austin_dern

Though we got to Michigan's Adventure early in the season, like we hoped, we whiffed on making return visits in late June or all of July. This got us to where it was getting on in August, so we finally picked a midweek day to make a second visit to the park. We also figured to get to the park closing day, like we traditionally do, but it's nice to have backup days. Not trying to do everything at once makes it easier when one ride or feature is un-visitable.

So our second trip was on a lovely, not-too-warm, sunny day, like all our trips seem to be. Yeah, obviously we wouldn't set out if we knew the weather was lousy but it seems like we get perfect days more than chance dictates. I asked the parking lot attendant if he had a map, and he said that guest services might. The park, along with the others in the Cedar Fair chain (Cedar Point, Kings Island, Canada's Wonderland, and so on) have been trying to ditch paper maps in favor of making people use their apps. bunnyhugger doubted they had one --- bear in mind, this is a park that has never had a signboard map --- and we would ultimately forget to ask Guest Services. It turns out they did have them, though, as we would learn on our closing day visit. But that comes later.

Our biggest hope for the day was that we might get to ride the Mad Mouse. It had been down our first visit. And it's been running painfully slow since then, often putting only one four-person car out on a track that, by design, should have five cars going at any time. All this chain's parks have had worse operations lately, attributable to the struggle getting workers (especially as Cedar Point, the mothership park, always depended on foreign talent that's harder or impossible to get now). But there's also apparently an attempt to standardize ride operations, nominally for safety, and that's great except it makes everything slower and completely knocks for a loop rides like wild mouse coasters that are supposed to run continuously, with passengers getting onto and off of moving cars.

So we were excited to see, as we entered, that there were two cars on the Mad Mouse. That's not great --- a 2019 visit might see three running at once --- but it beats ``one or less''. And they had people on them! We made that our first target for the day and discovered the ride did not have its customary 45-minute-to-an-hour wait. It was like nobody knew the ride was open; it was a maybe fifteen minute ride. That's like a walk-on for any other coaster.

The astounding thing is that this happened again. Later in the day we returned figuring we might as well see if we could get a second rie in and the line was not any longer. And our luck held up. In the last hour of the day we went back figuring we could get one more ride in, and the line was somehow even shorter than it had been. We didn't just get a third ride, we figured we could go back around for a fourth ride, on a slightly longer line. If it had been a tiny bit quicker we might have been able to go around again, but the ride was not quite fast enough. We would have to content ourselves to four rides on the one coaster most difficult to get any ride on, never mind multiple rides, during the day.

If you judged the ride from that and that alone? You'd think we had an incredible day.

And now? The last of my pictures of Canada's Wonderland. After this, we move on to Sylvan Beach.

Behemoth's station, on the left, and the start of its lift hill on the right. The queue runs through the infield here.

Behemoth does have these nice cars that seat four across, in two partial rows. Everybody has a great seat!

Walking out. Here's the Grand Exposition of 1890's centerpiece. The area is a bit under-decorated but it's a brilliant idea for a themed area.

Wonder Mountain seen after the park's closing, illuminated all in purple and looking like an album cover.

The midway fountain. The faint loop in the far background is where Leviathan starts its return leg, from outside the park entrance.

And a last look for the night, from the front of the reflecting pool back to Wonder Mountain.

Trivia: By 1859 Savannah, Georgia, had underwritten at least six railroad companies for a sum of nearly $3,000,000. Source: The Railroads of the Confederacy, Robert C Black III.

Currently Reading: High-Speed Dreams: NASA and the Technopolotics of Supersonic Transportation, 1945 - 1999, Erik M Conway.

After checking out the crafts and the other photographs we'd go to the rides area. Not to ride; we wanted to wait for night to do that. Just to see what was there. It looked different and we needed a bit to work out what was changed. The ride-through haunted house wasn't there this year! And all the other attractions shifted around a bit. The ride-through haunted house wasn't much --- I don't think there were even any (working?) internal attractions, just shuffling back and forth in the dark, the one time we rode, but it's still a loss. But the carousel and Ferris wheel had new locations. And the Simson band organ was missing, we hope only temporarily.

With that scouted out and a couple daytime photos taken we went back to the animals. There were a couple of ducks in the pond, and more turkeys and chickens, causing us to ask wasn't there a bird flu going around? Or maybe they've just decided that, as with Covid-19, they'd rather everyone get it than try to stop it. bunnyhugger loved seeing the turkeys and to a lesser degree the chickens, and made many valiant attempts to take a photograph of one before it jerked its head out of the way. She would later curse herself for using up all her camera's battery on blurred turkey heads, but the photographs that came in clear were really great.

In the rodents-and-rabbits pen they had a couple guinea pigs, up from the usual ``at most one'', but they all went into hiding as we approached. The rabbits were well-represented, though, both in actual animals and in posters about the animals. And there was something extraordinary: a juvenile Eastern cottontail rabbit, a wild rabbit, having their belly taped up by ... if not the on-site veterinarian at least someone who knew how to bandage a wild animal. The guy who brought the rabbit in --- it was about the size of his hand --- explained loosely how it had been in a fight(?) and he was hoping to give the animal time to heal. It was amazing to see how patiently the rabbit put up with being held, by humans, and having its middle wrapped up with a gauze that by definition was constraining its motion.

We would go through all the pens of the animals, although the larger ones like hogs and donkeys and horses drew less interest from us. One that was delightful was seeing the horses being led out of a barn, for exercise or something. One got to the threshold and decided that was it, and a sequence of horse people came on pulling at the reins trying to coax the horse into moving. Finally they found someone who had the knack of patting the horse in the right spots and pulling the right way to get things moving again. Was a delight to watch.

