austin_dern

We got up Sunday, a little too late for the hotel's breakfast, and I printed out the maybe-unnecessary and maybe-falsified ArriveCan receipts for our passage through Ontario. I also did one more check to see if I could find my poor lost pens in my car; no luck. They must have evaporated at Sylvan Beach, and I bet it was on the Bomber ride. I also got a picture of the weird sign promising the Bon-Ton and the Sears were there. We didn't go past the place with the Arthur Treacher's again.

After a spot of trouble finding our way back to the main road --- it turns out our hotel was so on top of it that my satellite navigator couldn't imagine we needed direction --- we were off, heading westward. If we had more time we might have hung around Rochester more; it turns out there had been a large pinball tournament characterized as a ``mini-Pinburgh'' that weekend. Also it turns out there's several antique carousels in the area, such as a 1905 Dentzel, a 1928 Allan Herschell, and a 1924 Spillman. We keep saying we need to sometime do a carousels trip out to Binghamton, but now I'm wondering if we don't need to just take the Thruway through to Albany, pop up to Saratoga Springs (a 1910 Mangels/Illions), and then head back on I-88.

On the way back we pulled off at any old stop for lunch. I assumed we'd be able to find something we could eat at this gas station. I also assumed we could buy gas there, but I couldn't even get the pumps to the point where they asked me for my card. It took so long at this that someone from the register inside came out and asked if we were having trouble, and yeah, we were. She gave it a try and didn't get any farther than I did, so we went inside to pay there. It turns out their credit card network was not playing nicely with anything. I was ready to give up, but she said if I paid for a specific amount they could engage the pump for that. So I made a guess and bought US$30 worth of gas, which didn't quite fill the tank completely, but was enough to get us home. I like the range on my car and especially like that for most of this trip I was cruising at up to 60 miles per gallon, somehow. (Hybrid cars usually get better mileage in city driving.)

Also they didn't have anything vegetarians could eat apart from chips, even though it was a fairly large and modern-styled gas station. So we took a guess at which way town was and drove in, finding a Taco Bell. Also realizing that this was Batavia, where we had gone to eat at a family restaurant twice back in 2019, around our visit to Darien Lake. We'd drive past the exit for that park, and think about what a happy day that was. Also that that's another park with the Fascination game, although I don't believe it was running the day we visited.

As we kept driving closer to Buffalo we drove over Grand Island, and right past the location of what was formerly Fantasy Island. The park has only slowly been reopening under Gene Staples's management, as Niagara Amusement Park and Splash World. Mostly kiddie rides and the water park first, which, fair enough. Apparently the Silver Comet roller coaster is now running there; I'm not sure if it was at the time we visited. We saw the Silver Comet from the road, though; we also saw the Ferris Wheel, although that hasn't been running. It still bore the old Martin's Fantasy Island logo, now two park names out of date.

Niagara Amusement Park is getting several old friends in. One is the Shuttle Loop, a coaster we had ridden as the Cascabel at la Feria de Chapultepec back in 2018. (Others may have ridden it when it was at Kennywood, as the Laser Loop.) Another is the Ghost Train, which we'd ridden as the Flying Witch dark ride at Rye Playland. And yet another is dear to our heart: the Serpent, formerly at Kokomo's Family Fun Center in Saginaw, surprised and broke our hearts by going to the other side of the Great Lakes on us. I'll write more about that unless I forget.

Oh yeah, also coming in, according to Wikipedia? A caterpillar ride that had formerly been at La Feria de Chapultepec. Wikipedia says the caterpillar was operating at that park until 2019, that is, that we could have seen it. But if we had seen it --- and we were all over that park --- we would absolutely have ridden it, and had four thousand pictures of the now-rare ride. I can find pictures of the caterpillar at La Feria, but not any more reliable dates about when it was there, or any park maps to say where it was and how we could possibly have missed it. This park map from 2013 lists a ``Tren del Amor'' which seems like a name someone might give a caterpillar ride (it goes around in a circle, like a Himalaya or Musik Express, but a canopy closes over each car), but I can't find a picture that would confirm this. (I don't see any ride names that are obviously a translation of 'Caterpillar'.)

