Thursday, December 9, 2010

Some Neatly Flowing Winter Thoughts...

I love sledding.  I know, who doesn’t, right?  But I don’t think many people appreciate it very much at my age.  By the time you turn Twenty-Three, you have turned your attention to other fun going-downhill sports, such as biking, skiing or snowboarding, or even kayaking.  I like biking, but not as much since I had a bike stolen from the 46th Street Station and had to walk home in the dark.  And I really like skiing.  Yea, I ski.  I’m sorry, I never wanted to learn to snowboard.  It’s not my fault I learned to ski first and then just never wanted to not be good at going down the hill.  That was the main reason, really.  Do I look down on those who snowboard?  Maybe.  Why, are they looking down on me?  Then yes, I definitely do….
I also really like kayaking, but I don’t have one yet, and I may have to get one in order to do some more challenging stuff.  But the reason I love sledding so much is because the sled I own is one of the fastest, coolest sleds around.  I got it for about five bucks at the fall festival’s rummage sale, but I’ve gotten the money’s worth a hundred times over.  It’s black, it has runners and a steering wheel (kind of a mini- snowmobile), and it might be the best thing ever- I don’t know why these aren’t more popular!
But I also have a car now, and quite honestly, driving in the winter is like sledding- only with potentially greater consequences.  The strangest thing about driving this vehicle is that on a certain level, I’m not sure if it actually works.  Because I’ve never seen it running from the outside.  I have commuted to work a couple times now, but for all I know, I get in, turn it on and then fifteen minutes later I get out of it at work.  What happens in between?  I see cars going past me, and me past them, and them going past me the other way, but that could all just be a simulation, and my car just teleported to work.  I can tell it’s a different place than my house, too, because the ‘burbs just have a different feel than the city.  A little bit more wide open, yes, but that’s because they don’t use things like space as efficiently as us.  Read the book The World Inside.  One day we will all be living in Urban Monads, giant mile-high towers of people and civilization.  Probably not, but the city is better than the suburbs- so there!
Nonetheless, if indeed my car does move through the world, I haven’t seen it.  Maybe God has.  I wonder if he could tell my driving style just by watching from a bird’s eye view.  He would probably see a green Cutlass Supreme (which is being mentioned in the song I’m listening to right now, “Good To Be Me” by Uncle Kracker- and no, that’s not a coincidence) which stays about ten miles over the speed limit and insinuates itself into different lanes maybe a little more often than it has to.
Which reminds me, I might have to one day get a white G painted on the side. And then outline it in gold.  It would be fun in this Vikings-crazy country.  The best part of being a Packers fan, honestly, is that it gives you a way to relate to people anywhere you go.  Not even so much as a way to pick a fight with regular Minnesotans, but with people anywhere who are either Packers fans, Bears fans, Vikings fans or even Cowboys fans (suck it, ‘Boys Nation!).  Because you find them everywhere.  In my life, I can’t see myself living for more than a year in any place outside the Midwest, so it works out great for me in that respect, but even if I did, I could still find those I could talk NFC North football with just about anywhere.  I feel like as a native Minnesotan, some of the people I watch the games with see me as some kind of giant Helga-hat-wearing Norseman decking himself out in Green and Gold.  I gotta tell them, that’s just wrong.  I am obviously a meat-cleaver-wielding Acme Meat Packer.  (Ugh, maybe that’s why we got rid of that mascot…)  And I completely respect the great state of Green Bay, Wis.  But not Greater Wisconsin.
You can bet your ass that if I had another topic here, you’d get another killer segue.

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