And it's fighting like a soldier winning a war

So let me talk more about interesting stuff at the park. Well, they seem to have a mascot, although I either missed or don't remember his name. He seems to be a frog, though. I can't find his name since they have a Frog Hopper kiddie ride and you see where the search engines will turn up that instead. Well, we saw him giving out high-fives to kids. He was wearing a yellow and red striped shirt, and black shorts, giving him the air of ``probably a soccer player in some southern-European country''. I will assume that's what they were going for.

And they had live entertainment, at the Carousel Theatre. This is located near the carousel, although it's not enclosed or anything. Their particular entertainment was a pair of magicians whom I think were husband and wife. He mentioned having been doing shows at the park for something like ten years running now. Their show, ``The Classics of Magic'', had a sign featuring what looked to me like the CGI version of Harvey Comics devil Hot Stuff, about as unthreatening as you can get.

And it was that sort of magic show: pleasant, goodnatured, unthreatening. (Well, really, who would go to a small amusement park for scary magic shows?) There was some pure terror on display, as the magicians called a couple kids up to do stunts and even say stuff out loud in front of an audience, on purpose, to people. The kids were so visibly relieved when they were allowed to run back off the stage that I felt relieved myself.

They also did the comic gimmick of following telephone directions to do a magic trick, much as the shows at one of Cedar Point's Halloweekends events has done the last few years. This time it was framed as phoning a dial-a-trick number, rather than Googling or asking Siri for a stunt. It's an irrelevant change, except for distracting me with thoughts about the history of this stunt's framing device. Also whether kids today have any idea what dial-a-trick numbers are all about, when they might use Google or ask Siri instead.

The wife did fewer magic tricks and more setup and such. She wasn't dressed all that differently to her husband, though. That is, she wasn't set up in the typical eye-candy sort of role. This felt refreshing.

There's a C P Huntingdon miniature train ride that putters around a wide swath of park and field. If Quassy's web site is to be believed it's the oldest ride they have at the place, as best I can make out. They date it to 1948, at least, a bit older than the Little Dipper and their other Kiddielands package rides. (Well, they date having this train ride to 1948; the web site says ``several models of the miniature train have operated'' there.) This doesn't tour very much of the park, though. Most of it chugs out into the forest, along a path that left me wondering just where the trolley from town used to come from. It makes an orbit that encloses a couple of the squash and volleyball and other ordinary recreational-park type areas of the park. And then it swings over by the Wooden Warrior, the park's major roller coaster. The roller coaster goes over the train at some parts of its path, though we didn't have the timing right to see that. The train does accelerate rather alarmingly going into a tunnel, though. This makes a pretty sedate ride more exciting than you'd expect.

Trivia: Francesco di Marco Datini, c1335 - 1410, was a trader and banker. Some 300 partnership agreements, 500 ledgers, and 150,000 of his letters survive. Source: The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea, John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge.

Currently Reading: Symmetry In Mechanics: A Gentle, Modern Introduction Stephanie Frank Singer.

PS: The Set Tour, Part 3: R^n, a whole collection of sets found as domains often enough.