A wooden sled with metal runners benefits from a bit of maintenance, says Sam Cooper, a Kingwood resident who loves his sleds.
"The main thing that we have tried to do every year is to keep the runners waxed up or soaped up, and to do that several times throughout the day if you're riding," he says. He suggests youngsters carry a bar of soap or a bit of paraffin.
"Then when you're taking breaks and coming back in to warm up and dry off, drink hot chocolate, stash your sled somewhere safe -- because a sled that's left out by the street is an easy target for unscrupulous sledders."
And children who own the whole world.
"The kids in the neighborhood, they would just pack up," Cooper recalls. "They'd have all kinds of sleds and just canvas the neighborhood looking for yards, hills, this and that. As the day wore on and different patches of yards and streets were thawing, they would seek areas of shade that still had remnants of sled-able areas -- that's another element about the whole experience, trying to track down those remaining patches out there as the thaw begins.
"Even now. That's my childhood and even Sean's, our kids. They come dragging back in and you ask them, "Where did you go?'"
-- Celia Storey
ActiveStyle on 12/15/2014