Toboggan

Alpaca chullos are warm, comforting headwear designed from the wool of the beasts of burden that hail from the Peruvian empire – but they are not toboggans. I own a chullo…actually, I own three. I wish I owned a toboggan. I suppose I would not have much use for what is otherwise incorrectly referred to as a bobsled in a latitude that is closer to the tropics than the arctic, but why should Cracker Barrel be the only place where it is considered normal to hang vintage items from your wall as if in a perpetual garage sale? I can understand why a sport that uses a modified toboggan would be called ‘skeleton,’ given the intrinsic danger of careening 90mph about two inches away from solid ice (I guess solid ice is redundant, and tautological, as if there is any other kind of ice…besides dry ice…but I suppose “redundant and tautological” is, itself, tautological). It almost seems as if the riders of toboggans are intentionally hurling themselves into Dante’s seventh circle of the ‘Inferno,’ – a few poor choices , in this case diving on top of a sled with virtually no brakes, which land them swirling endlessly and uncontrollably about in a fury of incessant turmoil. The good news is that skeleton ice course tracks have a long, smooth plane at the bottom for steady stopping. The bad news is that Dante’s “Inferno” just keeps spiraling downwards. I think it’s safe to say Dante took some poetic license in his imaginations, but the chaos of a downward spiral may, indeed, be fitting.