When night finally came we scouted out the rides again to figure what to ride. We came up with a meager list; they don't have (adult) roller coasters and when you rule out kiddie rides what's left has a bunch of things that are not to one or the other's of our tastes. Like, zippers look great but I think I only want to ride one once in my life unless it turns out very different from what I suppose. The drop tower, similarly, not something bunnyhugger feels like getting on. What we certainly wanted to ride were the merry-go-round --- their carousel runs at a healthy five rotations per minute, second-best in the state, even if it is a bit clunky a ride --- and the Ferris wheel. We also wanted to ride this small Himalaya-type ride that took up the spot the Gravitron used to occupy. (The Gravitron was now over close to where the haunted house had been.) This was a ride well-worth it. Good speed and a good healthy reverse cycle too, just like we'd hope for. Very glad to have caught that.

Speaking of catching. When we were waiting for the Ferris wheel someone on the ride dropped their water bottle onto the midway below. I noticed that because I had just been looking over the ride safety sign which includes the warning that you shall not throw things off the ride. While I was stunned by this and supposed it was an accident, someone from the midway picked up the bottle and tossed it back to the riders. bunnyhugger, who'd missed the drop, asked me if I, who'd missed the toss back, saw that. So you can imagine how we had a confused talk about what the heck happened there.

We didn't think we needed to stick around to the end of the fair's operating day and yet we came pretty close nevertheless. For a last treat we went to get elephant ears for bunnyhugger's mother. Her father, who'd had emergency dental work, we had thought couldn't eat something as solid as that but he would make the effort anyway. I also went to get a hot, soft pretzel and the operator there happily gave me the remainder of their stock, an extra five pretzels for the one I bought. We gave one to bunnyhugger's parents, after coaxing them a couple times; her father liked them too. And it turns out soft pretzels reheat really well. Wet them down and let them warm at 300 degrees Fahrenheit for five or ten minutes and you wouldn't know they were frozen in-between. We are going to have to hit up the pretzel places right before the close of the day next year.

Sunday, after the fair had closed, we drove back to the empty grounds and picked up bunnyhugger's photographs. Also her ribbons: one third-place, two second-place, and one first-place ribbon. We spent the rest of the day with her parents where, among other things, we finally beat the Mice and Mystics bonus chapter that was an escort mission we all had come to loathe. We're not perfectly sure we were reading an ambiguous condition correctly but on the other hand we don't care because we don't want to deal with that escort mission again.

bunnyhugger has looked at other fairs, including the Michigan State Fair, for their photograph submission rules. We'll see what develops.

Vortex height requirement sign has the old logo for Canada's Wonderland's Vortex, which is identical to the Kings Island Vortex's logo even though they were different kinds of roller coaster.

Wood carving of a lounging raccoon that's part of the decor for a ride near Vortex. Love that lounge.

And here's the lift hill for Vortex, which goes up and over Wonder Mountain. the support pillars for Vortex on top of the mountain caused the park to close off what had been an observation deck.

Lumberjack is a double pendulum ride, much like the Aero 360 at Kennywood, but the pendulums are made to look ike lumberjack axes.

And here's Yukon Striker by afternoon light.

Some of the queue decoration in Yukon Striker's very long and not-fast-moving-enough queue.

Trivia: The word ``since'' can be traced to Middle English ``sins'', a contraction of the earlier ``sithens'' --- the genitive form of ``siththan'', which was itself a condensing of the phrase ``sith tham'', ``since that''. Source: Webster's Dictionary of Word Origins, Editor Frederick C Mish. (The ``ce'' ending reflects the same genitive form at the end of words including ``once'', ``twice'', ``thrice'', ``towards'', ``always'', and ``backwards''.)

Currently Reading: High-Speed Dreams: NASA and the Technopolotics of Supersonic Transportation, 1945 - 1999, Erik M Conway. Opens with a (reasonable) complaint that he wasn't adequately informed how many of his source materials for the 90s project were proprietary corporate information and how he had to rewrite and redo research to replace his sources and how this is an increasing problem with that thing where the public pays for research that a company gets to claim for itself.

There has not been actual progress on my job-getting. But there's been stuff that feels like progress. Lately I've gotten the feeling that, in board game terms, I've finally built my engine for job-hunting and I'm getting ready to use the engine. For example, last week I dropped a bunch of applications in on LinkedIn's Easy Apply system and scored two interviews.

One's for a medical testing company in Tennessee and that one slightly worried me as that's, you know, stuff you absolutely have to calculate right and that's a lot of responsibility. But the job they're hiring for is not about evaluating tests; it's about reporting and communicating results. That's still important, and important to get done right, but it's a much lower level of stress.

The other --- one that I thought so little about that the night before I was going through my e-mail, trying to work out what the heck company I was interviewing with --- seems like it might finally hit, though. This is a Geographic Information Services position, working for (a company working for) the federal Department of Transportation. So right away we were starting with a job up my alley, and then as we discussed it I learned the job was much closer to what I had been doing for my big project at the old employer. The interview was scheduled, according to the e-mails, for 45 minutes, and it in fact ran just under ninety, which sure seems like a great sign.

Or possibly the interview e-mail was confused. Over the course of things the interview turned to technical details and I understood the programmer was probing my technical knowledge. But I was never clear what level of technical detail he was looking for. At one point it got into what has to be done for an interactive event where you click on a map and get a report on the map item clicked on, and ... I think the interviewer was asking about things like where you set the listener event and what parameters you have to pass where. That's stuff I tend to think about on a higher level and he kept re-asking the question until I got down to, like, well, you send a post query to the server with parameters about the viewport and the click location and what layer and projection you're working with and all that.

The point where I felt most unsure was when he asked if I knew what was meant by 'var self = this' and, like, var, sure; that's how you set the scope of a variable's definition. 'this' you use to later curse yourself for using 'this'. 'self'? I haven't seen 'self' in a Javascript context and owned up to it. It turns out to have something to do with closures; he asked if I knew what they were and I could give a loose high-level definition of them. Closures are a computer programming concept very important to people who write blog posts about computer programming concepts. I've gotten along all this time with only a vague idea what they're good for, if anything, and it hasn't hurt me, unless this costs me this job.

