Geezer tests his limits

Geezer might be ready before his time, but this downhill dummy won’t be headed to an early grave thanks to his creators who’ve tested his limits.

The dummy downhill doesn’t take place until next year at Big White, but inventor Trent James is taking the race seriously.

James gathered his friends at City Park on Thursday to test out his dummy on grass.

“I saw the downhill dummy race this year and I thought I could build a dummy, so I took the last two months building him,” said James. “I thought we need to test him somehow, so instead of going on snow I’ll test him on grass.”

Aptly named Geezer, after the team who built him, the wooden stick figure sits atop a saw horse on skis.

“Some of the people in our group call us geezers, we don’t really call ourselves that, but he looks like a geezer like the people he skis with,” said James.

The ski group consists of 13 members between the ages of 66 and 80 years old who are avid winter enthusiasts.

Jeff Higa helped design and test Geezer. He says the dummy is easy to turn thanks to a remote that controls Geezer’s movements.

“You have to plan ahead and kind of swing out. You can’t just make a sudden movement,” Higa explained. “He is quite hard (to pull), well maybe if you’re a better runner, but for a 200-yard course it’s quite hard.”

James and his pals designed a course in the park and took the 40-pound Geezer on several test runs.

Now Geezer’s inventor must just wait until the snow falls again so the real race can begin and for anyone else thinking of entering next year’s dummy downhill they better be prepared.

Photo: Contributed