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January 25, 2005
"Blizzard" Weekend 3
The search for a sled was looking fruitless. The dollar store. The home improvement superwarehouse. Sears. The Eastpoint Mall. "What about that dollar store."
"It doesn't look open."
It wasn't. That left Wal-Mart. "If anyplace has cheapo sleds it's Wal-Mart. Is there one around here?"
We went down to the WalMart on North Point Drive. I never knew it existed probably because I never felt the need to go. But now. Now there was sledding to be done and I had no sled. It was a last resort (Honest, political prisoners in China lucky enough not to be executed.)
I walked in, passed the mildly retarded greeter (a position to which a girl I once dated actually aspired) and continued into the store in search of a sled. "Where do you think the sleds would be."
"Over in sporting goods."
"Yes. Let's go."
We went back to the sporting goods section. On the way Emma pointed to a huge plastic bin, "We could use the lid to that if we can't find a sled."
"No way. This is Wal Mart. They'll have a sled. Don't they have everything? They're not open 24 hours for nothing."
We walked through the sports section. Past the kids bikes, past the fishing gear, past the rifles. "Did you see any sleds?"
"No. I think they'd be back by the kids' stuff though."
"I'll ask him." I went up to the guy guarding the rifle counter, "Where are your sleds."
"We don't have any."
"You don't have ANY sleds?"
"Nope. No sleds."
"Are you messing with me?"
"Nope. No sleds. Honest."
"Damn."
"How can the not have any sleds? That's unbelievable." More than half the people in the store were looking for sleds, stopping other customers asking them if they had seen sleds and the employees said that they didn't have sleds not in a way as to imply they had ran out, but they had never had them at all.
"They've got to have something we can use as a sled."
"What about those plastic things you pointed out on the way in."
"Yeah. They'd work."
"Hey! What about this skateboard? We could take the trucks off and use it as a snowboard."
We were walking toward the cashier with a huge "under bed storage" bin and a cheap skateboard decorated with a cow with a gas problem when a creepy little old man with the smudgy beginings of prison tattoo under his left approached us. "You're not gonna ride that are you?"
"Yeah."
"Those wheels suck. They're no good. It's a piece of junk" The guy was easily 50 years old.
"We're going to take the trucks off and use it to sled with."
"That's about all it's good for."
I can never get over how some people feel so free to approach others in public and talk to them like they're old friends. Here this old man felt free to come up to us and tell us the stuff we were buying was total crap.
Then he followed us. "Going sledding huh?"
"Ah. Yeah."
He got behind us in line for the cash register. There were several open registers. He chose to follow us. "You ever hear of Arundel Concrete?"
"No."
"Doesn't matter. They were selling truck tire inner tubes..."
We left Wal Mart and returned to my house only slipping and almost crashing once. There we ripped apart the skateboard, grabbed a four pack (six packs never seem to stay intact at my house) and rushed out to utilize the last couple minutes of daylight. "Where do you want to sled? Patterson Park or a super secret place I know about that no one else will have sledded on yet. We can drink our beer while we sled there."
"Let's go there then."
We went to the super secret sledding hill in an abandoned industrial complex down the street. We entered through a hole in the fence and climbed the huge man-made pile of earth I only days later came to think could possibly have been toxic. It was a huge pile of sand and stones, bigger than any one hill in Patterson Park. It had a slight slope on one side and a look-death-in-the-eye slope on the other. I was considering taking it, and would have had it not been for the trees throughout the slope.
I settled for the more mildly sloped side.
I grabbed the bin part of the under bed storage bin. It was about 5 feet long, 2 feet wide and maybe 6 inches deep. I held the "sled" in front of me. I prepared to perform another run-jump-sled like I had earlier in the day. Only this time I planned on not knocking my wind out and actually going down the hill. "Here I go!" I ran and eased more than jumped onto my stomach.
The sled broke into pieces as I got onto it. Immediately thereafter it sunk into the snow and I flew forward onto my face. I performed an as much now in the face and down the shirt vairant of a somersault as humanly possible, but other than that I went nowhere.
For some reason Emma thought it was funny.
After making an initial path the sledding was much easier. We alternated between the bin lib, which, luckily was made of a non-break-right-away plastic, and the skateboard, which proved to be the most awkward of all conceivable sleds. The slightest bump either forced it to an immediate stop throwing the rider off and down the hill or simply threw the rider off while it raced down the hill.
Still, the snow pile kept the beers cold and what some call light pollution kept the hill illuminated enough for us to have a good time. But eventually we left sighting the need for food and a hankering for a box of chillable red wine. "It's going to snow more tonight. We'll come back tomorrow."
But the "blizzard" wussed out on us. There was no more snow.
Posted by calculatoronfire at January 25, 2005 02:11 PM
Comments
totally unrelated to your post: i haven't thought about the Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 since, like 1994 or something. wow.
Posted by: sweetney at January 25, 2005 08:46 PM
Are you telling me that I'm impossibly stuck in 1994?
That may be. I'm fine with that.
Just don't say anything about 1994's super group, Ace of Base. I love cheesy Swedish pop whose every song sounds like their others.
Just kidding. I hated Ace of Base then, as now.
I do, however, have a thing for "Baby's Got a Neutron Bomb" by the Swedish less-than-super group Army of Lovers. I'm not sure why.
Posted by: brian at January 26, 2005 11:26 AM