Winter tubes
by
Randy McIntosh
I stopped during my winter run to watch a group of kids using flat cardboard boxes to slide down a snow-covered hill. These makeshift toboggans had poor steering, leading to some spectacular wipe-outs. I smiled as I remembered some similar attempts during my high school youth.
One happened during the winter when my friends and I discovered snow tubing. Now some of you may not know that in those days, almost all motor vehicle tires had an inner rubber tube that was the inflated part of the tire. Because the inner tubes were so abundant, there was a surplus that we took advantage of.
You can improve the steering of a flat cardboard box by grabbing the front edge and shifting your weight around. This is harder with an inner tube, speeding down snow-packed hills, which is what made tube sledding thrilling. You just jump on belly-first at the top of the hill and off you go, spinning and bouncing down the hill at blinding speeds.
We became masters at tube sledding that year. My collection of friends in high school were experts at getting progressively larger tubes where we could load two people on, creating more bouncing and feeling like there was more speed.
One member of our group was Bubba. He was a consumer of fun. Not in the sense of sucking the fun out of everything, but someone was constantly in the search of the most exhilarating thing to do, and slurping it to the fullest. He had an air of apparent wisdom, which prevented us from questioning his judgement. This made for some spectacular events during our high school days, like our two-day winter camp-out at Syncline campground, where we brought enough food and beer for several months and consumed most of it on the first night. We also brought a pellet gun for safety because you never know when a rabid tin can may come around. Okay, so in retrospect maybe some of his ideas weren’t the wisest choice for hormone-raged teens.
Bubba got the inner tube from a large tractor tire at a nearby farm. On this morning, he called me up and asked if I could borrow my dad's pickup truck to carry the tube to the hill. I told my dad I needed his truck to help with a flat tire, which was technically accurate. About a half an hour later, I pulled into Bubba's driveway to see a massive pile of rubber in front the garage door.
"We can fill it up on the way," Bubba called out from inside the garage.
We grabbed the rubber corpse and tossed it in the back of the truck. Bubba grabbed a few smaller tubes from regular vehicles, "Just in case we need extras."
A few minutes later, we pulled into the gas station and up to the air pump.
The owner eyed us. "You boys going tubbing on that tractor tire?"
"Yes, sir." I replied.
"You be careful out there. Those big tires can get up some pretty good speed. You could get hurt." He said, rubbing his jaw.
I ignored the obvious foreshadowing as the owner walked away with a slight limp.
After what seemed like an eternity for a teenage mind, the flaccid pile of rubber transformed into a massive "Tube of Death" as Bubba quickly labelled it. I remember the Tube being taller than me.
"Good thing I brought rope," I said.
We stood the Tube of Death upright in the back of the truck and looped the rope through its centre and the same for the other tubes, then secure them all to the interior of the truck bed.
We arrived at the hill, our other friends were already there. They were sliding down the hill on flat cardboard boxes. A deflated inner tube sat off to one side.
"This tube died gloriously at the bottom of the ravine," John said, pointing to Richard, who was nursing a bleeding nose.
In these days, pretty much any hill with snow was fair game for sledding. In the prairie town of my youth, there were many waterless ravines -- coulees -- that fed into the river bottom with varied depths, inclines and obstacles. The particular ravine we chose this day was the ultimate of these features, appropriately located next to the cemetery.
"Whoa, you guy brought a tractor tube!" Cheryl called out as she walked up out of the ravine carrying a tattered box, "I get to go first!"
Cheryl was tall and thin, a consummate athlete and with little fear. I think she acted as a sort of fun magnet, which helped play off Bubba's appetite for adrenaline.
Bubba and I released the tubes and tossed the smaller ones off to the side, and carried the Tube of Death to the edge of the ravine.
We held the Tube while Cheryl got on and I gave the tube a little push to get it over the edge.
The monstrous tube made a slow, steady descent into the ravine. The sight of the rubber mass carrying a single person looked pretty cool, but we were all a bit underwhelmed. It seemed much slower than expected.
