A fast sled
Outside there is more new fresh snow. You really can have too much of a good thing. And seeing outside I had a memory off back in the day when fresh snow meant fresh sliding. The kind that children do on the sides of hills. I received my first sled when I was in Grade 1. That I lived in a place with no hills mattered little. It had a rope and I could drag it around behind me and pretend that I was doing something fun. Later when we move to another province I learned that there were places that had steep hills. The kind that could be dangerous in the wrong hands. One of my friends had a large sled. What we called a double runner because it had two runners in two pieces. Probably designed back in the days when people had to move materials around in the winter. And we would take it to a nearby hill. Located on the property of an important lawyer which meant that there were no obstructions. We could go from the top to the bottom in one move. Happily there was a rather large hedge that would catch us before we went out onto the highway. What we call the highway but it was only a street. And on the right days after someone had taken the time to make the track a little clearer you could get up enough speed to frighten young boys. That is not easy. I can remember all the good points about that sled. In particular that it had been built by an adult. Someone who worked in the nearby factories I did manage to find enough steel to add an edge to the runners. It was the closest thing that we had to a rocket. Yes it took two people to move it and three people to drag it but we accepted that we were small and we were light and we did not make the sled bog down in the snow. We flew over the top. Many years later I discovered the wonders of the toboggan but in retrospect that double runner sled was the best of the bunch. Even better than the crazy carpet that followed.
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