KEENA ‘ANG ROB BROWN Night of the Scarab t was as if somebody with a powerful serve had hit the back of our Japanese made, $29,99, Army & Navy, blowout sale special, with a tennis racket. The sound re- verberated inside; and things don’t reverberate easily in a tent. I sat up and found Ray sitting up already. Shapes attracted edges, everything came into focus, but softly. I looked at Ray. His eyes were saucers, “What d’ya think it is?” I whispered, Ray an- swered with a head shake and a shrug. We waited for another thwack, None came. - Ray rummaged. It was surgical rummaging, discrete and precise, the kind you do so as to. avoid alerting something nearby — especially samething potentially malevolent. I breathed and listened as he pulled the flashlight from his bag and motioned toward the dcor flap with his head. Curiosity overcame fear. We crawled. Ray “unzipped the door. We crept toward the back of the tent, ready to retreat into its flimsy security _in event of an encounter of the unfortunate kind. The woods were dark. The dry air was full of ‘pine scent, the ground crisp and irritating under our bare feet. “Willya lookit this!?” gasped Ray. . I peered over his shoulder and down the beam. In the middle of it, overturned, its legs moving in the air like bug legs are supposed to do when they’re on ground, was a gaudy orange and black beetle big enough to make primitive peoples fall down and worship. “It’s the size of a sparrow,” I stammered as the creature’s antennae probed the air discon- | nectedly, “what’re we gonna do with it?” 0 “It may have friends,” said Rayw“We'll: put it back ort its feet so that-it can fly off and tell them we were kind to it, and that they should leave us alone.” Ray picked up a fallen branch and gingerly righted the intergalactic scarab. Then we scram- bled back into the tent where I lay atop my de- flated air mattress and thought about how things had been tending toward disaster since the be- ginning of this, our first, fishing adventure far from home. It had taken hours to get out of town. Thanks to the friendly and concerned constable who ap- prehended us on the freeway and took us to a far distant, far safer, car free road that bridged a vast sea of yellowing com, it took many more hours more to reach Hope. After a short night's sleep on the banks of the Coquihalla River, we put in another half day trying to thumb out of Hope. After walking miles in Saharan temperatures from the spot where our last ride dropped us, we reached the camp ground at Nicola Lake. The place sizzled. Crickets chirped endlessly. Soon after the tent was up, I accidentally hung my air matress on a nail sticking cut of one of its poles, banishing any hope of nocturnal comfort. The stuff-needed for camping was heavier then, so we'd cut down on food, arrogantly expecting to supplement those few cans of beans and boxes of Mac and Cheese with the fish we would cateh; a notion that vanished quickly on the day after the Night of the Beetle. The giant bug must have been the harbinger of storms, for the clouds blanketed the clear sky and the kind of rain that bounces off the ground poured out them. “How can it get so cold so fast?” asked Ray as we shivered over our morn- ing macazoni. Fortunately the rain had stopped, but a cold wind still blew. After a long walk to a bluff overlooking the lake, we were warmer, but not much. We chose the spot after realizing that our feeble casts wouldn't take our spoons past the shallows in a- lake the size of a sea, Water deep enough to ob- scure the bottom holds. more promise; the water next to the bluff had that feature. We gathered brittle twigs and bark from the underside of some scrubby ponderosas, packed them out onto the bluff where Ray managed to assemble an impressive fire. “We can stand on that shelf and cast.” he suid pointing to an out- crop at the foot of the bluff. “t’s underwater,” I observed. “It’s not deep,” Ray said, as he took off his runners and set them close to the fire, then rolled up his pant legs. As I went for more fuel, Ray made his way down to the fishing platform. When I returned one of the runners was on fire, I refexively did the logical thing: 1 grabbed up the blazing shoe and tossed it into the lake. Snatched from certain death, the black and white runner sizzled for a moment then sank and drowned. Without scuba gear there was no hope of recovering the body. Combined, the little money we had left was enough for one ticket on the Greyhound. There was no straw 10 draw this time, I watched Ray- mond limp aboard the Grey Dog with one shoe. J waved then shouldered a pack full of beans and macaroni and made for the highway, wondering if it would take anather three days to get home. TERRACE STANDARD Sports menu To get your gama, evant or meeting added to the Terrace Standard Sports Menu or Sports Scape, fax us al 638-8432, or you can e-mail us at standard@kermode.net Mar. 1 @ Women's indoor soc- cer: Team Blessings takes on Northern Sav- ings al 7 p.m, at Cassie Hall, Molson Rockets play the Almwood Roy- als at 8:05 p.m. at Cas- sie Hall, Mar. 3 @ Terrace Elementary Sports Association's (TESSA) grade six bas- ketball tournament at Caledonia Senior Sec- ondary 9 am. - 5 p.m. Mar. 4 @Shames Mountain hosts its second annual Mr. Mike's corporate chaliange. Teams of three race down Back Eddy, Call 635-3773 for registration info. Mar. 9-10 Mi TESSA’s grade seven basketball toumament at Caledonia Senior Sec- ondary. Call Dighton Haynes at 635-5082 for details. Mar. 10 @ Regular meeting of zone ten for’ the B.C. senior games. Happy Gang Centre at 1:30 p.m. Please note new