But for tonight I decided to suspend my snobbishness and have some fun a little closer to home. I still was worried about the stability of the equipment so I went the second night. I figured if it was going to fail, it would go the first or last night. I invited some girls from work and one of them "L" came with me. It was a lot of fun! There weren't any roller coasters but L managed to get me to ride some of the "death-defying" feats possible around the area.
We went up and around in a rickety ferris wheel which caused me to whimper as it shook and jolted in a mostly circular fashion. I kept reminding myself I've ridden the Eye of London (brag point-I saw it within a year of its being built!) and if I could be half a mile in the air and see everything underneath me, I'd be okay in this rinkadink one. The bench was a little narrow for the both of us and the bar put a sizeable dent in my legs as it secured us in the contraption (I don't think the seat belt was made to secure someone as filled out as me), but the view was great! You could see out above most of the buildings right to the edge of the horizon and we could see light-pollution from Cheyenne to the East and Ft. Collins to the south.
Then we rode a bench which sat two and left our legs free to swing underneath as the whole string of cables expanded similiar to an umbrella opening up. I assume our legs were supposed to hang down but then again I'm fairly sure the ride was meant for children and I and L are fairly tall women. I even took the inside seat so she'd have more "drag-room" but we still had to hold our legs up to prevent cracking our ankles on the platform. Then we were in the air, swinging with centrifigal abandon and realized our legs were within a foot or two of an approaching lamppost. L dutifully curled her legs so she didn't take out a limb damaging the lamppost and I curled my legs to prevent taking out a fence which also looked ominously close. Then the ride slowed to a stop and we drug our feet like kids on swings at the playground. And after we staggered with swagger off the platform with as much grace as we could muster-we realized objects on the ride were further away than they appeared. We probably wouldn't have hit anything but fear caused a great distortion of perception.
Trying valiantly to regain our equilibrium amidst giggles and randomly bumping into one another, we tried games for a while. Was it the best choice to go for the crossbow which launched foam darts at plastic cups as the first game after the bench ride? Probably not but it sure was funny and I only hit the woman manning the booth once and it wasn't even on the head! Between the two of us: we hit the booth girl once, her neighboring booth guy once, rebounded shots narrowly missed the booth girl twice, and we launched the darts both up and over the booth and back behind us on the pavement in addition to taking out our fair quota of cups. (yep, ah [imagine I'm preening and looking proud] those cups didn't see what hit 'em-I just saw 'em there and blam! next they knew they were on the ground dead, I was triumphant and everyone had ducked for cover.) Overall, it was a success and we both managed to win prizes (I got a polka dotted crocodile and L got a purple lemur, at least we think it's a lemur).
Feeling satisfied with our aim and prowess and wearing or holding the soft carcasses of the critters we'd claimed, we felt bold enough to try THE RIDE. BUM Bum bum. This creation was a ferris wheel made of torturous dimensions-it was larger than the one we'd previously ridden and the benches were encased within a rollcage. Each rollcage would roll the occupants upon demand as the wheel spun them around in a circle. I had been adamant I did not want to go on this ride when we began the night's activities, but my recent conquest had made me adventurous, And I still had an adrenaline buzz from the bench swing ride. So we sidled up to the wheel, gave the man our tickets and climbed inside a receptacle smaller than the first Apollo spacecraft. We squeezed in and the man bolted us down before we could change our mind and shut the door. I figured we would ride as we had on the ferris wheel and maybe sedately rock back and forth in a cradle sort of manner. I reckoned wrong. I had somewhat prepared for the ride by putting my small backpack through my arms to be around my front instead of on my back so I could sit back. L had put her keys in her pocket for safekeeping and her lemur wrapped around her wrist. We glimpsed a wink from the ride guy as he closed us into our tomb and immediately afterwards we were sideswiped by a jolt of centrifigal force as he gave our cage a good shove and sent us spinning like a top up into orbit around the wheel. My first thought was "Oh my gosh, I'm upside down!" followed by "oof!" as