Happy New Year!

Admittedly, this won't be very exciting because there aren't even any pictures. And I don't really have any good stories about the holidays, except for the part where my sister and I went sledding for the first time and I thought my life was going to end.

Wait, you want me to tell you about it? There isn't much to tell. Except that this nice lady was there with her grandchildren, and she told us how to go about it (I mean, we were such novices that we weren't even sure how to properly sit on the sled. It all seems like it will be very instinctive until you get up on top of the slope and you realize NOTHING about it comes naturally). Her grandchildren were also very helpful. And by helpful I mean "kept trying us to do crazy things that we were totally unprepared for".

"Hey go on that jump!"

Okay. No.

Also, do not take a running start. Thank goodness she stopped us in time, because my sister asked if that was necessary, and this nice grandma was VERY clear. We did not need, or want in any way, to get any more acceleration than we were already going to get speeding down the hill.

So we hopped on our little round sleds (cross-legged, naturally), and after some scooting closer to the very final edge, the last precipice before the top of the hill becomes the sudden drop, and when you're about to go skittering down the slope whether you want to or not--we let go.

And then it was over.

Only in the meantime, the wind rushes through your ears and your body hurtles through space at speeds never previously achieved by an unprotected human body. And there's no actual steering involved, so you might slide around so you're going down backwards, and then you break the sound barrier and your head explodes but somehow you arrive at the bottom mostly intact.

All this in a few seconds of pure bliss, of exhiliration untempered by say, a windshield. Or walls.

My sister crashed into a lamp post the first run. I didn't see it because I was too busy rocketing through space and time. But we took many spills that day. We were not pros. But we were most excellent.

So there was some bruising, and we had ice and snow in pretty much every crevice, and we were so tired that we fell asleep later in the day, but it was one hundred percent the most wonderful and terrifying experience I've ever had in my life.

Remember in Calvin and Hobbes, how the trips in the sled always ended in a spectacular crash? Well, now I understand that.