Profile

austin_dern: Inspired by Krazy Kat, of kourse. (Default)
austin_dern

June 2025

S M T W T F S
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930     

Custom Text

Most Popular Tags

Still busy with holiday stuff. So after you get answers to the questions of What's Going On In Dick Tracy? Why was that library woman killing people? October - December 2023 please enjoy a double dose of Gilroy Gardens pictures as we get to the end of the operating day:

SAM_8900.jpeg

Now that, Michael, is a $15 banana if I ever saw one.


SAM_8902.jpeg

Another view of the Banana Split, here at or close to its peak.


SAM_8905.jpeg

There's the Banana Split after a ride cycle. I love that they got such a whimsical custom frame for their swinging ship ride.


SAM_8909.jpeg

One last visit to the Garlic Twirl, so here's a last look at the queue. It's not the most efficient use of space but it must be very pleasant a line to be on when it's long.


SAM_8911.jpeg

What it looks like from inside a Garlic Twirl car, before it twirls.


SAM_8912.jpeg

[personal profile] bunnyhugger peeking out at what the next thing on my photo reel might be. Will I get to it before the new year? ... We'll see!


SAM_8913.jpeg

And the Garlic Twirl ride sign, a last look.


SAM_8914.jpeg

Basket, the centerpiece Circus Tree that's become an icon for the park.


SAM_8917.jpeg

This structure on the right, behind the Basket tree, is where the food-sampling event on the 4th of July was. We didn't get cards for it because there didn't seem to be enough vegetarian food to be worth getting.


SAM_8918.jpeg

Taking a last ride on the Illions Supreme Carousel. Here's the horse I rode.


SAM_8920.jpeg

And the file of horses we were on for the last ride of the day.


SAM_8922.jpeg

Ride operator going up to close the ride off. The day's barely at 5 pm and it's already over!


Trivia: From 1926 the United States Department of Agriculture's farm radio service began offering a five-day-a-week show, Housekeepers' Chat, hosted by ``Aunt Sammy''. Aunt Sammy would answer her large, semi-ept family's questions on everything from how to make Thanksgiving pie to why children need sunbaths. The scripts were provided by the USDA Bureau of Home Economics, to be read by each station's own local ``Aunt Sammy'', in the local voice and with local embellishments. By 1931 it was on over a hundred stations. Source: A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression, Jane Ziegelman and Andrew Coe.

Currently Reading: Michigan History, January/February 2024. Editor Sarah Hamilton.

Too busy with Christmas things to write. I mean apart from Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 8: Olive's Dinosaur Dilemma, over on my humor blog, where Olive faces no dilemma. Sorry to spoil that but it's true. Anyway as there are not two lemmas for you, please instead enjoy two doses of Gilroy Gardens pictures. You're welcome.

SAM_8875.jpeg

Climbing the steps to the Train Station, no longer obscured by the Circus Tree here.


SAM_8876.jpeg

Train arriving ready for our tour.


SAM_8880.jpeg

Did I mention the carousel rooster set atop a pile of hay for some reason? Because they have a carousel rooster set atop a pile of hay for some reason. And it's a good bit back of the public-accessible area, so you have to zoom in to photograph it.


SAM_8882.jpeg

View of the back of the swinging Banana Split ride. Could you resist an attraction like that forever?


SAM_8884.jpeg

Here's the Garlic Twirl, the ride that made us realize this was a really wonderful place.


SAM_8885.jpeg

Another view of the Garlic Twirl ride.


SAM_8887.jpeg

View from the train of the Arch Circus Tree, the one guarding the entrance to the antique autos ride.


SAM_8889.jpeg

And here's the channel the train takes within the Monarch Garden, the building that the monorail also passes through.


SAM_8890.jpeg

Looking up, inside the Monarch Garden, towards the pedestrian trails within.


SAM_8892.jpeg

And here we're done with the ride and getting a look at Spiral Staircase #2 from the other side, with the obscured carousel behind.


SAM_8893.jpeg

Another look at Spiral Staircase #2, before we start walking the path to ...


SAM_8894.jpeg

Yes! The ride that's on everyone's lips, the Banana Split.


Trivia: Apollo 8 emerged from its transearth injection and at 89 hours 28 minutes 47 seconds into the flight (on Christmas day, 1968) achieved two-way radio phaselock. Two-way voice communication was not achieved until 89 hours 33 minutes 28 seconds, however, and telemetry synchronization was not achieved until 89 hours 43 minutes 0 seconds. Source: Apollo By The Numbers: A Statistical Reference, Richard W Orloff. NASA SP-4029. Among the problems is it appears the spacecraft was set for high-bit-rate transmission, erroneously, so that a configuration command was incompatible with the carrier power. The line ``please be informed there IS a Santa Claus'' was delivered about a minute after two-way voice communication came back.

Currently Reading: Michigan History, January/February 2024. Editor Sarah Hamilton.

A needed correction on that ``Hey, pinball friends!'' guy from the other day. It wasn't someone who had quarreled with [personal profile] bunnyhugger about trying to keep from getting an infectious, sometimes disabling, occasionally fatal disease. Different guy, although one that did have a ridiculous online fight that didn't quite reach the ``dead to me'' point, though not for want of trying.

``Hey, pinball friends'' guy was rather the stage father of one of Michigan Pinball's set of very young yet crazy good players. He'd had an extended fight with her about whether it was even permitted under International Flipper Pinball Association rules to have a sanctioned tournament at a place where minors, such as his son, who had no interest in attending her charity tournament and did not after all, might not be able to attend. (If our local barcade sees an under-age person, such as his son, after 9 pm they get really tense, and it's hard to get a tournament done by 9 pm.) He was wrong, but also unwilling to take the word of anyone who knew the rules for that. It was a nasty scene, reaching the point where he declared in Facebook that yes, he would rather charity tournaments be cancelled than to force the three or four really good under-drinking-age competitive pinball players to forfeit their matches after 9 pm. At some point apparently everyone in the world told him he really needs to sit down and shut up and hope this all passes.

And he has, although he still likes to pop up and explain rules incorrectly to [personal profile] bunnyhugger. But the venue fight seems to have died down and if he's willing to let it drop then, fine, drop it.


So now let's get back to a double dose of Gilroy Gardens photographs. But first, have you wanted to see my review of the Popeye and Son episode The Girl From Down Under? Sure you do. That review is right here. Learn her astounding secrets whether or not you watch the cartoon!


Now back to Gilroy Gardens, here starting from after the boat ride.

SAM_8857.jpeg

Another of the Circus Trees. This one, I believe, is Chain Link, also called 3-2-1.


SAM_8859.jpeg

Slightly more dramatic angle here of Chain Link.


SAM_8860.jpeg

This one's a pretty decent view of that astroturf stage with the fenced-off area mentioned earlier.


SAM_8861.jpeg

Now we're looking here at some of the kiddie rides. Much of the park is kiddie rides, but you'd barely know that from my photographs.


SAM_8862.jpeg

More kiddie rides. These suggest many Herschell-Spillman rides but the park seems like it should be too new for that. But someone must make new old-style firetruck rides, right?


SAM_8863.jpeg

Back to the carousel for a fresh ride. Also admire that dragon-lion chariot there.


SAM_8864.jpeg

Ilions Supreme Carousel operator's station, including the scripts for loading, slowing down, unloading, and downtime. I can't get enough of this stuff.


SAM_8865.jpeg

Quick look at the rounding board and the many lights of the carousel.


SAM_8868.jpeg

Turning away from the carousel for a moment lets us get a view of this Circus Tree, Spiral Staircase #2, as well as the obscured train station.


SAM_8869.jpeg

But that is literally just turning away for a moment, as the ride gets back to going and we get this action scene.


SAM_8871.jpeg

Standing horse on the outer row as the ride slows down.


SAM_8874.jpeg

And here's [personal profile] bunnyhugger riding her pick of horses.