So that will be a mystery for a future visit, all going well.

We went on through Niagara Falls and somehow while following the satellite navigator's directions to get to the Rainbow Bridge, I got lost. While the satellite navigator made up its mind what to do next I started just driving around trusting there would be street signs to the second-most-prominent feature of Niagara Falls, and so it was. We joined the quite long line of cars at the border check around the Rainbow Bridge.

If our experience getting into Ontario early Sunday afternoon was a reliable guide, then we had made a very good choice Friday to drive east and cross at the no-wait border crossing at Thousand Island Bridges. It was at least a half-hour, maybe 45 minutes, just between paying the toll and getting to the passport check.

When we got to the Canadian passport booth the customs person waved off the ArriveCan receipts, which now join the mass of papers we'll leave around the house for when we need scrap someday. She asked where we were driving from, and where we came from, and then asked if we were just driving through Ontario. I blinked and said, truthfully, ``Well, we were hoping to stop and see the Falls.'' She waved us in and there we went, our cover story about ``deciding'' to stay at a Niagara Falls Holiday Inn unneeded and unasked-for.

On to our first attempt to ride Leviathan, and what we really rode instead!

Fountain just within the Medieval Fair section. The base has an inscription warning 'Drink Ye Not'.

St George and the Dragon, we suppose, at the top of that fountain.

And from the fountain you can see Wonder Mountain. The Castle Trader there is the spot that had that dragon plush.

Leviathan's ride sign, seen from behind. I did not remember that it had an image of the roller coaster on it, but bunnyhugger tells me it did.

The workings underneath Wild[e] Beast[e]'s launch platform. Can you spot the gate-opening mechanisms? It's a long metal pipe connected to a few other metal pipes.

At the station Wild[e] Beast[e] has a plaque giving the ride's manufacture name (three E's, not all in a row), and showing off an old logo (only one E), and two Crew of the Year posters, both from more than ten years ago and for the Drop Tower ride, which this is not.

Trivia: The ancient Athenian calendar had months which were either ``full'', with 30 days, or ``hollow'', with 29,. Full and hollow months generally but not always alternated. Source: Mapping Time: The Calendar and its History, EG Richards.

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

I came to bed, about 40 minutes later than I meant, as always; somehow getting up from the living room and going to the kitchen for Sunshine's vegetables takes 20 minutes. But I got to bed and bunnyhugger woke enough to tell me she read amusement park news. ``Uh-oh,'' I groaned, since apart from Clementon Park's purchase by the guy who owns Indiana Beach now, good amusement park news has been rough.

Fantasy Island, in Buffalo, has been sold.

Well, someone has taken up the lease. The park actually leases the land it's on. But that someone who's taken up the lease and hopes to re-stock it with rides and reopen it as an amusement park?

The guy who owns Indiana Beach. Also Clementon.

So, uh, I don't know how to feel about this. Like, I want to feel like it's good news, that these small, distressed amusement parks are being bought by someone who seems to want to run them as amusement parks. And the logic, if you have the capital to burn, is fantastic. 2020 was the worst year that amusement parks could have had since they invented economic indicators. Everything about them is going to be cheaper than it'll be for a generation on either side. This is the time to make big, bold investments and rake in gigantic heaps of cash later.

Catch being, you have to run the parks. The guy's experience, as far as I'm aware, consists of one year of Indiana Beach and one month of Clementon. Granted, a trial-by-fire year the likes of which will make all its survivors legend, but still. Also, you need to have the capital to keep running through business fluctuations. Maybe he has, especially since, like, Fantasy Island you could probably buy with whatever you had left over in Fantasy Island arcade game redemption tokens. But still, what if this summer is cool and rainy? And Fantasy Island was stripped; so far as I'm aware the only ride it has left is the Silver Comet roller coaster. Granted you could probably get it up and making money by hiring a fairground operator for the season, and expand things as needed, but that still takes cash reserves. Maybe the guy has enough? Maybe?

