The Family Puts Up Its Display; You Can See It From Albuquerque

[austin_dern]

New Year's Day Night --- please try to keep up with me --- we saw the weather was less bad, and so we went to the Lake Victoria Light Show. This is a big setup by a guy on the outskirts of the city, near Lake ... you know ... and he had posted a day or two before how he was taking the time to fix some problems that came up on Sunday with all the rain. So while he might take the light show down anytime, we had reason to hope it wasn't quite so soon as this.

There was also the promise he might try some new things, now that Christmas was over, and so he did. Some of the Christmas music, played on his low-power FM station, was gone! In its place were more general rock tunes, not seasonal at all. The light show was as intense and varied for ... oh, uh. Not Get Ready For This, but something with a similar tone ... as it would have been for ``Blue Christmas'', but the energy still felt different. One wonders if he's preparing for a summer show; apparently he already does a Halloween lights show and I guess as long as the things are up, might as well use them. Curiously cut were ``The House On Christmas Street'', this novelty song sold to people who do overdone Christmas Light houses (with their own street in place of Christmas Street on the recording) and the request to donate to the food bank made every half-hour. Also nearly all the bits where an inflatable snowman fills up and then, to some goofy joke song, 'melts' again were run one after the other, instead of spacing out between songs. Possibly the program of performances got scrambled in the song substitutions. We were plausibly the last people there for the night.

And a couple nights later we drove all the way to Brooklyn, Michigan, to return to the Michigan International Speedway. You might remember that in mid-November we went to a 5K run or, for us, walk, to see the many light displays set up on the track while sauntering about. Now, just before Twelfth Night, was their last day in operation and we wanted to drive through it the way everyone not on the 5K experienced the ride.

We started --- wait for it --- later than we really meant to and were a little bit worried they might stop letting cars in before we got there. They did not, and in fact we wouldn't even be the last car in. A couple cars came in immediately after us and I finally pulled to the side long enough that they passed, and then we suspected we were the final people there, only to have someone catch up to us at the end of the trail.

We had seen all or almost all the paid-course lighting when we walked through it and so anticipated we wouldn't need to take many photographs at all, despite which we did. Completely new to us were the fixtures for sponsors, which you see in the long drive up to the ticket booth. There did seem to be more than we remembered there and some were pretty clever at that, so we also got bunches of pictures of those that won't be nearly as good as seeing them in person.

The light show was great but was done before we were ready for it to finish, and was great to have done, much like the holidays are. Back to quotidian stuff soon, and then back to pinball stuff shortly after that.

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I'm happy now to bring you pictures of the ride to happiness, as we saw it back in the day (June):

So we got another Ride to Happiness. This time we noticed the boardwalk leading to it has the ride's (English) motto to 'Live Today .. Love Tomorrow ... Unite Forever' in it.

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Some artificial lily pads in the waters surrounding the ride.

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And here we are back at the station. There is something really Victorian Train Station about the high glass windows with all the muntins like this.

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There's that motto again, underneath the computer-animated face greeting you into this.

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Ride ready for dispatch. Half of everyone starts out backwards but the spinning --- unlike other spinning coasters we've been on --- starts almost immediately out the gate, rather than waiting even until we ascend the lift hill.

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So while you can pick your seat, front- or back-facing, as you load the station there's no way to know which way you'll even start, and you certainly will spin during the ride.

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Trivia: Noon, originally ``none'', was the ninth hour of the day, around what we would term three in the afternoon; the time retreated to its modern position over the fourteenth century, likely because during fasting periods monks could not eat before the none hour, and in long summer days this would take quite some time. Source: Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement From Cubits to Quantum Constants, James Vincent. This was also an era when there were twelve hours to daylight, with the length of the hour growing in summer.

Currently Reading: A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II, Maury Klein.

Comments

[fluffycritter]

You know I have the ability to fact-check that title, what with having multiple family members who live there.

Thankfully I have the discretion not to, most of all because they'd think I'm even weirder than they already do.