Classic Ker-splats

My next-door neighbor Craig and I were working on our minibikes in his garage when we heard talking on the other side of his hedge. It was not uncommon to hear voices out there because opposite his hedge were the cliffs which dropped down to Bellingham Bay. On beautiful, sunny, summer days, it was normal for people to walk the cliff edge next to the train tracks to look at the bay and the sailboats. What was unusual about these voices was that there were also the sounds of tools clanking on metal. Craig and I went to investigate.

Working on the cliff edge were two men in their 20s who were putting together a hang glider. I had seen people at the cliffs on warm, sunny afternoons when the thermal breezes blowing up from the tide flats would allow them to fly remote controlled gliders, but I had never actually seen a human glide off the cliff.

At last, the triangular glider was assembled and checked. The pilot wore a harness which clipped under the wing. He held a steering bar which he used to lift the glider off the ground. Once in flight, his feet would be placed in stirrups to level him horizontal under the wing.

There was a strong 15 mph breeze coming up the cliff as his partner went to the edge and looked at the tide flats below. He gave the pilot the thumbs up.

The pilot lifted the glider off the ground and ran into the breeze to the edge of the cliff where the updraft filled the fabric, and the glider took to the sky. For an hour we watched him ride the thermals up and down the beach. He looked as if he was having the best day of his life.

As we watched, I heard the crunch of gravel underfoot and turned to see my adopted grandfather, Swede, walking down the shoulder of the tracks toward us. In his hand he carried his ever-present flask of Canadian Mist. Digger O’Dell, his overweight, elderly mutt dog followed behind at a distance. He had seen the glider from his front room window and came to investigate.

“What are you boys up to now?” he slurred.

“We’re watching the glider. Want me to find you a lawn chair?” I asked. Grabbing a folding chair for him off Craig’s lawn, he sat down with Digger on his side.

“Where is he going to land?” was all he asked as he took a sip from the flask. “There isn’t enough room at the top of this here cliff.”

“Oh, he’s going to land on the tide flats,” the glider pilot’s partner answered.

“Did you know that the tide flats are sloppy, river-silt mud?” Swede asked. The partner glanced at him with a worried look and then stared at the flats.

The next time the glider came by he yelled to the pilot, “Take it easy when you land. It’s sloppy down there.”

The four of us watched as he made a few more passes. The tide was coming in now and soon there would be no tide flat visible, so he began his descent for the landing. Craig and I helped Swede to stand, and he shuffled to the cliff edge to watch.

On this type of glider, when you make an approach to the ground, you remove your feet from the stirrups and let them hang because they are your landing gear. Then, when you are just above the ground, you push up the nose of the glider to flare which slows the forward speed and gives a bit of cushioning lift. As the glider settles, you hit the ground with your feet and run to a stop. That was how it was supposed to work.

The glider came down the beach line with a cross wind. The pilot dropped his feet to start running although, not landing into the wind made his forward speed over the flats about 20 mph. He settled until his feet were just over the flats and then he dropped the glider the final foot.

Had he been landing in a grass field; his feet would have touched the ground and he would have run to a stop. As it was, when his feet hit the muddy tide flats, he plunged them deep into the sticky mud almost to his knees. Going from 20 mph to 0 caused the pointed front end of the glider to slam forward, planting it nose-first in the mud. Still having forward momentum, the glider did a forward roll. The harness lifted the pilot up into the air, pulling his stuck legs out of the mud and flipping him and the glider upside-down and slapping them onto the tide flat with a resounding ker-splat.

Swede chuckled and said, “That was a good one. Come on Digger, let’s go home.”

All you could hear was the gentle lapping of the waves, the cries of the seagulls, and the moans of the humiliated and bruised glider pilot.

Ker-splat, and I use a hyphen on the word to emphasize the sound or action, is usually associated with pain and embarrassment. Remember President Gerald Ford tripping and falling down the stairs to the tarmac from Airforce One? Comics use ker-splats in their pratfalls. Some of the memorable actors are Chevy Chase, Ty Burrell from Modern Family, and the two thieves from the Home Alone movies. YouTube is full of video clips of what they call “fails,” people trying activities that end up badly, i.e., skateboarders, trampoline jumpers, skiers, overweight people in lawn chairs, etc.

My wife Cheryl was telling me about going to the lake when she was a girl. She was at the cabin with her friends Jan and Val. Along the edge of the lake was a rope swing which made for fun Tarzan swinging out into the water. Cheryl, being the oldest, tallest, and a gymnast, took the rope first. She climbed the hillside, stood on a stump, held the rope high, and jumped, swinging down the hillside and out over the lake. She dropped into the lake. Jan, a year younger and shorter, took the rope next. She also climbed the hill, stood on the stump, held the rope high above the knot, and jumped. Val, Jan’s younger brother, was last.

Val was short and eager to show off to the older girls. He grabbed the rope by the knot at the bottom of the rope and carried it up the hill to the stump. He then yelled, “Look at me!” He let out a loud Tarzan call and jumped. Being that he was only tall enough to grab the rope at the knot to swing, he was much closer to the hillside as he swung toward the lake. His feet barely cleared the rocks and brush as he shot downward. The only thing he really had to do to complete the swing was to clear the beach. The girls watched as Tarzan, sensing that his clearance over the beach would be tight, lifted his feet and butt into the air to clear the shoreline.

But alas. Ker-splat! His little bathing suited butt hit the sand with such force, it caused a sand rooster-tail and a considerable sand wedgie. Limping back to the cabin, he more resembled Cheetah than Tarzan.

