austin_dern

We'd hoped to go back to the Flying Turns but found that by then --- 9:30, a half-hour before the park's official closing --- they had already closed the queue. This was disappointing and we kicked ourselves a little for playing pinball machines we could, after all, find elsewhere instead of going to a unique roller coaster. To console ourselves we went to the Looper, just beside the Flying Turns. This is ride, now extinct except at Knoebels, in which you and a partner sit on facing seats and rock back and forth until you get to tumbling end over end. Last year we managed despite our skepticism about the wisdom of all this to a pretty good ride including at least four rolls end-over-end in sequence.

This time ... nothing. We could get the car to rock back and forth, and almost to the point of tumbling over, but we couldn't get that last little bit of momentum to to looping. I don't know what it was we were doing last year that we couldn't this. I blame Flying Turns. No, seriously: last year the queue for the Looper included a video explaining the ride's history and how it works. This year, the monitor being used for that was over at Flying Turns, providing a little history of that ride, both the original coasters it was recreating and showing off the history of the ride's construction and somehow avoiding the park's general manager crying out ``told you we could build it! We told you all we could so build it!''. That's nice enough as it is but it did mean we were stuck for advice on how to get the fullest possible ride out of this.

Other people did fine, though, tumbling over as much as they wanted. And someone managed to tumble more than wanted, as they had to do some cleaning-up of the ride platform and riders were advised to exit ``the other way''. It wasn't that bad a scene, at least by the time we got to it.

But it did bring us to the end of the night, sad to say, and the closing off of the remaining ride queues. We went back to play a little more pinball, as I remember it, until we felt like the arcade wanted to chase people out, and then we did some walking around the park, enjoying it by night, at least until they started shutting off even more lights. We noted the location of a place selling coffee, on the anticipation that it'd be useful the next day, and when the park even turned off the lights for the giant Ferris wheel we took the hint and left.

Finding a dinner at that hour promised to be tricky; last year we just grabbed some sandwiches or something from a convenience store. My satellite navigator claimed to know where a Denny's was, and it did at that, although it took us on a long and windy path to the northeast which provoked me to say ``I'm not sure that it isn't guiding us into a Tales From The Darkside episode''. Rather than the unseen-by-most underworld, though, we found a college town. We didn't know anything about the community, but within the first few blocks we just knew it was a college town; it had that air. It turns out to have been Bloomsburg, home of Bloomsburg University, which I'd have sworn neither of us had heard about, although on looking back on my trip report from last year I'd run across their student newspaper's report on new Knoebels mascot Dexter the Raccoon, so they didn't just invent a college town out of whole cloth between the last time we were at Knoebels and this time. We just had no idea.

Also it turns out Denny's no longer lets you get oatmeal in a Grand Slam ordered at like midnight for some reason. This throws my whole build-your-own-slam routine off.

Trivia: In the winter of 1776, Henry Knox, chief artillery officer and later first Secretary of War, weighted close to 280 pounds. Before the Revolutionary War he had been a bookseller. Source: The First American Army: The Untold Story of George Washington and the Men Behind America's First Fight for Freedom, Bruce Chadwick.

Currently Reading: The Battle of the Frogs and Fairford's Flies: Miracles and the Pulp Press During the English Revolution, Jerome Friedman. My goodness but nearly every page of this recounts something wondrous.

PS: Machines That Do Something About Logarithms, as who cares if they're going to just idly think about logarithms? We want them to work. Third mathematics post since the last roundup.

So nearly a decade ago Knoebels amusement park in Elysburg, Pennsylvania, sought to build a Flying Turns. This is a bobsled-style roller coaster somewhat popular in the 1930s which has not been built since World War II (despite a flurry of fiberglass bobsleds in the 80s). No complete plans for one were known to exist. Nobody alive, probably, knew just how to make them work. They were determined to make one, and they kept at it, never losing the faith despite snarky having their doubts. And then, in October last year, they did it. We had no way of making it there in the seven operating days the park had before the end of last season, and resolved that we would just have to make it there this year.

And so that's why we had a two-day diversion to northeastern Pennsylvania. The three legs of our trip were Soupy Island, the Flying Turns, and the Floyd Moreland Carousel. If we did nothing else at Knoebels but got to the Flying Turns that leg would have been successful.

With our ride wristbands we went directly to the ride queue and saw that it was standing at about 45 minutes. We were hungry, and went back to one of the riverside grills to get something we could eat while riding, which was an efficient use of waiting time and earned us the envy of some folks who hadn't thought about what the 45 minute wait would require. (And it was just about 45 minutes on the dot; they're apparently not going in for overestimating queue lengths.) The queue runs entirely within the space enclosed by the ride, so you get to wander around inside the monstrous wooden construction and get quite a few good views of the half-pipe enclosures, and to see the bobsled-style train cars go past. They also have signs explaining some of the history of what they were going for, including quotes from ``World War I Flying Ace Floyd Gibbons'' [*] about how the rides are ``frightfully steep'' yet ``always absolutely under control'' and so ``just as safe to ride as a baby carriage''.

