Christmas Town

I've done a lot of posts about my childhood and recently I’ve been thinking that it would be fun to write about a more current event.  Here are selected highlights from my trip to Busch Gardens, Christmas Town Edition that I took yesterday with some of my friends.

You know that ride that has the chairs hanging from a spinning column that little kids like to go on?  I got kicked off of that. 

One of my friends suggested that we go on the chair ride and try to kick each other in succession to make a sort of chain reaction that would send the final rider careening out in a much wider arc than he would normally go.  I misinterpreted this as just grabbing each other’s chairs and flinging them haphazardly in random directions.  It really wasn’t that big of a deal or that distracting I don’t think, but after 45 seconds or so, the ride manager came over the PA system saying “Attention!  The ride is not over!”  even though the ride had begun to slow down.

I turned to one of my friends and said “Ah, damn.  They’re kicking us off aren’t they.”  That turned out to be exactly what they were doing. 

In retrospect, the real reason they shut down the ride may have been the fact that, as I was propelled forward by my friend’s kicks to my chair, I pretended to reach out for the little girl in the chair in front of me.  This girl was like 8 years old.  I was just imagining that I was a Ring Wraith reaching out for Frodo as Arwen  rode him toward Rivendell.  Anyway the point is that I was joking.  I WAS JOKING, ANONYMOUS PARENT.  I DIDN’T ACTUALLY WANT TO GRAB YOUR LITTLE KID.  Also, I’m sorry I freaked you out. 

This is what I thought I looked like:

This must be what you saw:

The best part, though, was when my friends and I were getting escorted off of the ride, a chunky, middle-aged woman yelled out, “Ho ho ho- losers!”

We went straight from the exit of this ride to the entrance of the nearby freefall ride. 

I’d never been on a freefall thing like this before and one of my friends said that you could hold out a penny in your palm and when the ride dropped you, the penny would float above your hand.  I rooted around in my pocket and found a quarter.  It was bigger than a penny, but I figured it would work just as well.

I hid the quarter in my fist as we were seated and a guy in a vest checked to make sure that our harnesses were ratcheted down tightly enough.  When he pushed on mine, it locked my arm in a really awkward position.  I wriggled as I tried to give myself enough range of motion to hold my arm out for the quarter experiment. 

The ride started and we were slowly dragged high into the air.  I continued to try to finagle my hand into a suitable position.  By the time the ride got to maximum height, I had found a highly uncomfortable position which let me hold out the quarter on my palm.  My arm was mushed through the small gap between the plastic harness and the seat and twisted like a withered flower, but the quarter was all ready to go.  I was excited to see that bitch float.

Suddenly the ride started and the quarter flew out of my hand like a priest releasing a dove at a wedding.  It shot out immediately into the inky darkness and I lost sight of it.  We plummeted toward the earth.  I was surprised at how fast we accelerated and consequently how short the ride was.  Soon the braking system engaged and we began to slow. 

                                                                         

A loud “TING!” rang out from a place below me that I couldn’t see.  It was really, really loud.  It took me an embarrassingly long time to piece together that what I had heard was the sound of the quarter hitting the ground with probably near-fatal velocity, and that by letting that coin fly out of my hands I was probably as close as I have ever been to the overdramatic intro of a CSI-type show.

Well, it looks like our victim ... just couldn’t handle change.  YEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Later I almost killed myself trying to jump onto this wall without using my hands.  I misjudged how high it was or something and flipped clean over it, landing on my head.  That is why I am behind the wall in this picture.

To cap off the evening, the girls in the group thought that it would be fun to see a penguin exhibit.  I didn’t know where we were going and followed them blindly until we reached the end of an obscenely long line.  After about four minutes of waiting in the line dumbly without asking why this was happening to me, I was informed that we were waiting to see this penguin thing.  I immediately started to bitch and complain.  I was being really unlikable and hard to be around.  I regret acting that way now and I regretted it in the moment, but I really don’t like delayed gratification. 

Once we were in the exhibit I continued to be an ass.

In a room filled with children and tired parents, there was a tiny case in which three penguins were uncomfortably mashed.  There wasn’t even space enough for the penguins to walk around.  They just had to stand there while a thousand little disgusting kids pointed and smeared their snotty noses on the glass.  I don’t have a bleeding heart and I’m not typically overly sympathetic, but it was plain to see that the lives of these penguins really just sucked.  Looking at these penguins I said loudly, “So are these the ones that haven’t killed themselves yet?”  There were a few parents who looked up in displeasure.  To which I responded:  “What kind of turtles are these?”  My friends ushered me quickly into the next room.

In the next room there were penguins playing in a larger enclosure with a little tank of water that was sealed so you could see the them as they were swimming under the water.  Some of the penguins were mottled with black spots on their tummies.  When there was a lull in the din of the exhibit, I said to the kids in front of me, “You see those black spots?  Each one is a dream that didn’t come true.”  Again the parents looked unhappy, but the kids laughed. 

Then we left the park and I ate a Triple Steak Stack at Taco Bell.  It was a weird Taco Bell, KFC hybrid where the kitchen was open and you could see them preparing your food, which was a huge turnoff for this particular establishment.  Also, never order the Triple Steak Stack.  It tastes like orphan thumbs stuffed messily into a pita shell made from cadaver flesh…with cheese.