austin_dern

We did not get up early enough to hit Kennywood at opening, which we expected would probably cost us time on some rides. Exterminator, most likely, since the indoor spinning wild mouse ride gets long lines early and never ends. And since we were going on a Saturday, a warm but not brutally hot sunny day, we figured the park would be packed. Also, I managed to get lost along the way because Pittsburgh's roads are eighteen layers of spaghetti on top of each other and the satellite navigator can not keep up.

We did do some unusual things. One is rent a locker, because bunnyhugger wanted to bring her good cameras into the park but not risk carrying them onto rides all day or leaving them on ride storage. (We got locker 1054, and I assured bunnyhugger that was an easy number to remember, and she gave me the look that you're giving me right now.) Also we brought drink cups. We'd gotten a souvenir cup last year, and also got one back in 2017 or so, and finally remembered to bring them in for low-cost pop refills. That ... was not so much a savings as we expected, really. I think we came out ahead over buying a souvenir bottle for this year but not by very much, and if the day had been hotter we'd have been better off buying this year's bottle. Maybe there's something we aren't getting about how souvenir bottles work.

Kennywood has made some minor changes from last year, mostly decorative ones. Repainting, repairs, the little things that maybe don't thrill the hardcore parkgoer, but that does make the place look more polished well-kept. The easiest thing to notice here is that the park has new National Historic District signs. The park has always (since we were going there) had black-and-white signs explaining various rides and attractions and this year, they got an upgrade. There's now slick-looking ones that look like laser-cut wood (goodness knows if they are), with small changes. The one at Jack-Rabbit no longer has the part where they clearly changed 1921 to 1920, for example, and the one at Racer, the Möbius-strip coaster, now (correctly) claims it's the only wooden Möbius-strip coaster in North America, but doesn't say anything about how many there are worldwide. (Two, in wood.) There's still the weird assertion that Jack-Rabbit has a rare design feature it calls a ``camelback'' which nobody else would. And ---

So there is a curious food stand called The Lucky. It dates to the 30s, and it's the last of its brethren standing and in use. Nobody knows, then or now, why it's called The Lucky, and I'm not even sure if the name predates its survival. But the National Historic District sign attached to it? Is still the old kind, as far as I can tell the only survivor of the older sort of Historic sign. That's such a clever, subtle joke to play. I love it.

Other new things at the park, besides a good-size welcome and map right up at the front of the park: queue times! At least for some of the rides, they now have a digital wait time estimate, like this was a European park or something. We're not sure how much these can be trusted; The Phantom's Revenge, at one point, claimed an hourlong wait when we could see there was no wait. But its estimates for Jack-Rabbit and for Racer were not bad, and while it may have erred in claiming that Exterminator was a 75-minute wait, the line was sprawling outside the building, so ``at least an hour'' is a safe bet.

Last time we were at the park we had no idea where the Laffin' Sal, a mannequin that jiggles around while a laugh track plays --- trust me, it's more than it sounds like --- had been. It used to be in the back near the train ride and the Auto Ride. Now, it's right up front, near the Old Mill ride, where you can't miss it or the offer to buy line-cutting wristbands.

Also. Thunderbolt. The ride has always (since we were attending) had this mural leading up to the entrance to the roller coaster, originally built in 1924 as Pippin and considerably expanded and changed in 1968 to become Thunderbolt. Over the past year, they repainted it. Now the old was, you know, old, and special for some of that. Also for its composition; it had this nice image of Thunderbolt with park mascot Kenny Kangaroo, and other Kennywood-associated figures like George Washington (who'd started the French and Indian War around here) and Cowboy Joe (a fiberglass statue you can sit by and photograph with) and all. How could the new mural capture any of that?

Well ... it doesn't. But the new mural is not bad. Its centerpiece is again people riding Thunderbolt, with Kenny Kangaroo up front. I don't recognize other faces in it. But surrounding the ride are features like the Kennywood Arrow, Cowboy Joe, and the Potato Patch french fry chef. And the whole thing is done in this late-60s psychedelic style, the whole thing promising that if you liked the Pippin you'll love the Thunderbolt, and it features bth the Pippin's and the Thunderbolt's logos together. Also rainbows, so conservatives can be weird angry freaks about that too. It's ... I can't say I love it. But I don't hate it, and I think it's going to age well. I just would like to see more George Washington in it.

Now to enjoy a little more Wonderland at Bronner's Christmas:

Christmas-y infinity mirrors which give this nice suggestion that they've got portals to other dimensions in the walls here.

You can almost see the starship Discovery falling into this elf!

I'd hoped photographing the tree mirror here would get that three-dimensional effect and sure enough, it does.

Here's Santa, bringing a tree through the wormhole that the Refit Enterprise created with its improperly balanced experimental new warp drive.

I know this is a cardinal wearing boots and a snow cap, but what I see is that Amongus thing.

And now here's some miscellaneous lighting to celebrate other, non-Christmas holidays.

Trivia: The Long Duration Exposure Facility satellite, launchd into orbit in April 1984, weighed 21,300 pounds and carried 57 experiments from two hundred researchers in eight countries. Among the experiment payloads were twelve million tomato seeds. Source: Suddenly, Tomorrow Came ... A History of the Johnson Space Center, Henry C Dethloff. NASA SP-4307.

Currently Reading: Michigan History, July/August 2024, Editor Sarah Hamilton.

