Sledding

I went sledding today. I haven't gone sledding in a few years. The last time I went was with my then-boyfriend and his daughter.

I was sick almost this whole week with the Norovirus. I caught it like three or four times. Every time I started getting symptoms, I stopped eating and drinking because of my vomit-phobia. Today I finally started feeling human after spending most of the week just staying in bed. I wanted to get out and see people.

I have only a couple of movies that I watch over and over again - I need to go buy a couple more, one of these days, but haven't gotten around to it - they have to be good enough that I'll enjoy watching them a hundred times, and it's not easy to find those movies. One of the ones I have is The Little Mermaid, and I watched it last night for the first time in a while. My mood today was 'I Wanna Be Where The People Are.' I wanted to see people having fun and doing things, outside of my closed little world. (I was thinking of writing a blog about The Little Mermaid but I'm going to write about sledding first. Maybe later.) So I got my camera and my coat and hat and got in the car.

I was going to go walk around town but ended up going to Slab Cabin Park instead. I got out, feeling embarrassed and alone, and walked up the hill. At first I just watched everybody else having fun.

When my brother and I were kids, we had Flexible Flyers. Those are the wooden sleds with metal runners. You can steer them. In our neighborhood in West Virginia, we lived up at the highest peak of three long, curving, connected hills. The road used to be made of gravel. (It isn't anymore.) The gravel was mostly small rocks with lots of dirt in between. When covered in snow, it was pretty smooth. If it hadn't gotten fly ash dumped on it yet, you could sled on the road itself, all the way down to the lowest area. It was about... a mile? Three quarters of a mile? Several curved hills, one after another. On flexible flyers, you could make it all the way down to the bottom and control where you were going. There weren't many cars, but one might possibly be driving up, so you had to watch out for them.

Walking back up was the hard part. I'm not kidding, I think it was about a mile or 3/4 mile, uphill. That's why we didn't do it very often even if the roads were perfect for it. But it was a great adventure when we did.

One time we tried to drag our sleds on a shortcut through the woods, to get back up to the top. The road was curved in a C-shape, doubling back on itself. To go back up, you could cut across the 'C' by going uphill through the woods. So we tried that. It was difficult. I remember dragging the sled up a very steep wooded hill through sticker bushes, heavy brush, and trees, where there were no trails, in deep snow. It almost seemed easier to go the 3/4 mile up the road instead.

I remember getting part of the way up the wooded hill and thinking 'This was a terrible idea, I wish we hadn't done this,' and then looking back down, and it was too far to go back down to the road below, and still a long way up to the upper road, and hundreds of feet of heavy brush and trees in all directions. There was no way out. You might as well keep going upwards.

Strangely, I don't remember whether we ever made it all the way up through the shortcut, or whether we gave up and went back down again! Maybe I imagined it all and we never even attempted it. Maybe we ended up going some other way instead. Maybe I was alone instead of with my brother. If it had been the two of us, I think we would have had better morale and we would have persisted all the way up through the shortcut. I think we made it.

But I do remember for sure that we did sled down the road, down all three hills one after the other, at least one time and maybe twice.

I don't have my flexible flyer here in Pennsylvania. I think it's at my parents' house down in the basement. I don't think they sold it or gave it away at any time in the past couple decades.

So when I decided to go sledding today - after driving to Slab Cabin and watching people for a few minutes - I went to Wal-Mart to find a sled. I wasn't going to spend a lot of money. They had some snowboards, and I think I could do that, but that was too much money. I was able to ski well enough when I took skiing classes back in college, so I expect I'd at least be able to do basic snowboarding - probably not any amazing stunts or anything.

I was able to ski well enough... except when I tried the intermediate level hill. That led to permanent injury. I'm not sure if I ever told that story in my blog before or not. The ski instructor recommended that we stay on the beginners' hill. I was overconfident and thought that I could do the intermediate. Don't ever go down the intermediate level hill if you don't know how to slalom. I didn't know how to slalom. You have to go from side to side, in long, wide curves, almost turning and facing back UP the hill, in order to slow down. I didn't do that. And you have to be very strong and have a lot of stamina, or you will get exhausted quickly.

