Recently in Toronto, we were walloped by a huge blizzard, which dropped over 40 centimeters of snow on the ground. This was quite a rare sight as heavy snowfall has been largely non-existent in recent years. While this was a huge inconvenience for commuting and getting around (even with winter tires, it was impossible for me to drive without getting stuck the morning of the blizzard), it was a glorious opportunity to break out the snowshoes and put in some solid kilometers before the trails got trodden down too much. Last week, I put in close to 14km in 5 hours on the snowshoes over three days, and had a ton of fun changing things up from my usual training. It really felt like I wasn’t in Toronto anymore! Downside – I got a pretty nasty blister on my heel on the second day, and didn’t manage it properly, so I had to effectively go shoeless for four straight days after. Worth it to take advantage of the fresh pow’!
Unfortunately, with large snowfall a recurring problem reared its ugly head at my local park/hill – broken toboggans/sleds. I returned to the park this past Monday to find the hill absolutely trashed. Probably 20 or more broken sleds/toboggans scattered all over the place. It was truly an appalling sight. I spoke with a couple people walking their dogs and they too were pretty displeased with how some people treat our green spaces.
My workout that day consisted of running up and down the hill, collecting pieces of broken plastic and placing them by the city bin. It took almost an hour (shoutouts to a gentleman I spoke with who dragged a decent chunk on a discarded tarp to another bin at the bottom of the hill). Unfortunately many of the pieces were very large and impossible to place into the city bins, and I don’t have the ability to dispose of them myself at home, though I will try and bin as many as possible in the future since they can get blown around in the wind or people can scatter them. Don’t get me wrong, this was a great workout and I like doing my part for the community, it’s just a shame to see this level of mess.
The Engineering Point of View
I used to toboggan a lot as a kid 25 years ago. It seems to me that sleds are very poor quality nowadays – my sleds lasted multiple winters, yet it seems many of these broken sleds look fairly new. Plastic becomes quite brittle when it’s cold, so maybe a solid wooden toboggan would be a better choice! Also, I’m fairly certain that a lot of the sleds were overloaded which would expedite breakage. At the hill, I’ve seen multiple people on one single sled, and also adults using them (when they are clearly designed for children).
I also saw when I returned to the park on Wednesday to do my hill training several people take broken sleds from the pile and continue to use them. You’d think it was broken for a reason! Also, once the sled is broken, it’s structurally compromised so it will continue to break down with further use.
So, we have a possible set of factors consisting of bad material choice, misuse by the customer, as well as ignorance/laziness r.e. cleaning up. Not a good combination!
Next Steps?
I emailed my city councilor (her rep replied to me and promised it would get looked into) and posted on social media, and was glad to see that others are speaking up about this. My photos were shared on a twitter thread which the original post showed the exact same pile of sleds so it is clear there are many people out there who are noticing and speaking up. I’ll be closely keeping an eye on this and pressing hard for things to change. I’m thinking to collect the pile of sleds myself and take them to a dumpster in my car if this hasn’t been taken care of by the end of the weekend.
Stay tuned for updates!
Veg 'n' Alpine 