Sliding Down Rooftops
The winter of 2008 was the kind that you read about in storybooks. It didn’t stop snowing for days on end and the air felt nice and chilly. Many roads were blocked and the ones that were not had walls of snow on both sides. No one even bothered to clean the sidewalks.
On one of these winter days, I believe it was a Saturday, my dad decided that the roof of our house desperately needs another cleaning, even though he had shoveled the snow off of it not more than a week ago. My little sister and I were watching cartoons and eating leftover candy from Xmas, when my dad invited us to go help him. Reluctant to leave the cozy and warm inside, we answered him with lazy grunts, making no effort to move. That was until dad mentioned we would be climbing up to the roof with him. In a flash we were up and running, yelling for mom to come help
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We were light enough to be able to crawl on all fours without breaking through the snow too much. Every now and then a hand or knee would break through and we would fall face first into the snow. Getting back out of that hole was hard to do but really funny to watch. Having finally made it to the back, we saw a sight which had us dying in laughter. My dad had jumped from the roof into the snow and was now in it waist deep: stuck. He was holding an icicle in his hand, challenging us to a duel. Breaking off icicles from the edge of the roof we did our best trying to stand up, ready to take on dad together. The air was soon filled with our gleeful screams and laughter.
Work first, play later did not apply on this day, it felt like all play no work to us, especially when we found out what our task would be. It turned out the job for my sister and I was to slide down the rooftop, like you would from a slide or hilltop, right into the soft cold piles below; we could definitely do
We looked around for a little while longer and Tom spotted a nice hit. It was an untouched field, with three 10-15’ drops which made for great hits. After hiking about a quarter of a mile we made it there. A quarter of a mile does not sound like that much of a walk but it is not as easy as it sounds when you are walking in snow past your knees deep, simply it took almost an hour and a half. We strapped in and took off, making huge carves in all the fresh powder that had probably not been ridden in at least a week. The first hit was coming and Tom shouted “hit it man,” As Dan and I approached the hit we got some big air. The only problem with riding such fresh snow is that when you land in that amount of fresh powder you sink like a rock.
Bang! Clack! The metal snowboarding lift twisted and turned over the snowy mountain. My heart pounded as I forced myself to step onto the loading dock. I scraped my boots across the metal platform reading Bittersweet Ski hill. I thought about why they don't say Snowboarding Hill. The thought shook inside me.
In July this year, I travelled to Queenstown for a family vacation. It was my first time in the snow and I tried out snowboarding. Those of you who have been snowboarding before would know that the majority of the first day is spent face down in the snow. It was freezing, wet and challenging but I did not want to give up.
After a little while of thinking about how to get Joe down the side of the mountain, Simon comes up with an idea to put two ropes together and have a pulley device to lower Joe down, and climb down until they get to the bottom. While Simon was lowering Joe, a snowstorm was brewing around them and night was approaching. They knew that they had two hours to go, they decided to keep going instead of digging a snow hole and waiting until morning. The snowstorm is getting worse and Simon is still trying to lower Joe, but Joe falls over a steep ice wall and is hanging with nowhere to build a fast snow hole.
I tried to crouch down and pick up some speed and ended up doing an aerial front flip with a two point header right into a patch of ice crusted snow. I lay there for several minutes, wondering if the cold I felt was my body going numb. I had thought that that fancy trick had killed me, but it wasn't my time. It only left me with a bloody nose and a cut chin. I was very disappointed, I thought that at least a cracked vertebrae was deserving of my efforts.
Throughout the majority of my life, I’ve known of Nikki Giovanni primarily as a poet. However, her finesse in delivering words in a playful yet though provoking manner isn’t solely contained in stanzas. The essay, I Fell Off the Roof One Day was a refreshing read, especially in this moment. Many of America’s college populations are finding themselves in discussions about race, especially in regards to anti-Blackness, whether they like it or not. In these discussions, which are usually very heated exchanges, White students often shift uncomfortably, play questionable devil’s advocates and there’s a least one variation of “Well, there’s BET. Where’s the WET channel?” Soon after, someone will take issue with the existence of HBCUs, and this exactly where Giovanni view of Black universities comes in.
As a young Canadian, one of the popular things to do for kids in the area was to go sledding after church on Sundays. One particular Sunday, Moe and his siblings, Marie, Jimmy and Tom, were quite excited to go sledding. He raced to the top of the hill to be one of the first to go down, but the hill was a sheet of ice. Moe’s sled quickly raced down the hill and as he tried to pull the brake to slow down nothing happened. He hits a large bump and goes airborne across the street crashing into the back of a vehicle backing out of their driveway.
One time I faced a challenge I went ziplining. At first I did not want to do it because I did not want to up that high off the ground. Then one of my friends asked me would you go with me. so I said yes. when I got up there to the top of the stairs. I was really nervous. I wanted to come back down. Then i said to myself you can do it.
The ground moved farther away from me as I went higher up. I nervously swung my legs back and forth and placed my ski poles next to me. When I looked down, everyone looked like itsy-bitsy specks in the vast, white snow. Whoa…, I thought to myself, the sight made me feel disoriented. As I went up the lift shuddered, shook, and occasionally swung side to side which made me feel jitterish. I couldn’t believe I was doing this though, but there was no going back now. After a few minutes, or what felt like hours, I could see the end of the ski lift coming closer. I prepared myself by getting ready to stand up by grabbing my poles and tensing my legs. There was a bright red line printed on the snow a few feet ahead and when I reached the line, I quickly stood up and got off. “Phew, at least half the journey’s done”, I thought to
Digging into the snow with my boots while stabilizing my body with the uninjured arm, I inch across the hill, lose my foothold, and plummet downward.
He arrived at his first destination after about an hour of hiking. After a short while he figured he had looked over his new found haven enough, he was ready. He started down the grade with a small arsenal, consisting of a shovel, about ten granola bars, two bottles of power-ade, his snowshoes, and what was left in his hydration bladder in his pack. After descending about two hundred feet he came into the clearing he was hoping to find, it was as smooth as silk, twenty inches of fresh powder under his board. Up ahead he say a small but formidable drop off on the mountain, he knew if he was going to escape this with his dignity he was going to have to work some magic, to his success. The drop was approximately eighteen feet, but he was ready for it, he landed perfectly, it was like a dream the poof of snow exploding out from his impact, and the gentle flakes hitting his face. As he continued down the slope he did not realize that his gentle landing had severely weakened the physical structure of the mountain’s blanket, and that any moment he could bring the mass down upon himself at impossible speeds.
A not so long time ago in a galaxy not so far,far,far away, in fact quite close actually, there was a young boy (Me) and a dreadful bike. Now I know what you're thinking, “It’s just a bike, how could it possibly be so bad?” Well, I’ll just have to tell you, from the beginning, the very beginning.
I could tell that Braden was very excited and wanted to get to the top of the slope more than anything else. The whole entire ride up he was staring at the end of the chairlift. Finally, we made it to the top. We got off with a bit of difficulty.
I was a very stubborn five-year-old girl. My friends were outside wanting me to play, but after much begging my mother was still refusing to let me out of the house until my room was clean. The thought of my friends outside playing, and my missing out on the fun was too much for me to bear. I decided to take a shortcut on the cleaning and learned a lesson that even now, almost 20 years later, I still haven’t forgotten.
He starts to build another fire. I am ecstatic for another fire, but unhappy that the man is even more irritated than before. Unfortunately, the lovely fire goes out due to a bundle of snow crashing onto the orange flames. Frantically, my companion begins waving and clapping his hands like a maniac. Oh how cold the man might be.