The Skouch at the FHE We Almost Died In

I decided it's story time, so gather around everybody--I'm going to tell you a tale of joy and pain that is absolutely true (honestly!).

One of the activities that the LDS church advocates is holding regular family home evenings--you know, an evening where the family gets together to have fun, share a spiritual thought, and so forth.  As students at BYU, we are separated from our families and are obviously unable to hold regular family home evenings.  As a solution to this, the BYU student wards put groups of students together into 'families'  with a mom and dad in charge of planning a weekly FHE.

My first FHE group here at BYU was organized in the fall of 2008 when I was a freshman.  We had lots of good times.  We laughed, we cried, we had dinners together, etc.  When we got back from Christmas vacation, it was time to reorganize the Family Home Evening groups, but our Bishop instructed us to have one more FHE with our old groups until they could get all the new groups together.  Obviously, our mom and dad wanted to go out with a bang.  As they were brainstorming, our dad's roommate made a suggestion that will go down in history as being on par with the decision to fill the Hindenburg with Hydrogen.

I think the conversation may have gone something like this:

Dad: "What are we going to do for FHE?"
Dad's Roommate: "Dude, I know what we need to do--we should go skouching!"
Dad: "What's a skouch?"
Dad's Roommate:  "It's an old couch I bought at a thrift store attached to used skies by a wooden frame I constructed."
Dad: "I don't know if that's safe....."
Dad's Roommate:  "It's been sitting out in the snow during the entire Christmas break, so the couch is frozen and the wood is waterlogged."
Dad:  "I'm still not convinced..."
Dad's Roommate: "I've had 17 guys on it at once and I've dragged it behind my truck with people on it."
Dad:  "......Oh alright, we'll do that."

For those of you who still aren't quite sure what a skouch is, I drew up a blueprint:

I did this in MS Paint.  This is difficult to do when using a laptop touchpad.

And so the following Monday we traveled to Rock Canyon Park like a family traveling to America on the Titanic.  We got there just after sundown, and the entire place was full of people.  There were loads of families, youth groups, and thrill seekers all sledding on this hill.  I remember very distinctly when the skouch was dragged off of the back of the pickup truck.  It landed with a loud thud that made everyone turn around and look at us.  There was a collective "whooaa...." heard.

I looked at the skouch, and then I looked at the steep hill, and then I looked at the snow--which had turned smooth and icy from being sledded on so much.  And then I said:

The guy who built the skouch reassured me that he had taken the skouch down several hills on several different occasions, and never once did he have an accident.  Still, I decided to sit this one out and be a spectator (I'm normally the cautious/wussy type).

So about six people loaded onto the skouch for it's first run.  A crowd gathered around us to watch.  There was tension in the air.  Then the skouch took off and started heading down the hill.  It was pretty much like a bullet, or a jet fighter  (it kinda sounded like a jet as it went down the hill).  In fact, I think there might have been a sonic boom heard.  The skouch had so much momentum that it moved about another 50 yards forward after it reached the bottom of the hill.  When it finally came to a stop, the crowd erupted into cheers and applause.  Several seventh graders were heard to say "can I get on the next ride?"  In my mind, I was thinking "that actually looked pretty fun..."

I grabbed a normal sled and went down to bottom of the hill to join my friends.  When I got there, the skouch engineer said "that was nothing.  We're going down that part of the hill this time."  He pointed to the tallest, steepest part of the hill.  We started to push the skouch up the hill.  As our entire group struggled to move the skouch uphill for the next several minutes, I gained an understanding of what it must have been like to be an Egyptian slave building the pyramids.

The difference is that we had a much steeper incline and ice.

Anyway, we finally got the skouch to the top of the hill.  I decided that I would join my friends this time.  The crowd gathered around us.  Bleachers were set up and people held signs.  I got on the skouch.  We pushed off and started heading down the hill.

Once again, the skouch was moving at a break-neck speed down the hill.  Things were going pretty good for the first part of the ride.  Then, about two-thirds of the way down, we hit a slight bump on the hill.

You may have seen this in a Calvin and Hobbes comic before.  Anyway, when we landed, there was a loud CRUNCH heard.  It took a moment to realize that the sound was the wooden framework below us shattering.  We were no longer riding a skouch.  We were riding on a couch balancing atop a pair of skies.  From this point on, everything moved in super-slow motion.  As we got to the bottom of the hill, the couch started leaning forward.  I saw that the ground was slowly getting closer to my face.  I heard someone yell, "We're gonna tip!!"

The following photographs show what happened next:

Once the smoke cleared, I opened my eyes and found myself face-down, staring at the ice.  I heard a guy yell, "oh my gosh!  Jake, I think I landed on your head!"  I had to think for a moment to realize how much my face hurt.  I said, "yeah...<cough> ...I think you did."  I lifted my head to see a disturbing scene of carnage and tangled bodies.  Apparently,  I landed on the icy ground and started to skid on my face when this guy in our group landed on my head.  Miraculously, my glasses not only stayed on my head, but also only suffered from one small scratch.  A spectator who survived the shockwave sledded down the hill to ask us if we were all right.  Fortunately, no one was seriously injured.  Granted, my whole body was sore for a couple of days and I got a gross scab on the side of my face (and I'm sure everyone else in the group had similar maladies).  But I think we were pretty lucky.

One of my roommates (the smart one) decided not to ride on the skouch, but instead decided to take a video with his cell phone.  Sadly, the night made it difficult to see much of anything.  What you can see is our group pushing the skouch over the edge of the hill, and then we disappear with the skouch into the darkness.  About four seconds later, you can hear a large crowd of people say "OOOooooohh!!!" in unison.

After that, none of us felt like sledding anymore.  We decided to go to a Starbucks and get some nice, warm hot chocolate.  I asked for a cup full of ice to nurse the skid burn on the side of my face. 

I actually look back on this with fond memories.  Even though there was a lot of pain involved, I'm grateful for the fun times our FHE group had together, and this is what I consider the culmination of all that.  Besides, if you're going to have a near death experience, you might as well do it with people you love, right?

Thanks guys!