I started off the new year with a bang -- a banging headache that is --by spending new year's day hung over in an airplane. At least I was headed in the right direction, though. I was flying towards hundreds upon hundreds of miles of solidly interconnected inland waterways for a skate vacation. Soon I'd be flying over frozen sheets of endless ice, slicing down reed-lined canals in a landscape dotted by sheep and windmills.

During the winters of 1990 to 1993 I had waited without result for the big canals to freeze over in Holland, so I knew it was time to trade in some sky miles when my trusty Dutch friends called to say that heaven was right outside the door. For more than ten days the Netherlands had been under the grip of round-the-clock frost, making it possible to strap on the skates and go just about anywhere in the country. Feverish anticipation for another 200 km Elfstedentocht, absent in the history books since 1986, was growing like the ice itself.

The official announcement for the Eleven Cities Tour came only hours after I stepped out of the plane and onto a canal outside Amsterdam. It was freezing so hard that expansion cracks rang out like gunshots. It would be only the 15th time this century that the Tocht der Tochten ("Tour of Tours") had been held. Between 1963 and 1985, a whole generation of skaters in their prime had trained each year to win the Big One, but mild winters gave not a single one of them the chance to claim the country's top athletic honor.

With 20,000 people skating the tour, the ice has to be plenty thick. Two areas problematical to the safety of such a mass of skaters are wind-holes and thin ice under bridges. Wind holes, which ducks keep open with all their carrying-on, can swallow skaters whole. The ice under bridges, where ice formation occurs much more slowly because the bridge's insulating effects and currents underneath, presents other obvious problems.

However, this winter had provided for extremely favorable conditions. The flag was drooping when it initially froze, and consequently the ice was smooth and there were very few holes along the route which could swallow skaters . Furthermore, the invading frost had been so severe that all but one bridge in Sneek (pronounced "snake") was safe to pass under (they later solved that problem with ice transplantations). The whole skate-crazy country was hanging on edge for an official announcement, and I wasn't about to sit in soggy California waiting for the word.

I initially caught Eleven Cities Tour fever in 1985, the first time since 1963 that sufficiently cold weather permitted the tour to be held. Along with thousands of other onlookers going absolutely raving bonkers, I jumped up and down on the canals that connect all the cities and screamed myself hoarse as racers zoomed by with foot-long icicles hanging from their beards.

The main attraction of the Eleven Cities Tour, though, isn't the race so much as the tour and the surrounding atmosphere. Fully 20,000 people are in it for the silver cross and the satisfaction they can earn if they collect all the stamps as they skate from city to city. If you thought racing 85 miles on inlines sounded crazy and masochistic, think again. In sub-freezing, wind chill conditions, the average skater spends 12-16 hours, much of it in the dark, completing the 124 mile wear-and-tear-a-thon. Injuries abound. Sometimes, exhausted skaters are literally dragged across the finish.

Time and time again, participants tell how the only thing that kept them going were the hundreds upon thousands of spectators in each city and along the course. Orange onlookers (orange is the national color) cram themselves on bridges and along the sides of the canals to cheer on the participants as they wage war within themselves and against the elements. Of the 16,000 starters who began, only 6,000 completed the tour within the allotted time.

I tried everything in my power to register for the tour, but officials were not willing to bend the strict rules governing participation. Only card-carrying members of the Elfstedentocht Association can qualify. Due to the overwhelming numbers of skaters who wish to take part in the tour, a lottery system is used to pick lucky participants. Out of hundreds of thousands of desirous skaters, only 20,000 can procure the arm band and the stamp-card it takes to be allowed on the ice. Even though there were 4,000 no shows, I would have to content myself with being a spectator.

The disappointment didn't last long, though, because there's something to be said about enjoying a race more when you're not in it yourself. It was a madhouse out there. I was able to take in a wealth of images and participate in a rich variety of experiences that would have otherwise been impossible.

At 5 a.m. I hopped unnoticed over a heavily guarded fence and streamed into a huge barn with hundreds of other skaters. I watched them assemble in cattle holding pens, out of which they'd be released in waves, roughly 2,000 every 15 minutes. From the barn, according to tradition, skaters must run nearly 2 kilometers to the real start, strap on their skates, and take off into the inky dark. I watched the racers bust out of the gate and run pell-mell towards the ice.

On the way to see the scene at the start I saw skaters with Vaseline-smeared faces clunking down the road in their clogs. On the other side of the barricades, festive groups with painted faces and bright orange wigs sang songs to which both skaters and spectators moved and grooved.

Long benches were set up on the ice for people to put their skates on. Soon, the ground was so littered with tennis shoes and clogs, that special crews pushed wide plows to get them to the sides, scooped them up into wheelbarrows, and then loaded them up into trucks. In the rush to take to the ice, few skaters had tied their shoes together. At the end of the day, that would mean searching for them twice in a gigantic haystack of shoes.

