Hey! Yesterday I turned 26! It was my birthday. It was fun and exciting. I got a number of things.. want to see? Here we go:
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| I got 26 baby gold fish from Rachel. [Thus far Ned has been unable to catch them.] | ||
Robb hooked me up with some lovely beverages! |
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My Dad and Mom got me some awesome posters! |
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… and a special edition DVD. |
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 I got a number of really nice and funny cards. Thanks to everyone who gave me one! |
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Dear Sven,
In the timeless words of that most articulate and magniloquent of odists, you can “suck this”:
It took me 5 pitches. 5. When I left you, I was but the learner. Now I am the master.
I’ve got a few more little things to take care of.. and as it’s already 1 am, I may as well not sleep, and just write instead.
The Cubs are in the World Series… I told you I had a feeling about this team. Continuing their impressive win streak, the Cubs swept the Braves, with the unlikely hero being Alex Gonzalez, leading the team in batting average, homeruns (he hit one in all 4 games), and hits. Now we’re off to face the Rangers. My money is still on the Cubs.
Honestly, can you imagine a pair of shoes more perfectly designed for me?
It happened again, only this time, the target was bigger. He’s getting more bold… taking on opponents rivaling his own size.. and winning easily. Yup, my turtle took out another fish.. but this time, the fish was quite large, and the results were quite disgusting.. so naturally I took pictures.
I finally started watching the show Alias… I watched the first episode late Saturday night->Sunday Morning.. and I was instantly hooked.. and very much wanted to watch every single episode that very second.. I’m rather impressed with myself that I’ve managed to hold off, opting to savor each episode, rather than blowing through them as I tend to do. But yes, to all you people out there that have urged me to watch the show the past 3 years or so: You were right, and thank you. I’m all giddy about it now. Also, Jennifer Garner is a hotty.
R.E.M. came out with a new album: Around the Sun. It is very good, and I recommend you give it a listen. Currently favorites include “Final Straw” and “Leaving New York”. [What, you expected me to not like an R.E.M. album?]
Here’s the scene: Sven and I were playing the Homerun derby game on MVP Baseball 2004. The object of the game is not to hit the most homeruns, but rather, to be the first player to hit a total designated distance. E.g. 1 Mile. So each hit counts for however man feet it flew before landing. Foul balls count negative, and strikes are -100 ft. Homeruns will earn you an extra 100 ft. bonus, and every 5th ball or so is the Money (we’d call it the “Monkey”) ball, which is worth double. Easy enough? Yeah, it’s fun. So you both play at the same time, and the first person to the designated distance wins. Obviously, as I’ve played the game a ton more, I was going to be better at the whole consistent hitting thing, but the game also records the longest homerun hit by each person, and this became the chief source of competition: Who could hit the longest homerun? We battled for hours, starting out with sure fire winners like Sosa and Barry Bonds… then tried out Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner (they were disappointments, but I think it’s cause we assigned them to AA teams in order to play as them.) We tried different stadiums, and altered the wind… Eventually we made it to the Astrodome, with me as Sosa, and Sven as Bonds. I hit a rocket that flew 531.. I was pleased. Sven switched over to Pujols, and promptly smashed one 554.. I kept at it with Sosa, and consistently gained with each competition: 535, 537, 538.. finally 541.. but I just couldn’t break 550… So I decided to try out Pujols. Now it’s Pujols vs. Pujols at the Astrodome. First pitch: 550! Now we’re getting somewhere.. After a few more games I had him up to 552, but couldn’t top 554 for some reason… and we decided to head off to Coors field. The first game: 587! Unbelievable. the ball was just sailing out of that park. 561, 583, 585… then 593! I was elated. Seriously, how is he going to top 593!? Sven began to falter, and his homeruns were falling to the mid 400s… It was getting very late, and the wife was getting impatient.. So last game was called…. It started like any other game.. I jumped out to an early lead thanks to some unfortunate off-speed pitches for Sven… then out of nowhere I hear 597!
There were some words I heard on the playground years ago, back in Cleveland. At the time I wasn’t really sure what they meant, or why they were said in such a violent tone… But at that moment, when Sven hit that ball 3 feet shy of a full 600, those words all came shooting out like fire. I was dumbfounded. 597!? Seriously?..
At my insistence, we played a few more games, but I wasn’t able to top his score. We had played that game for at least 4 hours and I had a bruise on the side of my pointer finger… and Sven had beaten me at my own game.
Only one word comforts me now: Rematch.