I hope.

Some more pictures from the other day when I poked around the parts of Old Town near Preuss. It's the original hipster neighborhood in Lansing.

One more look at the metal-sculpture crane that overlooks the koi pond and that I'm sure doesn't bother the fish at ALL.

Across the street from Preuss is the old Bethlehem Temple Building, which for over a decade now has been a series of unsuccessful renovations projects. It's currently being renovation projected, this time into loft apartments, they think.

Close-up of the windows that until this project started had (mostly) intact stained-glass windows. No idea if they'll be restored at a later stage in renovations or if they'll just be replaced with mortal glass.

Metal-sculpture dinosaur that's actually not around Preuss. Instead it and a couple other figures are outside Friedland Industries, in the same area but over towards the scrap-metal collector.

Musical frog metal sculpture that, again, is not outside the pet store or the scrap-metal collector.

If it's not actually transformation artwork it's certainly sneaking up towards it. Big mural on the west face of The Grid, hipster bar that advertises itself as a great place to play pinball, even though it's really not and the pinball includes Paragon, which is one of the most brutal early-solid-state games.

Trivia: In 1582 Queen Elizabeth's advisor John Dee proposed the dropping of ten days, to bring the English calendar in line with the Gregorian and better in line with the seasons, this by dropping three days in May, one in June, and three each in July and August of 1583. (The days were picked to avoid importnat days and holidays.) Source: The Calendar: The 5000-Year Struggle to Align the Clock with the Heavens --- And What Happened to the Missing Ten Days, David Ewing Duncan.

Currently Reading: Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story, Leonie Swann.

bunnyhugger yesterday asked where I was going to go on my walk, and I said I didn't know; I'd find out when I got to the end of the street. I try not planning out my walks too much, unless I know, like, that we need a couple things from the grocery or whatnot. Keeps things fresher. I ended up walking to Downtown East Lansing, a hike about two and a half miles long. And noticed that Curious, the used book store, was open. So, yes, reader, I ducked in, and looked around the two open floors of the building. (They have an upstairs too, that you can only get to from the outside door. It's quirky.) And bought a couple books there, my first purchase from them ... obviously since February, possibly since last year. It was nice to get a visit in before Michigan State University gets back into things and we have to lock the area down again.

Afterward I realized there was a book bunnyhugger needed, and while she has plans to go to her office (where there's a copy) sometime, I might have been able to pick up a copy for two or three bucks and at least reduced the chore load some. Well, next time.

We're coming now near the end of our day at Fantasy Island. Here's what we were looking at and thinking about in June 2019.

And here's the main performance stage for the park, towards the western side and near the turnaround for Silver Comet.

Oh hey, that looks like a great deal for a season pass! Free entrance to all Apex parks, which, great for Indiana Beach! Plus the Halloween events. And look at that, it's good for the 2017 and 2018 seasons! ... Wait a minute, we visited this park in June of 2019!

Benches and trees along the way to the Wild Mouse, which you can see in the background. So if you need decoration ideas for Roller Coaster Tycoon, consider this.

A look at some of the picnic pavilions and what cheerful skies we faced.

And ... hey! A cottontail enjoying the wet lawn, near the pavilions.

We watched the rabbit eating a fair while because we love this sort of park wildlife.

The rabbit nestles down for some more of the fresh grass.

Ride safety sign for the Crazy Mouse roller coaster. Also a nice mouse icon there at the warning that they'll only send out two people in a car when the weather is ideal. They were not sending groups of four people that day even though it was cool and rainy and windy.

And between the signs here we get two versions of the Crazy Mouse logo. Pick your favorite.

Close-up on the logo at the center of the Ferris wheel, which still shows the old Martin's Fantasy Island name and logo. Martin [ DiPietro ] sold the park to Apex in 2016.

Closer look at the Ferris wheel logo. Best angle I could get on this; the Ferris wheel's at the west end of the park and there's not many angles to shoot from.

