Saturday, February 5, 2011

Snow Stories

Conway finally got snow! If you can call it that. Arkansas snow, well southern/central Arkansas snow, comes and leaves usually within 24 hours; so I don't know if you can really call that snow.

To me, for snow to be "snow," there must be at least 3 inches, it must be pure, none of this misty drizzle business, and it must be on the ground when you wake up a minimum of 2 days in a row.

I don't want to burst anyone's snow bubble so I'm going to tell a few stories about when we lived in Iowa and we had real snow....and it was miserable 90% of the time......

As most of you probably don't know, there are like 2 hills in the entire state of Iowa. I mean decent sledding hills. I felt a pang in my legs just now as I'm remembering running four miles up hill down hill last summer, so there are some small hills, but 2 big hills.

One of them is at a public park. Silver Sioux. It should be treacherous lightening death hill sioux. When my parents were teenagers it was an inner-tubing hill, and there was a lift that carried the sledders back to the top. I mean, this bad boy is probably a good quarter mile of steep steep steep. Now, it's a quarter mile of steep steep thorn bushes with a tiny little trail, just barely big enough for a sled. In good snow, the thorn bushes are covered; however, the more people that sled, the more uncovered the thorn buses become. Last winter, under 40 inches of snow, it would've been impossible to even get there, let alone sled. But this past December was kinder and we enjoyed several afternoons on the hill.

Imagine. 10 degrees outside (probably colder, but I don't want you Arkansans to have a brain freeze), trudging up this hill with bearskin army snow pants, a marshmallow coat, a ski mask, a scarf wrapped several times around your mouth and nose, carrying a Laura Ingalls style toboggan....gasping for air, chest pains...why is it so hard to breath? Are you really this out of shape? No, unwrap the scarf a couple times to let some air flow (yeah sometimes I wonder if I even have a brain) :D
You get to the top of the hill and it is a looonngg way down. That red circle marks the landing spot!
Now you get on the sled, Rylee, You, Bryce, in that order. And fly. You are going so fast you can't even breath, let alone scream. The only sound is the wooden tobaggon scraping over the thorns...and the next thing you know, Rylee flips over you and Bryce flies off behind you, and you are on your back on the ground, the ice cold snow scooping into your coat, gloves, and pants as you race, headfirst the rest of the way down the hill. Finally, you slow to a stop, and don't know whether to laugh or cry. You sit up, get oriented, look around for your companions. Rylee's halfway up the hill, Bryce about in between you guys. Then you realize "WHERE IS THE SLED?!" In a panic you begin to search, until Rylee finds it, along with her stocking cap, deep inside a thorn bush. And all of a sudden, that wet feeling on your back is slightly comforting, and your happy it's not bloody thorns.

Moral of the story, the state of Iowa needs to clean up their park!!

Nothing can compare with last winter though. 40 inches. 6 foot snow drifts. INSANITY. I have seen nothing like it. Thankfully, I have a totally awesome family and everyone had fun.

Snow makes some of the best memories, some of the best bonding times, so while Conway has this snow, everyone should get outside and have fun in it :)