The Drag Kings of 'The Road'

But wait. We really do like snowmobiles, and their drivers, for providing one of our basic needs: groomed ski trails on which we fly.

That brings me to the best ski story I've heard in Illinois this winter. It's not how The Buckinghams' classic song "Kind of a Drag" was originally titled "When Your Groomer Lets You Down."

No, this is the amazingly true story of human-powered trail grooming that has been taking place on a 1.45-mile stretch of protected roadway in northern Illinois known simply as "The Road." The man behind this "only in the banana belt" story is one of my fellow age-group buddies, Abbott Wright.

"If you want a World Cup workout, try human-powered grooming," Wright wrote in an e-mail. "I have read about skiers pulling tires or children in pulks to juice up the workload, but nothing matches a human-powered trail groomer. Why? You get a great workout and you get a groomed trail."

And the rest, courtesy of Peter Foley, the maker of the Human Powered Trail Grooming (HPTG) , is better than urban legend. It's an urban fact with a Nordic twist. Visit humanpoweredtrailgrooming.com.

"For years, we have groomed The Road by skiing-in a trail, using a homemade groomer of wood and plastic, snowshoes - Ojibwa design works best - or packing down the snow with skis perpendicular to the direction of travel. Try doing that on a trail 1.45-miles in length. It takes four hours per person for four people," Wright said. "We have a group of 10 skiers who can be counted on to do their civic duty at one point or another during the year. With at least 150 Birkies worth of experience, they know what it takes.

"But this year, with HPTG, the praise and excitement reached a new level," he continued. "The HPTG leaves a level corduroy surface. We start with 20 pounds in the slots on top of the 48-inch-wide high-quality plastic device, and pull, up and back. Then when anyone is feeling strong, they ski and drag with more weight. Once again, a World Cup workout and a great surface."

Most Illinois cross-country skiers who take the sport seriously know exactly where The Road is. But to protect Wright and the HPTG crew, I have agreed to not to include directions to this famed little roadway that has been a season saver many times for locals training for the Birkie. I've been thereon numerous occasions, but confess that only once did I help groom it perpendicular ski packing.

"The Road is in a public park/preserve, so it is a shared space," Wright said. "We're lucky because for the most part it is protected from the wind by a lot of trees and runs, for the most part, east-west, so it has minimal exposure to the sun. The last two years, we have had at least 55 skiable days."

"But it does suffer from multiuse abuse," he added. "We share this with walkers, hikers, dogs, snowshoes and occasional mountain bikers. This year, many local deer set up their hotel bedding right on the trail. We politely asked them to move over a bit and used rakes to clear the debris. So far, so good."

Several years back, a pack of eight coyotes set up camp 100 yards away. A fast skier was wise to step around the frequent piling of rabbit and mice bones on the trail. Wild blood and ski wax don't mix well, it turns out. But it was a great thrill to finish up your last interval as the sun set in the sky and the coyotes began to howl, no doubt praising us for a good workout.

"The multiuse abuse sooner or later leads to a hard-packed surface, and therein lies the weakness of the HPTG," Wright said." "But Peter Foley is already working on a rejuvenator of some sort too. Maybe every resort will switch to HPTG. As I say, it provides a great workout and a great surface."

I've seen grooming accounts from others on site which made me laugh and increased my admiration ten-fold for Illinois skiers and what they're willing to do to be ready on Nordic judgment day, better known as the Birkie.

I hope to see many of you in the Cable-Hayward area on the last weekend of the month. I know 10 people, maybe more, who will be ready from this side of the border. We could call them the Courduroy Kids or the Drag Kings of The Road. Either way, these groomers will never let you down.