No Contest

Back then the competitions were strictly underground and illegal. A few hundred devotees would meet in the middle of the night to watch the launch. The launch pad was a truck, a parked boxcar or anything else that was close enough to make a jump possible. The surf train would roll alongside, and the surfers would leap aboard. They were always passenger trains, which traveled regular schedules and offered curved, challenging roofs.

After the surfers leaped aboard, the crowds would drive to the finish line. The best contests involved high-speed trains traveling track with a lot of twists and turns.

Sure, it was hard to stay on. Especially on a sharp curve with a speeding engineer. Dee took his share of tumbles and broke his arms and legs, but he had natural talent, and his cut of the wagering pots was more than he’d make at any job he could think of.

A few months ago he had his biggest win. It was in South Dakota, or maybe the other Dakota. The contest started out as nothing special until Dee heard that the sponsors, a bunch of small-time hoods from Fargo, had invited friends from Las Vegas. The friends from Vegas had never seen train surfing before, but they had cash to wager. The stakes grew to astronomical levels.

The train came and the players leaped onto it. One first-timer misjudged his leap and tumbled right off. Dee chuckled when he witnessed the snap of bones as the kid landed. He heard the kid was a Texan. Hell, they surfed on boxcars down there. His grandmother could surf a boxcar!

When the rain started Dee thought he was a goner, but at least he knew how to take a fall. And yet, as the surface of the passenger car grew slick and the other contestants flew off one after another, Dee managed to stay on.

A rain out became official if all the contestants slid off before the halfway point. Everybody assumed this early downpour would be a rain out for sure—and yet the train came into the finish line with Dee Ligit still surfing the top.

Dee was already well known on the underground train-surfing circuit, and that win made him famous. He got his first cover on LocoSurfer magazine. Then he heard plans for the first legitimate, legal rail-surfing event in the U.S.

The new Extreme Sports Network was behind it, and their people wanted Dee Ligit to compete. “We have all the permits we need to make it legal,” the producer told Dee on the phone. “Now all we need is the athletes.”

Dee said sure, he was interested. Minutes later, the cereal magnate called. The man offered to sponsor him in Pro Train Surf I, including expenses and a hefty fee. Dee got fifty grand just to compete, and a lucrative promotional contract if he won.

Dee Ligit felt everything was going right in his world. He dumped his girlfriend to take advantage of his growing base of adoring rail surf groupies. He got all new gear. He did a photo shoot and felt like a star. He flew first class to California, where the cereal company put him up in a nice room in Bishop Hills, the setting for Pro Train Surf I. Then he went out to have a look at the track.

“What is this?” he asked the ESN crew. It was like no track he had ever surfed—a torturously twisted stretch of narrow-gauge rail in the hills the town was named for. One of the producers from the Extreme Sports Network described the history of the steam engine. The train consisted of an antique steam engine and a single old-fashioned passenger car with an ornate, curved roof, refinished to a slippery shine. But Dee didn’t care about the train.

“What’s with this track?” he demanded.

The producer explained that it was a two-mile stretch of mining rail left over from the Wild West days of Bishop Hills.

“Rail surfers don’t surf track like this,” Dee protested. “We have to have a lot longer curves—these are way too sharp. And we surf for miles and miles—two miles is too short”

The producer gave him a superior look and tried to explain a little bit of reality to Dee Ligit.

“Who’s going to want to watch you boys standing there while you go on a Sunday surf through the corn-fields? And how would we go about filming it, anyway? See, this way we have a short, exciting event and we capture every second of it. We have cameras mounted all over these hills.”

He pointed out the steel camera platforms dotting the hills around the track. They had been expertly camouflaged to blend in with the dried shrubs and rock.

“They look permanent,” Dee said.

“They are. ESN is in this business for the long haul, so to speak. We bought the land, bought the track and bought the engine. We own Pro Train Surf, the only professional rail surfing event in the world.”

Dee got the message. Either get onboard with ESN or get out of the sport. “But what’s with the walls around the track?”

Alongside the entire two-mile tangle of rail was the plywood catch basin, also painted in the browns and tans of desert camouflage.