On Friday, we headed up to Paul and Judy Mason’s house in Chelsea, across the river from Ottawa near the Gatineaus.

Paul and Willa and one too many genetic experiments.

Paul and Judy have built their house (and built with their own hands, aside from some sub-contracting, as in pouring concrete) in a valley right by Chelsea creek. In the winter, Paul really gets busy.

Judy and Jamie in their gorgeous kitchen.

First there’s the skating rink. Holy cow. It’s huge. Paul can correct me, but I figure it must be 20 by 45 feet at least. With boards. And a plywood cartoon goalie to cover the net for half-rink games. And lights strung up for nighttime games. And a clubhouse, a space-heater-heated dressing room in the garage that has benches and hockey poster and little cubbies.

View of the rink from the warm kitchen. It was -20° out there, but we did have a good game with a bunch of local kids.

Then there’s the luge run. A few years ago, I guess the kids had started tobogganing down the snow plowed off the driveway. The pile maybe got up to 8 or 9 feet high. They were drifting near to hitting the house, so Paul built a bank in the slide, and gradually it became a two-curve luge run. Last year, it was moved to its current, more extreme location…up the hill in the forest, which means Paul has to build a bridge across a drainage ditch each year.

Jon lives for luge.

Last year the first turn was–how to say it gently?–more wall than a bank, with many many poor lugers, myself included, not being able to make it beyond in one go.

Paul and Jamie come out of the new and improved first turn at a bad angle, and carnage is imminent.

The architect for this year’s run has obviously learned a thing or two from the red stains on last year’s course. It is fast, and well-balanced, with just enough variation for a little carnage.

Click to watch some carnage unfold.

We had a fabulous weekend. Jon and Laura especially, since I came down with a stomach bug thing just in time to miss a second day of luging on Sunday. On the way back, we stopped by our friends in Gananoque where Jon got his first TV of the weekend, and he discovered…well, why don’t I let him tell it? This is from his creative writing yesterday:

“I went to Ottawa on a trip with my dad and my mom. I went loojing. I went to visit tom and caroll. I wotched the wether chanel in french.”

Oh boy! Now Jon is hooked not only on The Weather Network, but on its French twin M�t�o M�dia.

Thanks so much to Paul and Judy and Jamie and Willa, the staff at the beautiful Mason Resort.