Ski-Jogging

By Randy Haglund

                Ski-jog (skee-jawg)

                                verb ski-jogged, ski-jog·ging

1. to hitch a ride by grabbing a vehicle’s rear bumper and sliding down snowy streets:

                                       I’ve never been a jogger, but I used to ski-jog to school.

Growing up in Spokane, I thought everybody knew what ski-jogging was. But when I broached the subject with my college friends in the mid-west, they looked at me like I had suddenly started speaking Klingon.

“Oh, you mean “hooky-bobbing.”

Huh?

It turns out “ski-jogging” is a colloquial term peculiar to the Inland Northwest. Upon further research, I’ve found it is known variously as snow skitching, bizzing, skidhopping, and bumperjumping—according to the source of all knowledge: Wikipedia.

Other related terms include bumper hitching, bumpershining, and poggying, but these former terms do not refer to winter sports, like ski-jogging is. They require skates, a skate board, a bicycle, or the like. An example of these is illustrated in Back to the Future, where Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) out-foxes Biff and his goons on a makeshift skateboard.

The all-encompassing term for the amusement is skitching.

I never knew any of that growing up. To me, it was just ski-jogging, and it was how I got to junior high when the conditions were right.

Before I get any further, let me first offer a disclaimer. I do not in any way endorse the act of ski-jogging. It is dangerous and illegal.*

But it was darn fun.

Let me catch you up on the basics:

Gear

Unlike other forms of skitching, special equipment is not needed. Of course, you should dress for winter conditions. Gloves or mittens are recommended, although I never used them. The most important consideration is footwear.

Mom made sure I always had two pairs of shoes. My everyday shoes were tennis shoes, and my Sunday shoes were wingtips. Nice, slick-bottomed wingtips. I was not supposed to wear them to school, but I did if I intended to ski-jog. She also told me in snowy conditions to be sure to wear galoshes over my tennis shoes.

Galoshes! I would never wear galoshes in front of actual people. Or even junior-highers.

Since my mom left for work early, she did not know I wore my dress shoes to school on winter mornings. She did, however, express surprise at how quickly my wingtips wore out.

Strategy

Sometimes guys would ski-jog behind a friend’s car for fun. But that’s not what I’m talking about. It was more thrilling to hop a ride with an unsuspecting victim. The key to truly enjoying this endeavor, one had to be surreptitious. I would furtively crouch behind a vehicle parked along the curb, making sure an oncoming driver didn’t see me. It helped if the driver was old. At least forty. They’re not as alert.

When the passing car’s rear tires passed by, I made my move. Reaching out and seizing the rear bumper, it was imperative to stay low so the driver was not aware someone grabbed on. Positioning myself behind the fresh tracks of a tire, I held on as long as the vehicle continued in the direction of my destination, Salk Junior High School. Sometimes I had to transfer once or twice to get there.

It’s important to note that growing up in the late sixties gave me a distinct advantage over modern would-be ski-joggers. Today, it’s nearly impossible to find a car with the old-fashioned chrome bumpers. Grabbing on to one of these aerodynamic, plastic bumpers of today must be like trying to catch a fly with chopsticks. A futile endeavor. But vintage bumpers seemed designed for the human hand.

Conditions

Fresh snow was usually best. The tires would pack down the snow to ice, for perfect sliding. A long winter would sometimes provide icy conditions for days or even weeks at a time. But the streets with heavier traffic would wear down to bare pavement, and it became necessary to take side streets as far as possible.

It was also important to know where the sewer caps were. The warmer temperatures rising up through them would create a bare patch that would put an instant stop to your momentum. Well, a stop to your feet, anyway. The momentum of your upper body would likely bring your face into instant contact with chrome, rendering your teeth useless for perpetuity.

To this day, I know where every man-hole cover is between my old house on “E” Street, and Salk Middle School (as it is called today.)

Surprisingly, I managed to ski-jog to school for years without a mishap. This may be discouraging to my loyal readers who have come to expect breathtaking madcap adventures involving mayhem, bodily injury, or at least humiliating results.

I guess you’ll have to wait for my next exciting installment of Allegedly True Stories for more of that.

*When I practiced ski-jogging, it was perfectly legal. Spokane’s city council did not pass a law against it until 2009.

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Did you ever ski-jog or engage in other foolish activities? Tell us your best story!