With about six inches of fluffy snow on the ground, Tim and I had to try out the sledding hill north of main base. It’s not too bad, but it’d be better if it were steeper, or if we had a couple saucers to get going really fast. Remember saucers, the most insanely suicidal thing ever made to travel on snow? Couldn’t steer them, couldn’t even be sure if you were going to face forward, but you knew for damn sure you were going to reach speeds that would get you airborne if only you had wings, and sometimes you didn’t need wings. I don’t see them for sale here, so I’m guessing that lawsuits have finally eliminated them from the face of the earth.
Something else the sledding hill could use that has probably disappeared because it makes insurance companies pee their pants: a tow rope. Back in the snow-covered wastelands of Wisconsin where I froze solid many times, you could sometimes find a sledding hill where somebody had jerry-rigged a rope they’d wound around the wheel rim of an old tractor parked at the top of the hill. The rope was a big loop that hung over old tire rims on telephone poles on the way down, and dragged along the ground on the way back up. All you had to do to get back to the top was lie on your sled and grab the rope. You had to know how to ride it; if you didn’t grab it just right, it’d rip your arms out of their sockets, and you had to pay attention on the way up or you’d get dragged into the telephone poles. In a lot of ways, it was a more exciting ride on the way up than down.
Funny how all these things come back to you. I remember going about a hundred miles an hour, screaming my lungs out all the way down the hill, which Tim did this time, except that we were going about walking speed because the snow was so thick and hadn’t been properly packed down for speed. Somebody built up a ramp, which Tim managed to hit two or three times; that really made his day. He’s got a small ramp built right outside our front door, and he can shoot across the yard standing on his sled. There are quite a few other hills right in the neighborhood that are probably good for sledding, and I imagine he’ll find them all; he’s pretty crazy for the snow.
This Is Drivel 