"Hey," Cheryl called out from the bottom, "can you guys give me a hand to carry this thing back up?"
We, of course, hadn't considered that challenge of getting the tube out.
I jumped on one of the smaller tubes and John jumped on another, grabbing a piece of rope. "We'll tie this around the tube to make it easier to haul up."
John was one of the smarter ones in our group.
The ride down the hill was far more eventful than it should have been. I gained a lot of speed quickly as soon was careening backwards down the hill. I hit a bump at full speed and landed on the Tube of Death, bouncing off and then into snow-covered prairie grass. In the summer, the grass is soft -- not so much in the winter.
"Did you practice that?" Cheryl was laughing.
"I'm just warming up," I brushed the snow off my head, ignoring the pain from grass spikes in my leg.
John tied the rope around the rubber beast, and he and I pulled it up the slope. I carried one of the smaller tubes with my free hand and Cheryl took the other tube.
"We need more people on it," Bubba called out when we got to the top.
"Let's try two of us," Richard pointed at Bubba. There was still blood tissue stuck in Richard's nose. I imagined that it may have frozen by now, which I guess helped stop the bleeding.
"Let's do it!" Bubba moved to get on top of the tube.
I held the tube in place while Richard got on the other side. They were laying next to each other. Bubba gripped to rope firmly, either to convey a sense of control or maybe to hide slight anxiety.
I pushed them over the edge.
Bubba was right that have two people made for a more interesting ride. The beast lurched after hitting a bump and spun 90 degrees. Bubba tried to steer by tugging on the rope. This had the effect of destabilizing the tube, flipping it over and dumping the two boys.
"Excellent!" Richard cried out from the bottom of the ravine.
Cheryl and I went next. We sped down head first, hitting three successive bumps, getting some serious air-time, and coming to rest at the bottom.
"We should try three people!" I called out, pulling the Tube up the hill.
"I think," Bubba grinned, "we should do everyone,"
Now, at that point, we had no idea if the Tube could carry all five of us. We trusted Bubba knew what he was talking about.
Cheryl was the lightest of the crew. Bubba, John, and I were on the football team and had the bulk to confirm. Richard was the tallest, but was also well-muscled thanks to our summer routines of weightlifting in the morning before whittling away the rest of summer days suntanning and playing basketball in the outdoor court.
What I could predict was that having five of us on the tube was going to make it bouncier.
I held the Tube steady with the rope as my four teammates climbed on. Cheryl got in the middle, Bubba and Richard to her right, John to her left, leaving a space for me after I got us moving.
I pushed the Tube over the edge and jumped on. My momentum pushed the tube off course enough to hit the side of the run, slicing through fresh snow that covered the prairie grass. The Tube spun about 45 degrees, gaining speed as it hit the other edge of the run and bounced over a large mound.
"Woo!" Bubba bellowed as we drifted in the air.
The Tube landed, gained speed, then hit another larger bump, sending us into the air.
"Yeah, this is awe..." Bubba began.
We hit harder this time, bouncing violently as the rubber beast gained more speed. We let out a collective grunt as the Tube landed. Cheryl grabbed John's jacket and a bit of his flesh, so she wouldn't fly off the Tube.
And then hit another bump, and then another, and then another, each one sending us higher.
On that fifth bump, we were seriously airborne. I was no longer holding the rope, and I couldn't see or feel any of my other friends. Seeing the blue sky meant I was flying. I panicked and reached out to grab anything that could give some security, and squeezed hard on the first thing that met my hand.
"Let go of my balls!" Bubba cried out
We all landed in different awkward positions at the bottom. Bubba lay in a sort of fetal position, groaning. I landed on my butt next to him. John and Richard were face-first in the snow a few feet ahead. Cheryl was underneath the tube, laughing.
Bubba groaned again and rolled over, looking at me. "See, I told you this would be fun."
***
I turned away from the hill and started running again in time to hear an older boy asking his friends about snow tubing. Oh, the stories I could tell.
snow tube crash excerpted from here