#flexible flyer

[dsunearthed]

Flexible Flyer Carousel Rocking Horse

[onefootin1941]

[thedaveandkimmershow]

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.

😕

[monkeyssalad-blog]

MAURER, Sascha. Flexible Flyer, Splitkein, c. 1935. by Halloween HJB

[guidedsailor]

Timeless Winter Travel

[johnschneiderblog]

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.

We did, indeed, get the snow overnight and although we probably won’t have time to head for the hills, the boys might have some fun with them right here.

[snowsledstore-blog]

Get Ready For Another Unforgettable Snow Sledding Season With Your Family. Invest In The GREATEST SNOW SLEDS KNOWN TO MANKIND IN 2017. 

Sledding with your family in the snowy hills builds chemistry like no other thing!

[mamarenegade]

Roswell Rudd - Waltzing in the Sagebrush