Totally Tubular!

It's certainly not snow boarding, but it's the best winter sport within a 1 1/2 hour drive from my home--snow tubing! One of these days, I'm going to live where it actually snows and be hugely into winter sports like snow boarding, snow shoeing, cross country skiing, and I might even get the hang of downhill skiing. Until that I day, I have snow tubing in icy manmade snow in North Carolina.

I don't mean to downplay the adventure in snow tubing by comparing it to snow boarding in natural powder of the slopes of the wonderful West because snow tubing on the icy hills of fake snow is totally fun. Talk about fast! Weeeee!

I headed north on Saturday with some friends just over the state line near the town of Highlands, NC., for some tubing. Along for the ride were my friends Germaphobe, Red, Super Villain and his (much) better half and my oldest friend, La-La. It was a first time tubing experience for most of us. However, Germaphobe and I are professional tubers and we return annually to see if we can break the previous year's record of total number of kids taken out by our intertubes as we race down the slopes. I'm sad to report that I didn't take out even one person this year, but man, did I ever try! However, I'm very happy to report that I have returned once again with all my teeth.

Last year, Germaphobe and I had a pretty awesome collision at the end of one of our runs. Unfortunately, it was a collision into one another. Still, we counted this as a person-taken-down point since we managed to knock a man off his feet after our tubes bounced off one another. Score! This year we weren't able to tally up a big score, but we were able to set speed records since this year's winter was much colder and the slope was much steeper and had two big dips (or as I like to call them, "jumps").

All of our first timers had a blast, too. Red loved it. She had a blast zipping down the slope until she injured her knee. Truth be known, she had even more fun sitting at the bottom of the slope with her bum knee laughing and making fun of all the people crashing and being run over by other tubes because she's evil like that. (Not that I would enjoy anything of the sort!) La-La had fun and much like a cat wearing a bell on its collar, we never lost her as she cried Eeeeeeeeeee! the entire time traveling down the slope, reaching a slightly higher pitch as she cleared the tops of the dips. Super Villain was fun to have along as he, just as impatient as me, would walk with me up to the top rather than waiting in the long line for the lift. Now, if only he could keep up with me without hurting his back! (Don't worry SV, you'll be able to show me up at our rock climbing lessons next weekend ;)

We had a blast and I hope that next year we can all go again--and actually take out some kids next time.

Here's some of the gang: La-La is on the left making her debut on my blog. This is my oldest friend. (Not as in age, but in years of friendship--just to clarify!) Germaphobe who's made several appearances on this blog is in the middle. Red, who is pictured on the right, is my faithful partner in ghost hunting. I have mentioned her a few times on the blog, but this is her first photo.



Me and Super Villain looking like a cute couple. But let me set it straight...Boys, SV is NOT my boyfriend, so please still free to send me the chocolates we discussed! (Remember, dark chocolate is best.)





See...Here's Super Villain with La-La. They are really a couple, so just in case any of you boys are thinking she's cute and were thinking of sending her some Frerro Rocher, Lindt, Dove, or Ghirardelli, she's taken. Send them to me instead.





Here's our fake snow slope. It doesn't look it in this photo, but it was steep in real life.










And it doesn't appear so in this photo either, but Germaphobe was zipping by quite fast as she waved to me.





And again, it doesn't look like I'm moving, but here I am traveling at high speed at the end of slope. In a matter of seconds, I will barely clear a girl getting off her tube and rush head first into the muddy muck at the end of the snow.



Red took this pic of the Germ, La-La, SV, and me hooked together on our last run. Obviously, you cannot see the momentum we had going on in this one either, but we were airborne a couple of times. It's a good thing we saved the best for last because after the last jump, my tailbone rammed into the vertabrae above it. My butt is a sexy purplish tone now. Also, I wish the look of terror on the kid's face to the left of us were visible. He thought for a moment we were going to squish him into the snowbank.