And I'm not sure it will. Like I say, the interview ran long, and it got cozy and informal in some promising-feeling ways, like we were doing some shop talk about obscure map projections. And their big project is exactly something I had done at my old work, like, including using the same mapping software and overseeing the same transition from one version of OpenLayers to a new.

It all felt really good. And I know I've felt good about jobs that I was clearly a good fit for before. But, gads, it's been fifty weeks now; something has to break soon and I really hope it's not me.

Getting more through the day at Canada's Wonderland here, but not nearly done yet. Here's some more pictures.

Thunder Run, built into Wonder Mountain, is another of the park's original coasters, and it's an always popular one with a considerable line. The line does move well, though, since the train has like eight thousand cars in it.

The little roof behind the Thunder Run sign gets people tossing mostly scrunchies and elastic bands onto it, but you can see how people will toss pencils, pens, swipe cards, all that stuff.

As we got up to the level of the launch station we could see upper levels of the trees and what I think is a squirrel drey?

The maker's plaque for Thunder Run with all its manufacturing information.

Crew of the Year signs, and for this actual ride! Thunder Run was thinner in 2012, apparently. Also, aren't these the same years that Drop Tower was Crew of the Year? Huh?

Now, finally, getting on to Leviathan. I love the dragon-tail theme of all the signs.

Trivia: Among the cargo lost to the outbreak of World War II in 1939 was fifteen tons of grass seed waiting to be shipped from Poland to the United States. Source: The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession, Virginia Scott Jenkins.

Currently Reading: All Natural Pogo, Norman Hale.

We got Coke Zero from a cafeteria-style restaurant in some building/mall/thingy that seemed like it would have been a good place to eat if we hadn't gotten Taco Bell a couple hours earlier. And we walked back, partway along the Niagara Falls promenade, partly through a park, looking for somewhere with shade and a seat and not too much of a crowd. It was not possible to meet all these conditions at once. But when we felt a little more rested we got up again, the best part of resting, and made our way back up the hill to the roller coaster.

Of course there was a roller coaster. The House of Frankenstein is one of the many walk-through haunted houses in the Clifton Hill area, and a pretty respected or at least venerable one. A couple years ago they added a roller coaster, which you could buy separate admission to for a price high enough that bunnyhugger's mother disapproved. But the roller coaster was there now, and operating, on the top of the three-or-so-storey building, near the top of Clifton Hill. Putting aside that it was a roller coaster right where we happened to be, how could we not ride that? When do we ever ride a coaster from the top of a building? (There's a respectable number that launch from a couple fights off the ground, yes, but this was a twist.)

Is Fran' N Coaster a good coaster? ... Well, I mean, any coaster is good to some extent. But what it is, is a small coaster, a 'family' coaster just past the level of being powered. It's not as good as the name, which you have to agree is right up there. It's got a height of 25 feet, according to the Roller Coaster database. While it does give a breathtaking view of the Clifton Hill area --- and made us realize there were even more pleasantly odd attractions around than we had noticed --- it's also a bit of a knee-banger. It's short enough that they send you around for two circuits, a trick everyone who runs family coasters or who's trying to eke 0.2 more satisfaction rating out of Roller Coaster Tycoon knows. The cars have a nice coffin theming that may not make perfect sense (surely that's more a Dracula icon?), but it all looks pretty nice. Don't tell bunnyhugger's mother what it really cost.

She had tried to quell her mother's doubts by saying she thought she might have read the price for going through the house and riding the coaster, which we did not. We did need to walk up and back through part of the House's layout, particularly joining its exit, and we got a good jump scare from one of the walk-through house's last attractions. I'll skip details for the sake of not spoiling you in case you walk through the house.

It was getting time to get back on the road but, you know? We hadn't had ice cream in I couldn't tell you how long. We found a Dairy Queen that was doing the sort of business you'd imagine considering it was 180 degrees and cloud cover was at negative 40 percent. Several people ordered Blizzards and we saw the staff demonstrating by flipping them upside-down, for each one. Except that one customer was on the phone and the staffer waiting until they were actually looking to do the demonstration. I, a person who tends to get frustrated if he can't complete his current task this current moment, felt so bad for them. Also somehow my cone was a much slower thing to make than whatever bunnyhugger had gotten (I think a milkshake?) and I started to worry they'd forgotten me. They had not.

And that was the close of our short time visiting Niagara Falls, Ontario. A quick bathroom trip and a walk back to the parking lot where we saw the price had risen and we were set, following the satellite navigator back home. We did stop at a rest plaza on either 403 or 402 where besides resting we bought a modest number of Canadian candy bars. Oh Henry bars, mostly, and Wunderbars, the latter because we thought they were pleasantly like Star Bars. It turns out they are Star Bars, rebranded for the Canadian market because of the reasons. Had we realized sooner we'd have probably filled a cooler bag with them.

We made one last stop for the night, at the duty-free-shop just before reentering Michigan. We're not sure when that shop reopened but the signs suggested it was very recent, possibly that afternoon, as they were apologetic about the staffing and the supply and everything. bunnyhugger would get a bit of rum; I looked a lot at candies but didn't see anything good enough to open my wallet. Although were I working I might have bought the big tin of Kinder Bueno mini bars. Gads, I hate having to budget.

As we went back to our car we heard, and then saw, fireworks, something that left me baffled. After a bit the connection to Civic Holiday made .. some sense, I suppose? Also I guess Civic Holiday is a fireworks-worthy holiday? Even within a quick jog of the customs and border people who have guns and little sense of humor about explosive devices? I guess the locals know what the authorities will tolerate before getting too alarmed.

Our last border crossing and toll went without incident. We got home pretty close to midnight, after all, and would be able to unload my car, set everything away, and sleep in a slightly worn but familiar bed.

And now we need to get back to Canada's Wonderland and share photos of our day there.

Seagull spotted near Wonder Mountain, wondering where the sea is exactly? (It's a Great Lake and it's a little south of here, you can't miss it.)

