austin_dern

Let's see if I can't bring you up to the present without getting too lost in detail or skipping stuff altogether.

With several years of success in the Calhoun County Fair bunnyhugger decided to enter a half-dozen pictures in the big time. Well, the bigger time: the Jackson County Fair, notable as the county fair that sometimes brings in a roller coaster. Not this year, though. Still, they did take her half-dozen photos --- she would pick ten for the Calhoun County Fair, the week after --- and despite some stress at the work in getting them mounted and delivered per spec, they were there, and shown, and judged.

When we went to the fair to enjoy the day we parked in a lot within two of the walls of the onetime state prison in town, and walked just far enough away to be worried about getting lost on the way back. (We did not get badly lost.) And we got there to see an old friend: Adam Radatz, magician, formerly of Darien Lake amusement park, formerly formerly a long time ago of Cedar Point Halloweekends. He was doing a fun show we joined in progress, noting how he showed the way he did one trick --- having a banner already on stage showing which of two things an audience member picked. He'd had a banner with the other thing elsewhere on stage, so the real magic was working his way naturally on stage to match the audience pick.

After the show we did go up to him and re-introduce ourselves and if he remembered at all the people who four years ago said they remembered him from twelve years ago at Cedar Point (it was only bunnyhugger who had seen him there, but I imagine we blend together in people's recollections) he didn't act like we were being weird. I thought hard about buying something from his merch table, but it was all kiddie magic stuff for sale. Which, you know, it's not like I have any actual magic skills besides finding things bunnyhugger has misplaced, so I have to start somewhere.

Now to the exhibition. The Jackson County Fair has a rather good-sized building for its exhibits, one big enough to host an artificial waterfall and 'river' within (they turn the water off outside exhibition times), and labelled 'streets' to help people navigate. Even enclosed rooms that are done up to look like shopfronts, which made good spots for exhibits they did not want people to stand too near. This is a big fair compared to Calhoun County.

There were many more photos than I expected, even knowing how big the fair was. Like, photos are already threatening to take over the whole of Calhoun County Fair's exhibitions but this was even more than that, many temporary walls overflowing with pictures, over and over again. And another section for kids on top of that. Also a not-as-large section of drawings and paintings, with similar spread of categories.

Ah, but, what about the judging? bunnyhugger and I both had picked a couple of her pictures as sure to be winners. They both lost. However, the rest of her pictures got some award, even if I think two of them were fourth places. I forget, at this reserve, but don't worry, bunnyhugger remembers and will say in her comment on LiveJournal. She can hold her head high, having got a great finish in her first try at the more bigger leagues. And started to plan out what she might do for next year.

So just because we've reached the finale of the fireworks show doesn't mean we're done with California's Great America, does it? No, as we got up quickly to this:

We hopped into line for GoldStriker, the lift hill for which you can see here, beside the observation tower. And we'd get several rides in, as the lines were never too long for this.

From the queue, which runs inside the structure of the ride, we get this nice view of the carousel.

And here's what the station looks like by night.

bunnyhugger waits her turn. I believe the kid in front of her was one of the team that all took their shirts off while the train went through the tunnel and put their shirts on as we got back into the station. Might be wrong. It was one of those night rides, though.

Anyway here's a last look out through the station to the main body of the park.

And after our session on GoldStriker we got up to the carousel. Here's the upper level mid-ride. It's not the fastest carousel, since the thing is like twice as heavy as a carousel 'should' be, but it's got novelty to make up for that.

Trivia: When Sir Francis Walsingham, spymaster to Queen Elizabeth, died in 1590, he was buried at night in order to foil creditors who might have impounded his coffin. Source: The Life of Elizabeth I, Alison Weir.

Currently Reading: Space Craze: America's Enduring Fascination With Real and Imagined Spaceflight, Margaret A Weitekamp.

Late July we took a day at the beach. We went a little farther away than the Lake Lansing Park that we don't visit enough. Not so far as to Lake Michigan, though. Instead we went to the Sleepy Hollow State Park, the nearest state park to Lansing and a place we'd never visited before together. This despite our always getting the state park endorsement on our car registration so we could drive in for free and, you know, do state park stuff.

