It was the third Saturday with 'sledding' written on the calendar. Our first Saturday was a sledding party with multiple families, but the weather promised us a large dump of snow. Nobody wanted to brave bad roads in the mountains Uzbekistan, so we delayed the party and of course it was sunny that day. The next Saturday we decided to go with one other family, but the weather promised us rain, and nobody wants rain while sledding.
This Saturday promised sunny, warm weather. We made our third date for sledding, with the same family. Brandon wasn't that sure about going and neither was I, but we said yes when the other family asked if we'd like to go. But Friday some kids started looking sick, and they ended up cancelling while we were pulling on our snow gear. Being halfway done, we just went up anyway.
We had found a nice field last winter and decided to return there. I had worried that it would have been turned into houses, and when we got there it was enclosed with a large concrete wall. After repeatedly explaining the concept of trespassing to the children ("You can't just climb the wall, or go through a whole. A wall means it belongs to someone - who doesn't want you there"), we headed back to a spot I had seen earlier.
Our spot ended up being quite nice, close to parking, and far enough up the mountain that nobody else joined us with their four-wheelers, rental tubes, horse rides, or shashlik grills. Uzbeks are very social and love to hang out with each other in the snow, which attracts all the ride-sellers. I'm not sure of the correlation between sledding and horseback rides, but there seems to be a strong one.
We did have a hopeful tube owner show up, hoping that we'd rent his gear and a horse owner tried to struggle up the hill to offer his horse, but otherwise we got to have the place to ourselves. The kids had a great time building snow forts, sledding, making snow graves, and throwing snow balls while Elizabeth hung out in her chair, wondering why we had stuck her in the car and drove for so long just for white cold stuff. William proved to be a sledding fiend, trudging up the hill with me for ride after ride.
After enough time to give Edwin a crazy sunburn (next time, make sure he sunscreens his entire face), we finally put Elizabeth out of her misery and headed home. Today I saw my first spring blossoms, so it looks like the sledding season is over for this winter. Until next time!