Lately I’ve been really busy. I’m usually fairly busy in the summer, so that’s not a huge surprise. It’s the whole thing where I realize in the winter I tend to stay inside, and I hate driving anywhere in snow, so I stay at home a lot.. so in the summer, when it’s warm out, and the roads are a tiny bit safer to drive on–[Dear idiot who decided that it wasn't worth it to clear off any of your fogged over windows before starting up the car and pulling out of the parking lot and turning onto the street, and right into where my right fender would have been had I not swerved my car out of the way at the last second, only to see you keep driving for a bit, then roll down your windows to reveal your arms waving frantically in a "I have no earthly idea why the state considered me qualified to operate this moter vehicle" type manner, then drive off onto the next street without bothering to then (having already almost hit 1 person) clear off your $)@(and@# windows: You are a horrible person.]– I try to cram as much activity into every day as possible. But lately I’ve been more busy. Part of that is work, certainly. There’s just a ton to do. In the off chance that you’ve not yet seen it, the new Bible Gateway that has occupied pretty much every moment of my work time for the past bazillion years in now in beta, and you can check it out at beta.biblegateway.com/. If you don’t like it, assume your opinion is flawed, and keep it to yourself to avoid embarrassment. So work has kept me busy.. as then there’s Softball [We won our first playoff game, and scored 14 runs in the first inning... so we play next Wednesday for the championship.], and now with the baseball playoffs going on, almost every day has been filled [into the early hours of the morning in many cases] with spectacular games to watch. [Congratulations to the Red Sox, who were/have been by far the most fun team to watch this post-season] and then all those other little things that fill up the day so that you get nothing accomplished, and look back wondering where all that time went… all this to say I’ve been busy, and haven’t had much chance to write… but here I am, denying myself some much needed sleep just to write a few things that precious few people will ever read. I think if I wanted to suffer any more for my art I’d have to start cutting off my ears at this point.
So I’ll start with talking about Zelda. A little while ago [Middle of September.. around work conference time] I went through and played the original Zelda again, and once again defeated the evil Ganon to save Hyrule, and Princess Zelda. That game continues to be one of the greatest creations of mankind. Meanwhile, Tuuk, Joel, Andy, and I continue to work our way through Zelda: 4 Swords Adventures. That game continues to entertain.. It makes me sad to realize we’re nearing the end of it, but it was certainly a well done 4 player Zelda game, and a worthy addition to the Zelda family.
A while back a group of us (Cousins Tim, Sven, and Mindy, Robb, and myself) headed out and saw Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. I just want to say that this movie was excellent.. This is one of those movies where you either go in loving it, or you’ll just think it’s kind of silly, and not all that interesting. What struck me as kind of interesting (in that “hrm.. this is kind of interesting, but if someone else came up with it I’d think they were being some sort of jerky movie snob or just really full of themselves something.) was looking at this movie in a Post 9/11 mindset… It felt like a big propaganda type movie where you know the hard working all American boy in his distinctively American WW2 era type airplane is going to save our country, the world, and the all American girl.. while the evil invaders with no hearts and no souls (so in this case, giant evil [though really rad looking] robots) invade our All American city [New York City]) just go and destroy everything to suit their needs. Like I said, this is the kind of thing that’d annoy me if someone else brought it up, so I’m not going to run with it like I prolly could… it was just something that struck me as I watched it, and not in a bad way.. That said, it was a wonderful movie, very fun to watch and kinda throw your whole self into. The advantage a purposefully fantastic (As in, “a flight of fancy”, not “well done” or “the all-purpose cleaning solution”) movies have is that they get to define their own universe, and thus are given quite a bit of free range as far as what is believable and what isn’t… Your typical action movie, if it appears to take place in the modern day can really hurt itself when it does something that doesn’t appear believable (Steven Segal jumping his truck off a cliff, then jumping out and landing on a speeding train.. then later [on that same train] running a few feet in front of another train as it’s plowing through the first train… these are things that are not believable, and make an already bad movie downright laughable.) Fantasy movies get to define their Universe, but then they have to live according to its rules. Take something like Star Trek, and you’ll see that the is a whole defined universe that all of the series and movies [ought to] adhere to. All that to say, I could walk in to Sky Captain, and see some things that weren’t believable and just say “Neat.. that’s how that Universe behaves.. that’s pretty kewl.” Once that’s established, you can just sit back and enjoy it… and it was quite enjoyable.
So you know how I said I was busy and all.. yeah.. so far, this entry has spanned over about 4 days..
