Let it Snow

Let it snow let it snow let it snow.

Last weekend the snow hit the pavement.  It seems it hit it all around the upper hemisphere of the globe.  (Oh wait, there is no upper and lower on a globe in space.  Oh wait, why do people always say "its gone south" meaning its hanging way low, hanging down?  Thoughts for someone else s blog).  I am quite far away from the path of what was called Superstorm Jonas.  And yet, we got a winter wonderland galore here.

Fathers of 100% down to 10%, it doesn't matter, now is your opportunity to shine.  Now is the time to be a Dad to your kids in conditions which were made for Dads since the first cave men came out of the caves and made carriers from animal hides and sticks to sled down the hills.  

Really, if you are a male who grew up in the northern Hemisphere where it snows, you know how to handle the powder snow (does it snow in the southern hemisphere too?  Really?).  And the first big snow of the year is always cause for celebration and makes it even easier to be with the kids.  The first one is the best.  You aren't tired of it yet, its new and fresh and beautiful and FUN.  Now is the time to take the old metal saucer, or the even older wooden sleigh with metal runners and hit the snow with the kids.

Sledding isn't like skiing or snowboarding.  It doesn't involve being good on the ankles, strong enough in the arms, or for you to balance yourself to try to get the hang of that ski lift rope.  Sledding needs no education.  You just get on the sled and push off down the hill.  And if it is getting a bit fast and scary, you just put your boots down into the snow, turn and wipe out onto the ground.  Simple as that.

I have to admit at this time that one of my scariest recent memories and it may be one of the scariest of my younger daughter`s if she remembered, but she doesn't, was of me sledding with her.  Well, at the time she was about 15 months old and for some reason my wife thought it was safe for all of us to go sledding..... down a mountain of Alps height and length.  Along the path in the map on the right, we started out in Southern Poland, went through the Czech Republic and ended in Slovakia... in about forty minutes.

This is the killer hill (pic courtesy Sankarska Draha)

My wife teamed up with my older daughter, 4 at the time, and I sat behind our littlest girl.  Needless to say, the trail was very steep and probably made for professional bobsledder trainers.  I pretty much went the whole way down with my boots full into the snow and even that didn't slow us down enough.  My wife and daughter were waiting for us at the bottom of the hill.  The bus which we were supposed to catch back to the hotel had left and we were a full twenty minutes later than everyone else.  "Where were you?"  my wife asked.  "What happened?"   What happened was that I was scared .h... less of going down a veritable several mile mountain faster than the 1 minute mile which is what we would have done if I hadn't had my boots down.  And scared of losing the life of my littlest daughter.  I really had no wish for my little little girl to lose her life even before it had really started, or to be maimed or paralyzed in any way.  Which is what would have happened if I hadn't put my boot down.... the whole length of the sledding trail.  I was scared freaky the whole way down.  Give me a couple years to get over it.  Its been three years and I still am not.

But this last weekend, we went to our nearby park which has "friendly" hill.  In fact I could be

"family friendly hill"  

fearless father.  I rode with my older daughter down to the very bottom of the hill consisting of three sections of the hill.  So if it had gotten out of hand we could have "booted it" in between section one and two.  But no, we did not!  We sailed over the sidewalk of section one to two and momentum kept going.  It wasn't too big to scare the bejeebers out of me.  And we kept going over sidewalk two into the third section of the hill where we gained the most speed and yelled at people to watch out and scared them and made them MOVE and bumped down onto the pavement at the very bottom and skidded to an easy standstill in the bushes at the very bottom laughing and adrenalized and wowing and oohing and reeking of the sheer joy the approximately twenty second trip had been.

So Fathers big and small, 10 per cent to 100 per cent, don't miss this opportunity.  Grab your sleds of all shapes and hit the hills with your kiddies AND BE A DAD.  You ll love it.  Um... a small word to the wise, just don't go down the super duper Alps or Rockies or Everest size hills.  Stick with your friendly sloping kiddy hills.   Have a good one.  

1000 picture puzzle update.  Just about there at the finish.