Had to share just because, as mentioned elsewhere, it was such a beautiful winter evening; and we experienced a very strange phenomenon.

I left the trampoline up this year. I usually take it down for the winter, but that cruddy vinyl coated pad they give you to cover the springs finally disintegrated, and it was the only component that wasn't highly weather resistant; so why bother taking it apart. The tramp is at ground level as a safety feature. Instead of being on legs, there is a huge conical hole in the ground, over which it is firmly planted.

So by the end of the day yesterday there was a foot of snow on it. We walk over there and I'm pointing out to the kids that the dip in the surface of the tramp shows just how much snow weighs, even the powdery stuff we've gotten so far. We walk on to it and take a few hops and I immediately notice that it feels like nothing I've experienced. A couple more hops and sudddenly I'm getting nauseous.

It turns out that doing a running back drop onto a tramp with a foot of snow on it feels just like jumping into a tank of pudding*. It's very soft, it swallows you up, there is a lot of give, a lot of cushioning, and a definite stop, but no bounce. And if you jump up and down in a standing position (which requires a lot of work) you start getting nauseated after about a half dozen jumps.

My guess is that this is similar to walking up a stopped escalator. I noticed that can be disorienting and was told it is because of the different and changing size of the first few steps. Your body is expecting one thing and gets another, messing up your equilibrium. Must be a similar thing happening with the snowtramp. Body is expecting big springy bounces and insteads get tremendously shock absorbing gooieness.

*Trust me, I know this. Comes from getting way too up close and personal with a sewage treatment facility.

__________________
Don of Borg - Cool, Calm, Collective.

"Within the next generation I believe that the world's leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience." -- Aldous Huxley