Here’s something that needs to stop : Blogspam. (Blogspam –> A spamming technique where advertisements are placed on Weblogs posing as comments from users.) Honestly, I am at a loss as to what kind of complete dick would come up with something like this. At first I thought I was safe, because my site is all pieced together by my own sloppy coding, but apparently not, as I’ve been getting more and more of these things as the weeks go on. I’ve written some stuff to stop it, but I’m still made aware of it, just in case. But it just makes me mad. Here we have something that can only be defined as evil, and purposefully malevolent, and you’ve got people out there actively working on it. Why?! How can you feel good about yourself doing things like that? I’m assuming these are the same people that juggle cats and eat babies. I wish them Ebola.
I got the urge to play Sonic CD a while back, and as I’ve been unable to get my own Sega CD to work, I decided to buy one off of ebay… so I did.. and it arrived, and I was very excited… It doesn’t work. So now I’m going to do some tinkering with it. If I fix it, I do believe I shall declare myself the smartest man alive.
As some of you may have known, and others of you just assumed while pointing and giggling behind my back: I’ve never driven a manual transmission car. Never have. Some of my past cars looked like they were stick shifts, but they weren’t… and for reasons still unclear to a number of people, I insist on having my hand on the floor mounted PRND12 while driving, though it seems to serve no real purpose (as far as you know). Well, a little while ago [before we headed out to Cedar Point] Rachel decided enough was enough, and we headed out to Grandville High School’s parking lot, and she taught me how to drive her car. I’d like to think I was a pretty fast learner, and I also like to think I did fairly well. I’m biased, so I’m leaving those sentences as they are written. Anyway, after some time driving around the parking lot, and not having too much trouble, she wanted me to drive the thing back to my place, so I pulled up to the first stop sign (still within the High School’s parking lot) and I promptly stalled it..
Not once..
Not twice..
Not three times..
Don’t even bother with 4, 5, or 6…
Thinking 7? You’re getting pretty warm.
Eight Times in a row… I stalled that stupid car 8 times at one stop sign. Now, I’m more than willing to admit my shortcomings at certain things… I’m not a good swimmer… my spelling is average at best… my abilities at Chess and Battleship are apparently on par with your average 6 year old child… but man.. .8 times is pretty pathetic. After that complete failure, I was able to drive it to my place without incident, but I think at that point the damage to my pride and her clutch was already done.
A short time ago I got to hang out with someone I’d not seen since June 20, 2003, Maryrose! Maryrose is going to Med School down in Arizona, and was doing a rotation in Detroit, and came into town to hang out with Mindy (You’ll recall that they were good friends from college, which is how the whole Europe trip thing got started), and I got to tag along. Now, I’ve only really known Maryrose for about 2 weeks of my life, but she’s just one of those friends that I feel like I had an instant rapport with.. I don’t know if it’s because her voice sounds so much like my friend Sonya Doty’s, or if she’s just such an all around likable person, or if I’m simply so charming that any woman is going to strive to make me feel right at home with her asap, but yeah, I feel like I get along with her really well, and after a few minutes it was just like it was back in Europe… well, minus the constant fear of death and all that. So we hung out, and reminisced about all the fun times on our trip, and wished a lot of people Ebola. I got to introduce her to Max and Ermas, and afterwords we played some pool, and some poker. All in all a wonderful time, and I wish she lived closer, so we could all hang out more often. Dear Scientist: work faster on the whole “beaming” thing. I think it’d be useful.
Swac went out to New York City a little while ago to see Mandace, and he got me a gift:
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Swac, you rule.