my backpack came up and hit me in the face. At the same time L was hit by her lemur in the head and her very long legs alternately sought gravity on the roof and the floor with a "bam, thud" rhythm. On the second cycle of our fear-spin I heard a "k-clank, tsh tsh, k-clank, tsh tsh" to accompany L's "bam, thud" and my "oof" and it took me a second but eventually I turned upside-down again and as the blood rushed to my brain I realized: "L's keys are revolving this blasted cage along with us!" Eventually I got used to the odd cacophony around me and calmed down a bit. My backpack wasn't sharp, L's legs had nice solid shoes so her feet were okay, and as long as we heard the keys clanging they were still in the cage with us and not launched upon the unsuspecting patrons beneath/above us. Truthfully though they can't have been all that unsuspecting-we were screaming enough to alert everyone on the block that we were in that contraption. And mercifully, after a while we stopped and rocked to an upright position. At the very top of the wheel. We seized the opportunity to stash our treacherous belongings while fellow adventure seekers boarded opposite us on the ground. L snatched her errant keys from off the ground and glancing sideways in a furtive manner (like a spy) stuffed them down her bra-in such a way that even a passing pigeon wouldn't have seen anything. Meanwhile I had ripped off my backpack and shoved it between my legs, holding it with my knees like a vice. Somewhere in the midst of this we both looked at each other and L just said "I've changed my mind, I want to do that again!" I just squared my shoulders, clenched my hands against the pole supporting us and with my game face on said "Let's do this!" Or some facsimile of that, truthfully I can't remember and I'd like to think I was brave and coherant as opposed to whimperingly uttering "Ookaay..." And just then the wheel started spinning and L cranked the bar a bit and towards the bottom of the revolution we spun end over end. We achieved uprightness after a while and at the top L said "again, again!"; so we did. At one point she cranked the bar as far as it would go and we ended up travelling half the circle completely upside-down...and screaming. Predictably at this moment my pocket started vibrating! I thought for sure this was a sign that the support beam was going and any minute we would fall to our deaths...then I realized only one pockey was vibrating. It was my phone! Which I couldn't reach because of the dang seatbelt/bar safety device keeping us in one place. [Turns out it was my roommate B wondering when I'd be home, and my first line to her upon calling her back was "I'm sorry I didn't answer, I was upside-down and screaming at the time!] Eventually, the ride slowed and came to an end and the door mercifully opened. L got out with a grace which astonished me, and I just looked dumbfoundly at the ground trying desperately to figure out how it operated. After a few seconds I got it, and one foot in front of the other I half slid, mostly oozed out of the cage. Then with all the left-veering slant-wise balance I had left I meandered after L like some cowboy wannabe with a John Wayne like bravado and a stiff upper lip.
Wanting to get rid of our remaining tickets and not ready to face another ride we opted for ping pong balls. Thrown at bowls with paper stuffed in them. For possible goldfish. It sounded like a good idea at the time. Turns out we each had 15 balls we could throw, chuck or toss at the bowls and if we made it, we'd get a fish. The lady was not happy when L (having amazing balance, coordination, and long arms) reached over from across the line and dropped a ball in the bowl. We did not get a fish. We did participate in reenactments of the game Pong though. The balls jumped, pinged, swished, and pounced off any viable surface but the one we wanted. It was a lot of fun!
After the tickets were gone, the rides had been done, the critters stashed and the fish not won-we decided we were hungry. So we went out for food and ended up chatting quite late about anything and everything. It might have been because of the adrenaline, or the feeling of a near death experience, or the simple fact that two girls together tend to talk. A lot. But we happily spent an hour or so eating and talking and laughing at stories and verbal replays of the evening's events. That's when I realized: it's not the place that's cool and it's not the rides that give it that edge-it's who you go with. If your company is awesome you can have fun in the most unexpected of circumstances. I know I had a hoot tonight and all of that is due to L, because I wouldn't have done practically any of those activities had she not gone with me to share in it. So thanks L, you're amazing!
No comments:
Post a Comment