Yesterday we went to Cedar Point, for our first non-eclipse-related trip of the season. Our hope was to get a good six hours or so on a not-crowded, early-season day. The six hours were foiled by construction traffic: both what we had to do to avoid the blockade leaving Lansing, and a fresh batch around Ann Arbor which, somehow, our friend JTK --- who'd gone down the day before --- had no idea existed. He went the same route we did, we don't know how he didn't notice the part where the lanes of US 23 South merged down into one that swung over onto the shoulder.
Also foiled: that this would be a low-key day. We expected that, you know, it's one or two weeks into the season, this year's marquee ride of Top Thrill 2 is down for rethinking, how many people would be there? The answer is a great number of people were there. I mean, not packed, not by midseason standards. But considering the season had barely begun, it was a lot of people. More, without Top Thrill 2, or --- for parts of the day --- Magnum and Corkscrew operating the crowds had nothing to do besides fill up lines for more rides. I mean, we walked away from Skyhawk because of the line and that's a ride that takes 40 people in one cycle. Also, what the heck is Corkscrew doing being down for any reason? That ride's a tank, you can't slow it down if you try.
Anyway the important thing is that we had enough time there to do ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger's homework. She's taking a course on photography and this week's assignment is portrait photographs. This is not necessarily formal portraits where you sit in flattering focus in front of a nondescript background and try to look like a board member. Just, pictures that highlight one person. As a person happy to pose whatever way bunnyhugger likes --- and unafraid to make eye contact with the camera --- I would be a happy test subject.
At least apart from a couple specific photos where, for example, between the sun in my face and the sunscreen melting into my eyes, I looked teary and pained. This spoiled some pictures of me right at the front of the park, where we'd watched the totality of the eclipse, at least if you don't want to show a picture of me appearing to have a generic emotion. Seriously; while it's easiest to read pain or maybe drunkenness into my face, you could also interpet my look to be ``about to burst into hysterical laughter'' or even ``has just learned something about municipal water mains''. In the end, she got photographs like she needs and we have the rest of the week to consider them and take more pictures if they need to be better ones.
Despite the crowd we got rides in on all three carousels --- the band organ on the Midway Carousel was working --- as well as on Mine Ride, Iron Dragon, Corkscrew, Raptor, Blue Streak, and both the red and blue sides of Gemini (which was running two trains, like they never do anymore). Not a bad set of roller coasters to ride, especially as we were also sniffing around the gift shops and taking the long way about finding lunch and all.
On the way back we kept seeing a thunderstorm ahead, as in, surely moving toward us. And a huge one, based on the cloud-to-ground lightning with crackly streaks that were clear, sharp, and several times the diameter of the Moon. bunnyhugger protested, and likely will protest again, my characterizing this as ``heat lightning'' but as we never heard thunder I believe I fall within reasonable definitions of the term. And yet, threatening as the weather was, we never encountered more than light sprinkling. We did get back home after midnight, but not so much after midnight as to be ridiculous. Good first normal-operations trip.
No pictures today; didn't have the time. Sorry to disappoint folks who wanted to see the Gnome-Mobile in detail.
Trivia: Chinese tea cups were imported into western Europe originally as ballast that could be sold at voyage end. Teacup handle-makers became a fixture in large European port cities by the mid-18th century. Source: A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped The World, William J Bernstein. (Europeans drank hotter tea, improving the dissolution of sugar, than Chinese people did.)
Currently Reading: Sign Painters, Faythe Levine and Sam Macon.