Trivia: The second EVA during Skylab 4/3 was on Christmas Day 1973, to take photographs of Comet Kohoutek before perhelion, using the extreme ultraviolet camera, the coronagraph contamination experiment, and the X-ray/ultraviolet solar photography experiment. The EVA lasted six hours 54 minutes. Source: Skylab: A Chronology, Roland W Newkirk, Ivan D Ertel, Courtney G Brooks. NASA SP-4011.

Currently Reading: Michigan History, January/February 2024. Editor Sarah Hamilton.

When the Merry-Go-Round Museum in Sandusky, Ohio, was organizing in the late 80s the fashion was to describe the ride as merry-go-rounds. In recent decades ``carousel'' has become the classier word, for some reason. (Some have tried retrofitting a distinction between merry-go-rounds and carousels. Ignore them.) But they've stuck with the old name and made MGRM their logotype. So why, on the receipts from the gift shop this year, did they give the name of the business as the Museum of Carousel Art and History?

We don't know. It wasn't mentioned. From appearances that Halloweekends Saturday the Merry-Go-Round Museum was carrying on as it traditionally does. It was busier than usual for one of our visits, as a pack of a dozen or more people who all look like my mother's friends got there just ahead of us and were taking the guided tour. [personal profile] bunnyhugger often remarks to me how she could give the tour, and there wasn't anything to this year that suggests she isn't still able. Possibly more able: the docent gave the impression that there's no brass-ring-game carousels operating anymore, when [personal profile] bunnyhugger and I have ridden on three of them, one as recently as four months before. Or the docent was simplifying for the sake of my mom's friends.

The crowd does seem like a good thing for the museum, though, which in our annual visits had seemed to be getting sparser attendance up to the pandemic. And there had been some word of a big part of their holdings --- on loan, as these things often are, from a collector's estate --- going back to the estate. [personal profile] bunnyhugger will make very clear whether they have or not. The floor itself seemed well-stocked with exhibits, some of them new or somewhat new to me. Maybe a better indication of the museum's health is the gift shop, which after a couple of skant years was stocked with plenty of stuff, including new back issues of merry-go-round trade magazines.

They also had, for what they say is the last time, raffle tickets for a carousel horse. This is the same one I had thought they were raffling off New Year's Day 2023, but apparently they've given the last horse one more year and this will be the last. Of course we hope every year to win but now if we win we'll have to hope the horse doesn't fight with [personal profile] bunnyhugger's rabbit.

The Merry-Go-Round Museum decorated for Halloween in a way I don't remember before. They got bunches of skeletons and many of them were riding the horses around the place. Fun bit. I hope this all suggests the museum's on an upswing.

On the drive back to Cedar Point --- which we feared would be packed, as Saturday was not quite as warm as Friday but it was still, like, low-50s, extremely comfortable weather --- we made a stop. This is because at 1538 First Street in Sandusky is a mysterious brick building that's fascinated us every time we drive past. It's your standard style abandoned industrial place, surrounded by empty fields. But a no-longer-working lighted sign atop the building and built into the brickface are light-colored U's, inset in a circle, speaking boldly of the building's history as having been at one time something. We've called it things like the Underdog Building and the Power U Building. After years of swearing we'd someday stop and get good pictures of it, this time, we did.

The building shows of its abandonment, with a lot of old, fractured glass windows and a front door that's just the plywood nailed into the back. (How did that carpenter get out?) It's a pretty attractive piece of industrial ruin and it so happens the empty lot adjacent is one that has a view of Cedar Point's skyline. But meanwhile this building sits there, metal shutters rusting and windows getting muddy and cracked, its only apparent remaining purpose being holding a sign painted in the brick pointing people to eat at Lyman Harbor, across the street.

[personal profile] bunnyhugger, using her documentation-sleuthing skills, found the story of the U Building. I forget what the U stands for, but it was, I think, an electrical parts company that went out of business in the early 2000's. So this building has been derelict a while, but not, like, from time immemorial. Just long enough to look lost forever.


On to something that doesn't lok a bit lost: Gilroy Gardens, and our ride on the Rose Garden Round Boats.

SAM_8847.jpeg

Looking ahead at this last stretch of pond before the return station. I think the white dome in the upper right corner is the mushroom swings ride.


SAM_8848.jpeg

There was some kind of backup at the return station, but that gave me time to notice and try taking a picture of the operator wearing the safety harness there.


SAM_8849.jpeg

So there's the people taking our boat after us. Also, a decent image of what the Gilroy Gardens park uniforms look like.


SAM_8850.jpeg

Looking on at another boat making the return to the station.


SAM_8851.jpeg

And here's a view from the bridge over the ride, so you can see a lot of boats ready to or starting to go.


SAM_8852.jpeg

Waterfall, one of many little ones around the park.


Trivia: In 1260 Venetian merchants built a ship with displacement of about 500 tons, the Roccaforte, and within a few years built another of the same size. In comparison the Mayflower, built centuries later, was only about 180 tons. Source: The Riddle of the Compass: The Invention that Changed the World, Amir D Aczel.

Currently Reading: Michigan History, January/February 2024. Editor Sarah Hamilton.

Back on Halloweekends reporting. Friday, which is as far as I've gotten. As the day wore on it got more and more busy, so we got to looking at less-popular rides --- mostly the flat rides we never get on when we're there for a single day --- and attractions. Here we spent more time prowling around the Frontier Trail than usual. The mill, with the waterwheel, was closed up, something different from previous visits. Can't say whether that was a happens-to-be-closed or they don't want people poking around an enclosed and unattended building. We did discover inside ``Fort Sandusky'', which has a big open front that you'd think would be a problem for an actual fort, a box that looked like it once held brochures about the historical nature of the buildings relocated here. We also found in the 'Trail DOR' box the Park Operations checklist for the area.

And that the now-combined candle shop/woodworking shop had a bunch of little candles that look like they were taken out from the backstock and put on shelves. Rose Stein, who'd run the candle shop, died in early 2021 and despite the universal acclaim of how much people liked the candle-making there, they're not making candles anymore. You can still dip a candle into colors, but that's all. This would be all right enough except the wood carving guy is busy enough selling candles he doesn't get much chance to carve. But we did see they had neat new things like miniatures of the Gemini roller coaster trains, or tiny trash bins, or the like, so he has time to do small projects at least.

I forget which day this happened s I'll just fit in here. While we were walking towards Corkscrew someone yelled out ``Hey! Pinball friends!'' and we smiled and waved back at we hadn't the faintest idea who. Moments later [personal profile] bunnyhugger placed him, as one of the weirdly large number of people who picked fights with her online about [personal profile] bunnyhugger's tournaments and, particularly, insisting on masks and such until the local board of health dropped the recommendation. (Which they should not have, but that's a separate issue.) We don't know why he was acting so much like nothing ever happened, but he managed to stay non-obnoxious enough that if he wants to consign that to ``let's not discuss this further'', all right. We can work with that and I suppose we looked gracious.

As the sun set and the weather went from clear and upper 50s to clear and mid-50s the crowds did thin out, and we were able to get some good riding in, both on flat rides and roller coasters. It was looking like we'd be able to meet our informal Halloweekends goal of riding all the roller coasters and even a bonus of riding maybe all the flat rides? (We did not, but if we'd focused on it Sunday we absolutely would have.)


Now in photos let's get back to Gilroy Gardens, a wonderful little spot:

SAM_8834.jpeg

Getting our second ride in on the Rainbow Garden Round Boat Ride. The wait was much less bad than it was on the 4th of July. Here you get to see the operator's station and the operator's big frozen margarita jug.


SAM_8835.jpeg

[personal profile] bunnyhugger looking charming on the boat ride. Also wearing a pinball T-shirt for some reason that can't possibly be explained, right?


SAM_8837.jpeg

Flowers lining one edge of the boat ride's channel.


SAM_8840.jpeg

And rocks lining the other side. I think this is near that sign explaining bamboo that I had a blurry picture of, from the other trip on this ride.


SAM_8841.jpeg

Looking at this tranquil channel you'd never imagine we were fifteen feet frm going over the waterfall, would you?


