Ride

We hit the fair. It had stopped raining, and we noticed as we walked in that none of the rides appeared to be going.

Were they shut down for rain?

Come to find out, they had, in fact, been shut down all day. And were just reopening. So we had the joint to ourselves.



And I was originally just going to buy a few ride tickets, but the armband deal was just too attractive when I got right down to it. Even though World's of Fun was less than 48 hours off, I was like, damnit, we're riding some rides.



I love carnival rides. They're the scarier for being moved around the country and maintained by carnies. I even found a web site that encourages this notion of mechanized menace. RideAccidents.com. No kidding.



But really, something like 2500 people a year are actually sent to the ER by these things. Considering there must be millions of rides taken every year, that seems an acceptable margin of risk. Probably more dangerous driving the car to and from the fair grounds.



The ferris wheel is always good, too, for a mellow out. And to get up and see what's going on over at the demolition derby and whatnot.

I tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade the girls that this ride ticket money would be better spent on admission to the derby. They weren't having it.



And yeah, I broke down and bought some fair food. Em had a funnel cake. Mo some cotton candy.



I managed to get queasy on a ride, something I don't think has ever happened to me. The Tornado was sets of four seats you can control the spin on (like the giant bears or martians you ride inside) on longish arms that also rotate. It's a gentle ride, but something about that gentleness may have been what did me in. In any case, I was genuinely dizzy and not feeling well when it was over.



I sat out a few rides, then got to thinking maybe the problem was a lack of caffeine. After a Diet Coke failed to quell the nausea I wondered if it was low blood sugar, realized I hadn't eaten much in awhile. A chicken-on-a-stick hit the spot but I still felt ill for awhile.



Then I spotted a woman I've been trying to find a way to chat up without the presence of our respective children. I see here around town, she takes her kid to a lot of the things I take mine to, and I've been curious to get to know her. I noticed her right as her kid was getting on the Power Surge while mine were on the Zero Gravity, exactly the kind of opportunity I've been looking for. But something about trying not to vomit just doesn't go with trying to flirt.



I figured, too, that there might be another shot or two with both of us putting our kids on rides. Her son had an armband, I noticed, so it seemed they were in it for the duration.



So of course they disappeared after that. Ah well, the way such things go it's unlikely anything as dramatic as fate was taunting me.



After my stomach came back to the game, I got back into the rides. And into trying to get good night shots, a tricky thing with my camera. The Cannon Powershot is a nice enough camera, but for low light and action, well, I'd love me a 5D.

Of course, then I'd want a HD video camera to get my ride videos on. And then I wouldn't be able to ride some of this stuff because I'd be carrying more than my car cost in expensive and fragile consumer electronics. So I guess I did okay with my pocket camera.



I also got a reminder of my age. The Zipper had a strict two-rider rule. Once the girls were on, I failed to persuade the operator to let me ride alone, so I was waiting when three high-school-ish girls came up and ran into the same problem. I offered to ride with the third girl, who's friends were now ten feet up and locked away. She game me a look, a look like I'd offered to vomit in her shoe or assassinate her dog. The ride operator attempted to rescue the situation by saying, 'His daughters are on there and he's stuck for someone to ride with, too.'



She didn't say anything, but I'm pretty sure if she'd had a can of mace I'd have gotten gassed. She walked off in a way that just screamed 'No way I'm letting some carnival creep lock me in a cage with a fat, sweaty old man!'

I don't know what she imagined would happen. There's barely any room to just be in that cage, and the ride itself is a near-death experience. It's not as if I offered to be her partner in the Tunnel of Love.



A kid threw up on the Avalanche right before me and Mo got on it the second time. Which meant the operator went a long ways off for a bucket of disinfectant, sluiced the offending seats and then ran the ride empty, flinging water and whatever the kid had vomited all over. Then he repeated the process and reopened the ride, warning us there were a couple of wet seats.



A kid waiting behind us started discussing which rides were most likely to induce a hurl. I made the comment that the Tornado, of all things, made me nearly puke. The kid's mother said, 'That happened to me, too. I think it was because I'd just eaten.'



No, I said, I did it on an empty stomach. It's the ride.

We'd ridden this ride earlier and it wasn't this fast. He really had it flying, to the point where the restraint hurt my collar bone as I was flung upward. I'm surprised we didn't all blast fair food all over the place. I asked the operator and he smiled and said they'd just replaced one of the hydraulic units, 'so it really cranks.'



I guess if you blow chunks, you know you got your money's worth.

I debated a lot with the soundtrack for this video. 99 Ways to Die (Megadeth) was such a good fit I'd already saved it out that way, but Ain't No Liberal was so funny it gets an also-ran. Then, Green Jello turned out to be the bomb.


Untitled from Chixulub on Vimeo.