Fortunately, the black plastic shell of the Mad River Rocket doesn't garner a lot of attention. I climbed halfway up the hill and deliberately stepped off to a side where no one had been sliding. I remembered Henry's warning that the sled was at its best in soft powder. I knelt and strapped myself in, hopped to twist so I was headed downhill, and - whoosh - I was off so quickly that I seemed to leave sound behind. This sled is an aptly named speed demon. In the sudden silence I was already down the hill and streaking across the field.
I walked back up and tried sliding through powder carving turns. I held the edge of the sled, tilted my body like turning on a bicycle, and shifted my weight from one knee to the other, rather like pushing turns in a kayak. The sled followed every movement. It seemed too good to be true.
It was.
Emboldened and exhilarated, I took the Mad River Rocket all the way to the top, waited until I had a clear hill, and sent myself down on a tangent, carving turns first one way, then the other. Then I crossed the hard-packed snow where everyone else had been sledding and the channels in the bottom lost their grip. I went over sideways and instinctively tucked my head down in the kneeling position, bounced once on my back, rolled sideways again, bounced on my back again, and somehow managed to come upright and pointed downhill to complete the run. The football players applauded.
When I walked in stiffly to return the sleds at the end of the day, Henry asked how it had gone. I explained my inadvertent sideways double somersault without catching any air. He laughed. "Around here we call that a dinner roll," he said, a mocking reference to freestyle skiing hotdog Jonny Moseley's signature trick.
Moseley does it without bouncing off the slope.
David Lyon can be reached at harris.lyon@verizon.net.