SAM_8846.jpeg

And here we're back to the end of the ride and whatever plant it is that does so well in the water here.


Trivia: Starting in 1934 the ``Committee of Five for the Betterment of Radio'' --- bandleaders Rudy Valee, Paul Whiteman, Guy Lombardo, Richard Himber, and Abe Lyman --- chose to not play songs with too-suggestive titles. This lest songs like ``Love for Sale'' or ``I Found A New Way To Go To Town'' inspire censorship drives. Source: The Mighty Music Box: The Golden Age of Musical Radio, Thomas A DeLong.

Currently Reading: Michigan History, January/February 2024. Editor Sarah Hamilton.

I got running late on Tuesday, because the workday and the pinball tournament took up all the time right up to the brink of midnight, so that's why I had to reschedule some of my stuff from the humor blog this week. The lineup as things turned out was:


And now, Gilroy Gardens pictures. Enjoy!

SAM_8803.jpeg

We were almost in time to make this ride cycle. The poor kid, now, I'm not sure what happened but I think he was in the wrong lane.


SAM_8805.jpeg

Looking up into the 'balloons'; you see how plausibly they look like they could be real things.


SAM_8808.jpeg

And after the ride, here's the baskets back on the ground. The balloons seem to alternate between stars and stripes, which makes sense.


SAM_8809.jpeg

This is another of those blind pictures, taken by putting my hand up over a construction fence and hoping for the best. You can see bits of what look like the tiling for a fountain or a pool or something here, hidden away. Also props of some kind?


SAM_8811.jpeg

And this is the fence all that's hidden behind. It's an irregular shape for the fence; the astroturf region itself is roughly a trapezoid.


SAM_8812.jpeg

View of the far end of the astroturf area. There were a couple people lounging at the end and I think that might have been the tail end of an activity. I'm pretty sure there was something scheduled for this spot that we got to after it ended.


SAM_8813.jpeg

Getting back to Timber Twister Coaster for another ride, and another look at the ride sign, which is a pretty darned good one and which matches the snake-themed car.


SAM_8814.jpeg

Hey, did ou know this about sandstone? Or about Romper, the dog who left 'fossil' footprints in the sidewalk?


SAM_8817.jpeg

Here's those footprints we were hearing so much about.


SAM_8822.jpeg

Close-up of a panel of ride information on Timber Twister, posted at the operator's booth.


SAM_8823.jpeg

Good look at the train during a test cycle. It had gone down while we were waiting and came back before we gave up and moved on to something else.


SAM_8828.jpeg

Picture of some of the track of Timber Twister; it does some good twisting around and you see the timber right there.


Trivia: Between 1910 and 1922 homesteaders established claims on 42 percent of the entire area of the state of Montana. About four-fifths of this was unfit for crop agriculture as the colonizers practiced it. Source: The Story of American Railroads, Stewart H Holbrook. (The colonizers were drawn by aggressive railroad promotion which is why it's in this book.)

Currently Reading: Michigan History, November/December 2023. Editor Sarah Hamilton.

Don't have the time or energy to blog properly today. So enjoy a bunch of Gilroy Gardens pictures.

Oh, but should mention something from work. My boss came to me with a surprise: a proper plastic nameplate for the outside of my cubicle. It's something I hadn't thought about not having until a month or so ago, when someone came around doing a seating chart for, I guess, emergency service applications and he needed me to spell my name. My boss said he had ordered it a year ago, when I started work, but somehow it just never appeared until, well, now. I wasn't worried. There are two new hires which may have lodged free whatever was keeping my nameplate from making it to us.

Anyway, with this surprise, what could I do but stand up and show it around, while everyone applauded? So I did. [personal profile] bunnyhugger, on hearing about the holiday breakfast potluck that made yesterday a day of so many frittatas, said it sounds like working in an office is fun. Will say, there are fun bits about this office.

Now on to the pictures.

SAM_8780.jpeg

View of the sky monorail --- as promised, not running --- along with the Four-Legged Giant circus tree.


SAM_8781.jpeg

The entrance to Quicksilver Express! This time we weren't going to miss the laughing raccoons.


SAM_8782.jpeg

And here they are! I assume they're a couple of years old, but they look back and forth and laugh about the merry things to do with the black powder.


SAM_8783.jpeg

See? They're very glad to see you! I don't know if the center raccoon was ever supposed to have something in (or near) their right paw.


SAM_8785.jpeg

And now here's that empty patch I pointed you to from the Panoramic Wheel pictures. Hidden behind a construction fence was this circus tree, Zig-Zag. The map has a garden area in this location but it's evidently under reconstruction, and they've blocked off Zig-Zag for ... some reason. I got this picture by sticking my hand above the fence line and shooting blind.


SAM_8786.jpeg

Zig-Zag is on one side of the channel formed by the flow from the waterfall. Emblem, here, is on the other side and it's not in the midst of any particular renovation project.


SAM_8788.jpeg

Closer look at Emblem, so you can see how it's decorated for the holidays even now, the 6th of July.


SAM_8792.jpeg

A bundle of topiary stuff that looks faintly like a bunch of wiggly fingers, at least from this angle.


SAM_8794.jpeg

From this angle you see that the 'wiggly fingers' interpretation is indefensible, but what else are you going to do to describe it? You can see the water park in the background.


SAM_8795.jpeg

Lakeside Amphitheater, which does go from the space opposite the water park and leads down to the central lagoon, that week was featuring white noise.


SAM_8798.jpeg

And now here's a ride that caught our interest with more realistic balloons than we expected, and that turns out to be a major attraction at Gilroy Gardens.


SAM_8799.jpeg

You see how much the ride makes its balloons look like actual hot air balloons, and has cars that plausibly look like baskets. They sit on the ground, too, once landed, so there's a bit of a jolt as the ride comes to an end.


Trivia: Francis Cabot Lowell's first cotton mill, in Waltham, Massachusetts, saw its assets grow from about $39,000 in 1814 to $771,000 by 1823. Lowell himself considered the initial sales boom ``too favorable to be credible''. Source: Big Cotton: How a Humble Fiber Created Fortunes, Wrecked Civilizations, and Put America on the Map, Stephen Yafa. (This would be very early, Lowell was writing about, as he died in 1817.)

Currently Reading: Michigan History, November/December 2023. Editor Sarah Hamilton.

PS: What's Going On In The Phantom (Weekdays)? What's with the art in The Phantom? September - December 2023, and how a story with not much plot much going on went.

Friday at Halloweekends promised to be our first full day and with the sunny skies and warm weather --- I think it was in the 60s --- probably a crowded one. Still, we used our season-passholder early-admission not to ride something but to find food. Specifically, the burrito bowl place which did turn out to be in the Frontier Town. And, better, which were covered under our meal plan so we could walk in to the empty restaurant, get a lot of food, and take it right back out to eat in a wonderful noontime sun.

With that done --- and I didn't feel seriously hungry the rest of the day so this might be our best meal option at Cedar Point --- we could get into riding and Halloweekending. The Mine Ride was the nearest ride and I noticed the signs on it still list the Quicksilver Express, at Gilroy Gardens, and could point out how we'd been there.

And after that, the Sky Hawk, the rigid-pendulum giant swing ride that brings you a hundred-plus feet up in the air. Almost no line, too, a surprise given it's a good ride and it is a good thrill. Part of the joy of it for me is that it's one of the few rides giving a few moments of free fall, at the top of the swings. This was quite disconcerting to some of the kids in the row past us but, you know, they'll come to love it, I'm sure.

After the Sky Hawk we noticed something that must have been there forever without drawing our attention. This is a little building --- it's got swinging doors like a cattle barn --- that sits between the maintenance shed for the Mine Ride roller coaster and the parkgoer-accessible areas. I assume it's some convenient spot for maintenance stuff for that part of the Frontier Town, but I'm not sure how it never attracted our notice or exploration before.

