The big event

Well, hello!

The year started out delightfully with organizing and rearranging my apartment. Lots of pictures being regrouped and hung, new spaces opened up and some good general cleaning. Why, a new table lamp has even been welcomed into the mix! It was fun to get my house in order. And, being highly motivated by outside deadlines, the possibility of house guests for the Red Bull Crashed Ice in late January was all that was required to fuel this cleaning blitz.

Not being a sportsperson, I hadn’t heard of this event until they started building the course outside my front door. They call it ice cross downhill and it’s a combination of ice hockey, downhill skating and bordercross. It’s an international competition where heats of four skaters sprint down a luge-style course to be the first over the finish line (hopefully in one piece) and make it to the next round.

The set up for the event started after Christmas. First they built a three story high starting gate adjacent to the Cathedral (giving new meaning to the slogan “Red Bull gives me wings!”). And just as soon as Epiphany occurred (and Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus and the crèche were safely packed up and out of the way) they completed the link from the starting gate down the steps of the Cathedral, over the bridge built across the street and down the hill to the finish line. It was one of the most challenging courses built to date.

And my, but was it festive! There were colored lights mounted on the roof of my building, giant video screens outside the front door, a ramp banking sixteen feet up the side of the building behind me and security 24-7. They estimated 80,000 people were in attendance. When I got home from work that night of the finals it was like Vegas outside my window with all the running lights on the course!

At the end of this clip you can see what it looked like when it was all done (turn down the volume as the music is loud!):

http://www.redbull.com/cs/Satellite/en_INT/Video/Highlights-of-Red-Bull-Crashed-Ice-021243149059259


The staging took up a lot of the parking space in the neighborhood and that caused some neighbors to grumble. I thought it was a lovely boost for our fair city and rather exciting to have such a big event here. When I felt inconvenienced by the show (there was a very, very cold snap and having to walk three blocks to the house was really chilling!) I just reminded myself ‘it’s for the greater good’ and remembered to wear my long underwear, ear muffs, extra scarves and my down coat.

It took two solid weeks for them to get the track built and then only one to tear it down. There wasn’t so much as a cube of ice left as a memento, nothing left to say had been there (except of course the video on their website). I’m all about ephemera but it was very “Brigadoon” kind of moment… did it actually happen?!

Well, it did. And I've got a clean apartment to show for it.

Peace,
Karen