First Person Sledding
Posted on February 3, 2011 Posted by John Scalzi 35 Comments
Because I think you want yet another sledding video, even if you didn’t say so out loud. This is us going down the hill in our front yard. We spend most of it going backwards. This makes the trees in the yard a refreshing surprise!
Hope you’re having a good day wherever you are.
Busy, busy, busy. I am glad you are having a good day.
Awesome! Possibly the best thing is Daisy trotting alongside you happy as can be. Wonderful!
Dogs and daughters are awesome.
Those exreme close-ups of Daisy made me want to pet her trough the screen.
I agree with Max @ #3. I am also having a good day. Thanks!
Nice to see you’re making the best of the snowpocalypse.
You turned like you were on a swivel!
That looked like a lot of fun. Much better than being in the office… Maybe I’ll turn the heat off and watch it full-screen :)
I especially like the shadow of Daisy’s wagging tale in the bottom right corner.
Daisy is having a blast. Into doggy memory will go–ice storms = fun.
Not so much, but thanks for asking! I wish I could be out sledding with a dog right now!
Your sledding videos have been the best parts of the past 24 hours.
Having an AWESOME day where I am, thank you very much. Went out this morning and got a new (to us) snowmobile, and a new doggie! Big, powerful fast snowmobile and slightly small gorgeous chocolate lab who’s just as sweet as can be.
YAY!
It’s funny that the same storm that brought you all that ice gave us, in Northern Kentucky, rain and then high winds. The snow we had melted and then evaporated. Have fun.
Every second of that video was fabulous. Yay. I’m gonna watch it again.
I meant “Have fun.” sincerely, not sarcastically.
Pretty much dug out here in SNOWPOCALYPSE 2011 Chicago edition. A tad cool today.
If you are interested in making a forward facing descent while sledding, you might try getting more horizontal on the sled instead of sitting up or, if feasible, move Athena closer to the front of the sled. I’d bet in this video the front half of the sled isn’t running on the ice at all. The idea is to move your combined center of gravity closer to the center of the sled.
Plastic was not as ubiquitous when I was growing up; we had wooden sleds with metal runners (with a “steering” arm!!), Flexible Flyers. If you ended up backwards on one of those beasts you were ‘departing stable flight’ and about to have a very ‘Calvin & Hobbes’ crash. The other problem with skinny metal rails was you’d only get about 3 days a season where it was icy enough to actually sled.
Happy sledding!
Good to see the dog has settled into her duties. The shadow of the wagging tail makes the video for me.
Wheeee! Again!
Dude, thanks for triggering a rush of childhood memories last night and today, Seoul time. That was me back in the late 1970s at the Cataraqui Golf & Country Club, Kingston, Ontario. It would have been better with a dog, though.
My favorite part was the *crunch* *crunch* *crunch* of the ice as you went along. Holy cow, even though all your other posts/tweets/vids mentioned the ice — and even showed it — that really hit home! But yeah, like the others have said, it was actually a really fun (and funny) video and I watched it a couple of times.
Daisy needs a harness, you can see she wants desperately to work, pulling you along in style…
Not Fairfield weather, that’s for sure.
Should have titled this articel, SCALZI FPS.
Very cool. The snow can be a real pain, but why not make the most of it when it’s not going anywhere, eh? If you can’t beat ’em – buy a sledge!
Reminds me of the time my sister and I (college-aged) both crammed onto a Snow Wing (remember those?) and went down a much bigger and steeper hill at a MetroPark (at least 45 degrees and 1000 yards – here in NE Ohio it’s much less flat than in the west), most of the way backwards, laughing till we cried – still one of our fondest memories. Glad you’re able to get some fun from such an awful ice storm – they are the worst Ohio weather short of a full-on tornado, IMO.
You should put Daisy to work! Make her a little harness and you could ride back up the hill as well!
Here’s some how-to on a summer dog cart..
I just love your daughter’s voice. “‘Kay. ‘Kay. Wait, wait, wait! Hold on….” “Aahh, puppy!”
spirit03, I just remembered how my uncle pulled me out of the path of a speeding wooden sled with very scary metal runners. I was so little, and I remember being mesmerized by the sight of it rushing toward me. Luckily my uncle was able to analyze the implications and save me.
My wrists used to get so raw from the snow and cold. Mittens never stayed up; there was always a gap between mittens and snowsuit.
There’s a puppy! <3 Daisy. And she looks like she <3s sledding.
My daughter and her grandfather sledding:
The house. I want the house. Can I have the house?
Dear Ghu be careful. When I was a student at U. Kans., we had a professor who basically destroyed his life sledding when he it a tree near Potter’s Pond. Head injury, he recovered for some value of recovery but not going back to anything near like a real life for a professor.
For people who think Kansas is Flat, eastern Kansas has lots of mad hills. Like the Flint Hills. and all the Hills and bluffs that happen as you’re going down to the Kansas and Missouri rivers in either state.
I had a brain fart one day as a student and turned my bicycle down 13th St. i spent a half hour going back up and gathering all the crap that fell off the bike/out of my backpack as I bolted down the hill with 0 control.
that should be ‘hit a tree.’
I’m with Ruth Ellen up there – the shadow of the wagging tail is just killing me. What a nice family video :)
Seeing Daisy run with the sled reminded me of a snowfall many years ago in Dalton, Georgia. It had snowed all afternoon and evening. When my husband took our Sheperd/husky mix out for her last walk of the night, he came right back in to get me.
What I came out to was a magical winter wonderland all sparkly with fresh snow well over a foot deep. We lived at the base of a very large hill and a previous tenant had kindly left us an aluminum saucer in the garage. It was clear no one had been down the street all night.
So the three of us trekked up the hill and slid back down, us hollering and Susie barking as she chased the flying saucer. Nothing like a run down virgin snow! By the third run many of the neighbors were on their front porches to see what was going on. Several joined us along with their kids and dogs!
It was a magical experience that night.
We’re sledding, we’re sledding, we’re sledding… hey, cool house!
8>)