At Halloweekends we always try to ride all the roller coasters at least once, sometimes excepting Woodstock Express as a kiddie coaster that's not so fun when you have adult knees. Also sometimes excepting Top Thrill Dragster, because it always has a huge line for a 16-second ride. Not a problem anymore, of course, but we could see where they were building the new tower for Top Thrill 2. And, as [personal profile] bunnyhugger asked, wondering if that's really the name they're going with? You get the alliteration but nobody called the ride Top Thrill for short; it was Dragster or TTD. But they've got the merchandise out with that name and logo and surely they wouldn't be doing that unless it were the name they're going with, right?

Also: we spotted some nature! A chipmunk, particularly, with cheeks stuffed full that we saw in front of one of the better gift shops. I could get one okay picture of the chipmunk before they vanished. [personal profile] bunnyhugger I think wasn't even able to get that.

After rides on the two operating carousels --- [personal profile] bunnyhugger hugged one of the rabbits on the Kiddie Kingdom to break the news more gently about her Bayol carousel rabbit --- I noticed something curious among the kiddie rides. They have a Junior Whip, a too-small-for-adults version of the early 20th century ride. (Cedar Point had a full-size Whip at some point, but the Tilt-A-Whirl has taken its place for providing a similar sort of ride experience, while taking up much less space.) A full-size Whip is a sort of rounded rectangle track, with cars at the rounded edges rotating and being whipped back into place before resuming the straight parts of the path. Their ride, the Roto Whip, is a circular ride, little cars (still Whip or Tilt-a-Whirl shaped) going around in a bigger circle. Well, this time I noticed the tracks, showing the metal worn down by many, many rides, is not a circle. Or even a ring. It's a pretty well-defined oval or ellipse. I don't remember noticing the Roto Whip being ridden --- the Kiddie Kingdom rides share operators and only a couple run at a time --- and we wouldn't see it run. But now I'd like to understand how it moves that we get this wear pattern in the metal it runs along. Although I guess I don't want to understand deeply enough to check YouTube for ride videos.


Put aside my wondering at the mysteries of the Roto Whip. Enjoy some of the spectacle of Gilroy Gardens as we knew it.

SAM_8764.jpeg

Riding on the Panoramic Wheel, the park's Ferris wheel. It's not much larger than what you get at a county fair which might be part of why [personal profile] bunnyhugger was warm to riding it.


SAM_8765.jpeg

Looking in on the axle of the wheel. I believe we got the ride to ourselves.


SAM_8768.jpeg

Looking down! You see some of the forests we went through to get into the queue.


SAM_8770.jpeg

And now a look out across the amusement park ... which you can barely tell exists, from here. Quite the view. You might see a little clearing area at the center-right of the picture (where the darker, shaded trees start). If I have my bearings right, you're going to see that again and from a different angle.


SAM_8774.jpeg

Looking over at one of the buildings where they hold events and activities and educational stuff.


SAM_8775.jpeg

And I think that's the building that the monorail and the train also run through, over there.


Trivia: By 1901 the British population consumed 259 million pounds of tea annually. India and Sri Lanka were able to produce this, plus another hundred million pounds of extra tea for surplus. Source: Tea: Addiction, Exploitation, and Empire, Roy Moxham.

Currently Reading: Michigan History, November/December 2023. Editor Sarah Hamilton.

PS: Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 7: Redbeard, an episode I like more than you were maybe expecting me to say.

Doing a bunch of Gilroy Gardens pictures today, since Sunday and all. But first let me plug my humor blog's Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 7: Junior's Birthday Round-Up, a cartoon that sure seems like it exists although in another four hours I won't remember a thing about it. Now back to early July, still, with pictures:

SAM_8737.jpeg

Ah, here we are passing one of the 1950s cars on the road and ... huh. I guess they can't all be carrying passengers.


SAM_8742.jpeg

Farmhouse that's another of the points in common since I guess they mostly look similar, 1920s or 1950s. I also see that metal rail leading up to the porch and don't know its purpose. Would be wild if once upon a time you motored through a house, wouldn't it?


SAM_8746.jpeg

More of the farmhouse. I guess the rail there has to be some soil-retention thing but it's still a bit mysterious.


SAM_8747.jpeg

Martinelli's Apple Juice is from a company founded, like the billboard says, in 1868 and still headquartered in Santa Cruz county. Still family-owned, too.


SAM_8748.jpeg

This looks like a 1920s Chevrolet ad but I don't know if it's taken from an actual billboard (or more likely, magazine) or is a pastiche meant to evoke the look.


SAM_8750.jpeg

And now the big tunnel leading into ToonTown! Can't wait!


SAM_8751.jpeg

Just before getting back to the station we go past this building, made to suggest a gas station. I don't know if this is a working building or entirely a prop.


SAM_8755.jpeg

And now the ride's done. Hanging around here with a view of the Oil Well Circus Tree. You can also see a bear statue behind that.


SAM_8759.jpeg

Getting around to other attractions now. Ferris wheel on the left and the Monarch Garden name promises butterflies, but we didn't see any.


SAM_8760.jpeg

How's this for a queue, though? Plenty of room to feel like you're the only people in the world here.


SAM_8761.jpeg

More of the very twisty path to enjoy.


SAM_8763.jpeg

Oh, someone's left their box of Fancy Ramen up in the trees where the bears won't get at it.


Trivia: In May 1866 Austria offered to cede Venetia (the province containing Venice, and part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire since 1815) to the new Kingdom of Italy, but not directly: it proposed surrendering Venetia to France, in exchange for Italian neutrality in the Austro-Prussian War. The deal fell through, between French indifference and Italian hostility. Source: The Struggle For Mastery In Europe, 1848 - 1918, A J P Taylor.

Currently Reading: Modesty Blaise: The Girl In The Iron Mask, Peter O'Donnell, Enric Badia Romero.

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:

SAM_8728.jpeg

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.


SAM_8730.jpeg

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


SAM_8732.jpeg

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


SAM_8733.jpeg

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.


SAM_8734.jpeg

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


SAM_8735.jpeg

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.

Been another week on my humor blog which drew no comments from my father about there being too much Popeye. But there was both Popeye and his son given representation, and I dug something out of an ancient, forgotten funny animal comic to gawk at. Here's the recent stuff:


With the --- first --- day at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk wrapped up, are you ready for pictures of what we did next, back in July? I am. In case you forgot, it was the ...

SAM_8705.jpeg

Second day at Gilmore Gardens! Here's the entrance and the couple people in line ahead of us.


SAM_8706.jpeg

Uh-oh! Our hopes of riding the Sky Trail Monorail again were foiled. We held out a slight hope that maybe it would open during the day, but it did not.


SAM_8708.jpeg

One of the trees up front, with a sign explaining, 'I'm getting some help growing a new RUNG (thanks!).


SAM_8709.jpeg

And the wooden bridge leading from the entrance to the main body of the park.


SAM_8713.jpeg

Timber Twister racing back by the station during its ride. Don't see a lot of snakes that fast, do you?


SAM_8714.jpeg

Timber Twister coming back to the station; now we'll get a nice look and see ...


SAM_8715.jpeg

Oh, whoops! Guess the snake has other places to be! (The coaster makes two circuits as is common for small family rides like this.)


SAM_8720.jpeg

And here's the less-grand kiddie coaster, the one we're too big to ride.


SAM_8722.jpeg

Accompanied adults live by different rules, of course. You see some of the horses here, plus the chariot.


SAM_8724.jpeg

Ah, the Circus Trees! --- which this is not! It's just a weeping giant sequoia that grew all weird on its own! So far as I know.


SAM_8725.jpeg

Looking off in a random direction to find topiary along the antique autos track.


SAM_8726.jpeg

And now here's a circus tree, one of those guarding Claudia's Garden and the antique autos ride.