Along the way there, though, we did stop at the Looking Glass River in the hopes of finding a letterbox. And for the first time in what seems like forever, we found it, hidden inside a spot protected by a spider and many, many ants. That'll happen. My recollection is we had to some repairs to the box, putting in new plastic bags so it could go back reasonably safe from the elements and without being menaced by ants. The spider will have to work its own deal out.

At the Sleepy Hollow State Park, though, we set up on the small sandy beach and pretty much stayed there all day. Like, just hours of enjoying being present somewhere without anything demanding our attention. And enjoying the evening settling in and the place becoming more nearly ours alone. And looking at the sandcastles that other groups had left, some of which had elaborate structures, including moats and channels running ten feet or more to the shoreline.

Near the end of the day, as bunnyhugger went for a swim, I walked onto a dock to discover something remarkable: a turtle. A big snapper, I think it was too. Hard to estimate how big it was, but I'd say certainly 14 inches, more likely 16, which suggests one that's getting to a respectable age. The turtle hung around the dock a good while, diving down and coming back for more pictures, from me and from people attracted to whatever the heck I was taking so many pictures of out there. This would include bunnyhugger who came over to see what all this fuss was about.

Later CST --- consulted about the age and behavior of the turtle --- told us that most likely, the turtle was hanging around, hoping we'd be among the many humans who toss scraps of food. None of us were doing that, of course, but yeah, makes sense.

We didn't quite stick around to sunset, although my camera timestamps do say we didn't leave until after 9 pm, which shows what being on Eastern Time does to Michigan in the summer. And this is the lower peninsula. The upper, farther north and (much of it) west of Chicago, has it even more severe.

And now, I am finally at the end of telling you what I was doing in July of this year. Who's ready for August?

Of course we're still on the 4th of July in my photo roll, but have got back to California's Great America and the countdown to fireworks. For instance:

A stage in part of the Planet Snoopy area, with a giant-size piano too low to the floor to be comfortable to play. What could this be about?

And as fits the comic strip yeah, the black keys are just painted on. I'm interested in that Peanuts blanket, but the sign does ask us to stay off the stage s that's the picture I could get. Does appear that the piano is a stage of its own, which also makes sense for the shows I imagine going on there.

Here's the far side of Lucy's Crabby Taxi, a ride that we were too large to go on. You can see it's not the most intense-looking of roller coasters but I'm sure it would crush our knees if we tried anyway.

Just a nice illuminated fountain by evening. You can see the water park in the background.

The giant glowing disc here is the Orbit, the Enterprise ride, as its nighttime takes hold. This is one of the park's original rides and I'm glad we got on it; Enterprise rides are getting terribly rare on the ground.

And a flying scooters ride by night. These are the Flying Eagles, is the name here, and as you'd think it's in the All American Corners section of hte park.

Trivia: An article in Illuminating Engineer about the opening of the New York Hippodrome claimed that ``there are over four thousand central [ power ] stations in the United States'' but that ``the maximum output of a majority of these stations is less than the amount of current used on the Hippodrome stage''. Source: The Kid of Coney Island: Fred Thompson and the Rise of American Amusements, Woody Register.

Currently Reading: Space Craze: America's Enduring Fascination With Real and Imagined Spaceflight, Margaret A Weitekamp.

After last week's false start I finally get under way having opinions about Popeye and Son. All this and other mild diversions are going on in my humor blog, so if you'd like your last chance until the end of this post to read them, here's my recent writing. Some of it isn't even about comic strips or cartoons!

• MiSTed: Altered Destiny, Part 12
• Finally I checked with an AI search engine which told me her name was Sally Mustang
• Statistics Saturday: Snorks I Still Remember By Name, Forty Years Later
• Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 2: The Sea Monster
• Reviewing _Popeye and Son_, Episode 2: Poopdeck Pappy and the Family Tree
• What’s Going On In Rex Morgan, M.D.? Rene Belluso didn’t really reform, did he? August – November 2023
• Or Maybe _Real Life Adventures_ Has Really Ended for Real, Life
• MiSTed: Altered Destiny, Part 13

With our first Gilroy Gardens visit done, the photo roll advances to ... California's Great America, with our second and last trip. Given circumstances it seems probable this is the last time I'll be to the park so please enjoy evening and night looks at the place, starting with ...

