Dashing through the snow, in a one horse open sleigh

We finally got a decent amount of snow, bout half a foot. Time for a sleigh ride!
I only wear my chaps in the winter normally for riding/sleigh rides. They keep the wind out, minus my butt but I was sitting on that anyway. I learned my lesson in the summer after wearing them with shorts and zipping my skin in them a time or two. No thanks.
Today I finally got to use my new/old sleigh. God it's ugly these colours with it's tacky 60's vinyl refurbished seat. Best $130 ever spent though. I harnessed Sheba after 30 trips between the house and machine shed looking for harness parts and electrical tape and baling twine, nails, hammers and a pair of vise grips. I got her hitched and my friend Korinne and I hopped in with a blanket on our lap. You would swear we were doing construction, not hitching a horse to a really old sleigh.

See theres laws. They are everywhere but the ones in Ontario/Canada say you must have two bells per horse when you have it hitched to a sleigh because car drivers often have windows shut and would hear a bunch if bells before snow muffled hoof beats. Of course we have a set of bells. They sound so nice don't you agree?
It just wouldn't be the same ride without sleigh bells.

Going for a sleigh ride requires the right weather. Not windy and not too cold. It was perfect I drove my friend, my dad and his friend around for about 45 minutes and I was quite toasty the whole time.

I plan on re-painting the sleigh black and a red wine colour to match the velvet seats I have to use for it off the other sleigh. I have some brass fittings in mind and gold painted details. That isn't until spring/summer of course.

Indigo's turn tomorrow. I hope shes not as nutty as when I opened the back door this morning to see her bucking on the spot. What a goof. I swear shes 2 instead of 18 this year.

So I went tobogganing with some friends in the village last night because it was too late by the time we had sufficient snow to go for a sleigh ride.
Sarah took pictures of our escapades.

After we attempted suicide at throwing ourselves (minus me who was the video lady) down a nearly 90 degree slope into a parking lot at the harbor.
Sarah was our first real guinea pig on this hill as she took her sled dubbed "the bat mobile" down and wiped out on a cement parking block.
As all kids from the county (I guess being 21 now I am not really a kid anymore. At heart, at heart) know sledding isn't fun unless you attempt to go down on some sort of contraption, piece of plastic, or hood of a car at least once or twice or three times a year.

We found a foam mat for camping in the garage rafters. It's blue and 7 feet by probably 10 long.

This brings me back to memories of a few years ago when we had one of those folding gym mats they often have in schools that you can Velcro together. We piled 13 random kids on it at the hill one year and pushed it down. I have the video on my old phone if I can find the charger. Every kid made it down safe and sound and even came up to go down again.
Sadly the mat has been lost but we thought of re-creating this adventure as we rifled through the garage in search of things we could hoof ourselves down the hill on.
The mat looked about right.Note I take the stupidest pictures ever. I look super happy to have this big blue mat in my posession.

First we attempted to slide down on it. No one had been down the hill at the beach yet and so the snow was fluffy. I didn't get very far so our second idea was to roll another friend, Dan, up in it like a burrito.
Now poor Dan is a few years younger than I am and was always the guinea pig of my friends and I when we had these crazy, stupid, dangerous, ideas. He dutifully obliged as our crash test dummy like those years back in high school as a freshman.
The first few rolls his "burrito sled" came un-raveled. Being the farm/horse girl I am I ran to my car only to come out with...a lead rope! Oh the many times that lead rope has come in handy in so many situations. I can't see a reason to take it out of my trunk.
I tied it around the middle of the burrito sled with a trusty quick release knot (Horses teach you all sorts of different ways to tie things), re-assured everyone that you just had to tug the end of the rope to make it come undone and rolled Dan down the hill who promptly ejected from one end and somersaulted the rest of the way down to our great amusement.
What would we do without a few daredevil friends? I know I would end up getting hurt like I did last year tobogganing, but thats a whole other story.

The ice was completely frozen in the Harbor. I keep thinking about getting a new pair of ice skates as I have not ice skated since I was in grade 5. I however can Rollerblade quite well.
With almost a foot of snow on the ice we ventured out where I made my first snow angel of the year right on the thick ice.


I think tomorrow I might go in hunt of a pair of skates and shovel some snow off the harbor to attempt to skate. After another sleigh ride that is.