Sledding: A Year Round Activity

As I was driving down the road the other day I say a big hill and thought “Man, that sure would make a good sledding hill.  Too bad it’s 70 something degrees and not a flake of snow in sight.  I bet it would be a ton of fun once we get a good snow.”  Okay, so those may not have been my exact thoughts, but it was something along those lines.  Regardless, it caused me to wonder…why is it that we only go sledding when there is snow on the ground?

Surely there is a way to slicken (new word, feel free to use it) something up so it will slide down a grassy hill.  In fact, you could probably use a lot of the same things to grass sled that you use to snow sled.  I’m guessing sleds would probably be out, but I think rubber tubes, plastic trays, and most other sledding props would work fine on grass, especially if you were to grease them up somehow.  If nothing else, you could always just make a huge slip-and-slide, find something to sit on, take a running start, and fly right down the hill.

When you think about it, sledding in the winter when it’s cold and snowy is really the worst time to go sledding.  Conversely, fair weather sledding has its advantages:

1. Fair weather sledding allows you to get out and enjoy the beautiful weather as opposed to the cold temperatures, bitter wind, and frostbitten appendages that are experienced when sledding during the winter months.
2. If you fall off your sled in fair weather you won’t get snow in your pants, gloves, shirts, jackets, or shoes and have to do that weird dance where you try to shake the snow out of several different places at once while leaning just the right way and feeling everything start to go numb from the freezing cold.
3. When you get to the bottom of the hill while sledding in fair weather, it is much easier to climb back to the top than it is in several inches of snow while wearing several layers of clothing along with heavy snow boots.
4. If you slide into a pond while sledding in fair weather, you my get wet and possibly drown if you don’t know how to swim, but you won’t have to worry about sliding onto thin ice, falling into the icy water, and developing hypothermia.  In fact, if the water’s not too deep or you do know how to swim, sledding into the water in the summer can actually be quite refreshing.

So there you have it.  We need to stop limiting our sledding to just those cold, snowy, winter months.  The next time you are outside on a beautiful spring day and you see a hill that would be good for sledding, do something about it.  Go grab something to sit on, slicken it up, and conquer that hill!