Can you see the park from here? Because it turned out everyone had the idea to watch the fireworks from the amusement park or the adjacent football stadium and we were not out of walking distance but you see how little sign of amusement park there is here.

Finally, we've found our way to the entrance! The gates give some idea how mobbed they expected to be during the day.

And here's the reflecting pool entrance and the double-decker carousel, in the sort of golden light we'd had to leave before experiencing two days before.

So you'll know when my timestamps are by when I start showing pictures of fireworks that all look like every picture of fireworks ever.

bunnyhugger humoring me with a picture from the lower deck of the carousel, the one with menagerie figures, to wit ... well, you know.

bunnyhugger starting to lose patience with me fussing around at slightly different wrong angles.

GoldStriker and the observation deck in that lovely golden light.

Hometown Square is a little past the carousel and swing ride, and I guess it represents the original center of the park. The park, as you might have guessed, did open in 1976. I don't know what the population 520 signifies; maybe the original staff count?

RAD BLAZER in portrait.

And here bunnyhugger gets her own picture of RAD BLAZER X-TREAM.

Behind the RailBlazer ride is this First Aid station that looks like an overgrown one-room schoolhouse. Note the cupola and bell. It feels like something that's been repurposed from its original construction but we don't know in what ways.

And here's a picture looking east to catch the path to the front of the park by evening light.

Trivia: Gemini XII splashed down 4.8 kilometers from its aim point, and 5.5 kilometers from the recovery carrier Wasp. Astronauts Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin were on the deck of the prime recovery vessel 28 minutes after touchdown. Source: On The Shoulders of Titans: A History of Project Gemini, Barton C Hacker, James M Grimwood.

Currently Reading: Space Craze: America's Enduring Fascination With Real and Imagined Spaceflight, Margaret A Weitekamp. Wow, so I'd never before heard about this 1959-60 series, The Man And The Challenge, a TV show about whether Our Hero can endure all the extreme challenges of a John Paul Stapp-like research program, unlike all those other guest stars who aren't as perfectly manly as him. It's not specifically a spaceflight-in-pop-culture thing but it's partway there. According to Wikipedia, in one of the episodes, ``[ Dr Glenn ] Barton experiments with yoga to see if it is helpful in averting tragedy'', which sounds like something which may have aged in ... fascinating ... ways since February 1960.

It's not just a Sunday with a double-dose of photos but it's also the second straight day of nothing but pictures of us after the park's closed and there's nothing to do except leave. How much longer will this go on? Just you wait and see because this is not the end!

Still not off the exit stairs! But getting a nice picture of the lower deck of the carousel from an angle that makes it look like a toy. Note the cats are carrying dead fish in their mouths, because that's how the classic carvers they were imitating rolled.

Oh, looks like one of the lights is trying to make a getaway. Ssh, don't tell!

More of the lower deck, again from the stairs. Again, I promise you, my camera doesn't have a tilt-shift mode so far as I can determine so I don't know how I got this effect. Note the band organ in the background, though.

One last look at the French Quarter flower decoration, only this time my camera refused to focus for some reason. I like the look, though.

There, I'm finally on the ground and getting a picture of what the stairs look like as well as the Columbia chariot.

bunnyhugger's getting a similar picture and you can see her newest off-brand Squishmallow in her arm.

Does look nice, doesn't it? Anyway, I promise this is the last of the up-close pictures of the carousel in evening light.

Here's a look over the pool and a chance to get bunnyhugger upset that I don't clean my camera lens enough. (I totally cleaned it last year or maybe in 2020.)

Ah, now, here's the carousel from middle distance, featuring palm trees and reflecting pond and Gold Striker, which is a totally different picture.

And a last evening picture of bunnyhugger in front of the park's name and the reflecting pond and the carousel and the towel she was worried someone had lost and wouldn't recover.

