Vermont Wife Carrying Championship and Lawnmower Racing Cup?

If they can do it in Finland we can do it in Vermont!
By Manfried Rieder Starhemberg

Wife carrying (Finnish: eukonkanto or akankanto, Swedish: kärringkånk, Estonian: naisekandmine) is a sport in which male competitors race while each carrying a female teammate. The objective is for the male to carry the female through a special obstacle track in the fastest time. The sport was first introduced at Sonkajärvi, Finland.

Several types of carry may be practised: piggyback, fireman's carry (over the shoulder), or Estonian-style (the wife hangs upside-down with her legs around the husband's shoulders, holding onto his waist).

Wife Carrying World Championships are held annually in Sonkajärvi, Finland since 1992 (where the prize depends on the wife's weight in beer).

The North American Wife Carrying Championships take place every year on Columbus Day Weekend in October at Sunday River Ski Resort in Newry, Maine.

BUT WE ALL KNOW THAT MAINE AND FINLAND ARE FOREIGN COUNTRIES and we must have our own championship right here in Vermont.

I propose to do this in Barton because they have 1.) the required amount of strong men and presumably willing females in the surrounding hills and 2.) a lovely oval racetrack which we will need for the second part of our biathlon: The Vermont Riding Lawnmower Races.Lawnmower races are held in various parts of the United states and there is even a lawnmower racing association but we don't need to get that serious about it at this stage.
Generally, there are a number of classes depending on the size of the motor and the sharp bits that eat the grass have to be removed in order to avoid grudge races or accidental homicide like we do in hunting season in New England.

Now pay close attention to this: Being a competitor at our lawnmower championship is serious business and will involve an almost year-round state of preparedness which of course means that the mower with its rotating or spinning parts removed, can no longer be used for the mundane task of actually cutting your lawn. As organizers, we would issue a plaque to all contestants that certifies that he or she is a registered racing driver and thus fully absolved in the non-maintenance of mow able landmasses. In case an entrant has actually two riding mowers, it will suffice to state that the second one is the backup racing vehicle and all the aforementioned non-mowing regulations will apply to this mower as well. And this alone should be initiative enough for us to be able to garner a large competitive field of well rested Vermonters and their scythe yielding wives or girlfriends.
This now leads us back to the first part of the biathlon: the wife carrying competition. With the wives  having done all the menial yard work by hand, they should be trim and slim and our well rested non mowers strong and healthy which should add to the competitiveness of the race.

Wikipedia has this to say about the history of this noble athletic event:

There are many thoughts to how this sport first originated in Finland. Tales have been passed down from one person to another about a man named Herkko Rosvo-Ronkainen. This man was considered a robber in the late 1800s, lived in a forest, and ran around with his gang of thieves causing harm to the villages. From what has been found, there are three ideas to why/how this sport was invented. First, Rosvo-Ronkainen and his thieves were accused of stealing food and women from villages in the area he lived in; then carried these women on their backs as they ran away, (hence the “wife” or women carrying). For the second idea, it has been said that young men would go to villages near their own, steal other men’s wives, and then have the woman become their own wife. These wives were also carried on the backs of the young men; this was referred to as “the practice of wife stealing." Lastly, there was the idea that Rosvo-Ronkainen trained his thieves to be “faster and stronger” by carrying big, heavy sacks on their backs, which could have eventually evolved to a sport because of the hard labor (endurance), and muscle strengthening; which most sports ensure. Even though this sport has been considered by some as a joke, competitors take it very seriously, just like any other sport.

The Rules are as follows and we could certainly make up our own as we Vermonters always do but here it is nevertheless:

The original course is a rough, rocky terrain with fences, and brooks, but has been altered to suit modern conditions. There is now sand instead of full rocks, fences are still on the course, and some kind of area filled with water (a pool). These are the following rules set by the International Wife Carrying Competition Rules Committee:

• The length of the official track is 253.5 meters
• The track has two dry obstacles and a water obstacle, about one meter deep
• The wife to be carried may be your own, the neighbor's, or you may have found her further afield; she must, however, be over 17 years of age
• The minimum weight of the wife to be carried is 49 kilograms. If she is less than 49 kg, the wife will be burdened with a rucksack containing additional weight such that the total load to be carried is no less than 49 kg.
• All participants must enjoy themselves
• The only equipment allowed is a belt worn by the carrier, the carried must wear a helmet.
• The contestants run the race two at a time, so each heat is a contest in itself
• Each contestant takes care of his/her safety and, if deemed necessary, insurance
• The contestants have to pay attention to the instructions given by the organizers of the competition
• There is only one category in the World Championships and the winner is the couple who completes the course in the shortest time
• Also the most entertaining couple, the best costume, and the strongest carrier will be awarded a special prize.

Summing this up, I have to admit that we organizers who are as of this date me and my wife Nancy and "the other two guys who have not asked their wives for permission", had originally intended to propose this international Vermont Biathlon to be part of the EB-5 initiative much like the Renaissance Block or the Waterfront Convention Center and Marina but then we decided that we should make this an all Vermont event without offering green cards to far East investors because our project is doable without having our governor fly to China or Vietnam or talk to the United Arab Emirates about it. It is one of those grass roots things we do so well ourselves and since nothing is getting mowed next year, we will certainly have an abundance of grass roots to play with.

