Many Austrian mountain parks have a summer toboggan slide, called Rodelbahn in German. The girls just love them! It's a sled on wheels. You control your speed with the stick. Pull back = brake hard, middle = brake just a little, forward = Newtonian free fall.
When we've spent all we can bear without grimacing (it's about $4 per run per person), we give the kids one last run. Vanessa braves her last one alone, a move I regret having allowed when the rest of us reach the bottom, count to 4, realize Vanessa is not among us, and scan up the mountain in vain for signs of a lone 6-year-old rider. Just as we're about to send the officials up the mountain to go search for her, here she comes around the bend. She's inching down the mountain at a speed of about 1 km per five weeks, with a traffic jam of peeved riders stacked up behind her. She'd had her stick in full-brake position the whole time. We haul her out, apologize in multiple languages to the riders behind her and offer to buy them another ticket, which they gracefully decline with empathetic smiles.
OK...this was a hard out belly laugh! Thank you for sharing! Vanessa, YOU GO GIRL! Any speed is the right speed as long as you are comfortable.
ReplyDeleteThank goodness she does not have her cousin Ed's daredevil tendencies. You could have spent the afternoon in the ER. Glad they had fun.
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