As a boy in the 1920s, Paul Goszyk skied the snow-blanketed mountains surrounding his home in Ustron, Poland.
His parents had six children and couldn’t afford to buy him skis, so his father crafted a pair from wooden boards and made poles using two sticks.
Goszyk and his friends used homemade gear to scale nearby peaks, race down forest trails and jump off a ramp built for their town’s youth ski club.
That was before 1939, when Germany invaded Poland — before Goszyk fought against the Nazis during World War II, and before he was captured and enslaved for five years. Through it all, his love for skiing endured…Â More info
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The first day out there’s plenty of ice boaters but there isn’t any wind. The second day out, the wind is blowing gale force, but there aren’t any boaters.
Three’s a charm and so is Saturday morning, with both wind and boaters present in abundance. The puffs are steady from the west and the gusts top 46 mph — a little stiff and erratic, but otherwise a good day to sail.
Steve Bender is the fist to hit the ice with his kitewing, a hand-held sail that sends him racing across the lake. Near the shore, other boaters uncover their cockpits and rig their sails, then wait for the perfect wind before shoving off…Â More info
If there’s a heaven for snowmobiles, it’s in an unobtrusive western Maine warehouse whose owner calls it the state’s best-kept secret.
Shiny, restored power sleds dating back a half-century line the shelves of the United Sports Antique & Vintage Snowmobile Museum. They include long-discontinued brands, rare if not one-in-the-world models, behemoths pushed by rear engines, and one that would work well in a James Bond flick with its exhaust pipes jutting menacingly from the front hood…Â More info
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…had a severe sense of d?j? vu after first playing Snowboard Riot on Wii. Shushing through this downloadable title, it dawned on me: this is just a clone of Snowboard Kids, but with hipster characters instead of the oversized anime boarders that were used in Atlus’ previous designs. You don’t get much in this ten dollar purchase: four uncreative slopes with absolutely no single player progression. Its focus is more on the pick-up-and-play racing, but with very little at stake (and with some of the most obnoxious rubberband AI routines ever), there’s not much draw in Hudson’s competitive design.
Snowboard Riot isn’t so much a snowboarding game as it is a racing game on snow…Â More info…
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