Slow-walking our way out, well past the park's closing hour.

And of course one quick look back at the entrance gates and the 2023 season pass pricing. We did not notice the Gold and Silver passes were the only things offered on the sign there; this turned out to be an omen. Platinum passes, like we've had for a decade now, have been discontinued. (!) More on that as events unfold ...

Trivia: Testing the lithium hydroxide canisters for scrubbing carbon dioxide for Wally Schirra's six-orbit Mercury mission found the 5.4-pound cans of material absorbed barely any more carbon dioxide than the 4.6-pound canisters used for earlier, three-orbit flights. Testing eventually discovered the 5.4-pound cans had been under-filled by about half a pound each. Fully filled cans worked for the expected time. Source: This New Ocean: A History of Project Gemini, Loyd S Swenson Jr, James M Grimwood, Charles C Alexander. NASA SP-4201. The materials science equivalent of putting alert('WORKING!') to find out whether you're actually pushing your HTML edits to the correct server.

Currently Reading: Crosley: Two Brothers and a Business Empire That Transformed the Nation, Rusty McClure with David Stern and Michael A Banks.

So we'd closed out Gilroy Gardens. They didn't close the gift shop right away, giving us the chance to think very hard about what we wanted to bring home. I got a T-shirt that's probably cryptic to people who aren't specifically from the Bay Area. And we slow-walked our way out, as you'd expect from us. Our only mild regret was that we weren't confident we had seen all the Circus Trees.

The exit lane's a separate gate from the entrance, and between the exit and entrance is a bathroom and we weren't going to pass that up. While waiting for bunnyhugger I noticed something funny about one of the trees leading up to the entrance. It had a really deep knothole low down in its trunk. And ... come to it, the first branches were more horizontal than I'd expect. Then I realized another tree ten feet down or so had two holes going all the way through. These were some of the Circus Trees!

By the time bunnyhugger came out, and wondered why I was nowhere near the bathrooms, I was over by a tree that had a sign beside it, 'Do you love my CURLY CURVY shape?' (You can see the ash-or-maybe-Box-Elder and even that sign in that link.) Some of the other trees have signs and I don't know how two hyperlexical people, incapable of not reading any words in front of us, missed that as we went in. Some have signs that don't quite explain what's going on, such as this one that talks about being ``a spring vine ... without GRAPES!'' It used to have 'vines' that spiraled around the upper trunks, but with those having ... withered away? I guess? ... it seems more like just a wide-trunked tree that splits into a Y. Nature of having something made from nature, I suppose; they won't all stay as dramatic and immediately obvious as the Revolving Door.

My camera metadata tells me we only spent about fifteen minutes exploring the entrance, and the last ten of the Circus Trees. I would have sworn it was longer. It felt like a lovely last bit of peaceful discovery at a park which had given us so much of that already. Just beautiful.

My photo roll has reached the last ride of our first day at California's Great America. Want to see how that last ride looked?

I didn't take pictures during the ride but afterward? That's fair game. Here's the feet of the horse bunnyhugger rode; she was admiring the way the horseshoes were carved.

The upper-level chariot has a dragon menaced by a much smaller snake, a motif we also know from the Crossroads Village carousel. And that delights me too.

Peering out over the midway fountain towards the park entrance.

And a look back at the horses we rode for our last ride of the day.

Had to stop and get a picture of the Apollo astronaut on this mount. For some reason it's on the inside, too, the traditionally less-decorated side. And this on an inner-row horse, too!

All right, all right, I'm getting off the ride, but not before I grab a picture of it in this light.

Trivia: Ireene Wicker, star of The Singing Lady children's radio program (mostly the telling of fairy tales) added the extra 'e' to her first name early in her career, when a numerologist advised that the extra letter would give her fame and fortune. Source: On The Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, John Dunning. Fame and fortune did follow; she was extremely popular for a long time and even overcame the Red-Scare blacklist. Won a Peabody for her children's programming in 1961.