``What the hell are you SMILING about?'' demanded bunnyhugger as I exited the ride.

So yup, that's me, and you're probably wondering how I got into this situation. It really started at the end of last year, when I decided that I was going to ride Windseeker, the 301-foot-tall elevated swings ride at Cedar Point, this coming season, even if I had to do it without bunnyhugger, who does not like heights one bit except in the context of being on a roller coaster.

This past week we've been on a roller coaster trip, our big one for the year. The close brought us to Kings Island, Cedar Point's sister park just outside that city I can't spell correctly. Kings Island, too, has a Windseeker. We don't know when we'll be to Kings Island again. And I thought, well, it's been years since a Windseeker had that problem it was famous for. The first couple years of the ride one Windseeker or another got stopped at the top of the ride, leaving passengers stranded for, in some cases, hours. There's not much way to rescue people from the top; while there is an emergency service ladder on the tower, it's still a good twenty feet or more from the tower to where the seats hang.

But I told bunnyhugger I did want to ride this, and there was no wait (the ride loads 64 people in a cycle, and takes about three minutes from start to finish, so it's got capacity). She figured to get an ice cream and wait it out. They did not have the blue ice cream (a Kings Island specialty dating back to when they had the Smurfs license) she wanted. Meanwhile, I made a quick bathroom trip, figuring that while I didn't really need it, and while it had been ages since a Windseeker was stopped at its top for hours with no good way to recover the people, what are the odds it would happen now?

So you now know where this is going.

The normal part of the ride: it turns out they assign you a seat, probably to keep the load reasonably balanced. They also divide the queue, so after you get your number you go to either the 1-32 or the 33-64 queue to load. The swings are a solid block of plastic, with a restraint that locks over your lap and between your legs. The restraint's safety-belted to the bottom of the seat, but you don't have one across your lap. Given the ride doesn't go upside-down or do anything more than swing gently out, rotating, while up high, that's plenty and feels secure.

So we got up to the top of the top, and as the ride spun around the rigid bars swung out and I could see the Racer racing coasters and the new Orion coaster and The Beast, and all the main body of the park, and it was lovely. Kings Island is in a very wooded area, and the breeze that high up was steady, taking the misery off a brutally hot day. And then after a half-minute or so of this the rotations slowed, and stopped, me peering out over the toys of the Racer and of Orion just past my thigh.

After a few confused seconds a voice came over the scratchy PA system asking us to please remain seated (we could hardly do otherwise) facing forward with our heads against the headrest. The girls in the row ahead of me --- there was no one beside me --- gave voice to what happened: we were stuck. This is when I started laughing. I may have clapped. I was glad I'd gone to the bathroom right before this.

The girls started crying out in slightly overdramatic woe --- one was saying something like she's only fourteen, she can't die, she has so much to live for. So I felt safe piping up that this was fine, they're just going to have to restart the mechanism and they'll bring us down soon as they can. The girls started speculating about what if we dropped. I drew with confidence on what I thought I remembered about the mechanism and said we couldn't drop, it's a hydraulic lift and you can't make water do that. In researching afterwards I don't know where I got the idea it's a hydraulic lift, or really any information about how the lifting is actually done. It's likely done by whatever mechanism you would use for a thirty-storey elevator --- that is what this is, really --- so probably electric motors. But the important thing is those things don't just drop.

They did at least act soothed by this bearded stranger explaining that the ride's designed to stop moving if things break, instead of falling, and that if all else fails they could manually winch us to the ground, which might take time but would be safe. That last I believe is correct, now that I've had time to look at stuff afterwards.

Eventually --- after probably five or ten minutes; I don't have a watch and couldn't get my iPod or camera out of my pocket to check, and I didn't think to count dispatches of the Racer or Orion roller coasters as a timer --- and after another announcement we didn't quite get because we didn't know it was starting until it was almost over, we started lowering, slowly but with a confident steadiness. Then that progress stopped, and we got another announcement, this one that they were going to rotate the ride a little. This probably to get the seats placed so that seats 1 - 32 were at the end of the 1 - 32 queue and so on. This seems fussy, but I suppose the ride expects that as the rest state.

As that finished, and we started descending again, the girls ahead of me started calling out to the ride operator who'd done our safety check, telling him he lied, we were not good to go. I called down thanking him for the exclusive ride time, doing my bit to keep things merry. The girls said they wanted ``I Survived Windseeker'' T-shirts. They --- and I --- got cards from the main ride operator, vouchers for a free ice cream marked 'GAD' under the date slot. Not sure if that means 'Good All day' or 'Good Any Day'; I mentioned the shortage of blue ice cream and the day was so hot that drink stands had run out of ice. So ice cream might have been too much to hope for.

As we got to the ground and safely released I told our safety-check guy that I was glad for the experience and that my wife was not having the experience. He also asked about my T-shirt --- I was wearing a Conneaut Lake Park shirt --- and I explained it was this small park an hour and a half north of Pittsburgh that was great, but closed now that the new owner burned it down for the insurance money. This compresses the story down to where it's not quite true, but for the small time we had between people getting their ice cream vouchers and getting out of the way so maintenance can do something, it's close enough.

So I turned to the exit gate, started thinking where I might find bunnyhugger and how to explain this, and there she was, asking the question above.

