Steve Christilaw: Hot dog event no rival when it’s the Fourth of July

For 60 years now I have ignored eating as a spectator sport.
Not that I haven’t ever offered to arm wrestle anyone for the last Buffalo wing on the platter a time or two. I have.
But I have never, ever confused the over-consumption of wieners and buns to be a competitive sport. No. Just. No.
I understand the good folks at Nathan’s like to refer to those who compete in their annual hot dog eating contest as athletes. And there is an oversight group that covers events like this one called Major League Eating.
Not my definition. And to be honest, the sight of competitors slamming down wieners and dunking hot dog buns in liquid to get them to slide down faster is about as unappetizing as it gets.
But still, at around 11 a.m. on the Fourth of July, the sports ticker I subscribe to sent along a notice that some guy, who shall remain nameless in my memory, had eaten (and I use that term loosely in this context) 72 hot dogs in 10 minutes to win the latest sausagefest.
There are two sports that do pique my interest on Independence Day, however, and neither of them involves bypassing my own gag reflex.
July Fourth is a day to enjoy baseball. Just like July Third and July Fifth and any other day during the season. It’s the National Pastime.
This year, once again, I take note of where the Seattle Mariners are on this landmark day in the season and wonder what happened to all that promise we had at the beginning of the season.
And then I turn my attention to an out-of-the-way sport that has always fascinated me. And scared me more than a little.
Hydroplane racing.
There is something about standing on the beach and watching the thunderboats pass that is exciting and fun.
The names of the drivers were always thrown around in our house. Bill Muncey. Chip Hanauer. Dean Chenoweth. Norm Evans.
Evans was a hometown hero to hydro fans. We lived on Lake Chelan for several years and I went to school with Mark Evans, who still races hydros and even has a four-seater that he uses to take race fans for a spin around the lake.
We grew up with those gigantic Rolls Royce Merlin engines pounding across the water, leaving big rooster tails in their wake. That distinct sound was part of the attraction. Even from miles away, we could hear Norm Evans working on one of his boats and see the rooster tail as he prepared for the race season.
There were great names for the boats back in the day. Miss Bardahl was a favorite. Slo-Mo-Shun was another. Hanauer and The Squire Shop was a particular favorite once we were old enough to take ourselves to the races.
A group of friends trekked to Pasco to watch the Columbia Cup to see the new turbine-powered Pride of Pay ’n Pak. Instead of using the piston engine from an old airplane, this boat used the turbine engine from a Chinook helicopter, and the turbine-whine just wasn’t the same kind of thunder we were used to. But the potential for speed was something else.
The boat flipped spectacularly right in front of us, but the dawn of the turbine engine was upon us.
I’ve been fortunate to cover a few Seafair Regattas from the pits, and it is a fascinating spot. And the perfect place to be if you want to lose your hearing on a semi-permanent basis.
It’s an incredibly dangerous sport and it has cost the lives of too many of the men we rooted for over the years. Muncey flipped in Acapulco. Chenoweth lost his life in a flip on Lake Washington.
The days of the open cockpit boat are long gone, thankfully. There’s nothing to protect the driver when the boat goes airborne. Tragedies have been averted thanks to new designs.
When you get to know the men in the cockpit, it gets harder to watch. After a while, I got out of the habit. And the cost of maintaining a boat that skims over the top of the water at 200 miles per hour has driven most of the great names and big personalities out of the sport. Well, age may have had something to do with it, too.
But the good times on the banks of the Columbia River or on Lake Washington make for great memories. And it’s fun to reminisce about them when the summer turns to July and the Columbia Cup rolls around once again.