Sledding down the main road is lots of fun, just watch out for the tre....Oh Never Mind He found um

As some of you might have noticed, I spent a great deal of my youth up in Idyllwild, about 2 months each summer and the 2 week Christmas break....Usually in the summer I was just up with my cousins, my mom, dad and sister, especially my sister would all be at home in Upland.
I can remember one Christmas break in 1958, when the whole family was together at my aunt and uncles place and it was real cold, -7 degrees daytime highs and about 4 feet of snow on the ground. One day we all decided to go sledding. We were right at the base of Suicide Rock and had all of the roads to ourselves, except other people who lived up there....The Sheriff and the CHP had closed the mountain down because of the heavy snow fall and the below zero temperatures...Essentially we had the streets of a very frozen Idyllwild to our selves.
So we picked one very long stretch of road with lots of homes on it, and chose it to sled down....As a compromise for all of the noise we were making we asked several of our neighbors to join in the fun...Before long, people were coming out to join us bringing beer, and coke, sandwiches and other snacks to make one big snow party.
My uncle had warned us all though, to be very careful because at the bottom of the hill which was about a mile long there was an intersection with the main road down into town.....He told us to take sure we made sharp turn to the left or crash into the snow banks, he didn't want any of us going over the slide into the trees.
No problem, we all took his advice and either crashed into the snow before the intersection or we made the turn...Every one except my dad....He went flying down the road at about 40 mph (That's real fast on a sled) and was having a ball whooping it up....Then we all heard one of those yells, kind of like eyowlllllll!!!!!! and then nothing.
We got down to the intersections fast as we could but did not see anything, nor could we find my dad....Finally my cousin spotted the spot that he had gone over the side of the road at and we climbed down the embankment looking for my dad....We found him, wrapped around a tree, moaning and laughing all at the same time....Moaning because he had a 6 inch gash in his leg, which was not bleeding to bad because of the cold and laughing because he missed the turn....Crazy huh...Well that was the way my dad thought about things and essentially the way i feel about life today.
Anyways, we got him back up to the road, and my mom put some ice on the wound to keep it from bleeding in the warm car and they drove him down to the medical center in town....He was back at my uncles place in a few hours, all smiles but my mom had a look of 'like You stupid dumb blankty blank'.
That was our end of dare devil sled riding down from the base of Suicide Rock into town....But you know what we did....next summer, when I came up for the summer, I brought my ten speed bicycle up with me....We had decided to ride our ten speed down the same route and see how fast we could go....Big mistake.
The very first time I tried the ride, I was going so fast that I flew off of the same turn and almost hit the same tree....That was enough for me, especially after the woman who lives in the home there came out to see what all of the ruckus was....all she could say was....'Don't I know you from someplace?'
Gary Hall the ghostpainter