sledding stories
let me hear yours
last week, this kid got pinned under a car and was run over. luckily, he’s okay.
that, and a boston globe article about sledding accidents and potential helmet laws gave me an idea for a story. so, i’m going out to chestnut branch park in mantua to talk to some parents and kids and also, some area hospitals to see if they treated banged up noggins around snowfall time.
so, two questions?
1. where are the best places in gloucester county to sled?
2. any sledding stories??
Comments
You should consult Petroff, see if he still has Sledding Awesome and Sledding Awesome 2.
And that would mean the landfill we used to go to, and the overpass at 322 and 55.
Not related to Gloucester county, I used to go to the overpass of the Parkway and the nj transit shore line. If you got enough speed you went through the reeds and jumped a creek, if you didn’t, you got wet.
We also used to go to a doctors office built on a mound, but with a path cut to a basement entrance, making a (sorta) halfpipe. We would get like 20 people, all with their own sleds, grab on to each other, and slide back and fourth until everyone ended up in a pile at the bottom.
We had two places we used to go. When we were younger and needed some sanctioned sledding, we’d go to the comcast retention field (previously the Jones Intercable retention field). It was basically a giant, grassy ditch with large sloped sides. It was always pretty great and had a decent gradient of smooth sailing to death defying depending on where in the retention ditch you started out.
Then there was the landfill. The one we went to was also by 55, but it was at the intersection of 47 (Delsea Dr) and Egg Harbor Road. It wasn’t fenced off and cops never bugged us.
No real good sledding stories, though. Somewhere there’s video of me as a little kid on a saucer slide tied to my Aunt’s black lab, Clyde. They threw a stick to get the dog running and I upended, like an uppercase L falling backwards, and started to cry.
I also once thought I broke my tailbone whilst sledding at the landfill. For all I know, I fractured it cause it hurt for a week or two. There was a small 2×2 ditch that ran around the bottom of one side of the landfill. I thought it’d be fun to sled into it cause I was stupid and getting hurt is always funny. Well, the ditch had frozen up pretty good and so when I flew down the side of the landfill (this is the steep side, mind you), I came down pretty hard on some solid ice.
Other than that, no, nothing. I miss sledding. I wish I was sledding right now.
I’ve never sledded down the landfill but I’ve always seen cars parked on the shoulder of Route 55, and I’ve seen kids sledding down. I’ve never really sledded much before. But I lived in a cul de sac growing up, and they plowed all the snow towards the middle of it. My friends and I always dug a fort out of it. That was pretty cool.
Now that I live in Fairmount, I really want to sled down the Art Museum steps.
Reggie said:Now that I live in Fairmount, I really want to sled down the Art Museum steps.
you better make this happen!!! you’ve been talking about it too much and i know it’s something you wanna do. i’ll join you if it’s a weekend.
I grew up in northern NJ, so I don’t have any sledding-in-south-jersey locations to share. We just used a neighbor’s yard that had 3 hills on it. Because I was the smallest of my siblings, they’d make ramps and send me down first to pack-yet-not-destroy them. And once, I flew down so fast I went out into the road and under a neighbor’s parked car. I also knew some kids that had an actual toboggan and their first time using it, it went so fast that they went across a road and into a sticker bush.
i love people-getting-injured stories, so this is all making me LOL.
I actually have too many sledding stories to type in a reasonable amount of time, so I’ll narrow it down to the my favorites:
1. Most sledding in my neighborhood was done in the woods near my house at a location affectionately known as ‘Agony Hill’. It was perfect for sledding: two trails that started at the top of a little wooded ridge separated by a few yards at the top, each about 8-10 ft. wide and rounded like a bobsled track. The best part for idiot children – the trails intersected at the bottom of the hill, so snow chicken was in full effect. The best was when we brilliantly decided to build a ramp at the bottom of one hill and tried to time it so that we would jump over whoever was coming down the other hill. So many injuries.