The Elfstedentocht is better than any soap opera or celluloid drama. It is so intensely popular (more than 70% of the country was glued to TV coverage) precisely because life is so much stranger than fiction. The Elfstedentocht is filled with thousands of real stories of personal triumphs and even more personal tragedies, all of which capture the heart and rivet the imagination.

Dutch TV provided viewers with 18 hours of uninterrupted coverage, first of the race, and then of the thousands of tour skaters each acting out their own unforgettable sagas on an unforgiving sea of ice.

The sea represents a constant, age-old struggle in Holland, and the Elfstedentocht has become a metaphor for the same triumph and tragedy of fighting against something larger than life. No matter how much the Dutch beat back the sea with dikes along the coastline and erect storm-surge barriers over tidal inlets, the sea always reclaims. No matter how expert the Dutch are at sailing shallow bottom boats in estuaries and marshes, at some point the tide always goes out.

This may provide a clue to the realism and the fatalism exhibited by 16,000 skaters who set sail from Leeuwarden."We zien wel waar het schip zich strandt ," they would say, literally, "we'll see where the boat runs aground". With their knowing grins they seem to be saying "I know it's crazy what I'm about to do, I don't know if I can go the distance, but we'll just have to see what happens".

Many skaters stranded their ships closer to the start than to the finish. Lot of others arrived into towns seemingly adrift, no wind in the sails and scraping along the bottom, only to become reinvigorated by jumping masses and floated down the canal by their cheers. All too many, though, ran aground as energy ebbed out of their bodies.

As midnight approached, the scene was sometimes grim. Choppers hovered overhead and trained their spotlights on exhausted skaters who had collapsed in the reeds. Others wobbled into first aid stations with split chins or open eyebrows, or worse get frozen eyes, and still insisted on continuing. One unfortunate man arrived at the last checkpoint just one minute after it had closed and burst into tears on national television about the silver cross his unborn son would never grow up to see (later, a 76 year-old with seven Elfstedentocht crosses called the TV station and offered one of his to the expectant father).

Inline skaters figured prominently in the race, comprising about 50% of the lead pack for the first 100 kilometers, at which time the superior technique of the ice skaters caused all but one of the inliners to fall back into the chase group. Erik Hulzebosch, 25 the last in-liner in contention, and also the favorite to win, was edged out after nearly 7 hours by Henk Angenent, a 29 year-old brussels sprouts farmer, in a sprint that included Bert Verduin, 32 (current Dutch national champion on natural ice), Henk van Benthem, 27 (brother of two-time winner Evert van Benthem), and Piet Kleine, 45 ('76 10K long track Olympic gold medalist).

The composition of the lead pack -- a mix of young bucks and seasoned veterans, attests to the diversity and durability of top contenders. It gave me hope. Even though just 29, but already considered an old man for my sport, I took solace in the fact that at 45, Piet Kleine had put the hurt to everybody, including the winner, and had done it with class.

The tens of thousands of other skaters, the ones that give the Elfstedentocht its true celebratory fever, are also a diverse and durable bunch. Many have trained on in-lines every summer of their lives in preparation for the Big One, only to wait out the winter in vain for the Big Freeze that happens so seldom. These are people who understand what it means to take advantage of a "once in a lifetime opportunity."

In the U.S., we are lucky to have one of these opportunities every year, the Athens to Atlanta 85 mile road skate. Although a far cry from the Elfstedentocht, Athens to Atlanta is a worthy cousin. It has the same flavor, the same atmosphere of camaraderie, and the same good vibe of collective accomplishment as the Eleven Cities Tour.

So please, run out the door, strap on your skates, and train for our microcosm of the Big One, October 12, 1997, starting at 7 a.m. at the Holiday Inn in Athens, GA. Along the way you will have the time of your life, and the day itself will be a crowning affirmation of all your fun along the way (rather than a silver cross you'll receive a ceramic mug). Let's show the world (and the Dutch especially) that we can grow our sport just as big and be just as fanatical about something as anybody else. There's a lot of real life in skating, but mostly it's a great party!

Eddy Matzger finishes anonymously in ice marathons, but is a 4-time winner of the Athens to Atlanta ultramarathon. An even-year winner only, Eddy hopes to break the chain in '97. A full-time professional skater, Eddy is afforded time to train by TWINCAM bearings, ROCES roadskates, POWERBAR, BREATHE-RIGHT and TRANSPACK. If you want information on how to get ready for the Big One, or wish to train with Eddy at one of his weekend workshops, call toll free, 1-888-975-7467.