Let's all sing like the birdies sing

[austin_dern]

Before getting back to Indiana Beach pictures let me share my humor blog's posts of the past week. Here's the highlights:

• On Not Having Any Idea What To Dress As For Halloween, last week's major piece, about just what it describes.
• But Also About Those Missing Leaves as the mystery in the yard continues.
• Statistics Saturday: Major League Baseball Pennants, By League yet another little antijoke one.
• A Very Momentary Last Thought About The Leaves as I get worrying about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for some reason.
• My NaNoWriMo Indulgence Post, or as much self-promotion as I get around to, really.
• November: Its First Impressions, following up a little on my Halloween stuff.
• Statistics Tuesday Eventually: October 2016 For My Humor Blog or how these things went.
• The October 2016 Scraps File: Some Stuff I Didn't Use Last Month, or a bunch of miscellaneous little bits.

Now back to summer and a very happy anniversary day:

The queue --- longest of the day --- for the Lost Coaster of Superstition Mountain. The ride hadn't been in operation for at least a season, maybe several. One of the triumphs of the new ownership is they got the thing going. It's a very compact ride and the Superstition Mountain it's built into is a former dark ride.

---

In the gantry there is the roller coaster train being elevated to the to pof Superstition Mountain. The structure's so compact there's just nowhere for a lift hill to go. So they have to resort to an elevator instead.

---

Close up of the Lost Coaster of Superstition Mountain plunging into the mountain. It's a wooden roller coaster, incredibly, which adds to the intensity of the ride.

---

Station platform for Lost Coaster of Superstition Mountain. The ride has extremely tight clearances and you could very easily smash your hand on something if you raised your arms, even if you weren't that huge. So the solution is a wire cage. Best available solution. It does add some claustrophobia to the proceedings.

---

Lost Coaster train partly elevated to Superstition Mountain. That tunnel to the right of the coaster? The train goes back into the mountain there so yes, it's rattling its way uphill there. That tells you something of how fast and intensely it's moving.

---

Trivia: In the election of 1816 four-fifths of Congressmen who had voted for their pay raise that year lost their reelection bids. Source: A Nation of Deadbeats: An Uncommon History of America's Financial Disasters, Scott Reynolds Nelson.

Currently Reading: The Lost Work of Will Eisner, Editors Andrew Carl, Josh O'Neill, Chris Stevens.

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Egad! That does sound like it adds up to quite an intense experience. Not that I've been on all that many coasters (yet!), but wood definitely has its unique qualities, even if it's surely much more work to maintain and keep safe.

And an elevator! Wow. That must take a few people by surprise when they first see it. ^_^

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I think it's the first roller coaster I've been on with an actual elevator. I have been on some with very tight, nearly-vertical lifts before, though, such as the ones that use a helical screw to bring the train up to the top of its hill. Really it's astounding that they could fit a ride into a space that compact.

The compactness really works with the wooden roller coaster feel of being on the brink of running out of control. Does great things for the ride.