Trivia: Though a comet was observed in 44 BC, the year of Julius Caesar's murder, it was recorded (by Chinese astronomers) in May and June of the year, and not (as legend has it) before the assassination. Source: Marking Time: The Epic Quest to Invent the Perfect Calendar, Duncan Steel. There are Roman records of seeing it by daylight, but only in the last ten days of July.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 30: Popeye and the Evil Echo, Bela Sims, Tom Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

The week before Halloween I started on a new big task at work. This was going through the code of one of the two projects I'm on and, basically, cleaning it out. The projects I'm on are ones with broad scope, meant to handle a lot of individual tasks. And it was developed by someone now spoken of only warily as the Previous Developer, someone who was definitely in way over his head, stitching together StackOverflow answers at seeming random and copy-pasting lots of stuff everywhere.

I picked this task as something I could make progress on during a short week, and set down and pick up again without being completely lost for where I was. The three-day week was for a personal holiday: [personal profile] bunnyhugger and I were going to Cedar Point for Halloweekends. And as Halloweekends has expanded now Thursday through Sunday --- it's maybe four years away from becoming just Halloweeks --- we were expanding our trip to match. To get the full experience I was taking Thursday and Friday off. [personal profile] bunnyhugger had no classes those days, as usual, although that doesn't mean she didn't have more schoolwork than she wanted that needed to be done while driving down. We had picked the last weekend of the park season because we like going there closing day, and it was a little cheaper when we booked, and we thought the weather might be a little cooler and less pleasant so we'd have our best circumstance, a park fully open but with only a small die-hard group of attendees. No luck there; it was, once more, a warm and sunny weekend, even on the cool days just getting down to light jacket weather.

More on that to come. The big clean-up project, meanwhile, turns out I'm still doing as of today, when I put in a pull request [*] for my fourth great big change in how things are built. You might imagine it's frustrating finding myself doing the same kind of thing for nearly two months straight. You'd be wrong; I'm finding this very gratifying work. There is something wonderful in finding stuff that isn't needed, or finding that a tiny change can mean you can throw out huge blocks of code. We've long since passed the point that I have added a net negative number of lines of code, and it's continuing. I think I'm at the end of making any big code reductions, but then I thought that a month ago too and discovered surprises.

[*] A ``pull request'' is a thing in content management that really seems like it should be called a ``push'', but they already have something called a ``push'' and it's what seems like what ought to be called a ``pull'', although that's sometimes called a ``fetch'' instead. I may have this wrong, but there's no way to tell.

Also everyone else on the project is really happy with all this code-yeeting. The other programmers, who tried to guide the Previous Developer into better structures, are seeing enough clutter removed to rebuild the project well. Also it loads enormously faster, not weighted down with useless tools like Angular or multiple yet incompatible systems to make confirmation dialogues look prettier. Or trying to load two different versions of jQuery every page. This has also included separating what had been inline Javascript and stylesheets into separate files for each page, a feat mercifully done by a tool a different developer whipped up. But I could go through after that and found all sorts of commonalities that could be put into shared files, taking out a lot of copy-pasted stuff that would make the site difficult to impossible to keep consistent, so far as it's consistent at all. Or discovering little feats of madness.

One of my small triumphs was changing into something that makes sense a bit of style sheet that (renaming things a little to make this harder for supervisors to run across) went basically like:

div.div-show{
   display: none;
}

I realize including stylesheet stuff is a little inside-baseball but if you just read this stuff for the normal everyday meaning of words you'll see why this is bizarre. So it's been very gratifying taking a lot of that stuff out, lately.


And now, what you maybe never thought would happen, the last photographs from the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk! Until we get to Thursday's pictures!

SAM_8698.jpeg

Here we are, back on the street, outside the arcade (on the right). Notice they've got a shark up above the door there.


SAM_8699.jpeg

And there's the doors to the arcade, dubbed the neptune Kingdom, and offering --- truly --- games miniature golf pool restaurant.


SAM_8701.jpeg

Looking up the street, and along the trolley tracks. I wonder where the casino is.


SAM_8702.jpeg

And back down the other way, including to the spot where we got our tickets and entered the boardwalk. You might also just barely be able to make out Giant Dipper in the distant center.


SAM_8703.jpeg

There's the spot where we entered! Not the only entrance to the boardwalk, but one that's got a nice bright sign for it.


SAM_8704.jpeg

And that's the sign. That's where we spent the day; what do you think of it?


Trivia: Between 1926 and 1935 IBM's sales of punch cards, its main revenue and profit center, grew from $2.6 million to about $4 million per year. Source: Before the Computer: IBM, NCR, Burroughs, and Remington Rand and the Industry They Created 1865 - 1956, James W Cortada.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 30: Popeye and the Evil Echo, Bela Sims, Tom Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

And let me reiterate this, for folks who missed it. [personal profile] bunnyhugger's annual tradition on her Livejournal/Dreamwidth, where she and I try to guess what's on her advent calendar, is eleven days underway but you've still got a couple weeks of enjoying the game with us.


In the meantime, no fresh blogging today as I spent the day at work and the evening hanging around [personal profile] bunnyhugger's women's pinball tournament, where she won her second Venom launch party. Between the two of us we've won three Venom launch parties and that seems like rather a lot considering we don't particularly care much about Venom as a property. The game seems neat enough and it's got some clever aspects but we're not talking Foo Fighters here. Anyway, here's a double dose of Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk pictures:

SAM_8672.jpeg

Dinner. We got vegetarian burgers at whichever place this was, one of the last boardwalk places still open. We got out just as they were pulling the doors closed.


SAM_8673.jpeg

Here's what the Boardwalk looks like as it's being put to sleep.


SAM_8674.jpeg

And looking down the other way, where the lights around Giant Dipper are turned off.


SAM_8675.jpeg

And the Looff Carousel's gone to bed too!


SAM_8677.jpeg

They even roped off the stairs and ramp to the spot where you pick up the sky ride or the Undertow roller coaster.


SAM_8680.jpeg

The Colonnade 1907, with shops that never heard of that carousel music CD.


SAM_8683.jpeg

But the arcade in it was still open and ``Deadeye'' [personal profile] bunnyhugger was happy to put a dollar in.


SAM_8684.jpeg

So many things to spin around a little bit or hop up a second!


SAM_8686.jpeg

The arcade also had a fortune-telling machine, in this case, a pirate. Note the treasure chest in front of him.


SAM_8693.jpeg

And here's the Roll-A-Bingo arcade, the first installation of a modernized remake of Fascination. As it is a modern thing it's got color LEDs for all sort of fun effects.


SAM_8694.jpeg

More of the Roll-A-Bingo parlor, one of those few places where you can sit on a cube of color.


SAM_8695.jpeg

I forget whether it was already wound down for the night and we were watching the staff closing up or whether we played the last rounds of the night.


Trivia: Holly Golightly, a musical adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffany's, adapted the movie to Broadway without using the film's hit song ``Moon River''. It closed in previews after opening the 12th of December, 1966, at the Majestic. Source: Not Since Carrie: 40 Years Of Broadway Musical Flops, Ken Mandelbaum.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 30: Popeye and the Evil Echo, Bela Sims, Tom Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

PS: What's Going On In Alley Oop? Is Everything In Alley Oop Just A Dream Now? September - December 2023 in hallucinatory alternate universes and stuff.

Oh yes, I should have mentioned before. [personal profile] bunnyhugger's annual tradition on her Livejournal/Dreamwidth, where she and I try to guess what's on her advent calendar, is now ... eleven ... days underway. But you can join in the guessing game too and see one of the high points of the blogging year.


Had the first day of the big floor replacement today. It went ... smoother and quicker than expected, really. I'd managed to get the whole of the breakfast nook and kitchen cleaned out. My method for moving the Tri-Zone pinball machine worked as well as I'd hoped. And then this morning ---

Well, I needed to call the woman organizing the floor replacement over two issues. One is that we weren't sure we had ever made an explicit decision about the grout color we wanted, which sounds like a petty thing but we know what the place is going to look like in five years and we want to proof against it. The other was to ask about whether they'd be able to do the backsplash tile removal and replacement for when the counter gets replaced. As I was on hold while she looked up our file there was a knock on the door, the tile guys here --- almost a half-hour early --- to start on it. Turns out they were the best guys to ask about that, right then and there, so I could have saved a call. (Two calls, actually; I'd called before she had gotten in.) And while I was talking with them sketching out what they figured on doing my work meeting for the day started up. That's all rather a lot in rapid sequence.