Currently Reading: Crosley: Two Brothers and a Business Empire That Transformed the Nation, Rusty McClure with David Stern and Michael A Banks. Gah, the book mentions the Crosleys buying the patent rights for a particular kind of refrigerator door seal, and mentions that door seals were a particularly hard problem, and then tosses out a mention how the money for that was a waste, but not what was wrong with it or why it couldn't be salvaged and I want to know about this unusable patent for a 1931-era refrigerator door, what kind of reader do they think I even am? (Also turns out the Crosleys made a model fridge that had no motor or moving parts. You heated a sphere with a mixture of water and ammonia on the stove for an hour and set it on a receptacle; its cooling down gave you a day's worth of cooling in the box, which is danged ingenious. Not surprised it was more used overseas where it could be the only practical way to keep medicines cool where there wasn't any kind of power, but I still admire the thinking involved.)

Our second day at Gilroy Gardens was coming to an end, and we were getting to think of what the last things we wanted to do were. One was obvious, and to get on the Replica Antique carousel again. This time the ride operator seemed baffled by us and we thought we had gone in the exit lane or something. I don't think we did, though, it's just the entrance queue itself has two entrances and we somehow used the one nobody was expecting. We had no trouble feeling weird and awkward about it as if it were our fault anyway.

And we got on the train, for the nice long slow ride around the whole park. The miniature train, your typical CP Huntingdon ride, has ... I'm sorry, why is there a carousel rooster in the station? We don't know. It's standing on a pile of hay bales, where it should be easy to see, but it's also a fair bit away from where parkgoers can go, even if they're on the train. It doesn't seem to be a spare for the carousel, which as far as I remember hasn't got menagerie figures. It's just another piece of the park having personality, and maybe is something you get to understand when you truly know the park.

And then there was something I wanted to ride. I love a swinging ship ride. bunnyhugger not so much. There's so much we both like riding that I rarely feel the lack. Gilroy Gardens has what in any other park would be a swinging ship ride. Or, if it were the 80s, a swinging space shuttle ride. (The space shuttle ride at Great Adventure is how I discovered I love this sort of ride.) They don't do either. They instead have the Banana Split.

So if you're imagining a huge swinging ship ride, only the ship is bright yellow and has a stubby square black end? You've got it right. Also add in a stream of people talking about how they want to ride the banana, or how much fun they had riding the banana, or how they feel queasy after riding the banana? Do you get it now and why I had to insist we ride this? And bunnyhugger indulged me. We didn't go for the outermost rows, with the deepest swings, but ... my, that's a happy feeling, and the absurdity of the banana split boat and the gorgeous setting was just everything we might have hoped for.

This wasn't our last ride, but it was our last new one. We went back to the Garlic Twirl for another ride in the teacup-like ride with the most beautiful queue. And then went back to the carousel, supposing that if we made it while it was still running, great; if not, not. We were in time to get the last ride, though, and if that's not a great way to close out the day, what is?

And now some more of California's Great America, also getting near the end of the day.

Gold Striker and the Star Tower in the setting sun.

The side of the carousel facing away from the pond, that is, the non-romance side. Random guy for scale.

And a side picture showing off the palm trees grown around it. Same random guy for scale. Yes, I tossed off an ``under the big W'' joke, because I am old enough to have seen It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World and agree huh, there's a lot of people who used to be hilarious there.

Going in for a Gold Striker ride before the park closes.

The queue was appealingly short and oh, look back at that gorgeous play of light, shadow, and inclined track.

Look at that, the ride knocked someone's sock off!

Trivia: L L Bean died in 1967 at age 94. Source: The Grand Emporiums: The Illustrated History of America's Great Department Stores, Robert Hendrickson.

Currently Reading: Crosley: Two Brothers and a Business Empire That Transformed the Nation, Rusty McClure with David Stern and Michael A Banks.

Thank you, my dear bunnyhugger.

If there was anything disappointing to our second Gilroy Gardens visit it was that the monorail was closed the second day there. We were hoping to get better looks at what of the park it overlooked, especially now we had a better idea of the layout and features of the place. Also I hoped to pay attention to where the safety spiel called the place ``Bonfante Gardens'', a name it hasn't held since George W Bush was president. That's all, though, and it's not a big fault.

