Good Tip: Don’t Fall Asleep at the Wheel

Skateboarders are constantly adding new tricks and Bob Burnquist has been preparing to perform one that will involve a parachute: He wants to skateboard off a cliff.

The plan is still in the works but apparently it calls for a towering launch ramp that will send him airborne and plop him down onto a rail, on which he will slide on his skateboard over the edge and, if all goes well, open his chute and land safely.

“It’s almost subliminally why I started skydiving,” he told Skateboarder magazine, “so I could skate off a cliff and survive.”

It’s nice to have goals.

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Olympic moment: Burnquist lives in Vista, Calif., but comes from Brazil and recently helped carry the Olympic torch -- on his skateboard, of course -- through that South American country, which regards him as a celebrity. “I haven’t done a Letterman or Leno here in the U.S.,” he said. “But I’ve done all the Brazilian versions.”

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Torched: Some skateboarders have criticized Burnquist for carrying the torch because the International Olympic Committee has not embraced the idea of making skateboarding an Olympic sport. “It’s not like I was there trying to get skateboarding into the Olympics,” he said in his defense.

“I was there celebrating the Olympics. It’s such a huge human endeavor that’s been going on for ages. The reason you carry the torch around the world is to boost the feeling of global community before the Games start. Being part of that community was pretty intense. It was an honor to carry it, skateboarding or not.”

It would have been even more intense had he chosen that moment to go over the cliff.

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Trivia time: Snowboarding will make its third Olympics appearance during the 2006 Winter Games in February at Turin, Italy. Only one U.S. athlete won medals in the first two. Name the athlete and the results.

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Mush! Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula is gearing up for the 19th Arctic Winter Games in March. Many of the same sports will be featured but considering the location a favorite is sure to be, you guessed it, dog mushing.

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Gone fishing: Asked by ESPN the Magazine if he’d tune in to the playoffs, Jason Kendall of the Oakland A’s responded, “Are you kidding me? For the next three weeks I’ll be on my couch watching football. After that, it’s rehab from my knee surgery and playing with the kids. Then we’re going to Cabo.”

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Fat chance: How bad were the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday in a 52-17 loss to Washington? Writes Ann Killion of the San Jose Mercury News: “Even those fat guys in pig snouts and polka dot dresses could have scored on the 49ers’ defense.”

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Trivia answer: Ross Powers won the bronze medal in 1998 at Nagano, Japan, and the gold medal in 2002 at Salt Lake City.

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And finally: Jim Armstrong of the Denver Post, in reference to the New York Giants driving 83 yards and scoring with five seconds left to beat the Broncos on Sunday, 24-23: “The last-minute comeback was the second of Eli Manning’s career, leaving him a mere 45 behind John Elway in the fourth-quarter game-saving driver department.”