No new sled

[johnridley]

K came over for an overnighter with T, and I went out with them for a couple of hours of sledding, including I opened up one of the long slopes that people don't tend to hit because it's a quarter-mile walk. I also, from the looks of the tracks, hit a new distance record on the long/fast/bumpy slope back in the woods, and had the interesting sensation of breathing snow powder as I hit the fluff at the end going headfirst. Very fun.

I never remember until about this time of year that we really need some new sleds. We have ONE decent sled, and also a junky $3 plastic thing that we bought at K-mart about 20 years ago, and that's it. There are some runner sleds in the attic of the garage, but I've never had any luck with runner sleds, and besides I don't think they'd like it if I hit the Waterloo slopes; a 180 pound guy catching 5 feet of air on 3 successive moguls and coming down sideways on the last one would be the final run for them, I'm pretty darn sure.

A trip to Meijers and checking the toy department reminded me that in US retailing today, you have to buy things 2 months before you need them. The only sledding device of any sort they had left was one cheap snowboard and a half dozen toddler sleds. The guy I was talking to at the store said "Yeah, sorry, that's the way it is. It's about time to go buy a swim suit, BTW."

I'm going to check some lesser-volume places like hardware stores, or maybe Pamida.

I'm going to set a calendar reminder to buy a new sled next Thanksgiving.

Comments

[jennlk]

FWIW, Meijer is not the place to buy sleds. They rarely have anything decent, and considering that there's not been more than one or two decent sledding weekends per winter the last few years, they don't get very many of them in. KMart is where I usually see a lot, but I suspect that they're probably sold down as well....