Now you know how I got to this fix. Which was, as they go, no big deal as long as you don't mind being seated 301 feet off the ground. I felt secure enough for the length and as it went on only ten minutes or so total it wasn't horrible. Part of me was even a little happy to live through a freak event like that. It's the equivalent of having an emergency stop on a ride, or a walkdown from a roller coaster. I'm sorry there was no possible way I could take pictures from that position. I'll have to make do with remembering what it looked like from there.

bunnyhugger, meanwhile, saw all this from the ground and felt all the anxiety I did not. She was watching the ride after the blue ice cream rejection, and thought it weird that the rotations were slowing to a stop. But she wasn't sure this was not part of the ride's normal cycle, like, giving people a moment to look from a standstill before resuming. When it seemed to go on too long, this tripped over to worry, and as she approached the ride and heard other people saying the ride was stopped she got more afraid, and upset that I was not in the queue and not outside the ride so most likely up on it. (I was not only 301 feet off the ground, but on the far side of the ride, so it would have taken good luck for her to spot me. I never saw her on the ground.) The arrival of maintenance people crowding around did nothing for her humor and I fear she's not going to be happy reading me being so merry about it in these pages either, especially the above paragraph with me having kind of hoped something like that would happen. But the anxiety and worry and all passed soon enough, when I was back on the ground and could hold her and talk about my mansplaining rides to the teenage girls ahead of me, and how really fine everything went.

And then --- it's just possible that this small problem and not-particularly-great inconvenience saved us from horror. I intend to share that story tomorrow as I continue the saga of our hot-and-lineless amusement park trip. It was not perfectly lineless, but it was completely hot.

Another view of the fairy-tale mouse characters from the Ghoulish Golf course.

Here's ... not sure. Frankenstein Mouse on the left, but just a mouse witch with an orb on the right.

Hey, I didn't know Jack Pumpkinhead was in a band! But should have expected it.

Strongman mouse coming for me! Aieee!

Better-framed strongman mouse coming for me!

And here's the mummy mouse from behind, where you can see a tear that's trying to fool us into thinking it's a spider.

Trivia: Though there were book printers in Massachusetts from 1640, there were no paper-makers until 1728, when the Liberty Paper Mill opened on the Neponset River, eight miles from Boston. It never made a profit. Source: Paper: Paging Through History, Mark Kurlansky.

Currently Reading: The Mathematical Radio: Inside the Magic of AM, FM, and Single-Sideband, Paul J Nahin.

A week ago Sunday we took our first trip of the season to an amusement park that wasn't Cedar Point. In this case, to Michigan's Adventure, where it turned out I still remember the path pretty well. We wondered what might be new at the park this season, and whether it would be anything as great as the park map signboards and the one Freestyle soda pop machine. There wasn't, except that they did turn out to have actual physical park maps and I got one printed out on paper as we left for the day.

Something was missing, though: the petting zoo --- just a couple years old --- was gone! The infrastructure was there, but no animals. The ground was being used to stage many, many floral planters. I hear you protesting we're jumping to conclusions; maybe they figured this early in the season, before the water park is open and when the park is only open weekends, it's not worth getting the petting zoo going. And sure, but then, look at the maps, either on the signboards or the physical one in my hand. The petting zoo's location is an empty field of green. We're not going to see any more working bunnies at the park!

Which is not to say we wouldn't see any bunnies. While looking at the empty space we saw a bunch of chipmunks in what had been the goat pen, including several chasing one another around. And then I saw a small Eastern cottontail sitting in the shrubs, observing the outside world intently. So intently, in fact, that they didn't move when one pursued chipmunk crashed into the rabbit's side! And I tell you, there's a certain kind of offended you only see in a rabbit who's failed to notice an imminent squirrel collision.

As mentioned in a draft of the above paragraph that I fixed when I remembered it didn't happen in line for the Mad Mouse, we did get on the Mad Mouse. The wild mouse coaster, maintaining its tradition of having the slowest queue of the park, was running pretty well, with no service interruptions we saw. By the end of the day the line was short enough we could get in three rides, comparing favorably to the times when we can't get on it at all. Second time around we even got to explain to the people sharing out seat things like how the car was going to stop three times on the loading platform before starting up the lift hill. (This is why the queue is so slow, but we didn't go into that.) And hey, we got off the ride in just enough time to get one last ride in, taking the penultimate passenger ride of the day.

We got around to all the other coasters as well. Wolverine Wildcat's had more of its track re-tracked with that metal support instead of wood, making more of it ride smooth as glass. There's still rough patches, and they're likely not to let it run as fast and gloriously as its inspiration, Knoebels's Phoenix coaster, does. (Wolverine Wildcat is nearly a twin of Phoenix, but braked more.)

Shivering Timbers, the biggest coaster, has also had a bit more retracking done, so that its first hill is wonderfully smooth. After this it gets a bit rougher, which a lot of the return trip dedicated to shaking you silly. It's improved from last year, though, so maybe next year will be better yet.

After the park closed we took a tip from JTK, who always goes to this ice cream parlor in Muskegon. It turned out to be a slight annoyance to drive to, because the last bit requires turning around on a divided highway, but we'll be fine with it next time. The ice cream place, next to a miniature golf course, is a pretty substantial one. It's got its own playground and a bunch of Adirondack chairs with backs shaped like the lower peninsula. (We both mistook them for badly worn chairs at first.) Also the place believes in serving you lots of ice cream. I reflexively ordered a medium cone and was warned that was a tower of ice cream five large scoops tall. A small was more what I was thinking of and that was still three scoops large enough that by the time I finished eating it my hand was basically a large goopy puddle dripping off my arm. So the place could maybe use a water fountain but otherwise is great. Next time I'll probably get a cup rather than a cone.

