No More Tough Sledding

Attention those of you with $150,000 or so lying around gathering dust. Do I have a deal for you.

Act fast and you can get in on the snowy ground floor of a new winter sport that could hit the slopes harder than Sonny Bono.

In fact, had poor Sonny been bodysledding instead of tree skiing … well, they wouldn’t need a new Republican congressman from Palm Springs.

“Oh, definitely,” says Spokane’s Jim Pendleton, 42, an Eastern Washington University maintenance worker when he’s not playing Thomas Edison. “I’ve never been hurt doing it. You feel like you’re flying. You have the sensation of speed, but it’s completely safe.”

A word of explanation:

A Bodysled consists of five bright, molded pieces that strap over your arms, chest and thighs. Each piece has its own metal runners.

Once on, the wearer can take off down a hill with a leap and a bound. Benefits are obvious. You can turn on a dime simply by bending your arms. There’s no fear of letting your sled run away from you.

Want to stop? Move the points of your hands together and snowplow. You can even ride a chair lift while wearing your Bodysled.

If you don’t mind the stares, that is.

A Bodysled makes a person look like Rocketman or some armor-wearing mutant ninja superhero.

Pendleton’s invention is several epochs up the evolutionary ladder from the low-tech Flexible Flyer of my youth.

How well I remember those swell childhood sledding adventures I enjoyed with my best buddy, Randy Cloward. Like reckless fools we zoomed down steep, rock-strewn Rebecca Street on creaky wooden sleds.

The things were fast, but as unpredictable as intemperate bucking broncs. Every now and then we’d hit a boulder and tumble off. The sleds, however, would continue down the hill like unguided missiles, randomly knocking over small children.

Had we owned Bodysleds, we could have stayed in complete control, and takencareful aim to hit only the kids we didn’t like. That’s the beauty of Pendleton’s creation. With this, the sledder is at one with the sled.

“It’s not just a new sled,” says Pendleton, who figures a complete Bodysled outfit would sell in the $200 range. “It’s a whole new sport. First there was downhill skiing, then snowboarding and now bodysledding.”

Pendleton came up with this 20 years ago, while sledding one moonlit night at Manito Park. After nearly crashing his nephew’s Flexible Flyer into a tree, he began to think of ways to improve the lowly sled.

Pendleton is a natural engineer. He can “take things apart, spin them around and put them back together - all in my brain.”

It wasn’t long before the Bodysled was born. And then Pendleton discovered the wretched reality about building the better mousetrap: People really don’t beat a path to your door.

Selling a new idea takes a frustrating amount of effort and money that few inventors have. The corporations he contacted all thought body-sledding was a good idea, he says, but nobody wanted to take the gamble.

After trying unsuccessfully to find venture capital, he stuck his yellow wooden prototypes in a closet. Then “life got in the way,” says Pendleton, who has five children and worked a hectic schedule at a hospital until a few years ago.

But then snowboarding made it into the Winter Olympics. Pendleton decided bodysledding’s time had come. Next week, he will have his first fiberglass models made. He’s on the prowl for backers so he can test market his idea to the masses.

Will the Bodysled be the sport of the future?

“People need to see this as an alternative to skiing and snowboarding,” says sledding’s answer to Edison. “It’s the next best thing to come along.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo