Winter activities

I hate winter. I hate snow. I hate being cold. Anybody who knows me, knows this.

Why I ended up living in Utah where there's lots of snow is a mystery. Especially considering that I live in the state where the license plates say "Ski Utah" and I don't ski. I never have. There's a very good reason for this. See the first line of this post. Now add the fact that I'm a complete klutz, and I can't see paying a ton of money for the opportunity to be cold and miserable and falling on my bottom or breaking a leg for fun. These days my favorite winter activity is standing in front of the fire.

I DID participate in one particular winter activity growing up. We went four or five times when I was a teenager, and I really did like it when I went. I went inner tubing. It's basically skiing without any control over where you're going or how fast you can go. The ski lifts at some of the Oregon resorts where I grew up would cater to inner-tubes, and our church youth group would go and have a crazy time. We would hook our innertubes to the part of the ski lift especially designed for tubes, lay down, and get a lazy ride up the hill. Then we'd turn around, and slide down. If you wanted to stop, you simply had to roll off the speeding inner tube at the end, then pay attention to where the inner tube ended up so you could go find it and start all over again.

I should note that inner tubes are infinitely more dangerous than skiing is. We had someone get hurt every single year that we went. It didn't stop us, because I think all of the high speed tumbles from the inner tubes gave us brain damage. Either way, I am now happily a cave troll all winter long, and gleefully watch my children outside in the snow from my perch in front of the fire.