Turns out that the studious emptying of the fridge we'd been doing the last week was ... appreciated but maybe premature. The work they could do today, laying down the new underflooring, they could do with just moving the fridge and the oven around, never needing to put either in the dining room. Possibly tomorrow when they put down tile and the stuff needs a couple hours to set. But they spent a while making measurements, and then cutting things outside, and then laying down new underfloor (above the remains of our bad old floor) and screwing it in place. Then cementing a second layer on top of that. Our new kitchen is going to be a quarter-inch or so smaller, vertically, than it had been. I bet it only shows in how we keep setting things down on the counter wrong.

But it all went smoothly and efficiently. They put down little rails for the edge of our return-air vent and for the threshold between kitchen and dining room. They listened to a completely different Sirius XM radio station of late-70s/early-80s music than I was listening to one room over, and they took the time before leaving to pet our rabbit's head. And yes, they brought out a box of the tiles and we confirmed it's the right pattern and they've got the plan for installing it, with grey grout in channels as narrow as possible.

Tomorrow it's to be [personal profile] bunnyhugger's turn to be somewhere on hand while they work; I have to be in the office. They expect to be done, or close to done, by the end of the day. If they have more to do then I'm going to have to push my boss to let me work from home Wednesday. I can point out, I'd be making a sacrifice to stay at home for this. This Wednesday is the official celebration of everyone's birthdays, which usually involves someone bringing in boxes of fritters for breakfast and a huge pan of sheet cake for lunch. But I'd do it to be there when our kitchen gets to be 80% fixed.

Also tomorrow remind me to go to the counter place so I can make our deposit on the new counter. Thanks.


Now let's get back to looking at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk in the waning hours of the day after Independence.

SAM_8662.jpeg

Now there's a brake lever, waiting for the train to return for it to be of any use.


SAM_8663.jpeg

By night, the train dispatches from the station into a void.


SAM_8664.jpeg

Very close to sunset and you start to see how irresistible the place must be by night.


SAM_8665.jpeg

We're here waiting for our last ride ... unless we can get back around fast enough ...


SAM_8667.jpeg

Hurrying back from the exit lane to the entrance and we find ...


SAM_8671.jpeg

It's too late. The day is done, and the ride closed up.


Trivia: The Victoria --- the lone ship to survive of Magellan's expedition --- under the command of Juan Sebastian Elcano arrived in Seville with 26 tons of cloves aboard. Elcano was awarded a coat of arms embellished with cinnamon sticks, nutmegs, and cloves. Source: An Edible History of Humanity, Tom Standage.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 30: Popeye and the Evil Echo, Bela Sims, Tom Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle.

PS: Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 6: Surf Movie, in which I heroically try to remember something about this cartoon I just watched.

Sorry, I spent the whole day cleaning stuff out for the big floor job this week, and plus it's Sunday and I always just do photographs for that anyway. So here goes, from the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk:

SAM_8642.jpeg

Returning to the carousel; here's a picture showing the styling of the building and the picture above the entrance.


SAM_8644.jpeg

Here's one of the steel rings, held back so you could see what it looks like. It's greasier than its counterparts at Knoebels or Gillian's Wonderland Pier, I assume because the more-automated system needs the lubrication.


SAM_8645.jpeg

Oh look, the roof is smiling at the ride!


SAM_8648.jpeg

And now for another ride on the Giant Dipper. The safety instruction video is hosted by this anthropomorphized-hastily MyBoardwalk Play Card, and the whole thing looks like this.


SAM_8650.jpeg

Oh, got a glimpse of one of the cavemen on the sky ride!


SAM_8651.jpeg

Looking through the crown of the loading station at what sure looks like a smile in the coaster.


SAM_8652.jpeg

The clouds don't look very happy, but they held off doing anything untoward while the lights got going.


SAM_8653.jpeg

In the background you can see the lift hill of Giant Dipper lit up.


SAM_8657.jpeg

Ooh, spooky! The owl statue is there to scare off easily impressed minor birds.


SAM_8658.jpeg

Going back around for night rides. The park closed its rides about 9 pm which was barely sunset; unfortunately, we could only have stayed and ridden later if we'd been there the 4th of July instead.


SAM_8660.jpeg

Lift hill seen from the crown around the loading station. Also I am pretty sure that's not the brake lever there, just a broom.


SAM_8661.jpeg

Giant Dipper train warping back into the station.


Trivia: Nogi, in Mackinac County, Michigan, was founded in 1905 as a logging camp and sawmill for the Central Paper Company of Muskegon; after about twenty years it was destroyed by forest fires. It was named for Count Maresuke Nogi, Japanese hero of the Russo-Japanese War. Source: Michigan Place Names: The History of the Founding and the Naming of More Than Five Thousand Past and Present Michigan Communities, Walter Romig.

Currently Reading: Pogo Puce Stamp Catalog, Walt Kelly.

PS: Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 6: Junior Gets A Job, a showcase for Bluto's complex personality, right?

Replacing the dishwasher's wheels. You'd think this a matter just of taking the dishwasher out, removing the wheels, and putting new wheels on. Well, so it is at heart. A week ago Saturday I took the dishwasher out to the garage, set it on a matt, and turned it upside-down. The matt, and the outdoor placement, so that the residual water draining out wouldn't get on what remains of our kitchen floor. I started taking off the shell of the dishwasher, to get access to the wheels, to learn that I didn't need to do that. I had to take off a (removable) layer of insulating foam but otherwise the wheels where reasonably accessible. All I had to do was lightly tap them with a hammer and the wheels, with stems embedded in plastic sleeves, came out easily.

Of course I knew I had to replace the wheels. And I'd already gone to Ace Hardware nearby, buying a couple of new two-inch casters. I'd wanted larger wheels, on the theory that would be softer on the floor, but they didn't have four of the same kind of wheel. So I bought two packs of two wheels each, the ones I could get, and then discovered one of the packs was a different model that didn't have a stem. So I went back to exchange for one that did and discovered ...

So the old sleeve for the wheels reaches about one and a half inches long. The stems for every wheel I could find reach only one inch. This leaves a gap that just won't do on any surface. This sent me on a hurried search for sleeves of that size. Or, failing that, something that could take their place. They don't make plastic sleeves --- sockets is the proper term and that does not actually make it easier to find on hardware store web sites --- that long. Well, why not take the sleeves off the old and use them for the new? Because they don't come off, I suspect as part of a locking system to make sure the wheels stay securely on when the dishwasher is set right-side up and it's only friction holding the wheels in place.

I tried several clever improvisations to get around this, ultimately going to see what I could do to replace the plastic sleeves with something I could get from Ace Hardware. The hardware guy I started talking to had an idea that was almost there: what about using a vinyl tube or PVC pipe? This was a path that might have worked, but I went with a vinyl tube on the theory that I wasn't sure a half-inch-diameter PVC pipe would fit within the essentially alterable radius of the holes in the dishwasher's underbelly. I also wasn't sure how snugly the wheels would fit in the interior of the PVC pipe. --- And the last issue was how to make sure the pipe didn't slide out when the dishwasher was turned right-side up, a thing I was able to keep from completely happening by using the sockets that came with the new wheels but upside-down.

If this seems hard to visualize, don't worry. It didn't work. The wheel stems, having soft vinyl to lean against, tilted and collapsed under the pressure of being moved. I could barely move the thing, and left horrid black streaks that needed a magic eraser to wipe up. Tolerable for a floor in its last weeks of existence but impossible for the replacement. So I admitted defeat, took the new wheels out, put the old ones back in, and yielded to the inevitable.