My MVP Baseball 2004 regular season has come to an end. The Cubs ended it with a fairly impressive 100 game win streak… I think that might be a record. Clement got the Cy Young, leading the Majors in strikeouts, ERA, wins, opponents batting average, shutout wins, fewest walks, etc. Pretty much everything except for innings pitched and complete games (Prior had both of those.) Sosa picked up the MVP honors, ending the season with just shy of 150 home runs (he started to slump towards the end of the season), and a slugging percentage of 1.042. The race for National League MVP was pretty tight though, as this shot shows:
So the post-season has started, and the competition is noticeably tougher.. fewer strikeouts, better base-running and fielding, and far better pitching. The games have been close thus far, though I’m still undefeated in post season play. The teams in the playoffs are a bit surprising: The AL has Boston, Texas, Cleveland [I was pleased], and Seattle [!?] [You'll note the Yankees didn't even make the cut.. they were four games behind Boston at the end, and no where near the wildcard.] The NL has my Cubs, Atlanta, Philly, and, San Fran. The Red Sox lost to Seattle in 5, and the Indians fell to Texas the same day. Atlanta took 5 games to knock out the Giants, and the Phillies…well, they got swept by the Cubs, but made them all fairly close (within 3 runs each game.) I’m currently in my series with Atlanta, and am up 1-0.. If I were a betting man, I’d put my money on Chicago.. I have a feeling about them this year…
Speaking of Post-Season, the real baseball playoffs are going on… Now I picked New York and Houston to go to the show, with Houston winning… and for a while, I looked pretty smart.. until both teams choked. Now it’s Boston and St. Louis.. and I have reasons to not want either team to win… St. Louis is a big rival of the Cubs, and thus, I hate them, and they must die. Boston has suffered a similar fate as the Cubs, so there’s a lot of commrodery and kinship felt there.. but that only extends so far. The comparison I’ve used to describe it is this: You’re best friend.. You go through a lot together, and you care about each other, and wish well for each other… But if your best friend hooks up with a really, really hot girl, there’s going to be quite a bit of jealousy going on there. You want them to do well, but not better than you. If Boston won it all, then suddenly you’re the loser playing third wheel when the other two just want to make out behind the bleachers. Better to have them heart broken again, so you two can get back to playing Nintendo together in your parents basement…. So that kinda puts me in a jam, as it’s very hard to watch a sport, particularly one you enjoy very much, without pulling for one team over the other. I was pulling for Boston over New York, because the Yankees ought not to be cheered for by any person not actually on the Yankees, [and even that is questionable], but I wanted to see Houston win, as I just felt they had played the end of the season better than any other team. With the series started, I tried to sit back and just not care, but something happened… Julian Tavarez showed up. I just can’t stand the guy. I’m not sure what it is.. but that guy irritates me every time I see him. He kinda reminds me of Bill Gramatica who always irritated me as well.. I dunno.. just calm down, you’re not nearly as important as you seem to think you are. So when he shows up, I hope he gets shelled. So game 1 of the series was fun to watch. Other than that, I guess I just don’t care. I want the games to be close, and I want it to go 7. That is all.
I also promised a rant about baseball, but it would appear this entry has already reached the length where most people don’t really read any of it, so I’ll save it for some other time. If you’ve managed to read this far, congratulations. You should reward yourself with a cookie from Max and Ermas… they are wonderful!
Rant still to come…
My cube has been violated once again:
[Thanks to Dave's picturephone for the picture.. I had foolishly taken my camera home, thinking the attacks on my small prison cell had reached their conclusion.]
I walked toward my cubical today, and instantly felt something was wrong… very wrong. I felt cold… death. [beyond the normal cold death I feel walking in to work any day... for my birthday I'm asking for heat.].. Anyway, I looked in to my cube..["A domain of evil it is... in you must go"].. and I saw this:
Vengeance will be mine.
One part I forgot to mention last time… Those of you who know me know that on occasion I can get a bit competitive. Well, it would appear I’m not the only one. While we were driving to Cedar Point, Rachel and I were playing the Alphabet game.. (Alphabet game –> A game where players must find the letters of the alphabet in order from A – Z. This often means finding said letters on Billboards, perhaps trucks, license plates, people’s clothing, etc. Various house rules may exist. E.g.: The letter must be the first letter in the word, you can only use a particular sign once. You can’t use the same word as your opponents. You can’t use signs facing the opposite direction, etc. The first person to get all 26 letters is the winner, and usually then gets to decide if the game is going to continue (by starting to look for another A). Much of the game hinges on a person’s ability to find the key letters: J, Q, and Z.). So we were playing this game, and for a while I was doing alright… I had 2nd place locked up for sure. We had cycled through the entire alphabet 2 or 3 times (okay, one of us had gone through twice, and one of us 3 times, at that point).. and Rachel was very intent on maintaining her lead. As often happens, we were both searching for a Q… and our thoughts were on nothing but getting that Q… It was right around then that we both seemed to notice that the car was no longer on the highway, but had taken an exit ramp that we did not want to take… It just sorta happened… It was very funny. Then the quick trip around this small city to find the on-ramp back to the highway was punctuated by desperate searches around each street corner at each stop sign, hoping for a Quality something or some sort of equipment… we’d settle for Antiques…
The ride continued, as did the game.. and after some time we came upon a few cars with some rather nice license plates. There in front of us were 2 cars with J‘s, one with a Q, and another with a Z.. all this within a span of a few minutes.. Now I was currently on J, and thus got it, and was pleased… but up ahead I saw a semi with a big, proud Q on its side. Rachel noticed it as well.. I began feverishly searching for letters to get up to Q… and Rachel decided this would be a good time to let all the other cars drive past us… just far enough so that the Q Truck would be out of sight (and thus not allowed to be used). Thankfully, some slow traffic, and her losing track of where exactly that truck ended up eventually led to us catching up to it, and I got my Q… Rachel was approaching Q again, and spotted the car (might’ve been an SUV, I don’t remember) with that Q license plate.. and she proceeded to tail that thing for quite some time until she got up to Q, and claimed it as her own. Needless to say, she was proud of herself.
