So the last post was about our first trip to Benjamin Hill.  This is about the second.  This time we prepared.  We brought a winter picnic and two sleds.  We also bought an inner tube, but it broke in about 12 seconds (literally).  Chucking that aside, we trudged up and down Benjamin Hill more than a dozen times (for the second time this weekend--phew we are beat).  This time I got some more good video.  Here Isaac and I are at the top, prepping for an awesome run:



After that, I got this video of Isaac doing it "all by myself."  Be prepared Nanna, its pretty harrowing (though he never so much as wobbled):

A nearby town, Shirley, had a small local ski area in their town's rec area in the 1950s.  It was nothing big for a ski slope, about 200-250 feet high and 1200 feet long, but as a sledding hill it is practically Everest.  There was were a few good hills aroud my house in Xenia when I was little but even the massive Hawthorne Hill pales in comparison.  Here is a shot that puts it into perspective (taken by Mom at the top of the hill, those specks are Isaac and I):

The snow was coming down in thick flakes, as we took to the hill.  The first few runs were about half way up, but eventually Isaac pushed us all the way to the top.  It was an impressive site looking down the hill.  Worried we'd kill ourselves, I held on as tight as I could and basically cocooned Isaac on the sled.  The forces of gravity would have to peel of the sled and then rip a determined Dad away before they got to the soft nuggety Isaac center.  Mom gave us a push and we went slowly.  As we broke down the hill the angle of descent increased and we started really flying.  Snow and ice flew up into our faces and a few bumps almost pried the I-man away, but when we finished, about forty seconds after we started, we looked up and saw the entire hill behind us.  Isaac and I let out a shrill of excitement and Mom raised her arms in victory.  We had completed our own Olympic downhill event.  

But that wasn't enough for the I-man.  He wanted to go down the hill on his own.  I got his heavy LL Bean sled out of the car and we set him up around 1/3 of the way down.  The first run was great and he seemed plenty safe, perhaps even safer than when riding with me.  The weight of the LL Bean sled coupled with its seat gave him a perfect perch from which to attack Benjamin Hill.  The next run was higher.  The next, higher still.  Then I coaxed him into letting me record him as we raced down the hill.  Here we are plummeting to our eventual cushy end:

By the end the two and half hours of sledding, I-man had worked his way up the hill until he was about 2//3 of the way up, doing it all by himself.  We were wiped out having carried him and two sleds up a dozen or so times.

Aside from marveling at his courage, we learned two other lessons.  Isaac peed outside and we taught him not to eat the yellow snow.  And we also watched another family, a Dad and son, go down the hill on an inner tube and crash in stupendous fashion.  City people that arrive in their fancy Volvos and have never been outside will learn that, like lugers in the Olympics, you steer a sled with your feet.  

As kids are want to do, Isaac has become obsessed with a movie.  We have watched over and over again.  The movie is Mulan.  And though he will deny it if asked, he is positively enthralled by the villan of the movie, Shan Yu.  He also likes some of Shan Yu's henchmen, going so far as to name a few of them.  There is "Long Bow Guy", a guy with, well, you guessed it, a long bow.  There is Shirtless Guy, Mohawk Guy, Scraggly Hair Guy.  In fact, I am not sure if Isaac noticed that Mulan was a main character or even a character at all.

The best part of watching the movie with Isaac is the fact that whenever the bad guys are going to be featured in a scene, about a minute before the scene takes place he warns us: "Mommy, Daddy, bad guys are coming."  He never gets it wrong, ever.  He knows every scene in that movie and every scene that follows a scene.  

The avalanche scene in the movie is his favorite part and we have watched tons of avalanche videos on YouTube as a result.  There is this particular video that absolutely mesmerizes Isaac.  To be entirely fair, it mesmerizes me me too.   

But Isaac is not just a guide to the movie.  He is effective at recreating its most notable scenes, where he is playing Shan Yu (with the proviso, of course, that he does not like Shan Yu).  Here is our little Shan Yu (or, as Isaac calls him: Scary Good Guy):