On Sunday, I went tubing with Tristan, because we both agree that skiing and snowboarding sound like a lot of work, but that sliding downhill at high speed on our stomachs should be completely doable.
Two out of the last three weekends, I have had to sign documents promising not to sue if I break my face. This is a good trend, I think. We ended up getting there with quite a lot of time to spare, and instead of standing around in the snow for an hour like schmucks, we hiked up to the ski lodge and hit up the bar at ten am. 
Gin & tonic & mac & cheese: truly the breakfast of champions. The bartender was maybe a little heavy-handed for ten in the morning, but I can hardly fault him. By the time we hit the snow, I was already toasty warm inside.
We were maybe a little apprehensive about flinging ourselves downhill on a tube; after all, they wouldn’t have us sign a waiver unless there was actual danger involved, right? What if the abominable snowman doesn’t just go after skiers but instead enjoys snacking on the easier prey of adults on less-maneuverable tubes, swelled with dairy and starches and too drunk to run away? Worse, what if we enjoy it so much we end up concocting a special tubing uniform like this guy?
The only way I can describe this outfit is: A clown ate crayons until he exploded, and a passing unicorn was so amazed by the sight that HE exploded, too. We oughtn’t have worried–flinging ourselves downhill was insanely fun, even better as adults than we remembered as midwest tykes. We conducted a series of experiments as to which position led to the fastest and furthest ride and didn’t come to any official conclusions, but unofficially, flinging yourself onto the tube, superman-style (belly down, legs out or up, arms extended) was the most fun, knees into the hole of the tube was probably the most dangerous (Tristan flipped his tube, to the raucous laughter of us all), and on your back looking up at the sky FELT most dangerous but actually got a shorter overall distance owing to not being able to run and dive onto the tube with any great accuracy. About half the time, we trudged back up the hill on foot, and half the time we took the tow. We probably could have gotten more rides in during our two-hour block if we’d trudged up every time, but then I might have died. 
This is my ‘I’m boozed up and overstimulated’ face. The two hours positively flew by, but at the end, I was surprised at just how worn out I was–it didn’t seem like we’d done anything worthy of the term ‘exercise’ but my body told me otherwise. Everyone else seemed to be running out of steam as well. Tubes were being abandoned at the bottom of the hill and I ricocheted off one and nearly flew off my tube. A kid who didn’t want to hike back up the hill threw snow at his dad’s camera and the dad lost his shit. The employees were perky as ever, cracking jokes, asking us if we had fun, saying they hoped we would come back…it was really nice. On the way home, we loudly sang along to the Rocky Horror soundtrack, maaaaybe drawing stares from passing cars. Maybe.
Wow looks like fun! Too bad heights make me puke.
Yeeeeah maybe not so fun for you, then. 🙁
The drinking at 10AM would definitely be enjoyable, though!
Your no..
more than 2 feet off the ground..
IF YOUR DOING IT WRONG! 🙂
You’d do just fine.
Pinkyswear.
E.
Re: Your no..
In that case, I guess I’ll just chalk it up to one more awesome thing I shoulda done when I lived in Seattle :p
God, apparently I knew none of the right people there 🙂
Chris
Re: Your no..
You do now and flights are cheap!
E.
There’s
a reason we call the Terrain Park the Trama Park. 🙂
<3 the photos!
You coming up to Alpental for the Spag Feed Sat night?
E.
Re: There’s
No, I already had plans for Saturday.
Oh wait, I missed the fact that you’re clipped to a cable wire. I’d have been fine :p
Tubing: hard work.
Whodathunkit?
dunno – but you’re inspiring me to get out and skiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
I must admit, I looked at the skiing area and it DOES look like fun.
You’ve never been? :O
No, I grew up in the flatlands.
Also, I have no balance.
Hm.
Well, if you ever want to go, shoot me a line.
Will do! With the way my weekends are looking until April, I imagine I’ll be calling you up to go skiing NEXT season.
That’s good: scheduling-wise, that’ll probably be the next weekend I have open and have enough money to go do stuff.
Yeah, and I hear skiing is pretty spendy, too. Next year, then! None of us are allowed to die or move before then.
deal.
That hat.
I love it.
I made it!
It was actually pretty easy to make, and didn’t take overly long. I should really get to work on all of those hats I promised people way back in 2008.
EEEEEEE
Also I am pleased that my tag is spreading renown.
I don’t even know that it’s appropriate to this post but I wanted to start using it before I forgot about it. XD
I would like to trade lives with you.
plzkthxbye
I could not put up with even a fraction of the stuff you put up with, but I am willing to share my life with you, sort of a siamese twin thing if that would be acceptable.
This can definitely be workable.
Ok, this weekend we have the lunar new year dinner on saturday and then on sunday I believe we are skipping the superbowl and going go-karting. Friday might be dedicated to a month’s worth of laundry oooooor we might febreze the whole pile and just go buy new clothes.
Hmmmm…well, I have a bunch of kids at my house and then those kids have friends that seem to move into my house during the weekend.
and then those kids eat all the food that I saved up 2 weeks to buy.
then they go home to their normal families just in time for school to start again on Monday.
LETS SWITCH!!!
…
Let’s just burn the house down and run away together.
I approve of this idea.
You would have loved the waiver we all had to sign for the Survival Research Laboratories show back in 1990*. I don’t remember it verbatim, but it absolved SRL of all responsibility if we should go deaf or blind or crazy or if the extremely rickety scaffolding collapsed or if we ended up with shrapnel in our spleen or got electrocuted or burnt to a crisp or any number of horrible endings. What they didn’t specify was being covered in live (or not so live) crickets, and it was only through the grace of God and bad engineering that this didn’t happen. One of their devices was called the Hopper, and supposedly they had filled it with crickets, and at some point in the show the machine was supposed to launch thousands, hell I don’t know, millions of crickets all over the crowd. But apparently this isn’t something you can test in dress rehearsal, because the weight of all those crickets seemed to have resulted in a sort of cricket paste, and I guess the machine’s engine wasn’t strong enough to lob a gigantic wad of compressed crickets, which was good because I was standing pretty near the damn thing. Anyway, good times!
*Oh my Christ am I old. I have *bras* older than half the people who are reading this.
That sounds like an AMAAAZING show.
Also, you should probably replace your bras more frequently, I hear tell the lifespan of the elastic in a bra is something like six months. 😉
This is a good trend, I think.
I heartily agree!!
Also, allow me to provide more EEEEEEE!ing over your hat. Tres AWESOME!!! =D
Skiing is easy. Stopping is the bit that takes a bit of practice, but you’ll get the hang of it if you take lessons. =)
HEY! i recongise that hat! I WANT ONE OF THOSE HATS.