I love taking advantage of little bits of time, especially during this hectic pre-Christmas whirl.
Saturday morning in the fresh snow and cold the little red-haired girl and I headed with the wooden sled to the Elbe riverbank near where we used to live when we first came to Hamburg.
We were only out there for an hour or so, but every time we do a childhood tradition like this I savour it, thinking: this might be the last. She’s growing up so fast, how much longer will she feel like going out with her old man for a bit of fun in the snow?
Translation of the end:
How you supposed to steer?
You gotta lean!
But I did!
Oh…
Ah…
The banner photograph shows the town of Britannia Beach, BC, Canada, where I grew up. It's home. But I don't live there anymore.
And you held a camera while sledding!
Ha ha! That’s great! We don’t have that much snow, but if it keeps up, Mr. M and the boys will probably go over to the hill in the next town and have some fun. When I was a kid we had a very long, steep curved driveway so our house was official sledding headquarters all winter.
The camera was just for a couple of runs, of course – not every time!
It’s snowing again this morning, so maybe even if the weather warms up a bit like it’s supposed to, we’ll still have some around at Christmas. Seeing the snow billowing off rooftops in the wind and having to adapt so much to the cold reminds me of Quebec a lot, where it would be at least -10 for weeks on end.
Pure fun, for sure. I still have my Dixie Flyer. I drag it out every Christmas for decorating – I finally let the ice skates go, but I just can’t get rid of that sled.
lovely
Ian,
Hey, how ya lovin’ that “global warming”?
Ouch! That’s gotta hurt!
Those people in Europe who died from those arctic blasts would probably disagree with you about this issue — if they hadn’t frozen to death, that is.
*
Confusing weather with climate again, I see.
Is your daughter bilingual or does she prefer to speak in German?
She’s bilingual, but prefers to speak in German. At times she surprises me with the treat of a sentence or two in English, but mostly we talk just like you hear it: she in German, me in English.
Ian,
And ten years from now, I suppose, when a decade of collected weather statistics show the same variability that we’ve always seen, you will STILL be telling me that I’m confusing weather and climate?
Riiiiiiiiiight.
God is dead and so is global warming.
If you really need something to believe in, why not try Gore’s alternate scare-mongering myth, ManBearPig?
*
I haven’t a clue what I will say 10 minutes from now, nor is it up to you to predict, but your arrogation of responsibility for supplying my reply 10 years from now comes as no surprise. I hope you enjoy the view with your head in the sand. I can’t say it’s any prettier up here watching the world continue on its path of self-destruction cutting down what’s left of the forests, over-fishing, poisoning the seas, and on and on. Just because a bunch of climate sceptics have politicised the debate doesn’t make the harm we’re doing any less real, nor the need to do something about it any less urgent.