Guardian of Wonder Mountain, a combination roller coaster/interactive dark ride, was listed as 'temporarily' closed. It's been like that for months, though, and the rumor mill is grim about whether it will ever run again. The shortage of Guardian merchandise was also noted by bunnyhugger, who was hoping for the Squishmallow figure of Guardian. But we don't know things, yet, not actual things.

Fish set in the pond running near Yukon Striker and the Backlot Stunt Coaster.

A bad word in the graffiti leading up to Backlot Stunt Coaster.

Some #furrycore stuff in the graffiti leading up to Backlot Stunt Coaster. Also, the graffiti on the right there made us think, as ever, of that Father Ted script where Father Dougal had produced a page of experimental naughts and crosses.

And here's Backlot Stunt Coaster's station, with a train on Behemoth rising in the background.

Trivia: Ahead of the completion of Idlewild Airport Robert Moses, whose Airport Authority was to take take control of the new New York City facility, told Eastern Airlines president Eddie Rickenbacker of the hefty new user fees to be put into place. Rickenbacker announced that Eastern would concentrate at Newark Airport, outside the Airport Authority's (and Moses's) control. In retaliation, New York City Mayor William O'Dwyer reversed his support for the Airport Authority and transferred Idlewild and LaGuarida to the Port Authority. Source: Box Boats: How Container Ships Changed The World, Brian J Cudahy.

Currently Reading: All Natural Pogo, Norman Hale. A monograph about the comic strip and comic books.

It was a normal-seeming week of amiable nonsense on my humor blog ... and then! I asked you to look it over. See if any of this seems like it might be fun to you ...

• MiSTed: The Jovian Jest (part 4 of 4)
• My Mind Is Weighted Down With Thoughts Like These
• Statistics Saturday: Hosts of The Tonight Show over Time
• What I Learned From Watching All the 60s Popeye Cartoons
• Granting This Is Not a Wrong I Have to Right
• What's Going On In Mark Trail? Is the Mark Trail writing changing again? June - August 2022
• To Help You Understand What Life Used to Be
• MiSTed: Skippy's Mom (part 1 of 12)

Let's quick get another roller coaster in at Canada's Wonderland, shall we?

Leviathan's ride sign, seen from the front. You can also see a returned train in the background.

We went to Dragon Fyre, another of the park's original coasters, now tiny in the shadow of Dragon Fyre. In the center-right you can see the metal dragon sculpture near the entrance to the queue.

Partial castle 'wall' decoration adjacent to Dragon Fyre's station. It's well-overgrown but I imagine when the park opened it looked reasonably like the station had broken-down castle walls.

Ride operator about to start the safety check for the train ahead of us.

The face on the front of Dragon Fyre's coaster.

And here's that dragon sculpture we were talking so much about before.

Trivia: At the end of World War I Great Britain was still, on paper, a creditor nation, and France had a debt of $3.5 billion. Source: Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World, Margaret Macmillan. (However, both countries owed considerable money to the United States, and had loaned quite a lot of money to Russia --- in default --- and countries like Italy and Rumania, unable to repay.)

Currently Reading: New Brunswick, New Jersey: The Decline and Revitalization of Urban America, David Listokin, Dorothea Berkhout, James W Hughes. This is how I learn the Ferren mall was torn down! This!

There were two compelling choices for the last ride of our night at Seabreeze: the carousel or Jack Rabbit. We decided to make for Jack Rabbit, hoping that they didn't close the line before, or too much before, the park closed. It would turn out to be open until the 9 pm closing hour of the park, but we couldn't know that; our only previous visit was a low-attendance day cut short by rain.

So we hopped into a line for Jack Rabbit that was a bit shorter, and a lot darker, than any we'd been in all day. For a short while we wondered if we might be so lucky as to get two rides in, since if things moved fast --- and the ride does unload and reload fast --- we might get around again. We would not get that luck, but we did pretty well anyway.

We also had an unexpected visitor. A skunk wandered around the roller coaster, the second time we've had a nighttime skunk encounter near a wooden roller coaster. (The first was one at The Beast, at Kings Island, back when we visited in I'm going to say 2018.) I had a hard time spotting the skunk, but finally followed direction well enough I'm pretty sure I saw it. Some teenagers in line near us worried that the roller coaster's dispatch would make it spray. bunnyhugger observed that if the skunk lives around here, they're probably accustomed to the sounds and motion of the coaster and wouldn't fear it. There were no untoward skunk incidents that we witnessed, but see below.

When we got to the platform we noticed there was a small line for the first row seats, and a shorter one for the second row seats. We took a chance and joined the front-row queue, even though --- with the queue closed --- there might not be enough people for all these trains. But the chance of a front-seat ride for the last train of the night is worth taking. This too paid off. There were a couple people who briefly joined behind us but they estimated there wouldn't be enough people to fill one more train after us, and they went to a free space behind us. I don't think the operators ever told everybody to rearrange to fit in the last train of the night. They did say that we were going out on the last train of the night, though, and yes, we were in the front seat. The skunk did not mind us at all.

And now the park was closed, although it was finally dark and rides were lit up, at least while they handled the last of their riders. We figured to to the bathroom and get on the road to the last of our hotels. At the women's room there was some kind of kerfuffle --- no better word for it --- as some people said they saw a skunk, and feared going in the bathroom? Or maybe it was near the bathroom door? Anyway security guards came over to nod and listen to this story of there being a skunk on the park grounds.

And this threatened to foil my last, minor mission. Seabreeze Park has one big fixed sign with a map of the park. (Michigan's Adventure, a park owned by the mighty Cedar Fair chain, has none, by the way.) And I had checked earlier, they had a little mailbox with park maps inside. I wanted to hop over there and grab a park map ... but it was going into parts of the park that were turning off their lights, and here was a security guard trying to shoo people off from the closed parts of the park. I explained what I hoped to do, trusting that he might maybe escort me to see I didn't screw around longer than it took to grab a map.

