ICE FISHING CARNIVAL

By Tim Colin
Ice Fishing Carnival is an event held each year in Michigan. The event takes place out on the ice covering Lake Birdie. This event has been going on for decades and has always been exciting for participants and spectators alike. Many people participate in the sanctioned fishing and snowmobiling events. These events are very safe and great for family entertainment but, I don’t go to watch these events.

Instead, I like to watch the unsanctioned, showoff your snowmobile driving skills event. These people crank up their snow machines for exciting slides across sometimes treacherous ice. Watching people fly across the ice at 100 mph on their snowmobiles is really exciting. I especially like it when someone is going too fast and they are heading directly for someone’s cabin up on the shoreline. Watching the machines flip over and over as the drivers try to swerve out of a certainly fatal skull on cabin siding collision, can really give you a thrill. It is so much better than auto racing. Snow machine riders have almost no protection against frost bite let alone crashing into objects like cabins and ice shanties. Of course if there is an explosion, their clothing is usually highly flammable. Luckily they can roll around in the snow.

Another unsanctioned event that will give an onlooker a cheep but, no less exciting thrill, is the annual “Who is the stupidest person in Michigan?” event. In order to participate in this event you need to own a late model pickup truck with a blue book value of $50,000 or more. Each year there are at least a dozen people who participate in this event. The goal is to see how many of these trucks can park next to each other before the ice gives out underneath them and the vehicles become aquatic habitats for fish and other lake plants and creatures. Boy when that ice gives way those trucks really go down fast. You don’t dare make a trip to the port-a-potty or you might miss the whole show.

I get even greater thrills when the conservation and sheriffs officers start showing up and issuing citations to the truck owners. In addition to loosing their expensive trucks, these dim wits also get a nice hefty fine for polluting the lake. But, wait, there’s more. They also have to pay to have their sunken big trucks hauled out of the lake. For someone who likes to watch really dumb people loose lots of money doing something really stupid well, life does not get any better than a day out on the ice during Ice Carnival.

Of course you don’t have to go to a sanctioned event like on Lake Birdie to watch people do really crazy things out on the ice in Michigan. They do the same thing on every lake and river in the state as soon a there is a thin layer of ice on the water. The only thing is that during Ice Carnival you can get a hot dog and use a port-a-potty while you are waiting for someone to do something really stupid.