Notice: for the duration of this post, keep your head and arms inside the ride at all times. Also keep in mind the fact that the actual ride this is based on works NOTHING like this, nor do physics in general.
Cut to the middle, as usual.
I’m in line for The Racer, under the wooden arch. I’m not dressed properly for Kennywood; I even have my backpack with my computer in it. I must’ve come straight from work, as other personal props seem to indicate, including a long riding coat I haven’t owned since high school/early college. It’s pleasantly noisy and I know no one with me. Others look to be in business-style clothes and it has the air of a private event at the park. The line winds. They’re letting on a few more, a few more, filling up the coasters. There’s a space in the red train, which happens to be on the left side, towards the front. There are pillows and it’s far wider and more like a rather dull colored Morrocan restaurant in seating style than a proper train. I head in, asking the attendant to take my backpack for me. A nice man in a suit in the row in front of me greets me. There are a great number of attendants for the train, and off to the far sides (not the middle entryway), they are handing out small square napkins and sodas in small plastic cups, like airline stewards. There’s a great party air about the whole thing and I am comfy sitting down in my bit of pillows.
Ahead of me in the train, there is what I claimed in dream to be a bowl of tiramisu. It is much more like a tasty-looking, slightly liquidy pudding, all housed in a large serving bowl, sitting on some sort of built-in tray to the seat. These trays are throughout the train, and people have their napkins and drinks on them. The coaster takes a lurch forward, the typical start to the ride, and I warn the young woman ahead of me to hold onto that bowl or it will spill all over her. I watch for a moment as the coffee-colored liquid and chocolate shavings wave back and forth in their bowl.
The train is now the more narrow, true width and I am in the last car. We chut-hut-hut up the chain lifting the coaster to the first big drop, an insanely steep grade. At the top of the grade, the tracks actually bend past vertical, causing me in my last car to swing off of the track, dangling for that impossible, endorphin-beautiful moment before gravity on the rest of the train pull the final car over the top to careen down. In that dangle, I tell my car-mate (who wasn’t there beyond this moment), oh this is typical, don’t worry. I can even feel the breeze on my feet, as if this was some Flintstone-style, open bottom coaster. I see the tracks below us. And we fly down. It is a great speedy, properly rickety, wooden coaster ride. We round the bend and the blue train overtakes us on the inside loop. I watch them swing around, still alternately fascinated by the fact that I could watch the tracks beneath me. I wondered how it didn’t snip riders’ toes as it flew over tracks. There were other technical issues I had with it, but mostly, I am very busy having a grand time.
The last car in the blue train was not happy somehow and felt things were rather out of control. At another bend, this time they rode the outside track, the last car occupants reach to their left at a wall carrying power and some sort of pneumatic energy in a black, thick rubberish tube, pulling at the join in the latter. They separate the tubes and both end cars, mine and theirs, dislocate from their main trains and run the tracks with the stored energy of motion. I lose sight of them as the tracks diverge again. I rattle happily in my wild little car, up in the treetop height tracks, shimmying tight turns, down hills, until the car slows to a near stop. I hop out onto the wooden walkway alongside the track and find my way into a back part of the wooden station. Since this was not any part that was for the public use, the wooden plank ceiling was low, the way was dark, and the floor was covered in sawdust. I find a simple, no doubt nearly hidden from the other side, door, let myself through, riding coat waving happily in the train-breeze of the station. I am greeted by one of the attendants who happened to be on that part of the main platform. He wasn’t startled by my appearance, though he was generally frustrated by the lack of decorum, or perhaps the messiness of the other riders. He had no beef with me and is nice despite his annoyance with others. Thanking him, I gush that it was a simply fantastic run of the ride and make on my way out of the Racer, all smiles and long coat.
Filed by joy at 11:04 am under crafty, life
2 Comments
