The Need for Speed

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In the field below, a crowd gathers. Lutfi Tota, a 72-year-old farmer, looks up wistfully. “I wish I were young enough to slide,” he says, recalling the days when he went sledding in the mountains near his home village. “If I were 10 years old, I’d be up there with them.”

Tota’s cow, Bardhoshe, lies across the finish line, lowing peacefully. She is an essential safety feature in the game, serving as a bovine backstop to keep sliders from landing in a concrete drainage trench at the bottom of the piste.

Back atop the monument, the young Murati is giving a last-minute, two-dollar lesson to a newcomer. The feet-first slide works best, he advises, even though it offers “no direction control.” The novice squats down on his three-liter sled, grips the neck, and asks what to do next.

“Lift your feet in the air,” Murati says.

With a swoosh and a shout, the rookie is off. But just 50 feet into his slide, he executes an ominous 180-degree turn that launches the sled skyward and ends his shot at the title.

But, hey, there’s always next season, the cow willing.

Excerpted from Mona Lisa’s Pajamas: Diverting Dispatches from a Roving Reporter, © 2009 by A. Craig Copetas, published by Union Square Press; www.sterlingpublishing.com. This selection first appeared in the Wall Street Journal (June 2, 1999).

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