It was a cold morning on the top of Popes Hill in our year of The Lord nineteen hundred and eighty two. School was cancelled down at the Murphy, and yours truly was staring down into Hemey Park holding my brand new inflatable sled. The park had just been blanketed with a good 8 inches of snow from the night before and I was about to sled for the first time on my own. The hill at Hemey Park felt like Everest to a kid standing 3 feet tall, my adrenaline was pumping as I watched one kid after another blaze down the hill. There was tubes and toboggans, wood sleds and trash can lids, but nobody had my 2 piece inflatable…which made me feel pretty bad ass. It’s go time…

I brushed off my husky corduroy pants, sat on my space age sled and off I went. What I wasn’t accounting for was the large, incredibly slick surface area of my sled. Ya man, I had no idea I was sitting on a virtual missile. This *ucking thing should have had a space shuttle re-entry shield built into it. Anyway, as I was reaching Mach 2 doing my best imitation of a comet, I could hear my fellow sledders yelling “bail out!”. You see back then Hemey had a pretty sizable retaining wall at the bottom of the hill, on one side it was about a 20 foot drop off with a fence protecting it. The portion I was heading for was a good 8 foot drop. After hitting a mound of snow someone built as jump, my drop off was more like 12 feet after getting airborne. As I let out a giant fbomb while flying through the air, I could swear I saw the top of Saint Marks. I hit the ground and literally blew out my sled. Sounded like a gunshot, and the entire side of the hill erupted in laughter.

I was a tad embarrassed, but soon switched to a plastic sled. Every time I drive by Saint Marks to this day I throw up some deuces and thank him for saving my ass.

Anyway, be safe out there all you junior Dot Rats!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJmvzsQbc7Y]