Yesterday and the day before that I went sledding. I couldn’t find an actual sled, so i bought these car-floor-mat-sized peices of vinyl. It turns out that there is this bitching hill for sledding in park behind my house. In two days of sledding, I have established the following list of pointers:
 1) Get an actual sled. I know this is self-explanatory, but I cannot stress enough the feeling of security one gets, knowing that they are not going to spin around and end up going down a hill at 45mph while looking the other way. This is especially true when there is a tree centered in the middle of your hill that will likely kill you if you hit it. I assume the spinning while sledding phenomenon has been addressed and solved by those who make actual sleds.Â
 2) Drink first.  This helps on 3 fronts:  Pain mangement, Cold Tolerance, and Courage. Â
     Pain – Sledding hurts not only your butt, but your arm, if you accidentally slam it against a chain link fence.Â
    Cold – Your butt gets so cold. Â
    Courage – Thanks to my friend scotch, I was able to talk myself into going down headfirst. Which was stupid.Â
 3) Be aware that smartass indestructable kids build ramps on the hills that you cannot see, because you sled at 10pm. When you hit those ramps you will go flying off your makeshift sled and proceed to slide down the rest of the hill on your back. Which is fun, but leads to more butt pain, and butt coldness.Â
4) Try to double-up on the “sled”. This takes all the earlier issues, and makes them twice as bad, because you are going much faster, and your partner is you fiance, meaning one false move will kill you both and cancel your wedding. Which means you don’t have to worry about planning the food for the wedding anymore.
Happy Sledding!
I have always found that the trash can lid makes an acceptable sled. But what do I know, I’m a Southerner.
I wish I had thought of that.
I bet you southies wish you could have had half the fun we did that night.
I doubt it, since we had twice as much fun at Mardi Gras.
ouch.
When I was little and growing up in Chicago, there was plenty of opportunity for sledding. And every kid had at least one sled. We thought they were as cool as Harry Potter thinks his Thunderbolt is. Many of the forest preserve areas had hills just right for the sport. Care had to be taken with the pull rope so that it didn’t go under a runner and tip the sled. Or maybe that was part of the fun. Especially when you tried to put as may kids on as possible. Which made everything more fun and more dangerous. What fun!!!! But a better pastime was skitching. That’s when the side streets were still mostly snow-covered and cars were going sort of slow. As they passed, and trying not to be seen by the driver, you’d grab the back bumper and squat down and sort of ski by hitching a ride, hence the name. Trying to watch for the bare spots was part of the excitement because if your feet came to a sudden stop you had to let go quickly or else they’d get pulled out of their sockets or you would be dragged face down on the street. Again, what fun!!!!