The other antique-car-ride is, of course, the Funky Winkermobiles.

While Fantasy Island had many things which had been around since 1961 --- including the Crankshaft Cruisers --- they were keeping up with the times, too. The vaping area was separate from the smoking area, too, I guess so fights don't break out.

Prowling around the vaping area allowed me to get bunnyhugger to roll her eyes and also to get this view of the roller coaster that you just don't ordinarily have the access for.

Support structure for the Ferris wheel plus some miscellaneous parts that I'm hoping they don't need and that are used for decoration or maybe found art.

Used Ferris wheel parts placed more deliberately for aesthetic effect.

Trivia: In his first trip to England, in 1672, Gottfried Leibniz met several prominent mathematicians, but not Isaac Newton. Source: The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World, Edward Dolnick.

Currently Reading: The Plastic-Man Archives, Volume 4, Jack Cole. Editor Dale Crain.

PS: Using my A to Z Archives: Image, something else useful from functional analysis.

The Covid-19 cancellation of competitive pinball, and the three-year expiration for events to count for our world ranking, have finally hit me. After a couple months of my world ranking staying about steady, or even increasing, we passed the three-year mark for one of my twenty highest scores. That was a Fremont tournament back in 2017 when I finished in third place. And so my world ranking dropped from as the 820s to 897th. I'll lose another score at the end of August, when that month's Fremont finish (second place!) expires. But after that I won't lose anything until next July. This though events will still degrade, when they turn one or two years old. They just won't vanish altogether.

bunnyhugger meanwhile continues to sit pretty. None of her top twenty events will expire altogether until next March, and fifteen of her top twenty are from 2019. So she's sitting at 1118th, basically unchanged from last month's 1124th. Mind, last year at this time she was in 1353rd place worldwide. So we're about 250 places closer together than we were last year. I find it likely when competitive pinball resumes that we'll get even closer, and the clearing out of our oldest scores is going to help that along. (Before my love protests that I am over-rating her, I point out that according to the statistics, her average finish last year was 19th place, while mine was 23rd place.)

Whenever it is that competitive pinball does resume. I haven't heard any rumors from the International Flipper Pinball Association. But I can't imagine them resuming the sanctioning of events until the whole country, or at least the whole pinball-playing country, is safe to open arcades and bowling alleys again. Certainly not before it's okay to have public gatherings of, like, a hundred non-family-members. (Michigan is on ``ten''.)

Pinball At The Zoo, rescheduled for early October, hasn't cancelled yet, but it's got to be readying to. If the schools weren't reopening it might be almost safe by early October, but the plague factories must run and that's going to put us back by months. Maybe it'll be possible to have the kinds of gatherings you'd need for a small pinball event, like Silver Balls In The City or a Fremont tournament, by the end of December. Maybe there'll be the New Year's Eve party at MJS's pole barn. If things go better than they look now.

Let's get back to Fantasy Island. Here's some more prowling around the Kiddieland and Fairy Tale Forest and then the one thing an amusement park just has to have.

Another kids ride. I think this may have been the Grand Circus Menagerie, which Wikipedia tags as a mix of antique cars, animals, and motorcycles. I wouldn't call those antique cars but I do see the purple cow.

Small stage and seating area.

Magic Ring, another kiddieland ride, and the Magic Ring Maint Log Book, because I love that sort of operational detail. There's a notebook and a pen in there.

Fairy and clown figures on top of the Magic Ring. The ride itself dated to 1961 and the art tracks with that.

Looking from the park out to the main entrance. You can see what kind of day we were facing.

Boats, I assume, another of the park's original rides but here in the midst of maintenance. Notice Max's Doggy Dog Coaster in the back.

Rounder board art on ... let's say the Grand Circus Menagerie ... featuring a nice teal rabbit.

Also ... heeeey, I recognize that wolf with the magic tiara! We saw that same art back at Bowcraft, on the back of a truck ride.

