HURRY!
What's the big rush?
I find it is now extended to include our leisure time, so we can hurry it all up and get back to work.
One theme park has announced it was building an new, scarier and more daring ride for the youngsters of both body and mind, to quake over. Another park let it b e know that is what they were doing and they are now hurrying construction to see who can be the first to build the fastest, highest, deepest and, loudest “roller coaster” of 'em all!
Now, there's a fine old term which has become antique almost beyond recognition: “roller coaster”. It used to mean a park or carnival ride which looked like the frame work for a building without the building; spread out in a bent line around several acres of land to make the riders think they had been somewhere. You could see the framework sticking up in the air a good hundred yards before you came to the amusement,but today's colossal scaffolding rigs form a skyline all their own from miles away from the park.
Lit up o at night they look like strung out spider webs to catch light planes, and low-flying condors, and other birds on their way to the amazing global wetlands which are said to be disappearing at rate equal to that of the authentic, genuine roller coaster.
The new rides will zip you off to a good start -up to 128 MPH in the first 3.5 seconds. After your stomach catches up with you, you realize you are climbing upward at a ninety degree angle and when you get to the top you actually be;live your are 456 feet above those milling throngs of ant-like creatures moving about in the park below. You spiral downward toward them, doing some flips ,turns, twists, curves, pretzel-like contortions along the way.
At the moment, during construction, the other ride promises to drop you off 129-foot hill to produce a feeling of weightlessness They creep along at a mere 120 mph, and go only to 420 feet up. The one installation is in New Jersey the other Ohio so if we check on relative sea levels between Garden State and Buckeye State terrain they can probably claim to be about the same.
When, I wonder, is all of this roller rampage going to come to a screeching halt? Will it – ever?
Oh, by the hurried way, the total travel time on one of the rides, I forget which one, is fifty-five seconds - from start to finish!
We gotta cut down on that total time so we can hurry more people through the procedure.
We had best send somebody a note on that point. Mark it “URGENT!” and hand-write across it with a with a red marker :“ASAP!”
A. L. M. September 28, 2004 [c480wds]
