Near Death on the Rails

So, we had over a foot of snow earlier this week.  Joe came up here on Friday afternoon, just in time for another few inches of snow.  We decided to go snowshoeing...for only the second time together this year.  It's been a crappy snow year all around!

We tried to leave town and go up to Gooseberry, but the wheels on Joe's car just spun on the icy roads.  Instead, we decided to just snowshoe down the train tracks.

It was beautiful outside.

Joe on the Bridge

Me with a giant snowflake over my face

We snowshoed to a bridge just north of town...

...where we found some rather sweet graffiti.  It's nice to know the kids have community pride.

As we were on the way back, Joe suddenly stopped.  "Do you hear that?" he said.  I stopped.  "Is that a train?" I said.  At that exact second, a huge locomotive came around the bend no more than 50 feet behind us.  The annoyed conductor blared the horn at us as. We went "AUGHHH!".

Joe looked to the left, I looked to the right.  Both of us found steep embankments, so we each looked the other way: still steep.  "Come on!" I shouted, and we slid down the one on the side closest to town.  I slid all the way to the bottom, but Joe was able to stop himself a few feet down so that he could take a picture of the locomotive as it rumbled by:

"Get off the tracks, you morons!!!"

Luckily, we survived.  Granted, the train wasn't going that fast.  But for a brief moment, we both thought "This may have been a stupid idea".  By the time we were walking back to the house, though, we were talking about what would be involved in building a little handcar so that we could roll down the rails on our own.