with a professinally made looking ski.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zr7HqIGntpc

Seems like those Vermonters are culturally appropriating and should be ashamed of themselves.

These are your people, Tim. Will you condemn them publicly? If not, shame, shame, shame on you.

John Henry

Ann Althouse said...

I can't understand why anyone would prefer this to standing (skiing and snowboarding) or getting all the way down on a sled. But I guess some people like to sit upright. I'd say there aren't too many sports where you're sitting, but there's bicycling and also driving and horse-riding. Swinging, but I don't think there's a such thing as competitive swinging (thought I imagined there was when I was a child and became quite a daredevil at jumping off swings).

Ann Althouse said...

"And this is unusual how?"

I'd never seen it before but it goes back to the 19th century (as the article says).

"I saw something similar, but much more professionally made, in Tahoe in the 90s. the guy using it rolled up in a wheelchair."

As the linked article says: "On the surface, a jack jumper bears some resemblance to the more engineered and professionally designed monoskis used by Paralympic skiers and the devices used in an obscure European sport called skibok. But those devices feature different controls, such as poles or extended handles."

tim in vermont said...

That’s Vermonters all right. Kind redneck, kinda weird, fun-loving.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

I can't understand why anyone would prefer this to standing (skiing and snowboarding) or getting all the way down on a sled.

Agreed, especially with the jumping. Your legs are your shock absorbers. If you are sitting, your spine takes the shock.

Phil 314 said...

Looks just like what the disabled skiers do only with poles that have little skis on them.

David said...

They need snowmobiles.

Yancey Ward said...

Needs a beerholder.

Bad Lieutenant said...

The pity is, my father used to love to ski, still probably thinks of himself as going skiing again one day. I wish there were some kind of a way that an old man could sit on or in some kind of a ski related contraption and go or be led down the hill. Just not this stupidly and Dangerously.

Bad Lieutenant said...

Hey, bring back the mobile view, I love that isht on my phone!

tim maguire said...

I wonder how they stay up on a single ski without the gyroscoping effect of a spinning wheel.