I like games.
This past weekend I got to head down to Sandusky to help celebrate Gwen and Rob’s impending nuptials by spending the day at Cedar Point. For those of you who don’t know about Cedar Point (all 1 of you), it’s a little piece of awesome stuck in northern Ohio where the world’s greatest roller-coasters all get together and hang out all summer. I’m a roller-coaster fan, so me and Cedar Point get along quite well. I used to go pretty much every year, but I hadn’t been there in a few years, and thus there were a number of rides I was looking forward to trying for the first time: Millennium Force, the Wicked Twister, and the Top Thrill Dragster.
Rachel and I headed down early Saturday morning, and made it to the park just in time to arrive in the middle of a nasty, cold, drizzly, gray, ugly day. We met up with Randy, Erin, and David, and got in line for the Raptor, just in time for it to break down, stranding passengers at the top of the first hill. Those poor souls stayed stuck for at least 15 minutes while getting rained on and frostbitten by some bitter winds. We left that line and headed out to the Blue Streak. Rachel and I were both fairly tired, and as such the disorienting nature of the roller-coasters were somewhat amplified. It was kinda kewl. After that, Rachel and I headed back to the Raptor, which was back up and running. All these rides I had done before.. and while I’m a fan (of the Raptor in particular) I was looking for those new rides… so we headed to the Millennium Force.
The Millennium Force is taller than the Statue of Liberty. That’s really tall. After about an hour long wait in line (we passed the time by playing the alphabet game, and I totally wasted her.. though she may claim differently. [She's a liar]… (Totally Wasted Her –> I was able to pull out a cheap, self-declared victory based on a technicality and some clever word play.). Eventually we make it to the front of the line… and I was jazzed.
I’ve talked about “The Fear” a few times before, and it can be applied to the whole roller-coaster world fairly easily. It’s that feeling you get before getting on a ride for the first time… That cold line that runs throughout your body telling you that what you are about to do is foolish, and will result either in your own death, or [perhaps more likely] in you soiling yourself. It’s this kind of fear that I like. (the fear part, not the possible result… there’s got to be a pretty clear distinction between the two) As such, once you’ve been on a ride, that fear goes away. The second time you ride a ride, that fear is pretty much gone, I’d say. The problem comes when you no longer get that fear at all… and I was a bit afraid that for me, a Roller-coaster related fear was forever dead. As we approached the Millennium Force, I felt nothing but the giddy joy of knowing that I would soon get to sit down after standing for a long, long time, and the usual joy in what would surely be a fun ride, but there was no fear. We decided to sit at the very back, as it goes the fastest, and there’s no pause at the top of the hill. Here’s where the ride’s major flaw became instantly apparent.
First, a little background information. This represents your typical male human:
Now, note the section within the red circle. Throughout a man’s life, the number one priority is to protect that region there. Areas outside of this circle, while important, are ultimately expendable in comparison to the red circle region. There is no calling higher than to protect the red circle region. This can not be stressed enough.
With this in mind, I give to you the restraint system employed by the Millennium Force:
A quick check will point out a serious problem:
As you can see, this restraint system violated the red circle area quite egregiously. Then stop to ponder the thought that this bar, slammed firmly into place by the sadistic staff of this particular ride and consequently pinning your prized possessions squarely beneath its unforgiving steel, is now the force holding your entire body inside the car as it speeds along at more than 90 Miles and hour and drops from 310 feet at an 80 degree angle. As the ride ended, the two guys behind me and I, through high pitched sobs, shared the names we’d have given our children if fate hadn’t so mercilessly robbed us of any reproductive ability just seconds earlier.
So besides the castration, that ride was a-w-e-s-o-m-e!