time. Call Maxine for details: 638-8648 Mar. 10-11 @ Snowmobile Hill climb at Shamas - Mountain, Call Trever Gibson at 635-2909 for details. monthly. The Terrace Standard, Wednesday, February 28, 2001 - BS © GYMNASTS were swinging on bars, tumbling in floor exercises and strutting their stuff on the balance beam Feb. 17 at the zone seven gymnastics meet in Smithers. Terrace’s Peaks gymnastics club brought 12 athletes to the competi- tion and all of them fared very well. In the level one Midget division Jessica Ames put in a solid, consis- tent performance in each of the girls’ events, floor, vault, uneven bars and balance beam. With a total score of Meda a Teammate Britt Anderson came back with a solid second place finish with an overall score of 29.04. Nicole Pelltier placed second on both the floor and the bars.Combined with her fousth place standing on the beam and-the vault she came home with a bronze medal for her overalt performance, Kayla McColl earned a bronze medal on the vault, beam and bars. She placed sixth in the floor exer- cise giving her a fourth place finish overall with a score of 27.85. Ok aa a 31.53 Ames came home with a gold SIOBHAN SLOAN MCMULLEN and Marla Schulmeister were both competing at the zone seven gymnas- tics meet in Smithers Feb. 17. Both girls received gold medals in each of the four events they took part in. Terrace tumblers at top Next up, fifth place finisher Jenny Goddard. This was Jenny’s first gym- nastics meet and she preformed vesy well with a final score of 27.36. Janna Olynick also competed at the Midget level and tumbled her way to a bronze medal in the floor event, ; A sixth place finish on the vault and beam and a fifth place rank on the bars meant Olynick came home with an overall score of 26.56, good enough for sixth place. ; level one Argo division along with teammate Jody Kucharyshen. Both girls put on a great performance net- ting themselves second and first place finishes respectively. Dykes came home with an overall score of 29.43, just .06 points behind Kucharyshen who got the gold medal. The level three Argo division saw 11-year-old Siobhan Sloan McMul- len putting in gold medal perfor- Mances in all of her events. After only three years as a gym- nast Sloan McMullen feels comple- Erica Dykes .was competing in the . 638-7283 tely at ease in a competition setting. Her averall score at the meet was 33.1. Marla Schulmeister, 13, compet- ing in the level: four Tyro category mimicked Sloan MeMullen’s petfor- mance and brought home a gold medal for her 32.68 overall score, The Peaks male athletes also did an exceptional job in the meet. Seven-year-old Alex Meredith competed on the rings, vault, mush- room, horizontal bar, parallel‘ bars and the floor exercise. ss He earned himself one gold . medal, three silver medals and ‘two bronze medals which earned him a bronze medal for his ‘overall perfor- mance, Also competing in his first meet was 11-year-old Justin Schmidt. The. young man tarned a gold medal for his vanlt, not bad for a first timer. He also got three silver medals. and one bronze in his other events. He too brought home a bronze medal, The Peaks compete next in Kiti- mat for the Snowflake meet Mar. 10. SNOWBOARDER Jesse Huffman sits behind Jay Fantiman (above) on the snowmobiles they used to access the backcountry around here. They were impressed by the amount of snow here, easy access to the mountains and the a one of great Terrace hospitality they experienced. That's Huffman (right) sliding down a handrail by the arena during a photo shoot for Transworld Magazine. Riding the rails snowboard style By SARAH A. ZIMMERMAN TF’S NOT very often that you see a snowboar- der strapping on a board in the concrete jungle but that’s exactly what happened in Terrace Feb. 22. Four visiting professional snowboarders drew a crowd just outside the arena as they did a photo shoot featuring urban riding, The snowboarders created a snow track leading up to a jump just at the top of a hand- rail. : The riders landed on the metal handrail with their snowboard and slid down. It’s called a rail slide and it’s a trick derived from skate- boarding. Somewhat of a cross:ovet sport, urban ri- . _ ding has caught on primarily In U.S..citles where snow is not as abundant as here in Ca- nada, says Transworld snowboarding maga- zine photographer Jeff Corbett. So, what do snowboarders in a city with no snow do? Well, they bring in truck loads of snow toa skate-park type setling and execute tricks that they wouldn't necessarily get the chance to do on a mountain. But, this was just the riders’ rest day activ- ity. They were actually in town for about 10 days hitting the backcountry around Terrace and Kitimat working on a story for Transwerid, “The farthest I'd ever. been before this trip was Whistler Blackombe,” said Oregon-based rider Justin Mooney. “I've been to Alaska but I flew. theré.” oO Se All of the boarders came up on the ferry, an experience that definilely stood out for them. Along with the boys on boards were also a group of snowmobilers who were shooting se- quences for an action packed snowmobiling video series called Slednecks. ; “It’s been good far filming,” said snowmo- biler Jay Fentiman about his time spent in the backcountry here. Despite the recent lack of fresh snow the snowmobilers and boarders were able to spend about seven days out in the mountains. “There are amazing features on the the mountains here,” said Mooney. “And the ac- cess is so easy.” Another group of photographers and snow- boarders from a Canadian snowboarding maga- ‘zine are expected lo arrive here this week.