Winter Olympics....

Ah yes, it's here again. I have many memories of sitting in front of the television until all hours of the night just to watch the US Olympic Team compete. I love the winter olympics. I'm a winter sport fanatic, probably due to the fact that I've lived in the sub zero temperatures of the upper peninsula of Michigan my whole life. We have winter from October-April/May so winter sports are huge here. One memory that comes to the surface everytime the winter olympics come around is me and my sister's attempt at bobsledding.

I was 5 at the time, my sister was 7. We had been watching bobsledding the night before with our parents...it was our favorite sport. So the next day my sister and I got the brilliant idea to go bobsledding, problem was we didn't have a track. After a short brain storming session, we figured the 20 or so stairs leading from the second to the ground floor would be a sufficient track for our first time out.

Grabbing our wonderful 2-person lime green sled we set out up the stairs to become bobsledder's. Once at the top of the stairs we got the sled in place. My sister put on her gear; a helmet and pads. I had no gear but the jeans and sweatshirt I was wearing that day. We loaded up into the sled. I, of course, was in the front...I became my sister's airbag. "Ready?" I asked, "Yup" she replied. "Okay!" I said excitedly. "Wait wait wait! I forgot something!" she yells. Out of the sled she goes, bounding through the hallway door and into our bedroom. I sat there in the sled, excited about bobsledding. She came back with a pillow off of my bed and proceeded to place it between us-extra padding for her. "Okay, now we're ready." she says. We count down, "One, two three!" and off we go. Down the old wooden, but very sturdy, steps of our victorian style house.

The ride was awesome people, absolutely awesome! We got closer and closer to the bottom of the steps. The excitement was starting to turn into panic at this point because there is solid wall a meer 3 feet from the bottom of the "track." Of course, being 5 & 7, we didn't take this into account while we were at the top of the stairs. In addition to the wall, there is a cast iron radiator almost 3 feet tall to the left of the bottom of the stairs. We missed the radiator and crashed into the wall at full speed. My sister, of course, was fine--she had all that padding on, remember? Me on the other hand, I came out of it with a bloody lip and a loose tooth-(also bleeding).

While all of this was taking place my parents were working in their office. Due to all of the noise, my dad came running out of the office to find us in a heap, me with blood coming out of my mouth, my sister in full gear, and our sled broken almost completely in 2. He looked at us in sheer amazement--either wondering what to say or why he had such stupid offspring. Then he found his voice, "What the HELL are you two doing?" he screamed. I looked him in the eye, smiled real big and said "We're bobsledding!" while spraying blood on his pants.

We weren't allowed to watch bobsledding for the rest of the winter olympics that year.