The old wheels had model part numbers on them, and a quick DuckDuckGo on them found this string of numbers had never been assembled before. Searching on appliance-part web sites found that these were indeed wheel models for a line of (Whirlpool or something) washers, ages ago, long since superseded by (new numbers). And I gave in and ordered a quartet of supersession wheels, annoyingly more expensive than what Ace Hardware wanted for a couple two-inch wheels. Fine.

Yesterday [personal profile] bunnyhugger found someone on the community buy-nothing group that needed some two-inch casters for a project and we gave it to them. So there's someone this all brought some good to, besides boosting myself as someone vaguely familiar to the Ace Hardware people and building up my confidence that I can just take a dishwasher out to the garage and hammer things out of and back into it.

Tomorrow, all going well, we take the dishwasher out, and bring it back in with new wheels on a new floor sometime later in the week. More on this as it comes to pass.


And now to a thing that has long passed: photos from the 5th of July, Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.

SAM_8629.jpeg

Back to the Giant Coaster! You can see the train just returning past the crown, there.


SAM_8633.jpeg

Here's the lining of the walls inside, with old pictures within the arches there. Past the wall is the inclined ramp for most of the queue.


SAM_8635.jpeg

Little control panel for the operator at the end of the queue, where the operator pauses people and if need be scans their wristband or rides card.


SAM_8636.jpeg

Returning train. I'm able to get a little view of the non-romance side in the frontmost cars there.


SAM_8638.jpeg

Snap of the front of the car, and a ride operator letting people know they can get on board now.


SAM_8639.jpeg

At the end of the exit path is this sign, encouraging you to get a ride photo.


Trivia: On the 10th of December, 1973, NASA Headquarters directed Johnson Space Center, Kennedy Space Center, and the Manned Space Flight Center that the Skylab Program would be disestablished in March 1974, with a small group retained to manage the closeout of the space station. Source: Skylab: A Chronology, Roland W Newkirk, Ivan D Ertel, Courtney G Brooks. NASA SP-4011.

Currently Reading: Pogo Puce Stamp Catalog, Walt Kelly.

So after a long while of fussing over the house decaying we're facing ... doing something about it? Doing a lot of things about it, in fact, almost all at once. The kitchen floor replacement has been the driving thing and the one that's precipitated a lot of the activity scheduled for the next ten days. That's still scheduled for, nominally, Monday through Thursday though from what I understand the latter two days are contingent. We'll hope so. I did ask my boss about working from home Wednesday in case, and he wants to see what things are like Tuesday.

The discovery that our kitchen counter was in bad shape drove us to a fast decision to replace the counter. This because we worried that we would also need to replace the cabinets, something best done at the same time the floor is re-tiled. This looks like it won't be necessary. The counter place --- recommended to us by the floor place as someone they work with and could coordinate things with --- didn't think it needs to be done with the floor refinishing, so, good. And they're going to arrange for a plumber to have the kitchen sink, hopefully, taken out for the work and set back in place.

Ah, but, taking the counter out will demand the removal of at least one row of our four-inch square backsplash tiles. The counter place recommended the floor place as the best folks to remove them, repair the wall, and --- if possible --- restore the tiles. But that's only possible if none of the tiles gets cracked, damaged, or lost in the work. It could be that somewhere in the house is the surplus from when the tiles were first installed, but good luck ever seeing those, ever. [personal profile] bunnyhugger doesn't remember seeing them. So we might have to get a vinyl backsplash installed after all, replacing that bottom row. We'll see and hope that it's nothing so bad. Anyway they're scheduled to come in a week from Tuesday, when I should be in the office but [personal profile] bunnyhugger is scheduled to be home all day.

Also since our portable dishwasher, with its dirt-encrusted wheels, did so much damage to the old floor we have to do something about that. The answer is, obviously, change the wheels. That's a whole other story.

In a coincidental bit of business, our washing machine, the Speed Queen that laundromats choose for their never breaking down, needs repair. Most likely the belt needs replacement or tightening; it's not spinning right. I begged off a Tuesday appointment as I don't like the thought of dealing with both repairs in the kitchen and in the basement, especially as during that while we'll only be able to get to the basement by leaving the house through the front door and going in the side door. They could do Thursday afternoon, though, and while there's the risk of kitchen stuff still going on, I thought it was low enough to tolerate. We'll need the laundry anyway.

Also coincidentally we have the annual furnace inspection next Friday, so there's very little chance of our pet rabbit having uninterrupted quiet time for a while. I hope he doesn't get fussy. I also hope the kitchen floor guys don't dislike or worse, judge me for the satellite radio I listen to all day. I'll probably put on the 80s New Wave station, that'll be fine.

Anyway the last two days have been ones of cleaning out space in the basement, to move stuff from our kitchen and breakfast nook down there. I'm hoping to have time tomorrow to get the pantry shelves down there, and Sunday to close things out.


And now let's look at a couple things at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk:

SAM_8611.jpeg

Sign explaining the Ruth and Sohn 38 B Baritone Scale Band Organ, which the sign says has been at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk since 1911. Note the sign claims that you can get recordings of it at a gift shop near the Casino Arcade. This is no longer true and no one working at that shop or at the Arcade had ever heard of it.


SAM_8612.jpeg

Trying to photograph the whole of the band organ, but the protective glass means you get a halo of the carousel around it.


SAM_8613.jpeg

One side of the Ruth and Sohn band organ, showing how they've got bunches of cherubs all over the place.


SAM_8614.jpeg

The other side of the Ruth and Sohn band organ and yep, more cherubs playing drums and lutes. I believe one of them has an arm that's way off of the instrument, likely broken or disabled so it doesn't break further, but I'm not sure which from this picture. I should have taken a movie.


SAM_8619.jpeg

Dramatic action on the carousel! Well, someone dropped their hat? purse? something that looks kind of like a small mammal making a getaway, anyway.


SAM_8623.jpeg

Horse and chariot caught by the 'beautiful' light. I don't know why I didn't take all my pictures using that.


Trivia: In 1962 the United States' first enclosed urban shopping mall, the Midtown Plaza, opened in Rochester, New York. It had an interior ``town square'', and tunnels and skyways connecting it to existing towers, parking garages, and the new Midtown Tower, which had a hotel, restaurant, and offices. Source: Meet Me By The Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall, Alexandra Lange.

Currently Reading: Pogo Puce Stamp Catalog, Walt Kelly.

Over on my humor blog, as you've seen on your Reading page or else in whatever your RSS reader is, it's been a week full of Statistics reports. One of those was my readership report for last month. Two were updates on the project to replace the wheels on our portable dishwasher, which failed. And after that was enough Popeye that my dad texted me to say, enough Popeye already. I'll say when there's enough Popeye.


Let's enjoy a full twelve pictures from the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk now; I enjoyed taking them.

SAM_8575.jpeg

Here's dear [personal profile] bunnyhugger on the carousel, ready for her ride.


SAM_8577.jpeg

And there's the target of everyone's tossed rings, the clown face. Toss it in the mouth and the eyes light up and the thing makes a big whooping noise and everybody applauds. At the top of the picture you can see the ring dispenser. Grab a ring from the claw at the end there while the ride is in motion and you get your chance.


SAM_8578.jpeg

Close-up on the clown mouth. You can see how people are more likely to shoot late, so the ring falls to the left of the mouth, than they are early.


SAM_8581.jpeg

And here's the claw. Other ring machines put in one brass ring with a bunch of steel rings, and the one grabbing the brass ring gets a free ride. With pay-one-price parks that's not much of a prize so the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk's alternative is having every ring be steel and you just toss it in to the clown's mouth to make some fun happen.


SAM_8585.jpeg

I like this picture of a kid eagerly climbing onto a horse.


SAM_8589.jpeg

And here's the third and last of the band organs, the Wurlitzer 165 Duplex Orchestral Organ. This one's on the inside of the building, flat against the wall and behind the ring arm.


SAM_8590.jpeg

Plaque designating the carousel as a National Historic Landmark.


SAM_8593.jpeg

And here's the plaque explaining the Wurlitzer 165. As has happened to many band organs it's been converted from music scrolls over to MIDI players.


