Ah, the memorys. When I lived in Michigan as a yout, our neighbor had one and the local punks stole it and used it to slide down hills. In the summer in the gravel pit! The gravel pit was an area in the woods that had steep hills that we rode our dirt bikes in. Anyway, the hull got ruined and 1/4 broke off the back. We "rescued" it and used it that winter.
That coming winter/spring was a really strange one. A lot of early thawing flooded huge areas of the forrest behind my friends house. Then it would freeze again and then more thawing. There was a foot of icy cold water over a sheet of ice on the ground. We poled that broken hull all day through there, looked like a white bayou. You had to make sure you put the end of the pole in a crack or hole in the ice otherwise you would be getting wet if it slipped.