Soaring gently into the collection

I have some strange hobbies. Most of them don’t take up much time. My business card collection, for example, continues to exist much as it did when I was 15, only now it's in the basement of my own home, rather than taking up bookshelf space in my highschool-era bedroom between the Bloom County books and Spenser novels. (As an actual working person, I tend to accumulate more business cards than I did at age 15, but I'm not considering the cards strewn around my desk as part of my collection yet.)

But the more relevant hobby (to this column, anyway - it's not really relevant in any other way, shape or form) reared its head over the weekend on a trip to the western edge of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

I like picking up the tourist guides printed by local chambers of commerce. Partly, this is to find interesting stuff to do when you're in a place like Ironwood, Michigan. But more frequently, they provide a great opportunity to peruse some of the most tortured syntax in the history of the English language. Today's entry comes courtesy of the Adventure Guide published by the aforementioned town in Michigan:

On any given day, one may see a pair of Eagles or other Raptors soaring above the hillside of Copper Peak International Ski Flying Hill. Regardless of the direction of the wind, there is always a gentle updraft on the 600 foot landing slope of the only ski flying facility in the Western Hemisphere which enables these birds of prey to capture air under their wings and soar gently above the hillside.

(There are countless other ski flying facilities in the Western Hemisphere, of course, which allow the birds to soar aggressively above their respective hillsides.)