And now let's wrap up my walk around the neighborhood. Coming in a couple months: the walk I did just a couple weeks ago seeing all the things here that aren't here anymore.

Far side of the neighborhood center that the Hong Kong restaurant moved into. This is the side that's promised to have a pharmacy arriving for like five years now.

Piece of public art in the nearby park that everyone in the neighborhood except bunnyhugger loves. She finds it rather trite.

Same Earth-mother-tree figure but at an awkward angle so you can see how the leaves reflect light.

Here's the statue from behind, where you can see the upper branch that holds on to a small cloud.

And then over here's a former church (it stopped having services earlier than 2010) that was abandoned for, like, forever. And then got badly damaged before the huge windstorm that smashed our neighborhood in July. It's looking a bit rough and yet, to our surprise, the past couple weeks they've been working on it and put up vinyl siding and stuff so it looks like a building someone might prefer to have not fall apart now.

And then in downtown East Lansing we see from the shelves that someone's been unloading a bunch of Cathy books! Also Pogo, although a lot of these are duplicates-in-content to books I already have.

Trivia: News of the American and French victory at the Battle of Yorktown was carried northward by Tench Tilghman, aide to General Washington, who rode for four days, bringing news to Philadelphia at 2:30 am the 24th of October, 1781. Source: The First Salute: A View of the American Revolution, Barbara W Tuchman.

Currently Reading: The Best Of The Spirit, Will Eisner.

PS: What's Going On In Dick Tracy? Why is newspaper guy using a Linotype? March - June 2024 --- featuring, in comments, the author of the current story answering my subject-line question! Please enjoy the behind-the-scenes information.

And for those who were guessing: the next photo event is our Labor Day visit to Michigan's Adventure, meaning among other things we've got all the way to September of last year already! You know, I remember the point when society was trying to stop the pandemic when my photos here were caught up to the present day and I just didn't have anything to post, and yet here we are, me nearly a year behind again. Weird.

So I had joked that Michigan's Adventure's big new thing for the year 2023 was getting signs in but it's only kind of a joke. These were among the things put in, signs that do give you some idea where the points of interest are.

Also, this was their first year opening for a Halloween event, so they were getting decorated for it.

That's a pretty interesting metallic beast sculpture even with the steampunk ... ears? ... and stuff.

And of course it's facing off against a steampunk ... joker? Sandman? Something?

The Chance carousel doesn't care about Halloween; it's just going around in its own circles.

And here's one of those park signs I told you about! Seriously, up to 2023 the park didn't have a map like this on the grounds, but it was easy to get a paper map.

Here's the Mad Mouse coaster, seen in a rare day of operating all right.

The two evergreens planted on either side of the exit gate, even though one of them would have nothing to grow into except the track. Note that the one on the left has been cut off where it would hit the track, so it's sending out a new leader off to the side that ... is also going to hit the track. Sorry, bad luck.

Also here's another little tree growing to the side of the exit queue, itself to someday get too close to the track and learn a harsh lesson.

And here's an unexpected discovery! Outside the newly renovated and expanded restrooms (another major change at the park for 2023) I spotted this tiny mouse, behind a trash bin, trying to figure out how best to not be perceived.

Mouse kept coming close to my side of the bin and then noticing people were still there, then going out before I could get a good picture.

Mouse would also go to the far side and discover people there too. After a while of going back and forth the mouse screwed up their courage and dashed off, running into the women's bathroom. Contrary to what many cartoons taught me to expect there were neither squeals of shock from women terrified by the presence of a mouse nor people dashing out in terror. I hope the mouse didn't feel slighted by that.

Trivia: Until 1889 major league baseball allowed player substitutions only in case of severe injury, and so teams typically had a ten- or eleven-player roster. Some teams made do with nine, hiring managers or groundskeepers who could be pressed into play as emergency substitutions. Source: A Game of Inches: The Story Behind the Innovations That Shaped Baseball, Peter Morris. Morris doesn't say which teams hired groundskeepers with the expectation they could fill in but his work's so solid I don't doubt it.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine Volume 38: The Will of the Wimpy, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

Thursday at Halloweekends. First thing we noticed checking in at the hotel was the signs now said the Hotel Breakers would close Monday at noon, not Sunday. We had never imagined staying over Sunday night, although I guess if we didn't need to be anywhere Monday and the extra night didn't cost anything it might be nice to sleep instead of closing a ten-hour day with four hours' driving. But it did also mean that we didn't necessarily have to move the car Sunday morning for when we would finally leave; we could, and in the end did, cut through the Hotel Breakers to get to it.

The big crowd we expected for the day, given the weather, didn't materialize. The weather was great, warm enough that we didn't even wear jackets, just our hoodies. The feel was quite a bit like how Fridays at Halloweekends used to be, a decade or more, with only some of even the biggest rides open. Also only some of the food: we had heard rumors of a burrito bowl place somewhere in the western areas and we spent some time walking back and forth seeing no sign of it. It turned out that it was there, and we'd find it easily for Friday lunch. Probably it was closed Thursday night, when only segments of the park were open and running.

