Don't put your feet down. Keep your arms in. Very light pressure with your legs and shoulders will steer the sled.

When I had a chance to hit the luge track at the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid, New York, I remembered all of Christian's coaching and high-speed sliding philosophy right up to the point at which he said "he's ready" and gently pushed me out of the starting gate. Then it all went away, replaced by unreasoning fear, then exhilaration and pure joy, a few sharp jolts of pain as I banged the wall at 30 miles an hour or so, and that tremendous adrenalin rush I was supposed to somehow suppress. I did two luge runs and a headfirst slide on the "skeleton," a heavy sled not unlike the flexi-flyers of old. What a blast. What a treat.

How many other jobs give you a chance to spend an evening fooling around on the Lake Placid Luge and Toboggan and Skeleton track?

And what a great glimpse into the world and ways of the top-flight athletes who devote their lives to one of the great fringe sports of the Olympic Games.

The folks at Lake Placid started us just above turn #12 on the 19-turn track so we experienced only about 40 percent of what Niccum and his teammates do normally. I did my runs at the end of a long day of practice and the track was gouged up and frosted over and far from fast. I might have hit 35 mph at top speed and it seemed like 100. Niccum and company routinely take off from the top and negotiate the plunging, twisting, high-banked, track (picture an ice-rink twisted into a ribbon and draped down the side of a mountain) at top speeds of 75-85 mph.

So the next time you catch yourself thinking "How goofy, they're SLEDDING in the OLYMPICS. Kid stuff. I could do that." you can be certain that you're wrong. You couldn't do that. You can't do that. Not without years of experience and constant training and a truly humbling commitment to a sport with no pot of professional gold at the end of the amateur rainbow.

Nobody, at least no American, gets rich riding a luge.

By the way, Christian Niccum, who was on hand to help us get down the track safely, thoughtfully provided me with a skintight luge "speedsuit," a brightly colored, show-every-wrinkle, accent-every-physical-flaw type of garment designed exclusively for the young and fit to wear. I had no business wearing the thing in public so of course I didn't hesitate to put it on. If you're going to play ball, my father used to say, you might as well look like an athlete.

You can expect to see news stories on KING 5 this fall and winter about Christian Niccum as he pushes for a berth on the Olympic team and about my brief and terrifying and thrilling luge experience. Niccum is a very interesting guy and we spent a lot of time with him during our week in Lake Placid. I am not that interesting a guy but then I do look good in a speedsuit…
Gotta go…