Back in the 60s, the Baptist Slide was a sidewalk on a slope next to our church. It was notorious for causing women in high heels to slip on rainy days. The sidewalk was just outside our Sunday School classroom. My friends, Gary Cogswell, Steve Ellis, and I sat staring out the window as the Sunday School teacher tried to keep our attention. Down the rain slicked sidewalk came the first woman in high heels. In front of our window, her feet slipped out from underneath her, and she landed with a ker-splat on her backside. This was followed by two more ladies who were walking side by side. Both went over backwards at the same time. That, by the way, was considered a “double bun two-step”.  Of course, after each ker-splat, we howled with laughter, much to the chagrin of the teacher. To the boys, this was entertainment even to the point of calling out, “Here comes another one!” We were particularly impressed by the athletic prowess of one woman who, realizing that she was slipping, dropped into a squat and rode her shoes down the sidewalk like a beginner skier.

Of course, there are the more serious ker-splats which are ill-advised to laugh at.

Our class counselor retired the year we graduated. To honor her for her years of service to us and the school, our senior class presented her with a large bouquet of roses on the stage at our Senior Assembly.  After accepting the roses, she turned to leave the stage via the stairs. Stepping down onto the first step, she either slipped or tripped. This caused her feet to shoot out from under her, toppling her backwards. She bounced the six stairs down to the main floor, tossing flowers with each hit. Although this ker-splat resembled a pratfall, which at any other time might be funny, the auditorium remained quiet, worried she was hurt. It wasn’t until she stood up again and waved to the crowd, that we were able to give a sigh of relief and a standing ovation for her years of service.

I would indeed be remiss if I only were to point out the ker-splats of others and not my own. As I sit in my office thinking back over 67 years, I can think of many classic accidents I’ve had while snow skiing – painful doozies. I can also remember a time at a Forest Service horse camp where I jumped from a split rail fence onto to back of a pack horse, who, being caught by surprise bucked me so high and far that I cleared the fence by at least four feet and landed on my back on a pile of rocks outside the paddock. But let’s travel back to the cliffs where our story began.

It was a combination of heavy snows and high winds that formed large cornice overhangs on the cliff edges. The sides of the eroded cliff had a buildup of snow clinging to it as did the logs on the beach 150 feet below. It was a late afternoon in January, and this was a first for our neighborhood. We had never seen a buildup of snow like this, and it created opportunity. My best friend Chuck, and two of the Angel boys from across the street had snuck with me into Swede’s garage to retrieve two round sliding disc’s which he kept hanging from nails on the wall. As was our MO, we would take his stuff and return it later because why would an 85-year-old man care or even notice that we had his stuff.

As luck would have it, he must have been in his kitchen and saw us through the window as we entered the garage.

“Well now what the heck are you boys doing in my garage?” he bellowed from the back porch, his flask of Canadian Mist in hand.

“We need to use the sliding disks,” I said. “We’re going to ride an avalanche down to the beach.”

This idea had Swede speechless as he stared at us.

“Oh cripes, this is going to be good,” he chuckled. “Let me get my coat.” And us four boys, Swede, and Digger O’Dell made our way through the knee-deep snow to the cliff edge, blazing trails through the heavy falling flakes.

We could see that the tide was out as we stared over the edge but it had been snowing so hard, the tide flat now had snow sticking to it also.

“Ok,” I shouted over the wind coming up the cliff. “I’ll go first. What I’m going to do is run up and jump on the cornice. That should break it off the edge of the cliff and then I’ll ride the avalanche down to the beach.”

Swede didn’t comment but I think now that he wondered how I lived past fourth grade. He took another sip from his flask.

With the audience standing by the cliff edge and me twenty feet back I yelled, “Geronimo!” and ran for the cornice. Taking a mighty leap, I swung the disc under me and landed with a thud on the edge, my feet hanging over. The cornice failed to break off.

“Well poop!” I yelled as Swede hobbled to the cornice and stomped it with the heel of his engineer’s boot. The cornice broke free.

It just seemed in the planning stages that this would be a fun ride. Come to find out, riding in an avalanche rarely is.

When the cornice broke off, the disc free-fell ten feet before it and the avalanche of snow started riding the cliffside down to the beach.

The guys said that all they could hear was, “Yeeeee!!!” as I disappeared in the swirl of snow. With speed and accumulating snow gaining on the way down, I realized that I was going to end up hitting the logs on the beach which was indeed going to hurt. But the logs, instead of being a blockade, turned out to be more of a ski jump. The avalanche of snow flowed over them filling the gaps. Except for a final large log at the end, I could have slid to a stop without injury, but no. With all the grace of Eddy the Eagle, the disc bounced off the log sending me high into the air over the tide flats.

The fallen snow on the flat was just a facade covering what was beneath. Just like the hang glider pilot, except the temperature was 40 degrees colder, I landed with a sloppy ker-splat in the knee-deep mud.

Back on the top of the cliff, the rest of the guys decided that they weren’t trying it and they left for one of the homes for hot chocolate. Swede, on the other hand, waited until he saw me stand up and slog back to the beach before he yelled over the edge, “Hang my disc back up in the garage.” Then he called to Digger, “Let’s go home old boy. I knew that wasn’t going to work.”

A lot can be heard from the beach on a winter’s evening: the lapping of waves from the incoming tide, the sound of snowflakes hitting the ground, the howl of the northeast wind, and the painful moans of the avalanche runner making his way back home.

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