Eventually we went to get cheese-on-a-stick and cheese fries for dinner. We'd got the meal plan for next year and that was applied to the remainder of our season. So we could get food for free, although the rules are weird. We can't, for example, just get cheese-on-a-stick, as that's not a meal, by their lights. So we have to get the cheese-on-a-stick plus the fries and then that's already paid for. It's a bit odd to get more food than you quite want because that's the cheaper option but that's where we are. And I guess when we're there all day that's fine. It's not like we have to eat four too-big meals.

We did get to see a good bit of the decorations for Halloweekends, some of which were new. The Boardwalk, for example, as a new development this year had its own original setup as The Bonewalk. Nice. We also saw that the Jack Aldrich Theater was for some reason not hosting any shows this year. The venue usually hosted whatever the Midnight Syndicate's show was. But Midnight Syndicate was performing outdoors this year, on the stage outside the Iron Dragon roller coaster. Given that Midnight Syndicate's shows are often built around using the confines of the theater to build a ghost story I'm not sure how their performances even work in the open. But we ended up not standing around to see one of them, so whatever they did to adapt we don't know. I haven't heard anything about what kept the Jack Aldrich Theater from being used for anything; maybe renovations? But what would have needed the extra weeks of Halloweekends to work on?

A happy carousel discovery: the midway carousel's band organ was running again. And playing a variety of Halloween tunes, different from the ones we'd hear at the Merry-Go-Round Museum. We thought they just had a rotation of a dozen or so songs --- we stood around listening until we heard repeats --- but we were wrong. They had a random shuffle of many Halloween-y songs. An unhappy carousel discovery: Cedar Downs, the racing carousel with the horses that move forward and back as well as in the circle, was closed, not operating all the whole weekend.

When we went past Millennium Force the ride sign promised there was a wait of fifteen minutes or so. That seemed unlikely but also probably the best offer we'd get all weekend, or would have all season. Turns out it was right, too, with a lovely short wait. We had similar luck with ValRavn --- and even got put into the front row, center, best spot to enjoy the seconds of staring down that are the selling point of that coaster. Wild Mouse too; we'd get several rides on it this year, including one on the cheese-themed car. Lore has it that the cheese-themed car spins faster than any of the six mouse-themed cars and I can say, from having observed several test runs (so every car went with empty loads) that yeah, the cheese car does appear to spin more. At least when empty. We'll wait for further evidence.

One of the later things we did was ride the Cadillac Cars, last survivor of the three antique auto rides they have at Cedar Point. This was shaping up to be a regular enough night until I saw a traffic jam up ahead. Turns out one of the cars had broken down! There were ride operators gathered around, looking at the opened hood and fussing with ... things ... while the rest of us waited and watched. I know, you're as curious as I am how you do engine repairs on a car that is stopped in place on a metal rail, right? But we were far enough away not to be able to see clearly. I was fully expecting them to have to take the car off the track.

It looked like they pulled something out and put a replacement in, but given that these are gas-engine cars that can't have been just, you know, replacing a bad engine. I don't know what took place exactly but the car lurched into motion again. And the ride continued to an ordinary conclusion while we tried to figure out what the heck did happen.

This was late enough we had time for one last thing before the end of the night. This would be leaping onto Iron Dragon, getting its last run for the night. Very fine night all around; would do again.

In photos, now, I'm still back at Gilroy Gardens on our Thursday, second, visit. Here's the ongoing proof:

Here's that Circus Tree, the great arch that stands over the entrance to the antique autos ride. But this angle makes clear that, yes, they're decorated for Christmas or at least festivities.

This time around we started on the 1950s side of the autos ride. You see what the cars look like from above here.

Peeking over to the 1920s side. The 20s cars are four-seaters while the 50s cars are two-seaters.

Billboards along the ride. Porcella's, I learn, was a succession of stores originally opened in 1898 and owned by the same family; in the early 20th century it was a dry goods store, and (after a while as a barbershop) became a clothing-and-music-instruments store, then finally a music shop, finally closed in 2020 as the pandemic hit a couple months before the most recent Porcella had planned to retire. No idea if this billboard predates the shop's closing.

Statue of an eagle or something like that along the ride path. Not sure its specific deal.

And here we're coming up on the gas station, the rare common point between the 20s and 50s sides of the ride.

Trivia: Between 1885 and 1905 the number of magazines in the United States almost doubled, from about 3,300 to about 6,000. Given the number of magazines that went out of publication it is plausible that eleven thousand magazines were published in those two decades. Source: The American Mail: Enlarger of the Common Life, Wayne E Fuller.

Currently Reading: Modesty Blaise: The Girl In The Iron Mask, Peter O'Donnell, Enric Badia Romero. So I get to the title story and have to say, it slaps. Some billionaire jerkfaces foiled in an earlier story decide to drive Modesty Blaise insane, by trapping her in an iron hood and dropping her deep in a pit, and they're amazed and horrified to watch --- by TV from their crew recording the whole thing --- that she gets her bearings, climbs out of the pit, and even knocks out the three-person crew on the site there. It's all done with enough cleverness to be believable as a story even if I kind of doubt an iron-hooded person could really climb out of a fifty-foot-deep pit and knock out three hired hands.