The train ride, apparently originally named Iron Horse and renamed Fanta Se (which tickles me). Unfortunately it wasn't running the day we visited.

Gulliver, bound by garden gnomes. I read somewhere that he had started out as a different figure --- maybe the beanstalk's giant? --- and was repurposed as Gulliver when that was easier to maintain or something. In the closing of Fantasy Island someone local was able to grab the statue for themselves and bring it to their home, so at least some things are staying in the area.

A look at the Fanta Se's seats, and engine.

And here at last we approach the carousel. It's a Chance fiberglass carousel, much like you'd see at any travelling carnival.

Flower bed surrounding the carousel. It's a nice bit of decoration and the overcast skies helped the flowers look sharp.

One of the carousel horses. The toy 1-2-3 blocks underscore what a kids' park the place was.

bunnyhugger considering her photographs of the carousel. (It happens a picture of this carousel is her calendar photograph for August, so it's possible that this is a picture of her taking that picture.)

The horses on the carousel. The paint's in good shape even if it's not ornate.

Trivia: About three thousand people from Kwangtung, China, emigrated to California in 1851. About twenty thousand did in 1852. Source: Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad, David Haward Bain.

Currently Reading: Promise Denied: NASA's X-34 and the Quest for Cheap, Reusable Access to Space, Bruce I Larrimer.

PS: Using my A to Z Archives: Into, one of those little words that gets you in trouble.

Not in hiding: my humor blog. Run there this past week have been:

• Some more things to say about The Story Of Brick, last week's big piece, and me geeking out some more. Spot the vintage Usenet joke!
• In which I wish to return the unused portion of this dream for a full refund because it was a boring dream.
• Statistics Saturday: Apollo Astronauts who are also former producers of The $1.98 Beauty Show in response to a request.
• 60s Popeye: Spare Dat Tree and where it lost me even though I'd say I liked the cartoon overall.
• Vintage Phantom: I can see Aunt Elsie’s point as the Ghost Who Walks did a really lousy job back then acting like a normal person.
• What’s Going On In Dick Tracy? Who is Dethany and why does she look like a villain? May – August 2020 a plot recap.
• Fascinating coincidences of South West England and me just making something silly out of a Wikipedia sentence.
• The Mystery Of The Call To Customer Service

Now let me get you back to Fantasy Island, on the western edge of New York state so that's why there's a Wild West shootout going on.

Bandits facing the fearsomely old guy who turns out to be the Sheriff.

Deputy Sheriff shooing the bandits out of town, and surely a happy ending to the confrontation, right?

There isn't really an off-stage area so the bandits just gather and wait for their cue.

They're back in town and one of the bandits' pants has ripped! I believe this was an accident although it's the sort of thing you expect to have happen.

The bandits figure out how they're going to take over the town and that deputy and that old man won't be able to stop them.

Huh, someone took away that keeping off the mat. Wonder why they did that.

Oh, climbing up those wall slats that happen to be spaced like you'd use for a ladder, that's a clever idea.

Oh, see, now that one's up high there'll be no stopping the bandits!

I feel very safe standing in front of the old guy with his shotgun like this!

Nobody told me the Deputy had a gun too! [ Falls over. ]

The shootout's getting intense, and the bandit on the roof comes to the aid of his fallen comrade!

Whoops! Oh no, he's falling from the roof --- say, it's lucky there's that pile of mats there!

And success! Thanks to a bunch of white men having guns, nearly all of them are now dead!

And after the show kids are invited in to take the sheriff's pledge and get a tin badge and that sort of thing.

Back out into the park. Here's the Yellow Brick Road, leading from the Fairy Tale Fortress into the fairy tale area which, Wikipedia says, they only established in 2018. I assume they moved together and re-themed stuff that was older, since it looked more than a year old when we visited.

Rapunzel, a miniature drop ride that's part of the Fairy Tale section of the park.

Trivia: Nicotine does not appear to be directly responsible for the health problems caused by smoking. Source: Oxygen: The Molecule that Made the World, Nick Lane. (This is why nicotine patches are reasonably safe ways to control a smoking habit.)