He looked me over like I was daft and then, after saying something over the walkie-talkie, told me to follow him. bunnyhugger came along, with his suspicious approval. And over at the guest services office, rather near the carousel and the picnic benches where we'd had our sandwiches hours earlier, he took out a couple maps from another little box that I hadn't noticed. And then pointed to the other exit gate, over by this spot. Fair enough, and we thanked him for the help, and went out with our last little subordinate quest accomplished.

We took a couple pictures of the park's entrance by night, and walked the long way down to my car, which was not the last one to leave the third parking lot. There was one car left, come after us.

For the last of our hotels bunnyhugger had picked the closest hotel to the destination park; it was only a ten or fifteen minute drive. Along the way we passed some odd restaurant that was a combination Salvatore's Pizza and ... get ready ... an Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips. Right? Who knew they existed except as a sub-label to Nathan's hot dogs in mall food courts? And that was not the only bizarre ghost franchise we would encounter. The hotel turned out to be in a difficult-to-access plaza that shared space with a strip mall Macy's, Bon-Ton, and Sears, at least according to the signs. The Bon-Ton Department Store, yes like Molly on Fibber McGee and Molly used to shop at, evaporated in 2018 although I gather there's some brand revival that's never going to do anything. And Sears, well, you remember when Sears used to be a thing. So anyway there's some weird ghost business stuff going on around Rochester. Folks should know.

We got to bed early; Sunday was projected to be a really big day.

Now for a bit more of Canada's Wonderland; you like the look of that place, don't you?

The tall gantry from which Canada's Wonderland launches its orbital rockets.

All you people enjoying the park today, stop it! The sign clearly states they are preparing for your future enjoyment.

I took a snap over the construction barrier walls there. This is the lodge-style restaurant they're building, one of an estimated 74,816 restaurants the Cedar Fair chain is putting into their parks this year.

Huh, a photo spot you say? All right, guess I'll take a picture of it. (If you used it correctly you'd get a photo of yourself in front of Wonder Mountain.)

The way into the Medieval Fair, one of the theme areas that opened with the park in 1981.

And a plush dragon friend for sale in the gift shop there! We gave it some consideration but don't need plush this big (or costly) that we don't love.

Trivia: In 1663 Isaac Newton bought a book of astrology, to learn what it was all about, a the Stourbridge Fair. Source: The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World, Edward Dolnick. The book's reliance on trigonometry would force him to study Euclid, and from there Descartes's geometry, and from there, the stuff we know Newton for. Newton also may have bought his first prism that year; it's not certain.

Currently Reading: New Brunswick, New Jersey: The Decline and Revitalization of Urban America, David Listokin, Dorothea Berkhout, James W Hughes. So the Irish foreign-born population of New Brunswick had shrunk, in the 2010 census, to four people. That seems low even granting the city had moved on to other immigrant sources. (Also there were far fewer Hungarians than I thought.)

It's another mathematics-blog review day, so here's the things run on my less-busy blog this past four weeks:

• How July 2022 Treated My Mathematics Blog: Romania liked me
• Here's the 157th Playful Math Blog Carnival
• Reading the Comics, August 5, 2022: Catching Up Edition
• Reading the Comics, August 14, 2022: Not Being Wrong Edition

Also! Since I've roughly run out of those 1960s cartoons I reflect upon What I Learned From Watching All the 60s Popeye Cartoons. And I still don't know what my next watch-and-review experience is going to be so if you want to nominate something, drop me a comment.

Let's dig back into Canada's Wonderland and enjoy the scenery.

Psyclone and Sledge Hammer, two great swinging rides that we did not even consider going on.

We dubbed this the 'Action Bathrooms' because of the figures with explosion cutouts behind them, and the hazard-tape-like pattern behind 'Washrooms'. We don't know why it's themed like this. Note the working pay phone, too.

Shield horse on the carousel; likely this was where PTC assumed ride operators would start collecting ride tickets from.

Rounding board above the carousel.

The carousel's chariots are 'pulled' by two horses harnessed to it, a move for authenticity that also cuts two horses out of service as riders; note the wrought-iron figures on the poles that makes them impossible to sit on.

The other chariot and its similarly harnessed horses.

Trivia: In 1850 the territory which would become Germany produced about six million tons of coal. Great Britain produced about 57 million tons. Source: The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848 - 1918, A J P Taylor.

Currently Reading: New Brunswick, New Jersey: The Decline and Revitalization of Urban America, David Listokin, Dorothea Berkhout, James W Hughes.

Now we're getting to the end of the day at Canada's Wonderland. We sought out the Hot Potato stand, somewhere in the children's zones that somehow aren't Snoopy-themed. bunnyhugger was interested in their tater tots and when someone finally came around to serving us we learned they didn't have tater tots. So it was a second round of poutine for the day, which was not a bad choice, really. Her brother's old joke about our options at amusement parks being pizza or french fries was holding up.

So then we started our longest wait for the night. This was on Yukon Striker, the park's newest coaster and the largest dive coaster in the world. A dive coaster means it stops the train, holding it for a few seconds looking down before the big drops. It's much like ValRavn at Cedar Point, which gets similarly long and slow-moving lines, but is a better coaster. It's longer, for one, and among its features is diving underwater. Early in the day we'd passed it and seen a line the attendants estimated as 45 minutes. This line seemed about the same, maybe shorter, and joined the queue without checking its length.

Reader, it was much longer. I don't know if the operations were just slower or if they'd opened more switchbacks in a very long queue or if the attendants earlier in the day were just rubbish at estimating the line length. I can say that a couple times during the ride we hit one of those strange pauses where for no obvious reason no trains were going out. This got frustrating, as we saw minutes ticking away, and we debated several times whether to quit the line and do things instead. If it had been easier to make our way out we might have gone for it. I misjudged where the launch platform was a couple times myself, and near the end of the very long queue almost lost my patience when I thought we were coming to another switchback. We did notice they had a Single Rider Queue and regretted it wasn't open, since we're certainly willing to ride separately in exchange for a quicker ride, although the signs outside the queue warn that those riders aren't guaranteed any seating and they might have a longer wait than the regular line did. Turns out the Single Rider Queue was open, we just didn't recognize that. Also it was fairly substantial --- shorter than the main queue, but moving slower --- so maybe we were better off in the line we took after all. Still, it's hard to fully shake off the conspiracy theory that parks are letting the lines get this long to sell the line-cutting Fast Pass tickets.