We went back to the Timber Twister roller coaster, just in time for the small, snake-themed coaster to go down. We decided to risk giving it ten minutes or so for a mechanic to come out and kick the exit gate, which always works in Roller Coaster Tycoon. The guy needed only five, so, bonus.

Another re-ride we took was on the Rainbow Garden Round Boat Ride, getting another lovely, tranquil ride floating through some subsection of the park. Not the lake with its swan boats, a ride we missed but appreciated. But still wonderful.

And here I have to break with chronology because I forgot we did this on Tuesday, not Thursday. One of the features at the park is an artificial waterfall, with a bridge behind it that offered a nice bit of cooling mist on a warmer day. But it also has an observation tower, at the top of the falls. The question was how to get to it. You might imagine stairs or a ramp of some kind, maybe both. No; the answer is an elevator, with a single glass side facing the falls so you can watch the water as you ascend. In theory. In fact, the ivy-covered elevator was fixed in place about two feet above the bottom level, powered off and apparently rusty, with what looks like a bicycle rack in front of the door, closing it off. bunnyhugger also noted the safety sign for the ride was one of Cedar Fair's style signs, rather than the Gilroy Gardens-styled signs that most of the other rides have. I'm so used to the Cedar Fair style ride signs I didn't register how that was out of place, and didn't photograph it. That seems like a shame since surely it'll be replaced whenever the elevator goes back into service, right? But from what we gather the elevator has been out of service a long, long time, not always in the safe configuration where the doors are shut and the elevator several feet off the floor so the mechanism won't let doors open.

bunnyhugger has described the park as being three parts carefully manicured, thoughtfully arranged, gorgeous park, one part Conneaut Lake Park. For the most part that's in the park's weird, homegrown, quirky and low-key nature. But in a few spots it's so in the park having just abandoned pieces, right where you can walk up to them (and, lore says, used to be able to walk into). It's a nice piece of exposed history in a park that's not yet a quarter-century old (as an amusement park).

To speak of a park that's not yet a half-century old (and might never be), California's Great America:

Catching THe Grizzly in the fine light of early evening here.

This caused me to realize I used to know more about Barney Oldfield than I could summon on short notice. Oops. Well, I was able to summon the important thing, that he was in the early 1900s and 1910s one of the first celebrity racecar drivers. Wikipedia credits him as the first driver to run a mile track in one minute flat.

Midway game --- the bowling ball one --- although what really interested me was that twisty road course sign. I keep meaning to check if it matches the twisty road course signs in some pinball games, like Road Show or Truck Stop, but I keep forgetting. Probably not.

At the Snoopy Boutique, giant plush Snoopy is face down in his egg and chips.

Oh and hey look, it's the happiest gull in the world!

And here's Lucy's Crabbie Cabbies riding on without us. Probably even if we fit in the cars our knees wouldn't have forgiven us.

Trivia: Animals used for experiments on Skylab 3/2 included two spiders, a swarm of vinegar gnats, six mice, and an aquarium of fish. The experiment measuring the circadian rhythms of the mice and gnats failed because of broken power circuits. Source: Suddenly, Tomorrow Came: A History of the Johnson Space Center, Henry C Dethloff. NASA SP-4307.

Currently Reading: Crosley: Two Brothers and a Business Empire That Transformed the Nation, Rusty McClure with David Stern and Michael A Banks.

Somehow we became aware of another of Gilroy Gardens' signature rides, or at least something locals seem to have extraordinary fondness for. This is the balloon ride. Not a captive balloon as in one that goes up a hundred feet or so. This is rather one like you can see at any fair or many amusement parks, the solid tubs that rise a couple feet and swing around a center pole. These are usually kiddie rides, or at least kid-inclined. The one at Gilroy Gardens is not. It's full-sized, with basket-shaped cars that could plausibly hold four adults. And the balloons aren't the sculpted fiberglass shells of a kiddie ride. They're canvas, conveying the impression of an actual hot air balloon.