Ending this, I am serious about this event and should like to hear from people interested in getting this done. I do not believe that my Internet is monitored by Homeland Security, so your wife will not know about it if you talk to me!

My e-mail is:

mapleleafpress@yahoo.com

A whole new tourism idea for Vermont:

By Manfried Rieder Starhemberg

Folks, I do not eat game because it tastes gamy, my idea of the "wild outdoors" is a night at a Howard Johnson's and I certainly would never hurt Bambi. But - living in northern Vermont I have to recognize that I am surrounded by seasonal hunters and gatherers and while in the rest of the country they call the gatherers "pickers" and the hunters are a two week a year nuisance, well, Vermonters live and breathe the out of doors. And not just for the few days of the hunting season neither - they gather around the fire or the table at the pub and tell never ending hunting stories from New years after the tree has been de-needled until the beginning of the annual hunt. If they don't talk about it, they buy guns, swap guns, long to go to gun shows, some spend weeks of oiling and cleaning the arsenal, others have their own loading equipment and brass polishing gizmo. The rest of them play with their knifes, find new different looking suspenders, add to the collection of loud flannel shirts and polish their boots.Few forget to send in the annual NRA membership dues. Thankfully, I have my own camouflage, from proper hat to checkered shirt so that I am able to sneak through town, buy my groceries and make it home safely as I try to blend in with the locals. Driving a mean old green 4-wheel drive Range rover with the appropriate amount of dents, rust and the big lights in front also helps.

See anyone?

So, having fallen in love with Vermont I feel that I should contribute to the general welfare of the state and I propose a whole new tourism concept; The "Deer hunter for a Day" concept which should be easily marketable to all those gray and desperately sullen millionaire layers, dentists, stock brokers currently not in jail and every current or former politician that has grown too old to engage in the pursuit of sex.

I feel that my beloved Newport would make a fine testing site for the Flannel and Suspender experience. There is plenty of room downtown to rent a cheap store front locale and staff it with a wholesome Vermont country girl in appropriate attire which could be modeled after any episode of the Little House on the Prairie. Then we decorate the outside with a minimum of two big wooden wagon wheels and one large sleigh or three or four smaller toboggans. A pair or two of old wooden skies (crossed of course) will have to be over the door and the regulation broken-down snowshoes can easily be found at the next church bazaar.

Inside we need an old wooden desk with a lot of burn marks and rings made by beer or coffee mugs. A large uncomfortable bench and a few unstable kitchen chairs will round up the furnishings. This we call the Tourist Hunting Blind.

Now we are almost in business. In Vermont tradition we organizers of this new venue will all call for a meeting at Jasper's in downtown Newport City to plan strategy. My plan is simple. We all donate our old hunting clothes the goodwill people would not take and label them by size. They cannot be cleaned under any circumstances. Next we need some non-functional guns, old shotguns with rusted up mechanisms would be preferred but we can certainly take the noise making stuff out of that old 22 and it would serve very well.All this must be enshrined in a gun cabinet. Yes, aunt Gwendolyn's unused jam cupboard would do nicely. Out of courtesy to our expected guests I would actually suggest we buy a few pair of black rubber boots. This mainly so as not to soil the floors of our tourist transport vehicles. Those will need some contemplation. Arguably it would be best if they had at least some mechanical functionality so it might be best to take the snowplow off the old rusted up GMC on the left rear of the barn. You see where I am getting at here; We need authentic hunting vehicles. They cannot start every time, this would take some of the suspense right out of it. The old trucks must also be authentically rusty and muddy because they will be the backdrop of many a cherished photo our guests will hand down for generations to come.

Now that we have the infrastructure well in hand we have to plan excursions for our guests. Most of those who will participate have favorite hunting grounds and since we will do everything but hunt, it should be easy to establish a fire pit, a cooler full of beer and blackberry brandy or even Vermont Applejack. What to grill on the fire will be left to the imagination of the individual tour guide and his sense of humor.

The way I figure it is, when our guests arrive, having been lured up here by tasteful advertisements in the New Yorker, we let them put on the hunting clothes, buy them breakfast at the nearest diner and drag them into the woods for a day of "The authentic Vermont country experience". It will be perfectly o.k. if our guides smoke, chew tobacco or use genuine country language. For those of them who might have forgot of how she is spoke there will be refresher courses after the first-aid training session. 

Lodgings for our visitors should ideally also be provided by the guides and their family if they own a farm, old building way back in the countryside, preferably with a functioning outhouse or know how to trespass at an unused campsite. If it becomes a huge success, we will have the means to buy some old farm houses for just that purpose and dilapidated them until they are suitable rustic.

Well, this is the general outline. I figure we could charge about $ 600.-/day of which half will go to the guide because he is providing transportation and lodging. The other half will keep our office and advertising paid and the authentic Vermont farm woman office manager will get a good salary as well. I assume that the state of Vermont will also give us some money to offset the cost of advertising and I expect a huge tax break since we are advocating Eco-tourism at its finest with no intrusive hotels, water  parks, disco pubs or polluting marina facilities to build and sustain.

Green tourism in the green mountains. All we are missing is that big plywood moose with the hole in the face where people can stick their head into to have their picture taken when they are all garbed out as deerstalkers with their ancient shotguns poised and ready.