Yukon Striker is a good ride, mind you, and it's really good in the twilight and gives gorgeous views of the park and all. Not sure it's a 90-minute line, but we do tend to be fussy about waiting too long for anything.

We were getting to the end of the day now. The one roller coaster we wanted to get on was Behemoth. The one extra thing bunnyhugger really hoped to do was get an ice cream cone. We went back to the shop and discovered a moderate but slow-moving line with people who were somehow taking a great long time to do anything, never mind order. After a lot of waiting without progress we gave up on this, going over to Behemoth, while bunnyhugger cursed herself for not having got one when we first passed the shop.

Behemoth, we found to our comfort, had not closed its queue early. Some parks close their longer-line rides before park closing, the better to let operators get off work before 4 am. So we felt good that we had gotten to the last of our must-ride things for the day, as long as nothing went wrong with the coaster. And nothing did: the queue wasn't that long, yet it was moving fast, taking maybe fifteen minutes where I had expected 45.

Behemoth is a wonderful coaster, 230 feet tall and more than a mile long, running along the edge of the park and going, for a while, over water, because when they built it the park didn't know they were going to build a 'Leviathan'. It's similar to Millennium Force, at Cedar Point, in its height and speed and wonderful feeling of smooth flight, and to ride that in the early-night glow of the world? Just magnificent, and such a happy way to see out a day that started so wobbly.

And yet ...

Could we get back to the ice cream shop before they closed up? Given how fast the Behemoth line ran, yeah, that sounded plausible, and we hurried along. We came into view of the shop and saw, yeah, there was one party out front, and so we joined the line, trusting the staff would tell us if they were closed. It wasn't clear; the staff was doing a good bit of work in the back area, I assume cleaning, and leaving the people up front like us to fend for ourselves. At one point what seemed to be the area supervisor for shops came over and asked if we had been helped and we explained as best we could that we were waiting for them. We're pretty sure that supervisor-y person was trying to close everything up; he did start shooing off people joining behind the party behind us.

So we got the ice cream cones after all. We couldn't have done anything to finish the day better.

And yet ...

Cedar Fair parks have been trying to go paperless. No cash in the parks, just credit/debit cards. (They have machines to turn cash into general-purpose Visa debit cards, for people who come with money.) Part of this is eschewing maps, trying to push people to get their app instead. But they had maps, real physical paper maps. I saw a stack of them at Guest Relations the start of the day, when we were trying to clear our season pass card issues up. We saw people carrying them through the day. Did the park have any left? I figured there would still be the inside-the-park guest relations desk open, for people who were upgrading their day tickets to a season pass, and they would have a map. While bunnyhugger finished her ice cream and looked over Squishmallows in the gift shop I joined a small but very slow-moving line of people upgrading their day tickets into season passes.

The important thing is that yes, they did have park maps, and were willing to give me two --- ``one for my wife too, please'' --- and since we got them at the end of the day, they were pristine and clear, just like we hope to keep as souvenirs. I hope this no-maps fad ends fast, because the only thing an app does better than a paper map is surveil you. But for now, at least? We had finished the day with everything we had hoped for.

We went back to our hotel, and slept. The next day we planned to have many hours of driving and to get to the prize park of the trip.

Now to the prize of our anniversary, visiting Indiana Beach:

The Cornball Express (left) and Hoosier Hurricane (right) share a good bit of support structure, again just like if you were building way too much stuff for your Roller Coaster Tycoon layout.

Looking from the elevated exit queue down on Cornball Express, getting ready for the next train.

From back on the ground let's look up at the Cornball Express. THe launch station is halfway up, there.

Peering way up at the Hoosier Hurricane trains. That coaster wasn't running when we visited, but it hasn't been marked as down for any notable time this season.

Here, from the vicinity of the Hoosier Hurricane/Rocky's Log Flume station, I look over at the Cornball Express track, and get what looks like an impossible stack of roller coasters.

Oh, and the park has our favorite ball-rolling game!

Trivia: Until the early 19th century at Laon Cathedral was the ``nail-stone'', which proved the innocence of a man if he could drive a nail into it. The stone was removed for urban improvements. Source: The Discovery of France: A Historical Geography, Graham Robb. (Wikipedia's article on Laon does not mention this tradition, nor does its pages for the Cathedral of Notre-Dame of Leon, which I expect is the cathedral of reference here. It would be odd if a city like that --- 1800 population of 6700 --- had two cathedrals. Wikipedia's article on Notre Dame de Laon mentions its extensive modifications in the 19th century, and that from 1802 it functioned as a parish church rather than a bishopric.)

Currently Reading: King Con: The Bizarre Adventures of the Jazz Age's Greatest Impostor, Paul Willetts. So near the end of his (recorded evidentiary) life Edgar Laplante turned to a lot of scamming people for money in your classic con-artist routine. It makes me realize I can think of a good number of con-man episodes of old time radio crime shows, told from the perspective or at least with the consideration of the victims, and that a part of what that kind of show does is teach what the start of a confidence scam looks like, even if it is in a stylized way. And maybe I'm just that much a pop-culture ignoramus but I don't remember seeing this sort of thing in modern crime shows. That seems like a loss, partly for what value TV shows can offer for public education but also because con artists are almost by definition great character parts. To play one you have to do a character that's charismatic and quick-witted and adaptable and what actor doesn't like doing that?

After wringing out a couple gallons of water we went off in search of lunch. Here we'd end up getting poutine, which oddly we had not had on our 2019 visit. But one of the stands now promised vegetarian poutine, which we hadn't noticed before, and we went for that. The food stand had somehow a slower line than the roller coaster did, with particularly a weirdly long wait before people who had already ordered could pick up anything, including pop. Also the soda machine was running out of water so everything tasted a little off. This would not be the only disappointing pop we'd get at Canada's Wonderland that day, somehow.