2. Also at Agony Hill. This kid that I hated with a passion showed up one day in a full skiing get-up trying to look cool. On his first run the fucker flew down so fast that he couldn’t stop at the bottom, so he ended up careening into the trees off the trail. He was seriously injured, but I can’t remember if it was a broken leg or arm or what. It was great.
3. Sledding at Holmdel Park when I was a kid. This place just has a huge, open hill that shitloads of people go to every time it snows. I remember making it down to the bottom of the run and wiping out right in front of an on-coming sledder. They ended up ramping off of my head, which I had half buried in the snow in anticipation of the impact. It hurt a little, but ever since I could not help but think about how I would have been shish-kabobed, or maybe even decapitated, if I got hit by an old school metal runner sled, of which there were many on the hill at the time.
Fuck, sledding is the best thing ever. I’ll fight sledding helmet laws to the death.
Holmdel park ruled. I went over the hay bales at the bottom one time, and nearly went through the fence. I can’t remember what was beyond that, but I’m sure it would have been painful/awesome.
while it’s snowing here, there’s a heatwave in Australia. and this little guy is cooling off in a cold water bucket behind someone’s house. weeee!
<img src=http://www.news.com.au/common/imagedata/0,,6472034,00.jpg />
I found them on Google videos, Evan!
Sledding Awesome
Sledding Awesome 2
And for my two cents, Heller Park in Raritan Center makes for great sledding if you’re in the Edison area.
Man that was fun.
Where the hell is Kevin V? He has a story about sledding on a mattress.
In college a buncha kids used to do the sledding on cafeteria trays. But I never got involved with their nonsense. We used the lids of our rubbermaid storage bins (the ones that hold sweaters, not soup).
OH! and we used to do indoor sledding. You throw all your old sleeping bags/pillows/comforters on the stairs and you get in a laundry basket and weeeeeeee!
My only significant sledding story was at the Broad Street entrance onto I-76, near the stadiums. The actual entrance is an overpass so there’s a good sized hill. Anyway, I am on a saucer sled and hit a bump that started sending me left towards Packer Ave. I decided to bail on an icy section that I took a header into. I had some nice cuts there, made me look awesome going to play hockey the next day.
In college there was a hill behind the cafeteria that we would use for mud slides and sled down. Once the tough East Falls kids came over and beat someone up from the college. It was really crazy to see; a bunch of 11 year old city kids pounding on a jerky 19 year old girl from Long Island.
There is a great hill in Washington Twp. on the Wedgwood golf course near the 18th tee that was fun to sled on.Dawn might know about this one, it was in her neighborhood, towards the dead end of Cambridge Rd.
I was never allowed to sled on the landfill, so it still doesn’t seem right to me. I would worry about eating too much toxic snow.
Heidi, we used to slide down our steps in those shiny lyrca dance class pants on top of slippery sleeping bags. That was a wild ride!
i just got back from mantua’s chestnut branch park and there were about six million kids sledding. i was there for a half hour and saw a kid with a leg injury get hauled off by an ambulance, another kid with am arm injury drive to the hospital and a kid who walked up to the cop i was interviewing and he looked like this. it ruled.
When I was a kid we used to go to a place in our development everyone used to just call ‘The Pit’. Only story from there was some asshole would jump on my as a i was sledding down every time to ruin my ride. So one time he came running and jumping and I stuck my foot out and nailed him in the gut. We started to go at it and my little brother came over with a huge plastic sled and started wailing on him with it. Then some parents yelled at us so we ran.
Speaking of my little brother. My dad took us to Bethel Mill Park one time to go sledding. I was about 6 and he was 4. It was a great hill, except for the huge concrete stage in the middle at the bottom, but as long as you missed that you were fine. Problems arose when my lil’ brother did a faceplant into the stage. We have a photo lying around somewhere of the aftermath, it’s a classic. Him with a pouty face and his long blond hair and a face all cut up with bruises all over it.
i’ve enjoyed reading your stories. not that any of you are interested, but…