Our mid-trip stop, coming back from Pittsburgh, was Cedar Point, where we discovered that the Midway Carousel's band organ was not playing. They were back on the old carousel music CD that I'd have thought worn out by overuse. We were getting worried the band organ had, very shortly after being repaired, been taken out of operation again. But when we visited for Halloweekends the band organ was going, not just well, and with a big stock of Halloween music, but also sounding even better than it had. Maybe they were just re-tuning it in mid-July.

As with any drop-in trip like this we didn't have expectations of doing much. We ended up discovering a little corner of the park we never paid attention to. It's this little observation patio from which you can look over the Thunder Canyon river-rafting ride. bunnyhugger and I haven't been on it, as we don't tend to go in for the rides where you're sure to get soaked and this ride aims you at a couple waterfalls to make sure you're splashed enough. The patio has always been there, of course; we just hadn't noticed it, and spent a pleasant, tranquil time watching the lifeguard looking over boats coming around one corner and then aiming at the waterfall.

We got some good looks at Top Thrill Dragster, deep in its renovations but without any official announcement about what was to become of it. The only clue we had was that Cedar Point had gotten a new ``CP Racing'' logo and was plastering it on the ground and on signs around the coaster. All we could do there was take the same pictures everyone else was and wonder, shouldn't they be announcing something by now? Or something?

Also we spent some time in the Coliseum. It's stopped being a must-visit place for us since they got rid of the pinball, and miscellaneous old mechanical contraptions. It's joined the world of stuff that's just magnetic swipe cards for imaginary tickets. But we did notice they had a miniature golf course in there, and that's worth a peek. We didn't play, but we did agree we might just give that a try one of these times. As of the end of the 2023 season, we have not.

We closed our little visit out with a ride on the rabbits of the Kiddie Kingdom carousel. And hit the road around 7:30, before the park was even near closing. This meant we could get home before midnight, and did, and I could get a reasonable amount of sleep to plunge back into office work. bunnyhugger retrieved our pet rabbit from her parents the next day, and everything was back to regular life. For now.

KennyKon trip ended, let me now finish our first trip to Gilroy Gardens in photos. And what's next, if you can remember that far back? Just wait and see.

Us, joining the remaining masses, walking out along the bridge that was so happy and a way into the park just a few hours ago.

And here's a look over the side at, in the distance, a pavilion, but nearer, a bridge that sure looks like it was used for something at some point. I think we had the impression it might have been a miniature railroad bridge but that implies a heck of a realignment.

Ah well. Here we are, come to the topiary figures of Giant Earbuds.

And here's my album cover picture of the earbud topiaries.

As we near the exit ... there! I did see some of the Circus Trees up front! Sideways Rope Rectangle (center distance) and Picture Frame (right, near). I don't know why it didn't occur to me the rest were up here since that's where the map points to, too.

Better view of Sideways Rope Rectangle and that great body plan it has.

And oh, something I failed to get earlier ... a picture of the park's entrance, and their logo, featuring both garlic and the Basket tree.

Trivia: Skylab 4/3 launched at 10:01:23 am Eastern Daylight Time the 16th of October, 1973, with a planned mission of 56 days, with an option to extend to 84 days. Source: Skylab: A Chronology, Roland W Newkirk, Ivan D Ertel, Courtney G Brooks. NASA SP-4011. (In 1973 the United States never went off Daylight Saving Time.)

Currently Reading: The Wright Flyers 1899 - 1916: The Kites, Gliders, and Aircraft that Launched the 'Air Age', Richard P Hallion.

We got up early Saturday for Kennykon. Not as early as we'd need to be there at the official starting hour of 8 am; bunnyhugger, reading the schedule carefully, determined that there was a good hour or so set aside just for getting people registered and in, and we should be okay coming in the later quarter of that. I showered and remembered to not rest the arm not blow-drying my hair on the towel rack when I felt it give. bunnyhugger found that housekeeping had left four packets of coffee, all decaf. I hid the decaf coffee in the back of one of the drawers, hoping this would inspire housekeeping to restock with actual coffee. Housekeeping never came, it turned out, but we left the coffee hidden in hopes that some future guest will benefit.

bunnyhugger's phone gave us directions this time, the first time we'd made the Red Roof-to-Kennywood drive without my satellite navigator doing the hard work. Turns out that I remembered the path more or less okay, which is freaky for a drive we've never made more than once a year and haven't made at all since 2016 or 2017. We pulled up to the all-but-empty parking lot and I had to restrain myself from parking in the very first spot I saw, in this little corner of pavement, that's often a good spot when you've arrived and found the parking lot full. No, we could go, still within the free parking zones, to something as close as possible to the park's entrance, alongside the other roller coaster enthusiasts.

We noticed something odd at the parking lot: an escalator, leading to the even-higher-up parking lots farther up the hillside. We didn't remember an escalator being there. The necessity was obvious, though. The Kennywood parking lot is already uphill from the entire park, but the remote parking lot is, like, a roller coaster's height above even that.

Something was missing that we didn't register until leaving for the day, too. This was the ski lift, the alternative method for getting from the remotest parking lot down to the gate. (And, therefore, the only Kennywood ride you could go on without ever entering the park.) It turns out the ski lift was removed between our last visit in 2019 and this year, its function more than replaced by the escalator. The ski lift only ever operated on the busiest of days, ones it's not clear the park ever experienced. The last time we're aware of it running was later in the week of our visit in 2013. I'm not sure anyone even knows the last time it operated.