After this, though, we went to Wilde Beast, another of the park's wooden coasters dating back to the park's opening. It's had the same name, but several different spellings, over the years, fitting its position in the Medieval Faire area. It's a sweet ride, although what caught my eye was that under the operating station they had two Crew of the Year plaques, one for 2009 and one for 2011. Both were for the Drop Tower, an adjacent ride that is not Wild[e] Beast[e]. I have no explanation for this phenomenon.

Our real hope checking this area was to see whether Leviathan, the 306-foot-tall hyper coaster, had a tolerably short line. No luck. We rode Dragon Fyre/Fire instead, a little corkscrew coaster that's again from the park's opening in 1981, and that now nestles deep in Leviathan's shadow. It gave us a good view of one of the two big coasters we hoped to ride, though.

Another ride in the area we went for, though? And not a roller coaster? Spinovator, the teacups ride, which she has fond memories of riding as a child. She also has memories of it under a name that would make sense, but lacks any mention from anyone but her and her brother's memories, Friar Tuck's TubsBuckets. The ride cars look like barrels, and it's in the Medieval Faire section of the park, so the name makes way more sense than even Spinovator does, but as far as she can find it's never had that name. It would make sense if she were remembering a similar ride at Canada's Wonderland's sister park of Kings Island, but that teacup ride was called Winnie Witch's Cauldrons, back then.

While waiting, though, we could see part of the diving show. This was a bunch of acrobatic stunts, over a fountain in the Medieval Faire section, including a couple of high-wire-walking tricks that got me worried. I can't imagine how bad this all looked to bunnyhugger, who has a more pronounced fear of heights.

We got into other park stuff, too, although a lot of it may seem like criss-crossing the park. Part of this is we wanted to try getting on rides with shorter queues and would find, for example, that The Fly --- the wild mouse coaster --- had a line maybe four weeks long. We also discovered more roller coasters closed. One was The Bat, a boomerang coaster that we probably wouldn't have ridden anyway. It's a duplicate of a ride we've been on many times, and we had ridden this particular one in 2019. Another was Wonder Mountain's Guardian, a combination roller coaster/interactive dark ride that goes through the interior of Wonder Mountain. That had a sign that the ride is ``temporarily closed due to technical difficulties'' out front. This suggested possibly something lasting for hours, maybe the day. We would learn it was more seriously closed than that, though. When we later rode Vortex, a suspended coaster that goes over top of Wonder Mountain, we could see that the entrances to the mountain for Guardian were closed off, covered with vinyl sheets. I imagine those are easy to put up and take down, but it suggests a bigger maintenance project than something just eating up a couple hours.

I mentioned yesterday how good it was that this was our second visit, and that we felt no need to do everything in the one day. We did have a good time, overall. We are fortunate that it had to do nothing more than be a day when we saw and did some fun things, though. It kept us from worrying about whether we would find Silver Streak (a roller coaster we never did set eyes on this time) or if this might be our only chance to ride the Krachenwagen (the bumper cars). It was enough for the time to be. It was already doing so much to relieve my depression. I had taken my first pill sixteen hours before; it could not be doing that much work in putting me right.

Now, though, some more of Indiana Beach, a different but just wonderful little park.

So ... no chance it'll be running later in the day, then? The Merry-go-Round --- now renamed Rocky's Round Up'' --- is completely gone, with the promise that it'll be there later in the season. To my surprise I don't have a good picture of Rocky on the sign, there, in his Park Ranger outfit. I have no explanation for this failure.

Walking down the main ``boardwalk'' of Indiana Beach. That's the Hoosier Hurricane in the background and it would, sadly, not run during the day.

Date pressed into the sidewalk. There's no (identifiable to me) mark representing who the contractor was or why they poured concrete at this date rather than sooner or later, but I imagine without knowing that it's probably when they decided they were tired of replacing wooden boards.

More of the 'boardwalk' midway. On the right is some track of the very intense Lost Coaster of Superstition Mountain, which is also built over the path for the Antique Autos ride; you can see two Antique Autos cars going in opposite directions on that track.

The Water Swings merely goes out over the water, when the ride's at full speed. This is terrifying enough, though; when we rode it (in 2016) I kept having visions of my car keys launching out of my pocket and into the river below. It's not a thing that happened, though. The park also used to have a Scrambler with cars that went out over the water, which is quite the way to increase the intensity of any given ride.

And here's a look back along the park from pretty near its south end.

Trivia: In 2009 the Cartographic Journal devoted an entire issue to the use of maps and globes in movies. One essay, by Sébastien Caquard (University of Montreal), argued that a large proportion of modern digital map user interfaces and uses were presented first by movies. Source: On the Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks, Simon Garfield.

Currently Reading: King Con: The Bizarre Adventures of the Jazz Age's Greatest Impostor, Paul Willetts.

PS: What's Going On In Prince Valiant? Where is King Arthur that Arn and Maeve are regents? May - August 2022 in review.

We found a parking spot, nice and close to the entrance, and got sunscreen on and, for bunnyhugger, contact lenses in, and even remembered to close the makeup mirror so its light wouldn't be on all day. (We've failed to close it in the past and been surprised the light was on. It hasn't caused the car to fail to start and I'm wondering if maybe the hybrid-battery thing makes a cabin light less of a battery drain than it used to be.) We had missed the very start of the day; we'd have had to get up a couple minutes earlier, and not have had the trouble finding the entrance and not had trouble getting through the parking lot to make it. As the attendant suggested, though, we went to the guest relations to make sure that our cards wouldn't be a problem before we got on the quite long lines at the entrance gate.

Then it turned into a frustration dream. After an extremely long wait while a group of between three and eight people did something or other another window opened up, and we went there. The relations person scanned our cards and reported, as the parking lot attendant had, that they were from 2019. But we reiterated that we renewed the cards every year and they were current and we had used these at other Cedar Fair parks already this season. The relations person frowned some and thought about this and scanned them again, finally conceding that while the cards were old they ought to work. She excused herself, to go to the back and make sure of something, and she and our cards disappeared. The extremely complicated group got their issue worked out. So did another group with an extremely complicated issue. I kept peering back, as if I could look around corners, and still nothing developed.