Airplanes are the theme for this ride. The cars are made up with unnecessary wings and a tail and mock dashboard, which seems to match the way the flying turns of the 1930s were decorated, and among the logos (for the ``Knoebels Safety Administration'') is Kozmo flying your standard cartoon prop plane. The launch platform has the arched metal roof to evoke an aerodrome, and the ride queue ends at the three ``Departure Gates''. Inside the cars you sit, one or two people together, with a seat belt wrapped around whoever's in front. The ride operator --- who was curious about the Morey's Piers roller coasters on my T-shirt --- pointed out if you ride two in one car, it's best for the person in back to put his legs as straight as possible and make room.

A lot of people were not riding two to a car, possibly not realizing this was allowed, possibly because the pair would not be allowed. The ride dynamics are such that the total passenger load may not exceed 400 pounds. It's also better (and I admit I don't know how) if the heaviest passenger load is in the front of the three cars. This has implications. One of them is that passenger groups are discreetly weighed; if a group exceeds 400 pounds then the (electronic) sign by their ``gate'' switches to announce there's been a delay and they have to see the gate attendant for reassignment. They're then broken up. Another is that they really would like pairs of people who weigh as close to 400 pounds without going over to ride up front. The search for this can lead them to start calling out for pairs of riders to the queue and promote people all the way to the next train.

bunny_hugger and I, together, do not exceed 400 pounds, and we're obviously quite willing to ride together. These traits got us jumped ahead in the queue twice during our two days at the park, shaving as much as ten minutes off our wait and also giving us that most special of all amusement park thrills, being called up front for the next ride. It also meant that we were put in the front car, every time. The one ride when we thought we were going to have to be satisfied with second, the pair in the first car did indeed exceed the weight limit and we were ``reassigned'' to the front.

Now, what of the ride? As a thrill ride it's not extreme: the Roller Coaster Database lists its top speed at 24 miles per hour, and its greatest height is only fifty feet, which as raw statistics are not all that much. I wouldn't be surprised if many kiddie coasters get higher and faster. But what's important is how you use that speed and that height and the Flying Turns uses it extremely well. The first point is that, simply, you're not on a track, which makes the ride feel much faster and more daring than the number implies. That you are so low, so close to the ground and the scenery and the people both in the queue and in the several viewing areas, also helps: being close to the ground makes the speed feel faster.

And then ... much of the fun of a wooden roller coaster is that it gives the illusion of being about to fly off the track. A bobsled coaster has a special advantage in this. The awareness that you're held within the coaster's ``track'' by the balance of inertia, centripetal force, and gravity alone increases the thrill, and you have (at least from the front seat) the wearing-down in the wood to show that no two trains ever follow exactly the same path. Obviously you can't go flying out the upper (or lower) end of the half-pipe, but, the thought that you might is always there.

I have to expect that Knoebels is going to find this a ride of long-lasting popularity. For one, it has the advance Wild Mouse roller coasters have of not looking threatening. There's no inversions, no great heights, no extreme speeds, no loops, none of the things that are obviously terrifying. It's beautiful to look at. It's a smooth ride, too, exciting without being punishing. It almost makes you wonder how flying turns rides ever died out, until you remember there's eight kajillion pieces of wood in the ride and every one of them will, eventually, need to be replaced. I hope they've figured out how to make this economically viable, because we want to go back to this ride often again.

[*] I cannot find a Floyd Gibbons listed as a World War I Flying Ace on Wikipedia. There was a renowned American war correspondant and radio commentator Floyd Gibbons who seems likely to have been the referent. There is a Frank George Gibbons, credited with fourteen victories, for the Royal Air Force, as well as a George Everard Gibbons, again, British.

Trivia: NASA's original core of medical staff was all experts borrowed from the military. Its forerunner National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics had no medical staff of its own. Source: Homesteading Space: The Skylab Story, David Hitt, Owen Garriott, Joe Kerwin.

Currently Reading: A Low Dishonest Decade: The Great Powers, Eastern Europe, and the Economic Origins of World War II, 1930 - 1941, Paul N Hehn.

PS: My Math Blog Statistics, August 2014, how my mathematics blog has been doing (tolerably well, particularly since I didn't write as much as I wanted last month), second of my mathematics posts since the last roundup of such.

