The other night we were enjoying dinner at a local restaurant, and the Winter Olympics were on in the background. It was the four-man bobsled event, and I nudged my husband and pointed at the TV. “I think I would have been good at bobsledding,” I said. He laughed at that, and we watched as they flew down the track, their heads popping up like baby birds in a nest at the end of the run.
I don’t have a lot of Olympic dreams anymore. As a child, after watching Dorothy Hamill and Nadia Comaneci in the 1976 Olympics, I really wanted to be a competitive figure skater or gymnast. But even at the ripe old age of 9, I recognized my chance of getting into either sport was pretty slim, especially since I was a chunky bookworm who spent most of her free time on the couch reading “The Chronicles of Narnia” over and over, not practicing her triple toe loops or uneven bar routine. I did like to skate at the outdoor rink down the street, dodging the hockey pucks the neighborhood boys flung across the ice as I practiced my “Dorothy Hamill Camel” spins.
Childhood dreams die hard, and my parents finally gave in to the begging and signed me up for a gymnastics class, which I promptly hated after scraping myself up falling off the balance beam, and getting some pretty good hip bruises trying to swing around the uneven bars.
I don’t remember when bobsledding came onto the Olympic scene, but as a kid growing up in Minnesota, sliding down snowy hills as fast as I could was the one sport I truly enjoyed. The hardest part was walking back up through the snow to the top again, but it was worth it.
Whenever it snowed, you could look across our neighborhood and see kids going down hills on whatever they had: plastic sled, coaster, toboggan, or sometimes just the seat of their pants. Anyone’s yard was fair game for sledding. If they had even a small hill, we were out there, packing down the snow with our sleds, trying to see if we could slide just a little farther the next time.
Sometimes we’d make a train and hold onto each other’s boots before crashing into a pile at the bottom of the hill. Other times, we’d try side by side and hold hands as we all took off together. There was sledding etiquette: you didn’t walk up the paths you created and fill them full of footprints. You made sure the smaller kids got out of the way before you took your running leap and flopped stomach first on your sled, icy sprinkles of snow flying onto your eyelashes and cheeks as you plummeted down the hill. You kept sledding until your feet were soggy, your muffler was crunchy and frozen against your mouth and your fingers started to tingle from the cold. Or your mom called you in for dinner.
While I will never know if my sledding skills could have turned into Olympic gold, I did get to practice my snow tubing last weekend in Flagstaff. It was 55 degrees by late morning and the snow was starting to melt, but it was still lots of fun. I didn’t take any flying leaps at this age, but the tube spun me backward a few times, sending me into the edges of the run, sprays of snow coating my cheeks and glasses as I gained speed before sliding across the skid mats at the bottom. Then it was time to go again, dragging the tube behind me as I trudged up the hill, watching adults and kids giggling and screeching as they linked arms and slid down as fast as they could, with as much joy as any Olympic medal winner.