After that, Rachel and I rode the Mean Streak, the Gemini, and the Magnum XL200 (which continues to be one of my favorites). Throughout this whole time, neither the Dragster nor the Wicked Twister was running at all. The rain had stopped, and occasionally the sun even peaked its head out to say hello. After some time, and a few more rides, Rachel had to take off, and I went to meet up with Lindsay, Josh, Randy, Erin, and David. On the way, I noticed that there was a long line leading to the Dragster. Rachel and I had seen them testing it a bit earlier, but when a person asked, they said they didn’t know how long it’d be before they let people on it, if they would at all that day. [The Wicked Twister stayed unattended all day, and never ran.] I found the group at the Mean Streak [well, truth be told, I fell asleep at the exit to the Mean Streak, and when they were done with the ride,they found me.] From there we rode the Gemini, then the Iron Dragon, then decided to head off to the Dragster.
The wait was said to be about 2 hours. I did not have a problem with that. I was very excited. The ride itself was only about 30 seconds long, but it just looked so impressive, and so sweet, that I was quite eager to give it a go. Seriously, just look at this thing:
So we got in line… and it was a long line..We passed the time by playing the alphabet game, and then 20 questions… an it was a lot of fun. I really like playing games, as anyone whose spent any time with me (particularly when traveling or forced to wait) will attest to. I had them pretty well stumped with “Santa Claus”, but out of the blue, David guessed it. So slowly we made it through the line, and all was well. Then, out of the blue, the cars didn’t make the hill… From what I have heard and read, they’ve been having all sorts of problems with the ride, and often it won’t make it all the way over (so they have to pull it back, and try again.. which is time consuming..) So when this one didn’t make it over, the crowd let out a collective groan, and then came the announcement: They’d be shutting down the ride for an unknown length of time to fix mechanical problems.
They were doing a haunted house type thing in part of the park, and many in our company wanted to see that, so we had established a time limit for this ride. Now thus far we were making good time through the line, but the decision was made that if the ride didn’t start up in time for us to reach the end by the time we were originally quoted (around 2 hours) we’d leave the line and go to the haunted house. I did not want to leave the line, and I knew Randy didn’t want to either. So I was greatly relieved when they eventually launched a car up, and over the hill without difficulty. A loud cheer rose up from the entire line, and they began loading up cars again… At this point we were near the platform, so very, very close to getting on. From this point on, every car that went up and over received a roaring ovation… and it was wonderful. Finally, we reached the front of the line, and once again, we got to the back of the platform to get the back cars. I was with David, with Randy and Erin just behind us, and Lindsay and Josh a few cars ahead. As the train we were slated to get on approached our position, the announcer’s voice again appeared: They’d be shutting down the ride for a while to get a new car onto the tracks. Another groan rose from the crowd… but as we waited impatiently at the front of the line, something funny happened… I began to feel it: The Fear! This ride was launching people from 0 to 120 MPH in 4 seconds! This ride was catapulting people straight up 420 feet, then dropping them straight down again. That was kinda frightening. Exciting, but a bit frightening. And then it was time. We got in, and I looked down at the same crotch destroying restraint bars that had caused such misery on the Millennium Force. With no regard to any hopeful future activity, I slammed that thing into place, and made sure nothing was going to be moving anywhere. The guy directly in front of us, who had apparently not been in a car since 1965, was having quite a problem with the seat belt… and required a fair bit of assistance, but eventually all was set. They moved us forward, and there we sat, facing the Christmas tree lights of your traditional drag-strip. As the lights flashed to life, I went for one more deep breath, but never got the chance. BAM! we were off! For about 4 seconds my entire body below my neck ceased to function… I was stuck, breathless, being shot forward with amazing force… and it felt incredible. Before I knew it, we were at the top of the giant hill, and my body became usable just in time to throw my hands into the air, as we began to shoot straight down. In what felt like the flash of a few seconds, it was all over. All in all, the experience felt like this:
The moral of the story: if Mark Hoolsema tells you to do something, do it. He won’t steer you wrong.
After the dragster, we headed off to the haunted area.. It seemed set up for little kids, and much of it was a waste, but we had a good time in the haunted house.. Watching your friends get scared by the tiniest things is funny indeed. Also, they had black lights, and we investigated the security features of paper money and credit cards.. Michigan Drivers Licenses are pretty kewl… After all that, we headed out, but stopped off to ride the Raptor one more time… Awesome… Then it was the long ride home.
A great time, and a great idea Rob and Gwen. Thanks for inviting me.