Clyde Brodt stood next to his stripped down Acura CR-X that he drives while ice racing.

"You've got to come out on Saturday," Clyde said, "and you will not believe how fast we drive."

The ice cars race at around 75 miles per hour on a track that is, of course, ice. Big Pine Lake in Crosslake is plowed to form a track with three-foot barriers all along the outside.

Clyde said the barrier is there so "if you lose a car it doesn't go into the crowd."

Clyde drives an Acura CR-X, but it's not the sort of car you'd see on the street. Ice racing cars are stripped down so they have as little weight as possible. Clyde's car weighs 1,700 pounds, and it has a four-cylinder engine with 160 horsepower.

Clyde's lived in Crosslake for 15 years, and he's had a cabin in the area since the 1970s.

"There's no better place to live than Crosslake, and everyone should come out to WinterFest and have a good time," he said.

Clyde's community involvement is extensive. He's on the Manhattan Beach City Council, he started the Safe Ride program in Crosslake and he was instrumental in bringing back the ice races after they went on a long hiatus.

The ice races have been going since at least the 1970s, Clyde said, maybe even before then. Back then they were held on Sand Lake, out of Fifty Lakes. The races were brought to Cross Lake in the 1980s. At that time racers ran rear wheel drive cars; now all cars are front wheel drive.

The cars must be four-cylinder cars, with no turbo.

"We can do anything outside the engines we want. We can put headers on the car, manifolds. But we're supposed to have stock engines," Clyde said.

The races will be every Saturday starting at noon on Big Pine Lake until the first week of March, including the weekend of WinterFest, Feb. 4. The races are sponsored by the Cedar Chest, which overlooks the track on Big Pine and tends to fill up once the races start.

Clyde races in the studded tire class; there is also a rubber tire class. Everyone who runs in the studded tire class uses the same tires, Clyde said.

When the cars get going, the studs kick up so much ice and snow that it's difficult to see anything at all.

"It gets pretty nuts," Clyde said.

Clyde's been racing 25 years on ice, but he's been racing cars since he was 19, which means he's been racing for 50 years. He's also raced snowmobiles, motorcycles and boats.

It seems Clyde has always had a penchant for rather dangerous sports, as he was the national champion for ski jumping two years in a row. He tells the story of how he got started ski jumping at just 8 years old.

"I was supposed to be in the back yard, two houses over going down this little hill," Clyde said.

Two miles away and across a creek was a ski jump.

"I snuck over there and I'm watching 'em. They put a cable across, and then they put a lantern up at night when they're done skiing. Well, they don't lock the cable. I just undid the (cable) and went off. And landed on my butt and rolled down the hill."

Though his first run down the hill may not have ended well, he got better at jumping pretty quickly. Clyde's dad didn't find out he was ski jumping until he saw Clyde's name in the newspaper - he'd gotten third place at age 8.

Clyde once broke his ankle ski jumping at a competition in Steamboat, Colorado, but that didn't stop him. He still jumped.

"I had to get a size 12 boot," he said.

Ski jumping aside, Clyde said his most memorable moment racing was the last race of last year.

"I went about 10 feet in the air and landed sideways, come up on my wheels and tore the rear axle off," he said.

He got his car back together the Friday before the first races.

"Everyone should do it because it's just fun," Clyde said of racing. "It doesn't cost a lot of money. You just get out there and do your thing."

The big question now is whether Clyde will stop racing after next year, when he will have reached his goal of racing until he's 70. Will he stop?

"I don't know," he said.