Tube Tent

When I was a kid, my Dad and I went on a series of adventures gone awry. He had a word for these: unventures. So in memory of my Dad, who went on to the Great Unventure in the Sky just over 5 years ago, I thought I'd start sharing some of my more current unventures with the world. But first, I'll share one from childhood: sledding on a tube tent.

When I was in 8th grade, my Dad and my friend Lisa and I went for a hike on Mt. Wachusett. This is a ski mountain, and although it was spring, in Massachusetts it's cold and slushy for essentially 9 months out of the year. So there was still a lot of snow. The hike took us along a fire road, which sliced through the ski slope. So there were walls of snow on either side of us. Mind you, this was not powder -- it was something more akin to solid ice, but with a rough surface. This proved irresistible to my father, with his well-developed sense of mischief, and he suggested that we sled down it. So we climbed up one of those walls, and made our way a few hundred yards up the slope. We didn't have a sled, of course; what we did have was a tube tent. What is a tube tent, you ask? Well, it's essentially a paper-thin sheet of plastic, to be used as an emergency shelter. And why did my Dad have a tube tent with us? Well, that's just the kind of guy he was -- always (over-)prepared, like an overgrown boyscout. So anyway, my Dad pulled out this tube tent and suggested that Lisa and I take it for a spin down the mountain. I was dubious. My Dad assured me that we would not pick up enough momentum to go careening off the cliff of icy snow and onto the paved fire road that waited 6 feet below. Well, he got that right. I positioned myself on the tube tent, and Lisa sat behind me with her legs around my waist. I kicked off and we started to slide . . . until we almost immediately slid right off of the tube tent, which created a far more slippery surface than did this rough, scratchy, ice/snow. Lisa somehow ended up on top of me, and we slid down about a hundred yards, using my butt and elbows as the sled. Eventually, as I used my feet and elbows as leverage, we skidded to a stop. My Dad ran down to us and helped us up. We climbed down off the wall of icy snow together and he began to inspect us for injuries. It was scary, and I was kind of shaken, but I didn't think I was hurt. That was when my Dad noticed that I had left the top layer of skin on both elbows somewhere up there on the snow. And of course then it began to hurt, and I was pretty pissed at my Dad and his stupid idea.

I found this picture of the wounds, when looking through an old album. It doesn't look as bad as I remember it feeling, but at least it provides a glimpse of my impeccable fashion sense in the early '90s.