Mothers of invention
Sometimes our wacky silent sports ideas pay off
Sometimes they don't
Story by Bob McCray
Illustration by Art Carr  Just in my immediate circle I've seen a number of great inventions over the years. My wife bought me zippered-pocket socks to hold keys when I run. My brother-in-law, a machine shop owner, made a ski pole that adjusts to a skier's height. And a neighbor who is an engineer/rafter built a waterfall from the garage roof that plummets into a homemade pond where he and his wife float on an inflatable.
I'm a sucker for tantalizing new products
in outdoor magazines and catalogs, and the patents listed on the Internet at www.uspto.gov are even more amazing.
In 1980, an inventor patented a ski fan a portable fan worn on one's back to blow you uphill on skis. Another inventor came up with a in-line skate trainer, something like a four-wheeled walker.
In Japan, a company sells rust-resistant, titanium running shorts (clankety, clank). In 1971, Stephanie Kwolek invented Kevlar, a fiber
five times stronger that steel but half the density of fiberglass.
For years, the outdoor clubs we've belonged to for camping, canoeing, running and skiing have been incubators for self-made gizmos. While paddling Midwest waters, we've run across a homemade platform for a backpacking stove that permits cooking on a rocking boat. (It has rubber feet and rails to restrain pots from shifting.) We've seen a Styrofoam-lined U.S. Army ammo box to protect watches and
eyeglasses from rocky rapids. Winter paddlers on Lake Michigan double dry bag their cell phones. These are simple and workable, but not exactly Swiss-Army-knife caliber.
Gizmo design comes naturally to some silent sports devotees. There are three basic motivators: 1) you can't afford something; 2) you want it but no one makes such a thing yet; and 3) creativity brings joy.
Silent sportsters sometimes jerry-rig what they can't afford. Both
makeshift and elaborate canoe carriages for portaging boats to water are common. I was dazzled by a ground-to-cartop boat lifter, and intrigued by a home-crafted waterproof camera container made of wood, with a glass window and a rubber-glove-thumb insert to press the shutter button underwater.
We couldn't afford a sail rig for our old wood-canvas canoe, so I doo-hickeyed leeboards (attached by hook-and-eye), a tiller and mast
mount. My wife sewed a sail, and with our two kids and dogs, our sailing canoe quartered the waves like a Viking ship.
Someone said, "The secret of success is a little confidence and a little ignorance."
Another time, I thing-a-ma-jigged a sail mount for an old paddleboard a friend gave us. My wife stitched a sail using three different color flower draperies producing a Renoir painting bobbing along the Lake Michigan
horizon. Unfortunately, when it keeled over the drapes sucked up half the lake and I needed a forklift to hoist up the sail.
Sometimes silent sports devotees contrive what hasn't been invented. For camping, we've come upon a homespun macramé flashlight holder to hang from a tent roof, and an orange-juice-bottle bedpan.
A friend sewed his own tube sack for his odd-sized skis. Another devised a makeshift ski rack for basement storage.
My wife and I love the grand vista from Midwest ski trails, like those at South Kettle Moraine. But there's no place to sit down. On Colorado ski trails (longitude Springfield, Illinois), skiers sit on their parkas, cross their skis in the snow as a backrest, and tilt their wine skins. (Pull that anywhere in the vicinity of Chicago and they'd find your body frozen to the snowpack.) So, we gizmoed a fanny hammock that attaches
between ski poles and forms an A-frame for your butt. Now we can sit and savor the view.
If necessity is the mother of invention, the father is desperation. The Chicago area is nicknamed the Banana Belt for its frequently tropical winters. Before roller skis and in-line skates, we desperately needed a faux snow sport. So I built a pair of grass skis with wooden rollers, long bolts for axles and mending plates. It was like wearing a pair of miniature Bradley fighting vehicles.
I tried them out one night, did a double-twisting flyaway into a face plant, and never used them again. They're somewhere in the basement.
For some, the fun of inventing is another motivator. There's a scientific basis for the high that accompanies creativity, according to Herbert Benson, MD., co-author of The Breakout Principle. Nitric oxide bubbles through your blood. My guess is some silent sportsters experience a gizmo high from trying their wacky, duck-tape contraptions
and hairbrained gimcracks.
I always wanted to combine cross-country skiing and sailing two sports with aspects like flying. Now I've seen skiers pulled by kites, and hang gliders wearing skis. But I always dreamed of sailing across a snowy meadow on cross-country skis.
So an engineer friend and I built a catamaran on skis a "ski sailer." He welded a catamaran frame, my wife sewed a trampoline cover for it and
we mounted running skis in front and steering (tiller) skis in back.
Using a Sunfish sail, we set out, zigzagging across the Evanston golf course in three inches of snow with the mast creaking and groaning. It moved like a hermit crab with bad knees. Sadly, the wind gave out and we halted. The next day, the March snow melted.
Later that spring, we unbolted the skis and put on six-inch wheels. Our "land sailer" (yet another new idea) rocketed across the Northwestern
University parking lot like a lightning bolt. In fact, a week later, the campus police clocked us at 40 mph across a lakefront park. I couldn't worry, because I was on a collision path with a large log. With seconds to spare, a gust of wind lifted the port side wheels over the "land strainer."
That was my last ride. I wasn't interested in becoming a human crayon. The frame is under the porch. The sail is in the garage and the wheels are in the basement.
Thomas Edison took 500 tries to invent the light bulb. I'm sure many silent sports inventors could make it big time with one last adjustment. (Maybe if we'd used fiberglass ski pontoons. Hmm.) Still, there's no harm trying.
Meanwhile, I'm inspired by ads and catalogs. I just bought a mosquito net shirt and hood for bug-free kayaking, a $1 digital bracelet watch for kayaking, and a great three-person inflatable kayak. I'm still considering titanium shorts (clankety, clank).
"There is a correlation between the creative and the screwball," Kingman Brewster of Yale said. Which would explain why we're thinking of entering a Flutag a homemade aircraft flying day. Chicago had one in 2003. You launch your Da Vinci-style flying machine off a 30-foot ramp into a lake. I'm thinking inflatable wings, a foot/hand pedal, recumbent-powered propeller and a baking soda/white vinegar injection propulsion booster.
As Carl Sandburg said, "Nothing happens unless first a dream."
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