If you were like me in elementary school, then from grades six to eight, you went on field trips to Chicopee Tube Park. That was the thing to do when it came to Ontario elementary school trips and that was often the one trip that mattered most. Regardless of whether you would go down the hill holding onto your best friend’s tube or your crush’s, you were making memories and you were trying to impress everyone else in your grade. Perhaps what excited you was when your mother would volunteer to be a supervisor on the trip and she would bake all the cool treats. Whenever my mom baked, everyone wanted to sit at my table when we were in the Chalet and that was the only time I was really ‘popular’ when it came to elementary school.
Even though it sounds like it, the tube park is not just for young children and high schoolers, you can be any age to go be thrown down a hill in a tube. All I wanted to do for my twenty-first birthday was to go to Chicopee, and my boyfriend made it happen! Imagine a six foot guy trying to fit in an average size tube, trying to keep his legs up from hitting the ground as we are going flying down the hill. I even saw many older people, they were having a blast too. Parents were there, pulling their children up the hill while they sat in the tube. My boyfriend wouldn’t pull me up the hill in a tube which was kind of upsetting but at least there was the lift that I stood on that took me to the top so I did not have to walk up the giant hill.
Hold on to your hat, your glasses and your scarf, because if you ask the person at the top of the hill to spin you super fast down the hill, that is exactly what they will do. You will be screaming the entire way down, or in my case laughing at my boyfriend as he struggles to keep his legs up from hitting the hill as we are going down.
Everyone loves Chicopee, and it is always a fun experience. If you do not want to go tubing you can go skiing, although I cannot ski for the life of me, so I do not do it. My favourite part of going is seeing what everyone else is wearing when they go tubing. I wore two pairs of pants, winter boots, a winter coat and a hat. My boyfriend on the other hand wore jeans, Vans and a winter coat and the winter hat I bought him. Did either of us think to bring gloves? No. Thank goodness it was such a nice day out. The weather network said it was negative five but it did not feel like it when you were on top of the hill. Other people were in jeans or in shoes that were not really made for snow either, which I’m sure made my boyfriend feel a little bit better.
If anything, this means that anyone big or small, young or old can go tubing and have a blast while doing it. If you have not been to Chicopee in Kitchener, my only comment to that is that you must go at some point in your life and make sure you are in the proper gear to do it! Don’t forget your gloves!