When we got to Clementon Park the first thing we went for was the Hellcat roller coaster. This might threaten to make the rest of the park anticlimactic, particularly as they haven't got another roller coaster, but bunny_hugger had heard tell of the roller coaster suffering a lot of downtime, and it was running right then, and it would be unspeakable to wait for the ride to break down before going over.

Hellcat's got a nice homegrown-style logo, showing a cat-faced plane made of fire, suggesting the fighter plane that gave it the name. bunny_hugger noted the name is probably a better one for this roller coaster than its original J2 for Jackrabbit 2: the coaster has a lot of swoopy, banked, curving paths, suggestive of the way a fighter plane might fly, rather than the quick leaps that suggest rabbits. We were able to walk on the ride, and went for the back seat, to notice that everyone else was gathering around the front. ``Do they know something we don't about this ride?'' bunny_hugger asked. The ride is a bit rougher in the backseat than the front, but I don't think it's dramatically so. The front seat offers a better view, it's to be admitted, especially since the coaster dives very close to the edge of the lake and that's always a beautiful sight. We'd take quite a few rides on the roller coaster, and be glad for all of them.

The exit queue drops people off in the midst of the picnic pavilions, inside the space enclosed by the coaster. This is curious because there was a table and a park guard checking that people entering that area from the midway had the wristband indicating they were part of the groups that had reserved pavilions. We have no explanation for why there's a need to limit entry on the ground when you can get to the same place by going through a ride.

The most interesting ride besides the roller coaster, I think, was the Victorian Railway, which is a simple narrow-gauge railroad which does putter around some of the edge of the park, including the outside of the Hellcat, and past a number of statues of wildlife, elephants and bears and lions and zebras and, what the heck, a giant bulldog. It feels like the quirkiest and most personable of the regular park attractions.

Clementon Park also has a log flume ride that's apparently well-regarded as these things go. It's called King Neptune's Revenge, with your classic rotating-platform launch platform, and it's a nice, long ride much of it over the lake. It's also got a pretty steep drop that got us very well soaked. We staggered out of the ride, soaked pretty much up to our shoulders, bunny_hugger worse than me, and ran into a group of people considering whether to ride it. ``Learn from our sins in life,'' I said, not loudly enough; one of them pointed to us and said, ``See, you don't get too wet on this ride!'' I think he talked some of them into going on King Neptune's Revenge. Maybe.

Someday bunny_hugger may forgive me for trying out the Thunderdrop ride. This was a tower ride, and I thought it was maybe one of those that launch you to a considerable height. It ran the other way, though, bringing you up and dropping as we'd probably have known if I had paid attention to the name or if we'd seen a ride cycle. She's not too fond of drop rides, and dropping from maybe sixty feet down wasn't her preferred method of riding, but, she survived and this might have been a good taste of dropping considering something which would come in a few days.

Clementon Park has a cute little kiddieland, a bit hard to see because the access to it is behind some buildings including the gift shop, but the whole thing is enclosed so it's probably very attractive in drizzly days. That's got some normal little flat rides where kids go in circles and make buzzing noises; it's also got a Safari Train ride that putters around in a small loop, which made us think of the Safari Train ride at Casino Pier, the last thing we'd ridden before our wristbands expired.

The park has a Ring Of Fire, which goes in a tight loop and gives you a lot of time upside-down at low speeds, which bunny_hugger does not like as a ride. But she liked the ride T-shirt they had in the gift shop, and by the way who makes a ride shirt for a Ring Of Fire, and felt that she couldn't buy it in good faith if she hadn't ridden the ride. I found a park shirt that includes what looks vaguely like heraldic symbols on the chest, naming the park and the Hellcat ride --- nicely enough --- as well as one of the water park rides. The roller coaster was easy enough; we wouldn't get to this water park ride.

But we did go to the water park. We'd got there kind of late in the day, so we didn't have time to do very much, but we'd brought our swimsuits just in case we felt like it. What we did have time for was the Endless River, a lazy river ride. Getting into the inflated doughnut was the worst part for me, since I tried pulling my legs up through the middle and went tumbling over backwards into the water, which is one way out of the problem of the water being not quite warm enough to wade into. Also I bonked my head on the concrete base of the river, though not enough to do me any lasting harm, I think. While we drifted some packs of kids came racing past us, because they weren't at the age where you can just be lazy in a river-like fashion, and the water park officially closed so we missed the other attraction on my park T-shirt: Torpedo Rush. Based on the appearance of the thing it's a drop tower that ends as a water slide. It looks unspeakable.

