Sledding (or sleigh riding as my husband grew up calling it) has always been a favorite winter past time of mine. My family recently took a trip up north to our favorite camping spot for our annual sledding party. This is tradition, and each year it seems that people come up with stranger and stranger things to use to get them down the hills more quickly! Here are a few things that flew past me as I was climbing up the hill!
Sleds, (plastic and wooden), toboggans, snow boards... the usual boring things
Inner tubes of various sizes
Assorted lids (garbage cans, dumpster, rubbermaid containers)
Blow up air mattress (the kind you float on)
Plywood
Laundry Baskets (there were some cute little ones on the "bunny hills" in these)
Cardboard
Knee board/wake board (normally used on the water)
Plastic tarp (for covering wood and 4 wheelers)
Garbage bags
All of these things got me thinking (expecially after I saw the topic of the blog for this week) what other types of items do people us to sled. I googled this, and found some even more interesting, or strange things. For instance...
A toilet seat lid
Little Tykes house roof
Pick up truck bed liner
shovel (ouch...impact could really hurt!)
Cookie sheets and pizza pans
I guess that goes to show you, there is always someone out there thinking creatively! Now we will have to figure out what to take up next year! My family is always looking for creative ways to have fun! :)
You definitely painted a great picture of winter fun. For some reason the first thought that came to my mind was the scene from National Lampoon's Christmas vacation - with Chevy Chase flying down the hill at lightning speed on the saucer because he applied some special lubricant he had invented. Once again, your examples reinforce that people are at their most creative when they are creating for themselves, not others. They were inspired and motivated by fun, not a job or pay. How tough would it be to have to sit down at work at say, "Okay, I have to invent something now..."
ReplyDeleteGreat topic Amy! Some people have definitely taken some pretty elaborate measures to figure out a way to slide down a hill quickly. Sabrina I think you make a great point about these creative ideas coming from people motivated by self-interest and enjoyment. I think it provides a much more relatable example of what Pink talks about in terms of employees being more productive in the time where the pressure is off and they are allowed to work on whatever they want. It's really the same thing. When freedom and fun enter the picture it becomes possible for concepts like google to be thought of, and for toilet seat lids to end up as snow boards.
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