So, in that light, something that doesn't require staffing, and can run all the time --- the escalator was even going then, first thing in the morning, at a time when the parking lot was 99% empty. Also that isn't a terrifying way to get up and down a hill. I'm sorry never to have ridden the ski lift. bunnyhugger I suspect is a little regretful but she would not have ridden it anyway.

And now in my photo roll: Gilroy Gardens! This was a heck of a beautiful place so get ready for a couple hundred thousand pictures of trees. These are from our first trip, the 4th of July.

Our second rental car, the one that took forever to get, but that had working air conditioning. In the background, that rolling hill background we don't get at amusement parks in driving range.

And the trees lining the edge of the park. Somewhere behind there is a roller coaster; can you see supports for it?

Following the edge of the trees to the park entrance. This, too, is a tree height we just don't get at, say, Michigan's Adventure.

The entrance, a cozy little one for a low-key park.

Here, at the entrance, I took pictures of some of the topiary, completely failing to notice the circus trees nearby that are actually wild and not just a $10 1x1 scenery item in Roller Coaster Tycoon 3.

The pond underneath is something you walk on a bridge over, getting from the entrance to the main body of the park. Note the water fall on the right, and that there's a building underneath, and (on the left, distant) walkway to some attractions down there, including (if I've got the location right) the smaller kiddie carousel.

Trivia: Most of the homes on the French territory of St Pierre (off the coast of Newfoundland) built during the United States's Prohibition era were made with empty whiskey cases. Source: Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America, Peter Andreas.

Currently Reading: Cuba: An American History, Ada Ferrer.

California's Great America opened in the mid-70s as part of Marriott's amusement park chain. Marriot eventually got out of the business, selling the park to the city of Santa Clara, which sold the park (though not the land) to Kings Entertainment Company (the chain that built Kings Island and Kings Dominion and other non-King-named parks). Kings Entertainment Company got sold to Paramount. California's Great America became a Paramount park then, while its Chicago-area twin went to Bally, then-owners of Six Flags. Six Flags has gone to other owners, but it's kept one Great America. In the meanwhile Paramount sold all its parks to Cedar Fair, corporate overlords of Cedar Point and Michigan's Adventure and everything else we have season passes for.

But the city of Santa Clara kept California's Great America's land, selling it to Cedar Fair only in 2019. Last year Cedar Fair sold the land underneath California's Great America to a Real Evil Investment Trust, keeping only a six-year lease on the park with the REIT having an option of a five-year extension.

So the important thing is here is a park, nearly fifty years old, that's all but certain to close by 2033, and most likely before 2028. And, likely enough, to start being dismantled before then. Nothing official has been said, and in fact the park just opened a newly-completed area this summer (some of it wasn't even done yet!), so Cedar Fair at least expects to recoup the costs of that before they close things down.

When we got to planning our summer amusement park trip then, we had some reliable thoughts. Camden Park in West Virginia. Some Pennsylvania parks we haven't seen in forever (Dorney, Hersheypark) or longer (Sesame Place, which finally put in a roller coaster). But I nominated Great America, on the grounds that we don't know how long the park will last, but it seems likely this year or next will be the last ones where it's fully intact. Cedar Fair's bound to start moving what can be moved out, maybe to other parks, maybe to a hypothetical new location. And the logic persuaded bunnyhugger. This thought it would require plane travel, something she's never liked, and a thought I haven't savored since the pandemic began. But I wear an N95 mask for eight hours at work, twice a week, and at pinball for four more hours most Tuesday nights. I can do that on an airplane too. bunnyhugger does the same with the added challenge of teaching atop that. We could do the same for roller coasters too.

And so we had our California amusement park trip roughed out.

But before I tell you all that, how about looking at Saturday at Anthrohio? I thought you might like that.

bunnyhugger's dragon puppet communing with another puppet. I'm sorry the picture isn't clearer, but both were moving pretty quickly and having a great time of it. Also puppets should make a comeback in furry spaces because they're great.

Slightly better picture of the meeting of the characters.

Going back up to the hotel room we found everything in good order and our various puppets sacking out.

I have no idea what I did with the camera here but I like the almost zoom-in effect of it and know I'll never do that on purpose.

bunnyhugger is taking her daily walk, there, surrounded by geese who don't see why they should have to avoid the walkway on her account.

The confrontation is peacefully settled and she goes on her way.

Trivia: In 1891 the United States had a national debt of $997 million. The capitalization of the largest company, the Pennsylvania Railroad, was $842 million. Source: The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea, John Micklethwait, Adrian Wooldridge. So on the one hand, there isn't any company with the capitalization anywhere near that close to the national debt. On the other hand, in 1891 the only things the federal government spent money on were ``enough of an army to shoot Indians'' and whatever it took to run the Port of New York customs office, whereas now we have marginal public services and ``more aircraft carriers than the next five biggest navies in the world combined''.

Currently Reading: Wooster Proposes, Jeeves Disposes - or - Le Mot Juste: A Fresh Look At The Masterpieces of P G Wodehouse, Kristin Thompson.

