Tobogganing

Went to Ben Lomond on Thursday with K, M and J. It was SO much fun! We went there to go tobogganing – I'm not quite game enough for skiing. It was M's idea, and she insisted that we all take a day off work to go. That particular part certainly didn't disappoint me – work is awful at the moment, so I was glad to get away. We borrowed M's mum's Land Rover and hired chains to put on the tyres. K and I bought some waterproof gear and thermals, then we were set. Yay! I was excited. I don't usually let myself get excited before an event, just so I can avoid disappointment in case it doesn't happen for some reason, but I was excited this time.

We arrived at the top of the mountain at about midday. I'd heard horror stories about Jacob's Ladder, but it wasn't that bad. I mean, it's a freaky road, but it's pretty wide, and there are railings on the corners, plus J is a very safe driver, so it was okay. We put on all our gear and waddled up to the shop to hire the toboggans. All the toboggans had names, and were in bright fluoro colours. I ended up with a bright pink toboggan named Brad. The lady behind the counter suggested that maybe Brad was a bit confused. I laughed. I'd never considered that a toboggan could be confused about its/his/her sexuality. Maybe having a girl riding him all day might clear things up for him.

Tobogganing was GREAT! We started on the weiner's slope, but soon gained confidence and moved to a better slope further down. There was tons of snow – I'd never seen so much snow in my whole life. Tobogganing wasn't that hard, but you were pretty much at the mercy of the slope – none of us managed to figure out how to steer the damn things, so we just held on and hoped for the best. I seemed to go a bit further than the others, maybe because I was the smallest. K definitely crashed his toboggan the most. He kept trying to go over jumps, and just end up axing himself. At one stage, we went around the corner and decided to try a very steep slope. It was fantastic the first few times, but the last time was interesting. A pile of snow had been building up about halfway down, probably from our footprints. The last time I went down, I hit the pile, went sailing through the air, and landed on my back with a thud. Cartoon birds flew around my head. Brad was nowhere to be seen – when the going got tough, he'd buggered off. I eventually spied him, cowering behind a bush. Pfft. What a wimp.

We went to the pub/café thing for lunch, after going to the drying room and toilets. That was an ordeal in itself – removing fifty layers and putting them back on again isn't easy. While I was zipping myself all watertight again, a sticker on the toilet cistern caught my eye. It said something like, "Please do not flush oil, fat, milk, paint, chemicals or harmful substances down this toilet. Launceston's water supply starts here!" Well! Launceston's water supply starts at the toilets at Ben Lomond? I felt both proud and disgusted that I'd just made a contribution to Launceston's water supply. It occurred to me that I could even be drinking my contribution by the time I got home.

After lunch and a few more runs down the hill, we decided to build a snowman. Well at least I decided to build a snowman – J and I put in all the hard yards, and we'd just got him to a decent size and I was about to go find him some stick arms, when suddenly everyone else wanted to put their two cents worth in. Looking back, the whole process was pretty funny, and seemed to reflect our different personalities perfectly – K was furrowing his brow in concentration as he painstakingly sculpted an arm out of snow. I was whining about how I didn't want snow arms for him, I wanted stick arms, and it was MY snowman, and now he'd come and taken over, and I didn't want snow arms, I wanted stick arms, and why wasn't he listening to me? J was hopping around with a grin on his face, trying to find an opportunity to knock the whole thing over when nobody was watching. M was sitting a little bit away from the rest of us, humming to herself, sculpting a smaller 'lady friend' for our big snowman, complete with intricate facial features and boobs. Then she set to work on the big snowman, and made his head look like a penis. So the snowman ended up with one snow arm, a penis for a head, and two sticks that would have been arms lying at his base. Oh well – it'll look intriguing to anyone else who gives it more than a passing glance I guess.

It started snowing pretty heavily after that, and got really windy, and we were all knackered, so we called it a day. I had the best time though. I felt so free, sliding down the hill on Brad. K and I were pretty sore the next day though. It was worth it! For one whole day, all my worries were gone.