Currently Reading: Promise Denied: NASA's X-34 and the Quest for Cheap, Reusable Access to Space, Bruce I Larrimer.

PS: My All 2020 Mathematics A to Z: Imaginary Numbers, a piece I figured would be a tight 1200 words and spilled out to, like, a jillion.

Baby fish update: there's at least four of them downstairs. bunnyhugger fed them a dollop of the frozen mealworm food we'd gotten as emergency quarantine rations and we'll see if they can grow into something safe to either put in the pond or have around when it's time to bring everybody in come October.

And to catch you up on the story strips, here's What's Going On In Dick Tracy? Who is Dethany and why does she look like a villain? May - August 2020 in recap.

So now let's get back to Fantasy Island, in our June 2019 visit to the park.

Silver Comet's lift hill, and return leg of the roller coaster. The entry queue goes underneath the coaster so you get some good angles. Note the United States and Canada flags, much like those at the lift hill for Ravine Flyer II at Waldameer, also on a Great Lake. And you see why the park was named Two Flags Over Niagara Fun Park for surprisingly long considering they weren't sued out of existence for it.

A look down at the turnaround for Silver Comet. Silver Comet was one of two coasters inspired by the Crystal Beach (Ontario) Comet, which was moved to Great Escape in Queensbury, New York, after Crystal Beach closed. The original Comet was a (significant) rebuild of the Crystal Beach Cyclone, legendarily the most extreme roller coaster ever, one that had a nurse on duty for the many fainting passengers. Silver Comet is a great ride but nothing that intense.

Waiting for the train. I believe we waited for a front-seat ride for our first experience, trusting that the rain would hold out that long at least. And we succeeded, joking that now, we could leave.

The Mega Disk'o, something bunnyhugger was not going to be up for riding. You can see how breezy it was.

The Rock-N-Roll music-express ride, with a typical enough art package. Fun to see anyway.

Looking down the westernmost end of the park, with a couple of the pavilions and rentable space off to the left. The drop tower, wild mouse, and Ferris wheel are off in the distance.

The Crazy Mouse and the Ferris Wheel, far off. They're pretty close to a spur of the Thruway, that you can see from the top of the rides.

The Crazy Mouse had a warning sign that in the weather they might need to send out groups of four, no matter what, but they didn't need to. It's the same model spinning wild mouse as at DelGrosso's and as the Exterminator at Kennywood, and the Raton Logo at La Feria in Mexico City.

Back to Silver Comet for another ride, though! And here's the maker's plate describing important facts like it's supposed to run forward. (There used to be a fad for setting a train facing backwards, which runs fine but that parks have gotten shy about.)

Another look at the Silver Comet launch station, along with signs warning about stuff you should not have on the coaster, and how you need eyeglass straps and whatnot.

Claw ride in the middle of its swing. Also something that's not really bunnyhugger's sort of thing.

Silver Comet again, but also a look at the bumper car ride, Scooter. This was part of Martin DiPietro's travelling carnival before he bought the park and renamed it Martin's Fantasy Island.

Martin's Galaxy of Games --- Martin's name is still on a couple of pieces --- although the only game I have a particular picture of is one of those ball-rolling horse-racers.

Pond or river, with an island opposite it. It's the sort of thing that looks like a camping area but I don't know that they ever had that.

Looking over the pond back at the Western-themed area; this is a rare chance to see the backs of those buildings.

bunnyhugger about to learn whether the fish would like a handful of Cheerios.

They would! The fish are quite happy with the Cheerios idea.

And, oh, Indian statues that I'm assuming go back a ways at the park. They're off on the island, inaccessible so far as I know.

Trivia: When the flying aircraft carrier USS Akron crashed into the ocean off Barnegat Lighthouse (in April 1933), the Naval blimp J-3 launched, to drop life jackets to the survivors. J-3 also crashed, killing two of its seven-person crew. Source: Fighting To Be Heard: New Jersey In History, Thomas P Farner.