This week my humor blog saw me get all upset about a typeface, get baffled by a question about a movie I never saw, started a serious-ish conversation about an amusement park ride's depiction in the comics, got a kind word from the guy who writes The Phantom comic strip, and saw nothing happen in a fan fiction crossover between the Rescue Rangers and The Secret of NIMH. All this and more waiting for you here:

• MiSTed: The Rangers of NIMH II, Part 5
• Did Gary Larson Know What a Particular Amusement Park Ride Looks Like?
• Statistics Saturday: Some Words From JRR Tolkein's _The Lord of the Rings_
• In Which I Don't Know What This Means Either
• In Which Pittsburgh Obliterates My Chain of Thought
• What's Going On In DePaul and Mike Manley's The Phantom (Weekdays)? Who is John X and why does Jungle Patrol care? April - June 2023
• My Chance to Make History
• MiSTed: The Rangers of NIMH II, Part 6

And now that we're out of the fair it's on to ... that's right, amusement parks! Here we start with pictures from the Mother's Day trip to Cedar Point, which is already three Cedar Point trips ago.

Establishing shot. Exterior, early afternoon. My car on the extreme right, hatchback opened up. Cedar Point's new roller coaster visible in there ... do you see it? You will.

They're sticking with the Cedar Point 150 sign, even though the park is up to 153 now, I suppose because they didn't want to buy new numerals every year for a decade.

The Boardwalk is the new name for the renovated area that used to be the Oceana midway. It's got a 50s theme and lovely old-fashioned styling.

Troika Troika Troika is one of the rides that didn't get moved, but did get absorbed into the Boardwalk theme, with new safety sign and all that match the area theme. Also, they're getting area themes back together, which is great.

Troika Troika Troika's new sign retains the old, 70s-era unexplained tripling of the name while putting in the retro-50s seafoam green boomerang flair.

The new restaurant/bar that opened behind the Giant Wheel, eating up space where Wicked Twister used to be, we worried was going to close off space that had only just been opened up and made a pleasant view. (It had previously been blocked by the Oceana stadium and to a lesser extent Wicked Twister.) And maybe it does, but the building looks so very good, and so very much like something that had ``always'' been there, that it's hard to fault it. Look how handsome a view this is; it's hard to complain that there could have been Lake Erie behind it instead.

Trivia: Sailing ships cannot travel north in the Red Sea against the prevailing headwinds, and have to be towed in both directions through the Suez Canal. Source: A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World, William J Bernstein. (This as part of making a point about the Suez Canal bringing about the end of wooden ships in favor of metal hulls.)

Currently Reading: Come Fly With Us: NASA's Payload Specialist Program, Melvin Croft and John Youskauskas.

A week go we drove to the parking lot of a megachurch in a former Farmer Jack's supermarket that I, and many people on the neighborhood Facebook group, would have sworn was the former K-Mart. No; the former K-Mart is a couple blocks up the road and is now a self-storage place. We were there less for the chance to be near a megachurch than to go to the carnival. There was a small fair in its tenth day or so, and who brings a fair around this time of year? Especially for that long a visit? But we didn't want to miss it, both for the fun and because bunnyhugger found the company sometimes brought somewhat rare rides.

The fair was very small, filling maybe a third of the parking lot, with two rows of rides and one of midway games. They didn't even have an ice cream vendor, defensible given how cool the month has been. It also charged $2 just to enter the grounds, plus a buck a ticket, with most rides being three or four tickets. They had only the one kiddie roller coaster, not exciting enough for us to think seriously about riding. They did have a kiddie ride with a cartoony dog head figure that we recognized from the kiddie coaster at Fantasy Island, from back in our 2019 visit, so I guess those fiberglass dogs really get around.

And they had a Ferris wheel, a small thing we were allowed to ride the chariot on. What we couldn't do was figure out the manufacturer. It's a tiny one, a bit larger than the kiddie carousel at (say) Conneaut Lake Park. We never did find a maker's mark we could read, although I took a picture of the thing that looked most like a nameplate. It's still sitting on my camera, not yet loaded onto the computer. Soon, I promise. You're going to see all my pictures of this.

The most unusual ride and the one that confirmed we'd spend time there was a Break Dance. This is a platform ride, four cars rotating around an axle that's itself on an axle, much like a Calypso or even a Scrambler. But the cars spin freely on the ends of their arms, and will tip forward so you get that little extra axis of disorientation. bunnyhugger remembers riding one at Coney Island (New York) to the point of nausea and has been looking for another experience slightly less intense than that. Would this be the one?

No, it would not. It started out promising and disturbing enough, accelerating backwards in a way we could not have taken had it gone on indefinitely. But the reverse acceleration didn't last too long, and while the cars spun quite well, they never reached the out-of-control continued spinning that would be too much. And while the ride went on a good long while, it stopped at just the right point to not be too much for us; another minute or so and we might have started regretting the ride. As it was, this was a good ride and part of a nice little evening excursion.

Besides that we had a small sampling of what's good about fairs, which is to say a heap of fresh-made fries. Also a couple people complimented bunnyhugger's Pac-Man earrings, for good reason. The compliments encouraged her to wear them to our activity for Sunday, a big thing I intend to tell you about shortly.

Trivia: The design certification review for the 'parasol', a replacement heat shield for the Skylab station, was held the 23rd and 24th of May, 1973, and the certificate of flight worthiness for the new hardware granted. Source: Skylab: A Chronology, Roland W Newkirk, Ivan D Ertel, Courtney G Brooks. NASA SP-4011.

Currently Reading: When Giants Ruled The Sky: The Brief Reign and Tragic Demise of the American Rigid Airship, John J Geoghegan.