For several
years, my family and I owned a condo up in Canmore in three sisters village. Across
the highway from where our condo was, there was a hill that my mom took my
brother and me every time that we went up there. The hill was incredibly steep
and went up about a kilometer or so. In retrospect, I am surprised that my
mother let my brother and I go on it at all considering the environment of the
hill. The left half of the hill was for the most part flat, but the right half
had multiple ramps and jumps that propelled some people an excess of 5 feet
into the air if they hit it straight on. I usually kept to the left side of the
hill, but on the last run of the day (go figure) I went down the left side of
the hill but about half way down the hill, a little kid about three or four
years old stepped out from the treeline that lined the hill. I put my left foot
out from the toboggan and pushed myself away from him, but straight into the
right side of the hill and into the path of the largest jump on the hill. Normally
I would have endured the jump and hoped for the best, but as fate would have
it, someone happened to have wiped out right in front of the jump and was just
standing there as if he were the only person on the hill. Rapidly approaching,
I yelled at him, but he didn’t hear me because of the helmet that he was
wearing. With no other option other than plow into the man and risk injury
myself, I threw myself off the side of the sled and rolled another 10 feet or
so before I even slowed down. The sled hit the jump, missing the oblivious idiot
standing at the base of the jump as if nothing had happened. With a hot head, I
stormed down the hill grabbed my sled and stormed back to the car. Although I
was angry at the time, in retrospect, it was kind of a fun and memorable
experience.
