The Snowmobile Incident: The Brave EL Tigre, the Maple, and Me (1987)

 

Winter of ’87, I was 11 years old and just old enough to be dangerous. My dad, Alan, had a buddy tune up his late-70s Arctic Cat El Tigre 440 snowmobile—a green-and-black beast with full steel cleats and a hunger for gas and chaos. That winter, it stayed at his friend Walt’s house, who lived on a good road that led back to the hunting camp. Perfect terrain for mayhem.

Alan let me ride passenger a few times before he gave me the nod: “Alright, your turn.” He handed me a metal-flaked, glittery open-face helmet like it had just rolled out of a disco. I didn’t have an Evel Knievel jacket with tassels, but I might as well have. I was eleven, on a snowmobile, and life was perfect.

We did a few laps around Walt’s yard—me driving, Alan on the back, probably wondering why he ever thought this was a good idea. Eventually, he gave the okay to head down the camp road. I felt like a superhero with a motor.

That is, until we hit the turn.

It was a sharp 90-degree corner glazed in ice. Alan leaned to help steer, but the cleats weren’t biting—until they did. When the machine finally caught traction, it did so all at once and tried to flip over to the right.

Alan grabbed me, trying to save us both, but only managed to rip my left hand off the bars. My right hand, however, had a death grip on the throttle. He rolled off behind me, and I remember glancing back to see if he was okay—or furious.

It was a short glance, because I realized I was still accelerating. Off the road. Into the woods. Straight toward a maple tree.

Now, there’s this theory in racing that if you stare at the thing you don’t want to hit, you’ll hit it. I tested that theory. And, yeah—it’s true. I aimed my eyes at that tree like it owed me money, and the left ski smacked it dead on.

In an instant, I was launched. Smashed into the handlebars, shredded through the windshield, and suddenly I was airborne—rotating like a slow-motion rotisserie chicken, feet over head.

And then something weird happened: time slowed down. Like really slowed down. It was the first time in my life that time did that, and even mid-air, my adolescent brain noted, Huh. That’s odd. I drifted through the woods, narrowly missing a dozen trees, before gravity did its thing and dumped me in the snow.

I’d barely hit the ground when I heard the engine still screaming. I looked up just in time to see what was left of the El Tigre cartwheeling through the air on the same path I’d just taken. It crashed down a few feet away—nose buried, ski gone, exhaust flapping in the wind, windshield a memory—but still running. Loud. Sad. Like a warhorse that just got drafted for one last battle.

Then Alan appeared—no yelling, no lectures. That’s how I knew it was serious. He snapped me to my feet, probably terrified I was more broken than I looked.

Shock is a funny thing. For about 30 minutes, I didn’t feel much—just kind of wobbled. But by the time we made it the half-mile back to Walt’s house (Alan walking, me limping like Elvis on a bad dance night), I could barely move. From knees to thighs, I was bruised like a human eggplant.

Everyone was at Walt’s. My mom, a bunch of others. They laid me down on a hardwood floor with a blanket, in case I puked. Because it was the ‘80s, and cleaning carpet was a bigger deal than concussions.

I survived. Barely.

The snowmobile sat in our yard for about four years after that, like a wounded veteran. Eventually, my mechanically-minded teenage friends helped me resurrect it—minus the windshield—and I squeezed out two more days of snow-fueled glory.

Then Alan saw it running.

And he sold it.

Because I think he figured I’d already cheated death once, and that was enough for one lifetime.