Currently Reading: Promise Denied: NASA's X-34 and the Quest for Cheap, Reusable Access to Space, Bruce I Larrimer. The title and prologue suggest it's going to be a book from someone Very Mad about experimental spacecraft development of the 90s, an admittedly quite frustrating time, and that's the sort of teapot-tempest I feel like these days.

So now the really unexpected has happened. Somebody's bought Indiana Beach. Like, somebody that wants to run an amusement park. The company that owned Indiana Beach, in Nowhere, Illinois, and Fantasy Island, in Slightly Less Nowhere, New York, closed them ... sometime before the pandemic. It was what counted as shocking news back then.

So, Gene Staples, from Chicago, bought the place for an undisclosed price. He says he hopes to reopen the park by the 1st of July, which seems hard to credit. But he allowed that if the park didn't open by mid-July, it would punt to 2021. He also hopes to finish the re-tracking of the Hoosier Hurricane wooden roller coaster that the old owners had begun.

Still, that's very hopeful news. The natural follow-up question: what about Fantasy Island, near Buffalo, New York? ... And that appears to be truly doomed. Nobody had bought the park by the time its owners declared bankruptcy. There's reports of rides being moved out of the park, and the state got the company to refund season ticket holders. And at least one of the props, Gulliver, has moved to a private home, I assume legitimately but who can say. I suppose as long as the big infrastructure, and wooden roller coaster, hasn't been torn down it's not hopeless but it's so very little hope, especially in this year.

Nevertheless, it is one amusement park un-stricken, and that is such a very good and big accomplishment for the season.

Now let's get back to the Eagle Harbor Lighthouse, up on the Keweenaw Peninsula back in August of 2018. That whole trip.

The Eagle Harbor Lighthouse had bedrooms, of course; here's the kids' room with furniture and toys that would seem appropriate to about 1920. I don't know why they picked that era to restore things to, but they have to pick sometime.

Rabbit toy that's in the children's bedroom.

In the master bedroom things are a bit more formal, and we have here the jacket and a memorial to one of the lighthouse keepers. I don't know but it's plausible that this rescue of the L C Waldo might have driven the choice of restoration date for the museum.

Good old-fashioned sewing machine on display in the lighthouse.

And we walk back to the first floor of the museum while also posing for our album cover.

On the 15th of November, 1873, the lighthouse keeper got a bit snarky, although I don't blame him.

On display outside, a wood stock anchor of a type commonly used in the Great Lakes until around 1890. This one was discovered and raised in 1968; it's thought to have come from either the James Pickands (wrecked 1894, carrying iron ore) or the Colorado (wrecked 1898, carrying flour).

And a harbor buoy of the kind they use now in place of a working lighthouse.

So here's a Chrysler with a story: in 1926 the ship City of Bangor, carrying a load of 248 cars ran aground in winter storms. The crew made it to shore and walked to town, although it wasn't easy and in the storm they walked several miles in the wrong direction before correcting things.

18 of the cars, on deck, fell into the water and washed ashore; the rest were recovered, sent to Detroit (by train), repaired and sold. The cars that washed ashore were also recovered and here's one of them.

Another view of the interior of the recovered 1926 Chrysler.

Telephone switchboard from the Keweenaw Mountain Lodge; the lighthouse is, in part, a good place for the Keweenaw Historical Society to keep stuff of local interest.

Trivia: The first crowned monarch to speak on a Movietone newsreel was Spain's King Alfonso XIII, whose extemporaneous speech invited Americans to visit his country, ``where there are no speed laws''. Source: The American Newsreel 1911 - 1967, Raymond Fielding.