But I went straight down at full speed, realized very soon that this was a mistake, and was screaming at everyone to get out of my way because I couldn't stop.

There were moguls. Remember moguls? A mogul is a big bump or ridge on the hill. I knew about moguls because we had a skiing game that we used to play, on Intellivision. Moguls were just an occasional obstacle in the game. On this real-world hill, however, it was one mogul immediately after another at very high speed. It was an entire hill of nothing but moguls. I helplessly went over about ten moguls in a row at high speed, then crashed. The skis came off my feet and went sliding down the hill by themselves. Another skier was nice enough to catch them for me. I flipped a couple of times and strained my shoulder and my hip. Fortunately, I didn't hit the trees.

My shoulder and hip healed by themselves, and nothing was really broken, but I still remember it every time the weather changes and my joints and old injuries ache. It's always the hip and shoulder that got strained in the skiing accident. But I don't regret it. I love telling the story.

So, no skis, no flexible flyer, no snowboard. What did I get? For about $7, I got something called the 'AUTHENTIC SNOW BOOGIE,' by Wham-O, Inc. (The company name sounds like a bad omen to me. And I guess you want to avoid mistakenly buying the IMITATION Snow Boogie, made by some other company. Buy the real thing!) I had a feeling that this sled would be difficult to control. There were no runners. It was a smooth piece of lightweight plasticky styrofoam mystery material, with holes cut out for handles. That's all. In my mind I saw myself going down the hill backwards and/or spinning uncontrollably. I decided that was okay.

Well, I found out, don't try to sit upright on this thing. I tried it on a little hill first so that I would know ahead of time just how bad it was going to be. I tried sitting upright and holding the handles, and ended up spinning around (just as I had imagined) with one leg splayed out sideways at risk of injury, and my body halfway falling off the Authentic Snow Boogie. It was obvious that this was not a good way to ride it.

The instructions said 'This product may have limited braking and steering, or none at all.' Yes, that is true. But it didn't recommend any particular position or way of using it that would actually work. It just told you some things NOT to do. 'Never tow from behind any vehicle.' Wow, that sounds like fun! The idea would never have occurred to me, but now that you mention it... 'Do not use in the proximity of trees and other fixed objects.' There are a whole bunch of trees at the edge of Slab Cabin's hill, so I was breaking the 'No Trees' rule. 'The wearing of helmets and safety goggles is strongly recommended.' Well, I was wearing my Armor Class +1 Knitted Cap, does that count? but no goggles of any kind.

I decided to lie face down. That worked. I'm pretty short, but even so, the Snow Boogie was only long enough for my upper body. My legs stuck out the back of it. I don't know if it was just designed for really little kids, like toddlers maybe, someone who's about three feet tall, or if you're SUPPOSED to have most of your body dragging directly on the ground.

But it turns out that you can use your feet to control which way you're going (kind of) and to slow down. So I didn't spin around or go backwards this time. I went mostly forwards and mostly in the direction I was trying to go. I was able to stop, and I avoided the Trees and Other Fixed Objects, and the people.

And it's nice to walk back UP the hill carrying a thin piece of styro-plastic instead of dragging a heavy sled. The Authentic Snow Boogie was so light it waved in the breeze as I carried it.

I went down the hill a few times. It was getting dark, and I needed more food, and my clothes were getting cold and wet, so I didn't stay long. On my second-to-last run, I accidentally went over the little ski-jump that somebody made. I saw it coming towards me and I couldn't steer out of the way, so I shouted 'Oh shit!' and started laughing. I survived the mini-jump though. Maybe I'll try to go over the mini-jump deliberately next time.

People were friendly, and I said goodnight to them as I left. I'll do it again sometime.

But the toes of my shoes are shredded...