I went bobsledding on an Olympic track and my head turned into a pinball (Video)

You may or may not have noticed that I was out for the past week. Shame on you if you didn’t. But I will take that as a compliment that Del, Darryn and Dixon dominated while I was away to the point that you didn’t notice anything different about the site, which is the goal.

Anyway, I was out all last week taking my first real vacation since going full-time with the site in 2010. This was probably the first time I went longer than 36 hours without publishing a story on the site since about 2009.

After being tied to the site for so long, it was about time to go out of town, so I headed north of the border to Whistler for a week. I had a blast. The scenery was gorgeous, the activities were tremendous, and the trip was tons of fun.

While in a city where the Winter Olympics were once held, I was determined to go bobsledding. I mean how often do you have a chance to bobsleigh on an Olympic track? You better believe I was going to do that.

I headed over to the Whistler Sliding Centre on Friday morning and went for a spin down the track. The track opened in Dec. 2007 and was used for the bobsleigh, luge and skeleton events at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Keep in mind this track was so dangerous when it opened that Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili died during training after he flew off the track and hit a pole. The track was known then as the fastest and most dangerous in the world. But that wasn’t about to stop me.

I bodied up into the sleigh with my helmet strapped and went for the run. We started off at Turn 7 and went down the rest of the track, reaching a top speed of 88.8 kmh (nearly 55 mph). It was awesome and felt like going down a fast roller coaster, only on this ride my head bounced around like a pinball. Seriously, my head was killing me about halfway down from banging off the sides of the sled.

It was just me and the driver, Anna, in a four-person sleigh, and we completed the course in 58.58 seconds. That was three seconds slower than the previous group that had three people in the sleigh, though we did reach a higher top speed. I think she hit too many walls and slowed us down, because I was in top form.

Check out the board (and respect my sled’s name — Slidin’ Dirty):

The actual sled was called “Rolling Thunder.” It was on wheels during the summer instead of the ice, but it was still pretty awesome.

Of course I wasn’t going to miss out on a chance to zipline too while in Whistler. Check out this video of me ziplining at Superfly Ziplines. This was the third of four ziplines, and I believe it was called “Godzilla.”

Here’s what the promo video looks like for the company. They advertise that you’re 600 feet above the forest floor and reach speeds up to 100 km/h. It was pretty sick.

Another fun activity was going off-roading on some Polaris Razrs. It felt like monster trucking all over the place:

Before I finish this post — which 100 percent justifies charging my bobsled ride and purchase of the video as a business expense — I must complete my unofficial sales pitch on behalf of the Whistler tourism board by sharing this gorgeous photo:

I had no idea that skies could be this blue and clear and smog-free. It was mind-blowing.