“Will you slide down the hill with me Gram? Cuz you didn’t last time.” My four-year old granddaughter Cade (who has the memory of an elephant) looked up at me. We had just arrived to Conlin farm, our local toboggan hill in Perth. She spoke true. Last year I would run down the hill and help her drag the toboggan back up but not once did I sit my butt on the sled.

I was in my twenties the last time I went hurtling down a hill on a wooden death trap. I wiped out, cracked my tailbone and it was six months before I could sit without pain. And that wasn’t the first time I had hurt myself tobogganing. It amazes me when I see people speeding down a hill, swerving and steering, gliding to a stop, unharmed and happy, almost in the parking lot. My daughter-in-law Sharlee is one of those people, she and the kids are like poetry in motion on the hill. I’m kind of in awe.

I can do this, I thought. People love tobogganing, I was being paranoid. So I sat myself down on another wooden instrument of agony with Cade in front of me. Sharlee plunked my 15-month old grandson Huck on my lap, who was delighted, and down we went. It happened fast as these things do. You have probably already figured out that, of course, it didn’t end well. It’s a blur for me, all I remember is pain, but Cade says we rolled and rolled and rolled. Fortunately, the kids were both ok but my relic of a body was not. I was pretty sure I had broken a rib but after a few days it was clear there was also something wrong with my head. I had constant brain fog, headache, nausea and dizziness. At my daughter Sabrina’s insistence, I went to the hospital where X-rays confirmed the broken rib and the doctor confirmed a concussion.

So here I am, packed and ready for my bike trip to Chile. My brother Rob and I had gotten my bike road-worthy, he gave me a crash course on the mechanics, the bike box for the flight is waiting in my garage, but when the Santiago-bound plane leaves tomorrow, I won’t be on it. Between my dizzy head and my busted rib I can’t ride or carry a pack. Initially, I was super down-hearted that my winter was not going to look the way I thought it would. My visions of coasting down the mountains of Patagonia would not happen. It took me a couple of days to make my peace with it and then I decided that, for whatever reason, I just wasn’t meant to go on this trip. Maybe I would have crashed my bike or skidded off a cliff (making my toboggan shenanigans look like a winter picnic). Who knows. In any case, I’m grounded for now. Sabrina says I’m starting 2026 from a place with only room to improve. I like that idea. Maybe when my head is straight I’ll go for a few weeks to an Airbnb in Mexico to rest and write. I like that idea too. Until then, Happy New Year. Stay warm, stay safe and only go tobogganing if you are good at it.