Around the time I saw the opening for the USBSF internship on the Grove City Career Services website, I received the GeDunk, the alumni magazine, in the mail. The cover story for this edition was about Adelle, the Operations Manager here at the USBSF, and her job. Reading how she got her start, and what she did for a living convinced me to apply for the position. One piece of information that caught my attention was the intern at that time had the opportunity to ride with Steven Holcomb after he won the World Championships in March. When the USBSF selected me for the position, I told myself I had to ride the bobsled because I didn't want this once in a lifetime opportunity pass me by.

When I first arrived for my internship there wasn't ice on the track yet, but during the summer, they offer wheeled-bobsled rides on the '32 and 80' Winter Olympics track. I felt like this would be great way to gauge myself to see if I would be able to handle this ride before trying the actual thing. It's like starting on the kiddie rides before adventuring onto the roller coasters when you were little.

After filling out the waivers at Lamy Lodge, I look around to see all the memorabilia. They have a couple of displays showing the current and past tracks, trophies, and a bobsled used back in the day. Later, a guy picks up two people and me and takes us to the starting point. On our way there, he explains the history of the tracks and then slides in a cute, little tidbit how the rides start at the ½-mile point instead of the beginning. The main reason why is because the officials decided that the upper part of the track was too dangerous for people to slide. As you can tell, I decided to bold and underline the phrase for dramatic effect. Even though the ½-mile start course was safe, saying the majority of the overall track is too dangerous is not the greatest choice of words. Like the scene in Meet the Parents where you can't say, "Bomb on a plane," you don't tell people this track use to be too dangerous, but I digress.

After getting suited up with helmets, we boarded into our bobsled. As we adjust to make room for the driver and the brakeman, we hear the announcer giving us the final countdown, and yes, I did sing that song to pump myself up for the ride. "3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . . GO," and we're off . . . very slowly. I forgot to mention that they don't push the wheeled-bobsled down the track, so we had a slow start because there were two heavy-set guys in the sled. After we made a couple of turns, we start to pick up velocity. Even though the wheeled rides go around 50 to 55 mph compared to 75 to 80 on an actual bobsled ride, you can still feel the g-forces on these sharp curves. For anyone from western PA that needs a better reference on how intense these rides are, take an Alpine Slide sled and put a go-kart motor to the back of it. Now take that modified sled to a track with hard breaking turns and dips, and that would be the equivalent to the wheeled bobsled rides, but then again, I'm not an engineer. I'm just an intern who writes a blog for your entertainment.

As I see the lodge in my sights, we go through the famous zigzag curves, a quick left and right turn that creates the shape of an S. After zigging and zagging, we see our final two curves. The sled gains more and more speed as we blaze through the last two curves and race past the finish line. We finished at 43.66 seconds. Even though we had a rough start, I'm proud of my team because we finished strong. Overall, it was a good day. I did something that I thought I would never do in my life. I didn't get hurt, and I got a free shirt, pin, and photo to boot (JACKPOT!). If you ever come to Lake Placid in the summer, this one attraction should be on your to-do list. I think I'm ready for the real bobsled ride now.

Until next week . . .