So you get why this should capture kids' imaginations. And why it would attract a reasonable adult's, such as ours. We didn't guess how popular it was going to be, though; the line for this was shorter than that for the lazy-river boat ride the previous visit, but not by very much. It was also a slow-moving ride and that I don't understand at all. All the cars sit on the ground for loading and unloading, so I'd expect it to be quick enough to do the safety check that everyone's seatbelted in and the door locked. Maybe it's the large number of kids to deal with.

According to the time stamps on my camera, we spent something like 45 minutes between getting in line and getting off the ride. It was a delightful ride to experience, and we do want to see and experience the things that make the park distinctive. We probably could have done three other rides in the time it took for this, though they'd probably not have been ones we'd remember as well.

We might possibly have gotten to some of the shows, though. There are several stages and the suggestion of shows being put on. There's one stage for example that shows off the various stages of planting and growing flowers. We never saw anything happening there, as it happens, but the space must have been used for something. Near the Chinese food stand is what looks like an animatronics show with canned and fresh fruits that pop up and do something we never got to see. Just past the balloon ride was a large swath of the sort of green plastic 'grass' that they make miniature golf courses out of. A lot of the space was concealed behind irregularly-shaped construction fences. I put my hand way up to get some blind snaps of what was behind and couldn't make that out, apart from what looks like a water-feature backdrop that was empty. On the miniature-golf lawn were a couple people laying down and stretching out. I had the feeling that something had just wrapped up and they were left over, but what it was would remain beyond our knowledge.

Doing better than I hoped at getting my trip report going again! Please enjoy some more California's Great America pictures from slightly earlier in the trip.

I don't remember what ride this was, or whether it was just a temporary closure. I also can't explain the crutches any better than you can, seeing this.

A look at the lift hill for the super flume ride here.

Berserker, the Bayern Kurve, as we're finally getting ready to ride the only (current, United States-based) operating example of this ride!

And the ride tears around the track. I believe at Kennywood the ride was powered from a center post that's preempted by the prop building there.

And here we are running up as far as we could to get good seats, which is to say any seats on the ride.

View from just after our ride, getting a peek inside the building. Also apparently an off-model Flash is running to car #1, looks like.

Trivia: In 1850, out of sixteen hundred students at Oxford, the average attendance in the modern history course was eight; at the chemistry courses, five; at botany, six. Source: The Age of Paradox: A Biography of England 1841- 1851, John W Dodds.

Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine, Volume 26: Paradise Peak, Part 3, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly. Editor Stephanie Noelle. I appreciate these, especially since they have to track down strips from what's available from various newspaper scans, and sometimes one or two days is just missing, but how is it the one missing is always the one where, for the first time in four weeks in either direction, something significant happens? In this case it's after the deal of Popeye fighting a giant seems to be resolved by the author getting bored and moving on --- again, your Thimble Theatre Plotting Promise --- Olive Oyl gains the ability to fly in a missing strip. The following context makes it clear she just discovered if she flapped her wrists just the right way she could take off, but we go from nothing particular to Olive Oyl making a lot of trouble with her flying and that's that. (It also makes sense of why Olive Oyl starts the next story in such a miserable state; she sprained her hands in a way that caused her to lose the ``Rhythm Of The Wrists'' that was said four billion times to be the secret.)

My humor blog this week was one full of exploration of the real me. My insecurities, my inability to understand the comic strip Compu-Toon, my relationship with Thundarr the Barbarian. You know. Here's the roster of recent articles:

• MiSTed: Altered Destiny, Part 4
• His Advice Is We All Floss Early So the Power of Compound Interest Helps
• Statistics Saturday: Places both Thundarr the Barbarian and I have been
• _Compu-Toon_ is being _Compu-Toon_ again, this time with oscilloscope monsters
• I was all set to make him listen to Camel's _Snow Goose_
• What's Going On In Alley Oop? Why did the aliens stop shooting at them? June - September 2023
• Another Moment to Help You Understand Who I Am
• MiSTed: Altered Destiny, Part 5

Here's more of California's Great America, from our full day at it.

Grizzly's entrance leads to the roller coaster's infield and a pleasant area inside, before going to another entrance that walks you up to the launch platform, like so.