My guess had been that they were going to print out complimentary tickets as the easiest way to get us out of their hair, especially once we had the concession that our cards were valid. But this took much longer than it should have. I started to fear that they were back there issuing brand-new cards, one with the current card number scheme and all, a thing we're sure they will force us to do someday. That's all right but I wanted the old card as a souvenir and I regretted not having a picture, or better a scan, of our worn cards.

But all waits except that for justice end, and this was not an exception. The relations person came back and told us that our passes were in the records and our cards --- our old cards, no replacement issued --- should work. So we thanked her, and joined the still-long, slow-moving queue to get through the metal detector and gain actual entry to the park.

Then it turned into a frustration dream. Not for bunnyhugger: she got through the gate with no trouble at all. But the gate attendant told me that my pass was from 2019. I reiterated that I was last at this park in 2019 but my pass was renewed and I had used it at other parks in this chain this year. The attendant told me I had to go to guest relations. Guest relations had acquired a line that wended back and forth through many rows. I asked if I could a least use the guest relations counter inside the park and was refused. With no other options, I left the park --- and left bunnyhugger just inside --- to re-enter a long and slow-moving line.

Because everyone who was at guest relations had some complicated thing going on. A park attendant came up, walking, asking people what their issues were with the hope that he could direct them to some other counter. None of them had issues that could be handled anywhere else, and my annoyance began to melt at the comic futility of his mission. But how often do two dozen members of the public all go to right where they're supposed to be? Like, ever?

When I got back to the guest relations desk a different attendant was there. I told her, ``they said at the gate my season pass was invalid'', and she exclaimed, ``No! That's no fair of them''. You might think this was patronizing and possibly it was, or edging towards that. But I was so glad to have someone take me at my word that the problem I was having was a real problem and I was having it. She took my pass and scanned it and reported that it was fine, there should be no problem letting me through. She walked me over to the entry gate --- one without a line; the start-of-day rush had receded to the point that few gates had queues had waits anymore --- and sure enough, that scanned and I got through without delay.

She explained the problem likely was in their database system. The first time a card is used it somehow takes a while to filter through their systems. I suppose this has to apply on a per-park basis, although I don't see why this is never a problem at Michigan's Adventure or Cedar Point. Possibly it's related to how Michigan's Adventure is our home park (our passes are nominally bought from them, not from Cedar Fair), and Cedar Point is the mothership of the chain. And then bunnyhugger's frustrating moment at the parking lot served as the initiator of Canada's Wonderland's interaction with her card, so she had the necessary waiting time to be let through. Me, since my first interaction was that initial check at guest services, though? I was in a holding cell that had expired by the time I got to guest relations the second time. It doesn't answer why the first guest relations person didn't explain that the system would need a while to update and that we should just chill for ten minutes or whatever. Well, more than ten minutes, given the first wait for the X-ray and entry, but, something.

Never mind. Finally, an hour after arriving there, we had actually gotten into Canada's Wonderland.

Ready for an amusement park or a pinball tournament photo reel? Sorry, not today. (It'll be tomorrow.) For now some stuff noticed while I walked around the neighborhood one evening.

Back in early June they closed off the end of our street facing the highway so we've had to belatedly remember to make an extra turn ever since.

Here they are tearing up wha seemed like an okay enough road before, really, although I'm not going to complain about getting roads in our under-served neighborhood repaired.

The sign welcoming people to the neighborhood. For June, they set up a pride flag, and someone stole it. So they set up another pride flag on a stronger mount and someone stole that. In retaliation, they set up a lot of pride flags, a whole prydra, to show where the neighborhood's loyalties are. (Then whoever it was made it no fun anymore by trying to set fire to the flags. Last I heard they were checking security footage to see if the person could be identified, but I don't know who it was. The flags yet waved, though, through the end of the month.) The pillar to the side contains plaques honoring Eastside notables, but nobody's consciously aware the thing is there.

Our pinball hipster bar, still, uh, not doing anything with that facade now that they've exposed the underlying surface, huh? Hm. A wine shop just opened across the street, too, so it's like they're taunting this would-be gentrifier.

Meanwhile the Bead Boutique a couple store fronts down just closed up and vanished! Here's all that's left. And I'm not saying we had a lot of bead needs --- I think bunnyhugger got some for her mother there once, and kept offering to get more but there's only s omany beads one needs --- but it was nice having in walking distance.

You know what you get in older cities? Century-old blocks of sidewalk, that's what. This isn't even the oldest in walking distance; we know of one that's fourteen years older. Still, since it was June 2022 I couldn't let pass a block I had reason to trust was a hundred years old.

For some reason these folks have the street sign for a Hess gas station, which is odd because Hess gas stations haven't existed for like seven years now and I don't think it was ever in Michigan, implying these folks hauled it from the northeast to set on their patio, obstructed ands upside-down.

Trivia: The Broadway Limited, the Pennsylvania Railroad's New York-to-Chicago premier line, started service in 1902. Source: The Wreck of the Penn Central: The Real Story Behind the Largest Bankruptcy in American History, Joseph R Daughen, Peter Binzen.

Currently Reading: An Awkward Truth: The Bombing of Darwin, February 1942, Peter Grosse. There's a bit of discussion about the ill-fated ABDA command, the joint command of American, British, Dutch, and Australian forces in southeast Asia and the surrounding waters and about how it was just unworkable. But it doesn't seem obvious that the ABDA command was obviously misguided apart from maybe this was too large and thinly populated a theater of command for one overseer. Anyway some Allied joint command makes sense. I feel like I should read a book about that and I also have the nagging feeling that I already did? Like somewhere around 2011-12, I'm thinking? Well, no way to tell since it's not like I have a readily accessible log of most all the books I've been reading.