Bodyboard Sledding:When Bodyboards Became Sleds

Bodyboard sledding in Ocean City, NJ turned an ordinary snowy winter day into an unforgettable adventure using summer gear in a completely different way.

Most people picture Ocean City in the summer.

Hot sand. Packed beaches. Bikes on the boardwalk. The smell of sunscreen and pizza. Bodyboards tucked under kids’ arms as they run toward the ocean.

But when you actually lived in Ocean City, those same bodyboards occasionally had another purpose.

These pictures are from one winter when my daughter was around eight and my son was about four. We’d gotten enough snow to cover the streets, the beach entrances, and—most importantly—the ramps leading up to the boardwalk.

So naturally, we grabbed the bodyboards.

Because apparently when you grow up at the Jersey Shore, a bodyboard isn’t seasonal equipment.

It’s just a sled with a summer job.

There wasn’t a tremendous amount of snow. There didn’t need to be. We weren’t exactly looking for the Poconos.

We had a boardwalk ramp.

That was good enough.

We hauled the boards up toward the top, found whatever little stretch of snow and ice Mother Nature had given us, and the kids went for it.

Then down they came.

I look at these pictures now and realize this is one of those little memories that explains what it was like raising kids in Ocean City better than any description I could write.

The beach wasn’t somewhere we went on vacation.

It was our backyard.

The boardwalk wasn’t somewhere we visited once a year.

It was part of the neighborhood.

And when winter came and everyone else pictured Ocean City sitting empty waiting for Memorial Day, those of us who lived there simply found something else to do with it.

Sometimes that meant taking something designed for riding waves…

…and riding it down a snowy boardwalk ramp instead.

That’s the Ocean City I remember.

Not just summers.

All four seasons.