Still, there was an hour or so between the water park closing and the main park closing, so we had the chance to wander around some more, take photographs, and get a few more roller coaster rides in. We closed out the park at the too-early hour of 8 pm (they apparently don't have many lights, which is rather like Michigan's Adventure in that way), with a last ride on Hellcat, and we wandered around taking pictures for only ten minutes or so. For us, that's pretty restrained lingering.

Trivia: James Madison sent his 1814 State of the Union report to Congress less than four weeks after the British burned Washington, after calling Congress into session two months early. He noted the United States wanted only ``peace and friendship on honorable terms'' from Britain. Source: Union 1812: The Americans Who Fought The Second War Of Independence, A J Langguth.

Currently Reading: Empires Of The Word: A Language History Of The World, Nicholas Ostler.

Wednesday morning we were able to get up and say hello more properly to my aunt, who was working on some writing project while watching The Price Is Right, so you know what my family is like. She encouraged us to have anything we wanted for breakfast, including some of the ham or (frozen) meatballs so I guess word of bunny_hugger's vegetarianism and my efforts to be more vegetarian hadn't reached her. A lot of stuff from my father --- my parents had stayed at her house for a couple months between the closing on their old and their moving down south --- was still there, including a lot of tools and some half-completed projects, including the putting of a closet and a laundry room door back on after painting.

But we had to hurry out, as the first thing we wanted to see was Soupy Island. This is actually a park, in Thorofare, New Jersey, basically part of Camden (though apparently it could also be considered part of the municipality of National Park, New Jersey, which is a name that makes me go ``huh''). It was established in the late 19th century by the Sanitarium Association of Philadelphia so that city kids could have some time in fresh, clean air, and it gets its name from the donated soup served to kids at lunchtime. It's got your normal park attractions --- swings and slides and the like, plus a swimming pool --- and is surprisingly cagey about just when it's open and when you can visit or whether they exist. Their Internet presence consists mostly of people saying there's this almost secret place near the municipality of National Park, New Jersey. It's only open a couple days of the week, for a few hours, and this fact set our schedule, or we'd have gone to Knoebels Park first and had a continuous stretch in New Jersey after that.

What attracted us to the park is that it's got an antique carousel, Philadelphia Toboggan Company carousel number 93R. It wasn't built by Philadelphia Toboggan company, but by Frederick Heyn; PTC refurbished it in the 1920s, which is what the R designates, and it was the last of their numbered carousels. This is also probably why Soupy Island is cagey about their existence, since too many visitors might overwhelm their ability to keep the carousel in running order.

When we got to the park --- a little too late for the soup-serving --- we, well, overheard a family arguing about the things families argue about when there's a bunch of kids and it's midsummer and everybody's had a little too much family time. Also the carousel wasn't running, and was shuttered, which made us worry the thing just wasn't running today. We wandered around some, getting comments of ``hi, strangers'' from folks who either worked for the park or who just kind of sensed we were there as tourists, possibly because we were obviously not chaperones for what looked like several classes full of summer school kids.

And it's good we hung around as the carousel did open up about 1 pm, after some light drizzles. The horses and chariots and such are in the process of being repainted, so some rows are all crackly and dried out while others are fresh and new-looking. We were watching some when one of the park guys, the sort of grandfatherly type that's always there around antique rides, came up and talked to me (unprovoked) about how it was a lot of work to restore the horses like that. I agreed and that I was impressed by how well so many of the animals looked. The center of the carousel has some extremely faded nature scenes, possibly going back to the ride's original construction, though it's also got folk-art style paintings of Muppets and Disney cartoon characters on the scenery panels that rotate with the ride. Above the entrances and exits of the ride building are Peanuts figures --- Charlie Brown, Sally, Franklin, Lucy, and Linus in a rubber raft by a desert island, that sort of thing --- which I guess just shows how much of the park is decorated by the people who happen to work there.

They don't have a band organ, or if they do it's not working, as they just played some CDs over a portable player for our ride, such as one of the Ohana songs from Lilo and Stitch, or ``When Somebody Loved Me'' from Toy Story 2. The ride also goes at a pretty good speed, too; five rotations per minute, I believe I estimate it at. It's a pleasant spot and I felt bad I couldn't find I donation box or anything for them. The park is a bit mysterious in many ways.

Trivia: The first major English colonization effort in West New Jersey arrived aboard the Kent in August, 1677, landing somewhere near Raccoon Creek. They stayed for some weeks with the Swedish families already settled there to make final arrangements. Source: New Jersey From Colony To State, 1609 - 1789, Richard P McCormick.

Currently Reading: A Nation Of Deadbeats: An Uncommon History of America's Financial Disasters, Scott Reynolds Nelson.

PS: Reading the Comics, August 25, 2014: Summer Must Be Ending Edition, because the mathematics-themed comics have lost their focus.