“Thanks,” I replied, “I’ll be delighted to make a fourth. You’re the only man I’d trust to take me down. It’s too fast for me!” I added with a laugh.
“Is it really a fast run?” asked the bride, smiling.
“Well, you will see for yourself,” I replied.
Laughing gayly we went over the snow, past the bend at the village shop where one can obtain anything from a Swiss cuckoo clock, to a paper of pins, and whose elderly proprietor is one of the best ski instructors in the canton. Paying our fare, we ascended by the rack-railway up the snowy heights of the Allmendhubel.
On the truck was our heavy “bob,” with its steel frame and runners, and its delicate controls. At the summit the attendants pushed it along the flat to the narrow entrance of the bob-run which a hundred hands had, a few weeks before, constructed in the snow, digging it all out and making many banked-up hair-pin bends down the side of the mountain for two and a half miles back into Mürren.
Those curves are scientifically calculated for speed, but it takes an expert to negotiate them successfully. The crew of a “big bob” must know the course, and be alert to the command of the driver to bend over “right,” “left,” or “up.” One’s first trip in a “bob” on a fast run is an experience never to be forgotten. But both the bride and bridegroom revealed that they had done such things before.
At the “gate” of the run—a narrow cut eight feet deep in the snow—a smiling Swiss stood beside the telephone, which gave “clear passage.” Burton, as an expert, who took no chances, had the “bob” turned over, and examined the brakes and controls, which sometimes get clogged with snow.
We all got in and set our feet forward on the rests, I being behind to act as brakesman, and to “brake” at the instant order of Burton.
“Everybody all right?” he asked, as we settled ourselves behind each other on the big bob.
We responded that we were, then four men pushed us off down the narrow icy slope.