I liked when my scout troop was bullying other kids because then they
were distracted from bullying me. The competition portion of the
Klondike derby was focused around sleds that each troop was supposed
to build ours was a super nice aluminum and ski sled with a net deck
instead of the wooden one that most of the other sleds had. Ours was
super light and carried all of our gear without sinking into the snow
at all. We dominated the competition in racing and where you were
racing was from one station to the next competing in survival
challenges. We were a troop of kids who did stuff like that for fun
so we ate them up at that too. The problem was that we finished hours
before some of the other troops and we were left with some free time
which was not good for me being low man on the totem pole. We decided
to use our sled to sled down the hill we had previously used to try
and assassinate people. A Klondike sled has no way to steer it which
was a big problem when the sledding hill turned. It also turned out
by 'we should go sledding' really meant 'you should go sledding'. I
was all alone on the sled and three of the older boys gave me a huge
push and I was off. I was gaining a lot of speed and was coming into
a corner fast I told the boys to go ahead and slow me down now but it
turned out that after the initial push they had let it go and were
watching and laughing from the top of the hill. If I didn't make the
corner I would shoot off into the mostly frozen pond so I decided to
bail out instead. The pond was fed by a spring that kept a 10'
section of it from freezing which looked like where I was heading
even after bailing out. I was sliding down beside the sled and not
loosing speed fast enough even though I was trying to dig in any part
of my body into the snow and ice. I was really starting to panic when
I hit a rock with the middle of my back which slowed me down and spun
me around and bruising me pretty badly. The sled kept going and shot
right into the pond with only the handle and the back of the sled
sicking out. The other boys ran down, not to check on my safety but
to yell at me for letting the sled go into the pond because I guess
they didn't really know about gravity and velocity and stuff like
that. I was laying on the ground writhing in pain trying to get my
breath back while they yelled at me and told me to go get a rope to
haul out the sled with. I got myself together and hiked up the hill
and got a rope and we hauled it out. I was really sore but I was glad
that the sled wasn't hurt, we loved that sled.
