With a new sled primed and ready to make the gruelling seven-day trek as part of the 2008 Prairie Women on Snowmobiles Ride for Breast Cancer Research, Jolene Kindiak said it was her own inexperience with the sled that got her into trouble.
“I went up this embankment and I thought that there was a lot more snow there than there was, because it was generally quite a deep ditch,” said Kindiak. “The snow looked like it was overhanging, but as I soon found out, it was really just a pile of dirt.”
Unable to turn out at the last moment, Kindiak found herself upside down with her new, much heavier machine on top of her. Thinking quickly, Kindiak managed to wedge her feet up under the seat and hold it above her—a move that to onlookers seemed to be to stop the machine from crushing her, but for Kindiak it was more to save her brand new sled than herself.
“I didn’t want to break the windshield,” laughed Kindiak. “That’s why I was holding it up, and it made it so that I got stuck in the snowbank. Thankfully, we were near the road, and my husband was driving the pit crew semi that day, so he and the rest of the pit crew were able to jump out and save me. Once they all realized I was OK, they all had quite a lot of fun laughing at me.”
