Wow – that is a specific item for the bucket list, yes, but
my brother and I thought it would be hilarious. He thought of the idea and
tried it with his friends last summer behind the jet ski.
I thought it was dangerous, and dumb (but funny!).
However, on this journey, we are trying things that we wouldn’t normally be comfortable doing.
Besides, why not? What’s the worst that could happen?
Actually, don’t answer that. And I’m not going to think about it.
So, we went to the cabin. My brother got the satellite dish out of the woods and drilled a hole at the edge. He tied a rope to the dish and we tied the other side around the back of his snowmobile.
We are all super pumped at this point. We get bundled up for this crazy idea. We take this awesome picture with the satellite in the back:
You can’t see the snowmobile, but my brother is straddling
it below the camera. Nathan and I buckled our helmets on after the picture and
hopped into the dish. It’s around 6 feet in width.
The lake is frozen, so we decide to goof off there, away from all the trees.
The dish is huge, so you have to do a mini hop to get in there. It doesn’t seem as slippery as I would have thought. We sit down cross-legged because we didn’t know what to expect. Joey hits the gas, and we topple backwards laughing. Joey looks back and sees that we are fine so he goes faster and faster until we have to hoist ourselves closer to the front of the dish so we don’t slip off. There is snow flying everywhere, so we can’t see what way we are going or when he plans on turning, or which way!
He stops, and he’s laughing so hard. Apparently there’s a little hole in the middle of the dish (for mounting, if you were using this dish as a satellite dish I guess K) and the snow is just shooting up and out of the hole into our faces and we are just sitting there like bumbling idiots, letting it happen.
So now, I lay my body over the hole and Nathan hops on the snowmobile and Joey jumps in with me.
There’s snow everywhere, and I push out as much as I can before Nathan fires up the snowmobile.
He hits it and Joey and I fly back! Apparently, the snow made the dish slippery. I’m trying desperately to stay in the dish at this point and I’m on my stomach just grasping at nothing. Joey’s up at the front of the dish laying down and holding onto the front to keep himself on.
Every time I try to hoist myself closer to the front, I slide right back. My feet are on the back edge and Nathan’s starting to turn us to the left. The dish swoops to the right, and so do me and Joey. Now
I’m off the hole, and the snow is flying everywhere again, so we can’t see. In my attempt to get my chest on the hole to block the snow, Nathan switches directions again, and my body slides back to the left, but now my face is right next to the snow geyser and it’s filling my face mask on my helmet with snow. I turn away, get my hand over the snow shooting up, but now I can’t see anything because my helmet is covered with snow. I can see my brother holding on for dear life, but he does have the energy to turn around and bust out laughing at me..
At this point, Nathan decides to straighten the snowmobile back out and hit the gas. We both fly off… and by fly off, I mean, we’re both on our stomachs and just limp from exhaustion from laughing and trying to hold on that we more just slide slowly off. But the ride isn’t slow, so once we hit the snow, our bodies go careening backwards. And we slide and slide, and I was surprised by how long we slid for! When we stood up, we saw our slide marks and couldn’t stop laughing. I fell off at a slightly different time and angle then Joey and he had slid about 20 feet in a different direction from me, but you could see the slide marks that our bodies made and they were about 20 feet each too!
Nathan sped back to make sure we were okay, and we were more than okay! That was such a rush!
I pulled the boys for a while until they tumbled off, and
then I hopped back in the dish with Nathan, and Joey drove.
I knew more of what to expect this time, so I held on to the front of the dish. Joey started pulling, and Nathan immediately turned it into a game. Who can stay on the longest? Which means, he was trying to tug me off of my holding place, but I was holding on for dear life. Joey was swinging us right, left, right again. My hands were sliding down the rim as we swung right, and then when he would switch directions, I would be dangerously close to falling off face first. By now the satellite dish was like ice, where we couldn’t lay still without sliding in whichever direction our momentum was pulling us.
At one point, Nathan was almost off, but he grabbed onto my legs and was able to pull himself fully back on, but then I slid back and he was trying to hold me on (because he remembered he’s a great husband and doesn’t want me to get hurt ;) ) but his efforts were mute as my one leg slid, followed very quickly by the other. I was a warrior though (remember the game - Who can stay on the longest?), and held onto his foot and pulled that turd off right along with me. There was snow everywhere on that fall! In my jacket, helmet, snow pants, gloves, everywhere!
We, unfortunately, didn’t get any videos because this was on Sunday after a pretty decent snowfall and my parents had already left to get back to the cities.
The whole experience was thrilling! We were out there for a good half day of fun. I had no idea we could have that much fun on a satellite dish.
Thank you for joining us on this journey and taking the time
to read this and be a part of our journey with us! We look forward to crossing
off more items and sharing our experiences with you!