SAM_8595.jpeg

So, something I realized only slowly. Who are those benches for? The fence closes all around this side of the carousel, so it's not possible for people to get in the way of where people are throwing steel rings, but that also means nobody but an employee could be there. My best guess is they're there so the floor doesn't look too empty?


SAM_8599.jpeg

Action photograph! Someone's just grabbed a ring and is ready to throw it. You can see the next ring is already loaded into the claw, too.


SAM_8602.jpeg

Snap of someone who's just missed the ring.


SAM_8604.jpeg

Success! Someone's grabbed the non-brass ring!


Trivia: By the late 1930s newsreel cameramen participated in group-insurance coverage, paid by their companies. The life insurance provided for about four thousand dollars per person. Source: The American Newsreel, 1911 - 1967, Raymond Fielding. (Newsreel cameraman was regarded as a particularly dangerous job.)

Currently Reading: The Tale That Wags The God, James Blish. Editor Cy Chauvin. So in an essay praising Poul Anderson, Blish mentions he had once tried to describe Anderson's stuff as ``hard copy'', stuff crafted so well that it looks solid whatever angle you take on it, and this idea mutated into ``hard science fiction''. I haven't seen this claimed origin, or credit, before. (I knew about Blish having a claim on the term ``gas giants'', for planets, though.) Also in another chapter/review, ``Music of the Absurd'', he goes on a multiple-pronged rant about John Cage and how this sort of thing is destroying concert music as a possible art form.

The Sunday after [personal profile] bunnyhugger got her rabbit we went to Michigan's Adventure again. This would be their last day for the season, though it was two weeks out from Halloween. And the weather was still warm and beautiful. For this visit, we brought our kigurumis, [personal profile] bunnyhugger as Stitch and me as Angel. She'd have liked to go as Cerberus but the three heads would probably clash with at least some ride restraints. (Although maybe not; I don't think anything with over-the-shoulder restraints was running.) I'd have liked to go in the red panda suit but the big tail would definitely interfere with seating. Anyway, we made an adorable pair, of course, and saw a good number of other Stitches, all of whom complimented each other. You know how genetic abominations stick together.

An enormous difference between this weekend and our previous one is we had more time for it; we left early and trusted we'd have a good five hours or more in the park. So we did. We had time for our first game of miniature golf in ages. I mean our first game at Michigan's Adventure, but it happens it's also our first miniature golf game in a long while, probably since 2021. There's a fair chance we'd have gone there anyway --- if nothing else, as half the roller coasters were closed and the petting zoo had no animals, just plastic skeletons --- but they made it irresistible by dressing up the golf course with Halloween themed stuff. The course seemed more fun than I remembered. I don't know if it's because they've made changes to improve the holes, or the statues and signs and pumpkins and hay bales and the autumn leaves improved the scenery, or because I took an early lead and never lost it. Impossible to say.

We didn't go on the ride to the pumpkin patch again. But we did notice, after the golf game, that people were taking not just the small 50-cent gourds but also full-size pumpkins. One or two I'd have written off as kids will grab stuff and get away with it by crying. But this was a lot. And it only increased as the day went on. Kids were making off with pumpkins, then adults, then we saw adults with their baby buggies and wagons stuffed full with pumpkins so the kids have to walk.

I would like to know whether the Great Michigan's Adventure Mass Pumpkin Heist of '23 was spontaneous or not. I can imagine the staff telling people, this is closing day, any pumpkins you don't take we're going to have to pick up and throw away so have at it. I can also imagine people deciding hey, what do they need with the pumpkins after today, why not take one, and the number of pumpkin thieves growing beyond the diminished park staff's willingness to expend energy fighting.

While we didn't join in the pumpkin looting, we did, at the end of the day, think, well, why not? But on our last walk out the door we didn't see any decent pumpkins left behind, just a couple ones with tears or lacking in stems or already starting to rot. And then we turned around and saw a fine-looking pumpkin just before the exit gate, a Mass Pumpkin Heist Miracle. We had agreed to take it just in time for a woman to come up and explain oh, no, she had taken it, she'd just set it down for a moment to do something with her friend. Fair enough and we certainly wouldn't want to snatch someone's heisted pumpkin.

For our last ride of the season we looked, as we often do, to Mad Mouse. We were there about twenty minutes before the park closed and the line looked short enough that we entertained thoughts of getting on a second ride. This we would have done easily except --- you knew it was coming --- the ride went down, as we were one or two parties away from riding. I was briefly afraid they'd just close the ride altogether, entirely fairly for a season with ten minutes left on it. But no, they got a maintenance guy to come out and kick the ride so it opened up, and we got on, leaving just moments before they closed the queue. So we lost our chance to rejoin the queue and get maybe the final Mad Mouse ride of the season --- someone still on the queue got that --- but it was still a grand day and we figured we'd have a last chance at some pumpkins as we left.

Gorgeous day, and close of a great Michigan's Adventure season. Would do again.


Speaking of things we'd do again, here's pictures from our first day at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Later, you can see how they compare to the second day.

SAM_8559.jpeg

The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk has a paper-eater lion! You can see they have a historical plaque for this too. So this is a waste bin, with a vacuum hose at the mouth to slurp up small debris. After never seeing these things growing up (that I remember) I'm starting to see them in parks now, often taken out of storage after they were removed in like 2000.


SAM_8560.jpeg

The Sweet Spot here made me think of the Lucky Stand at Kennywood. It's not similar at all except vaguely in having a cylindrical tower, but the free-standing bright look gives it the vibe.


SAM_8563.jpeg

And here's Tsunami, a Musik Express ride. Did you know there's a Facebonk group entirely for sharing pictures of Musik Expresses? I suppose they've got this one well-catalogued, though. Note in the background homes for people with way more money than I'll ever have.


SAM_8565.jpeg

Back now to the carousel! Here's a picture of one of the three band organs, this one a Wurlitzer 146-A Military Band Organ that's beside the entrance as you come off the boardwalk. Also it has a bunny.


SAM_8566.jpeg

Here's a picture of the carousel again, and the second of the organs; more on that to come. And you see something in the background on the far left there? More of that to come.


SAM_8567.jpeg

Here's your basic shot looking dead center at the carousel and its many lights and fair number of mirrors.


Trivia: Bayer started out as a firm making aniline dyes, before moving into medicine. Source: Napoleon's Buttons: 17 Molecules That Changed History, Penny Le Couteur and Jay Burreson.

Currently Reading: The Tale That Wags The God, James Blish. Editor Cy Chauvin.

Sorry, I didn't have the chance to write my blog today because I somehow thought I'd have time between getting out of work and the start of pinball league. I know, you'd think by now I would have learned. In the stead, please enjoy reading about What's Going On In Olive and Popeye? Who's the guy capturing Popeye in a bubble? September - December 2023.

And here's some more walking back and forth on the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.

SAM_8547.jpeg

Another picture of the front of the dark ride, with the doors that you vanish into on the right.


SAM_8549.jpeg

Another snap of the seahorse dragons guarding the Fright Walk, which I don't think we had gone on just yet.


SAM_8550.jpeg

The Rock-and-Roll is a pretty normal example of this ride; I think that's even a standard backdrop in the far background. Still, it looks great in the sunlight like this.


SAM_8554.jpeg

Stopping here for a picture of the lift hill to Giant Dipper.


SAM_8556.jpeg

Here we're looking up to the apex of the lift hill.


SAM_8555.jpeg

And here's what comes after the lift hill for Giant Dipper.


Trivia: After the failure of Vanguard TV-3's launch attempt sell orders on the Martin Company reached such a high level that the New York Stock Exchange suspended trading, from 11:50 am to 1:23 pm. At the resumption of trading it was at 36 3/8, off 1 3/8. At the end of trading it was at 35 1/2, off 2 1/4. Source: Project Vanguard: The NASA History, Constance McLaughlin Green, Milton Lomask. NASA SP-4202.

Currently Reading: The Tale That Wags The God, James Blish. Editor Cy Chauvin.