Snow Tubing

I went yesterday w/ The Wife on a class trip she was chaperoning to the Bear Mountain Ski Resort, the closest ski resort to Philly. It's probably about an hour away.

The thought of me skiing or snowboarding was one that was certainly unentertainable. But this ski resort also has a "snow tubing" course which looked right up my alley.

Snow tubing is a simple concept. You get a tube, get brought up a hill on a conveyor belt, and then you ride down a hill at an uncontrollably fast speed while laying face down on your tube.

Now, the half-lit teenagers who are the supervisors of the snow tubing facility were mumbling something about "using for feet as breaks." I thought this was short for "using your feet for breaks is a sign that you're a major pussy." I went down this entire course without using my feet as a break once. The hill has a few different incline/plateus on it and on both the second and third plateau, I literally flew threw the air. I mean, on the third plateau, I was a few feet above the ground and has absolutely no control over what direction my body was headed in.

I just assumed that when you got to the bottom of the hill, there'd be enough ground to come to a total stop. Well, wek now what happens when I assume anything. I slowly started coming to the end of the course, indicated by giant bundles of hay and a blue plastic fence. These were getting closer and closer, and I was not slowing down at all. Finally, I realized that, fuck, I was going to go crashing into this shit.

Right when that thought reached my brain, one of the teenagers in charge of this operation came to the same conclusion and screamed out "Holy shit."

I then went crashing into the fence and hay. my face directly hit this fence but I guess I got my hands up enough because I didn't get a cut or scrape on me. I do, however, have a series of bruises on the right side of my body, with major sore points at my knee, hip, ribs and elbow.

Of course, I went down the hill about nine more times. No more accidents, however.

ALSO:
* I had the oddest run in ever at this place, literally bumping into my friend Jason from freshman year of college before he went to Evergreen, that hippie/indie rocker school in Olympia. We've kept in touch since then. He lives in Brooklyn now, so finding him at this place was completely odd. We got lunch, caught up and babblebabble.

* I also nearly got into a fight with a pre-teen. We were inside the ski-lodge when this little brat came up to me with a little cream container in his mouth. He said "Watch this" and then smashed the cream container in his mouth. Then this kid started tormenting this grown woman.

"Yeaaaaaaah! Yeaaaaaaaah! I bet you can't do nothin' like that! Yeaaaaaaaaah!"

This woman looked at this kid like she wanted to beat him. Then he turned to me.

"Yo, man. You ski or snowboard?" I told him I do neither. "Ohhh, one of those, huh?" and he made a limp-wrist gesture. I then told him that was funny and helt my arm out like I was going to give him a fist pound. When he obliged, I took my hand away.

"Sorry, man. Can't let you touch me." He then started dancing in front of me going "Yeah man, you're real cool, dude. You can't even snowboard, man."

Then The Wife said to him "Nice snowsuit." He was wearing this ridiculous snowsuit that looked like newspapers.

"Yeah, you're cool. NOT," and then he pranced off.