#flexible flyer

One of the lovely things about snow days is that they almost immediately evoke the memories of all the other lovely snow days. 😊

Okay. Not all of them were lovely lovely. At least one was sketchy but it still comes to mind when the snow falls and sticks: that one December day when we had freezing rain and we had no idea what that was until, looking down from our apartment window we saw cars and people trying desperately not to move... but sliding slowly, inevitably, down hills anyway. So that's how we learned that freezing rain is like putting an insta-coat of ice on, well, everything.

We didn't go out that day. Stayed in our apartment where it was lovely. And then in the evening when that layer of ice was melted enough to not be hazardous, we grabbed the light rail with our daughter and did dinner and miniature golf at Flat Stick Pub in Pioneer Square. So yeah.

Even then it really was a lovely day. 😊

The rest of the memories that come on snow days, thankfully, are legitimately lovely with no asterisk*.

One year when we were living on the hill, it snowed on Valentine's day. Like dumped. And that night we bundled up and went walking about the neighborhood (all hills, by the way) to catch mostly young adults and adults with inner tubes and saucers recapturing the fun and thrill of childhood snow days.

Speaking of childhood, I have a specific image, less a memory than that image, of being on my Flexible Flyer while my dad pulled me along. It's fully night, this image. We just left our property from the back gate and, at this point, I think we're in the middle of the street, Elmore, directly between the alleys.

I don't have any more than that. I just know that, at the time, everyone would be heading for the intersection, the top of 33rd at Elmore. Steep enough but not so steep that you went barreling down.

That's most likely where we were going.

And most lovely of my dad to pull me.

Of course there's the story I told you yesterday about freaking out a USPS driver on their way up 32nd as we hurtled passed on either side of their jeep. After that story was over, after we passed the jeep, continuing down toward the school, we discovered another group of kids doing basically the same thing as we were doing but from a much higher starting point with a straight (ish) shot.

You see we stopped our sleds near one corner, the playground corner, of the elementary school. At the other end and up the park hill overlooking the school, kids were starting at the highest point possible and careening down the hill, jumping the curb onto the street parallel to the playground, coming to a self-imposed stop before a giant hill that would dump you into arterial traffic of which yes, absolutely, you'd run smack into cars.

Or they'd run over you.

So.

We did that run a bunch of times. Each time fully adrenalized by the time we reached the bottom of the run... and thoroughly exhausted by the time we dragged ourselves back up the hill. Then adrenalized at the bottom, exhausted at the top, and so on and so on and so on.

It was a wicked circle. Addictive as hell.

We couldn't stop ourselves.

I had a similar experience with college friends doing the Mt. Rainier inner tubing run. That same vicious cycle of adrenalin and profound exhaustion.

It was a helluva thing we just.

Couldn't.

Stop ourselves.

Another memory I have is specifically Queen Anne High School on a snow day but not snow enough to give us all the day off. I'm looking down the west side of the building at some senior trying to gun his metallic green muscle car on a slight incline to the street that fronts the school. I remember he was frustrated and his rear wheels were spinning and spinning, making one heckuva sound.

I think maybe he wound up hitting something.

Sooooo...

Was that a lovely experience?

No. Not at all. But it sure was fun to watch. 😁😁😁

And last but not least, this memory from the winter months during which Kimmer 'n I were dating.

You see it had started to snow iconic winter flakes so we thought it would be a fantastic idea to drive down to the Seattle Center to take photographs. By the time we realized the implications of all that falling snow, we wound up back of the line of cars from Lower Queen Anne all the way to the Magnolia Bridge. Then we had to creep from there to my parent's house, ending that effort a couple blocks shy because the car reached a section of road on which the ties couldn't, wouldn't, find purchase.

So we grabbed our stuff, got out of the car, locked it up, and walked the rest of the way.

It wasn't, strictly speaking, a lovely experience. But it was a fun adventure we enjoyed together. 😊

So yeah.

Old school

With a couple of inches of snow on the way and the grandsons coming to town today for a belated Christmas celebration. I ventured into the storage space above our garage Friday and extracted some relics from the past - a wooden toboggan and a classic Flexible Flyer metal-runner sled.

No plastic. Imagine that!

When our kids were young, sliding down local hills was our go-to cure for weekend cabin fever.

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I owe a decades-long-overdue apology to the USPS driver who was coming up 32nd West, driving on snow and ice during a snowfall, when my friend Tim 'n I came hurtling down the street toward him on our sleds.

Yes. Absolutely. I know that was wrong. Now.

To say we had a plan, standing at the top of the hill with our sleds, would absolutely be fair. To say we had a well-thought-out plan would be to stretch the bounds of believability. Our plan was simply to get on our rail sleds laying faced down and forward, and travel the five blocks to the local elementary school using streets packed with snow and ice.

How is that not a good plan?

Our intended route was not a straight shot, of course, which made the endeavor seem an awesome challenge, worthy of our afternoon. The way our "course" laid out before us (not that we could see more than the first block) is that after a block of straight shot downhill on a 45-degree slope, the street hooked a mellow left. A block later, it connected with 32nd at a tighter than 90-degree right turn. Call it 45 degrees, a severely tight turn. Not a hairpin... but it felt like one.

Again. Worthy of our afternoon.

To make that turn, we used the entirety of the intersection to force our sleds into an arc. To an observer looking up the street, it would've appeared, initially, that we were fully racing across the intersection from left to right before straightening out onto 32nd.

Was that a smart move on our part? Was the safety of that awesome awesome awesome experience ever in question?

Well, why would it be? Who would possibly be on the road under these conditions? I mean seriously.

Who?

Turns out the answer to that question is the United States Postal Service.

So at the moment we burst into the intersection making our arc onto 32nd, a USPS jeep was about a half block away coming up the hill toward us. We realized this the moment we straightened out into 32nd.

Whoops.

Okay not whoops. That was AWESOME. What we did (if I remember correctly) is we split left and right. I hurtled down the street face-first to my right of the jeep. My friend Tim hurtled down the street face-first to his left of the jeep.

Pretty sure the driver honked, taken by surprise as they obviously would've been.

And like that! We were passed the jeep and into the rest of our afternoon.

Best.

Ride.

EVER.

In extreme retrospect, however, I realize now that we surely startled the heck out of that driver who was just trying to make their way up the hill to deliver the mail when suddenly these two kids burst onto the street in front of them, heading toward them, and there's not much they can do. I don't think the driver even had time to stop, such was the speed with which our arrival transpired. If we were headed straight for the jeep grill, there's nothing they could do. If we were headed right under the front wheels... same deal.

Bit of a shock, I'm guessing. And all they could do was honk their horn in distress or from concern or frustration, because there was nothing else to do.

Whichever one of those it was...

Yeah.

Sorry 'bout that.