And here's a nice view of the lift hill on the left and one of the return hills. Also someone enjoying a rest on the grass.

Safety sign warning they have to close the restraints for you to ride. Also you can see some of the ramps leading up to the station there.

A rare-these-days photo from me, as we ascended to the platform, catching it down low and seeing some of the gates where they're almost concentric shapes.

And we got a walk-on! At this point we were starting to think we had come on the right day to the park after all.

Train ready to depart. They were running both trains, which surely helped keep the wait time down.

Safety checks before the red train takes off.

And here's our blue train getting ready to arrive. The same model trains as at Seabreeze's Jack Rabbit and Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk's Giant Dipper, too, so these were pretty much old friends by now.

Just past the ride we could see one of the haunted house walkthroughs for Halloweekends. Cedar Point has a different school name but the same general idea.

Fun ride! Here's the walk down from the roller coaster.

And from the exit a look back at the station. You can see the box for stowing things opened up there.

The exit path offers this nice view of the turnaround.

Trivia: Mercaptans are a family of organic compounds, all foul-smelling; methyl mercaptan, with a 'chain' of a single carbon atom before its sulphur-and-hydrogen end, is the prime ingredient in bad breath. A mercaptan with a chain of 18 carbon atoms before the sulphur is used as a silver-polishing wax. Source: Molecules at an Exhibition: The Science of Everyday Life, John Emsley.

Currently Reading: Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America, Megan Kate Nelson.

Thursday of our trip we went back to Gilroy Gardens. I hadn't had enough of the place on Tuesday, and there were things we felt we could spend more time on. We could probably spend much more time there; if we lived in the area we'd surely have season passes. We didn't quite get on the road early enough to be there for opening, but we got close. The park would shut early, I want to say at 5 pm, but that fit nicely as we had thoughts about what to do for the evening that would be helped by an early amusement park day.

Along the way we made another stop at Jack-In-The-Box. For me, another couple boxes of fried vegetables. For bunnyhugger, more mini-pancakes. This time they remembered the syrup which had been the only flaw of the previous visit. The pancakes weren't quite as piping fresh, a small drawback. But still, she wants a Jack-In-The-Box near us, or at least somewhere that will sell a dozen tiny pancakes any time of the day.

The park wasn't as crowded as it had been on Tuesday, the 4th of July. This justified their shorter operating day, and their having fewer events. (On the 4th they had some kind of Tastes-of-Gilroy event with different stands offering mostly non-vegetarian food, for example.) It also suggested we'd have even shorter lines and this was so. We went in, completely oblivious to the ten or so Circus Trees lining the main entrance.

Done with the Star Tower and reunited with bunnyhugger! So what are we up to now at Great America, back then?

On to our next ride, the roller coaster Patriot. And here you see one adorably tiny person walking around the stairs.

Looking up at the loading station. You can see the queue TVs, as well, showing whatever was going on that day. I'm more interested in the heaps of leaves caught in the net.

Here's what the top of the loading station looks like. The roller coaster used to be a stand-up coaster, and like a lot of stand-up coasters got converted to a seated one (compare Mantis/Rougarou at Cedar Point).

And off to another roller coaster. While approaching The Demon we got this nice side view of Berserker, the Bayern Kurve. So here's the side --- almost back --- view.

Demon has a lot of setting and decoration, such as these caves you walk through to go in. There's also a neat skull cave the coaster dives into.

And here's the Demon's loading station, seen here in film noir.

Trivia: Florenz Ziegfeld's first production, a decade before his Follies, toured the United States 1896-99 as the Trocadero Vaudevilles, starring strongman Eugene Sandow. Sandow, claimed Ziegfeld, could lift a man in each hand with two men standing on his back, could hoist 750 pounds dead weight with one finger, and could bear 3200 pounds on his body. Source: No Applause - Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, Trav S D (D Travis Stewart)

Currently Reading: Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America, Megan Kate Nelson.

PS: What's Going On In Alley Oop? Why did the aliens stop shooting at them? June - September 2023 as we get through one and a half stories that I think are doing rather well, really. Some neat time travel stuff and a nice strange island like you might have encountered in 1930s pulp science fiction.