We Were Going Sled Riding!
I always loved sled riding – but only on the way down. Pulling my sled back up the hill was far too much like work, and it was agonizing on the big hills around the places where I lived.
After dinner one night in college, the girls decided we should all go sled riding. This sounded like a marvelous idea. We all snuck trays out of the cafeteria – hard plastic rectangles that slid across the table nicely – to use as sleds. Under our thick coats in the middle of winter, this wasn’t too hard.
We raced back to the dorm, waving around our personal “sleds” and digging out our gloves and hats. We were going sled riding! There was snow as far as the eye could see, and all we needed to do was sit down and slide!
In Ohio.
None of us considered this. We were in one of the flattest terrains this side of the Mississippi. There were no hills. Anywhere.
We trudged through the snow all over campus, looking for a hill, laughing all the way. No one was willing to give up and, eventually, we found a 20-foot dip in the terrain to use for our purposes.
One by one, we sat down on our trays … and sunk into the snow. We pushed ourselves with our feet. We pushed ourselves with our hands. Friends pushed other friends. We fell off of our trays into the snow, laughing hysterically, sliding nowhere.
We were college students, though, so we figured out what we needed to do: carve out our path! We took our trays and ran them down the “hill” until there was a path wide enough for a tray or two to descend. And then we took turns “sliding” on the path – literally the most pitiful sledding experience in the history of the world.
To this day, it is one of my fondest college memories.