Currently Reading: The Legion of Super-Heroes Archives, Volume 5, Archive Editor Mike Carlin(?). It's the one with the infamous Can Nothing Stop Computo?! story. Also a lot of stories that interrupt what slender narrative logic there was to fit in a scene that technically meets the requirements of showing whatever Mad Libs product gave them the front cover, and then diverts back into a shocking lot of head games and casual cruelty that occasionally kind of has a point? Like, in one story, they have to expel a member for killing, even though it was in self-defense, when they show a plausible way that he could have stopped the villain without shooting him dead if he had thought of it. And then they sink my respect by saying, hey, don't worry, you can still join the rejects in the League of Substitute Heroes. And yeah, the Substitute Heroes are correctly described as rejects but still, they're people who have made a go out of, like, having the power to change the colors of things. Also, you let in both a traitor from a galaxy at the just-discovered end of space that's invading Earth in one hour and Bouncing Boy.

We were getting near 6 pm, around the last hour of the park, and getting a bit hungry. So what would be a good snack? We were right by a funnel cake stand. Sounds good. They asked if we wanted the regular or the deluxe funnel cake. I decided, sure, why not?

So this would be the single dumbest thing I said over this trip.

Not that this was stupid in principle. But in practice ... well, they made a funnel cake. And then ... nothing happened. I waited. They waited. bunny_hugger waited. People came in to the funnel cake stand. People left. Other customers came up, ordered ice cream, got it, and left. There was a ... something ... holding things up and while they apologized I also never got clear what the problem was. We heard in the distance the Wild West gunshow going on, the 6 pm repeat that would've been instructive to see. Finally I said to the guy working the counter, look, it's okay if I just get the plain. And he asked if I was sure, and I was, and he gave it to me. He didn't refund the dollar difference between the regular and the deluxe, nor offer to. I decided I did not have enough time in my life to raise the issue.

While we sat and ate and thought about the bizarreness of all this we noticed the midway games starting to close up. It was a heck of a thought that the park was so empty even leaving open booths where someone just has to supervise while people come up and give them money wasn't worth it. When we were finished with the funnel cake we started walking back to the wild mouse. And there we got stopped: park employees warned us, they were closing the park down, starting with the far western end and moving east. It was not quite an hour to the park's closing anyway, but they were saving that hour of staffing.

Oh, something I failed to slot into the time when it did happen. We were looking at the map at one point and an employee came over to ask what help we needed. And we didn't really, we were just getting a sense of the layout. But he knew we were amusement park fans, mentioning bunny_hugger's Indiana Beach t-shirt. At that moment I didn't know that Indiana Beach and Fantasy Island had the same owner; I just thought, wow, he's aware of this small and quirky amusement park several states over. That's great. (I was also wearing a park t-shirt, but for some other small park that I couldn't blame him for not recognizing.) Great moment, though, nevertheless.

So with the Crazy Mouse closed off instead we went to one of the rides which hadn't gotten the news, the Silver Comet. The sweater was still hanging on the fence and we decided that we should let that rest there. Either the person it belonged to, or park lost and found, would recover it soon enough. There was a short queue and that gave me time to notice another rabbit hopping around the supports for the roller coaster. It was too far, and moved too soon into the tall grass, for me to photograph or to point out to bunny_hugger. Another good ride, though. And ... we noticed coming off that the ride queue had not yet closed. We could dash around and get one last ride in. And that's what we did, securing a front-seat ride for the next-to-last ride of the day.

But this did impose a tradeoff. As bunny_hugger silently feared, the gift shops closed before the few straggler patrons left the park. Possibly they closed as early as the midway games did. Possibly if we had dashed for the gift shop rather than a second final Silver Comet ride we'd have been able to get something. An ornament, perhaps. A t-shirt, likely. They had some nice designs, and for some reason amusement parks won't sell merchandise online. bunny_hugger would curse herself for not buying something when we went out to the car mid-day. It would have been the logical time to buy something and we really ought to have. She was worried we'd end up with no good souvenirs of the whole trip. I couldn't argue that this was impossible; our next park was going to, similarly, be a small independent park and who knows what they might have.

And now there was more rain. And cold. We drove, going off to a Red Roof Inn in Batavia, New York. bunny_hugger had picked it out as being near enough to all the amusement parks we'd want to go to --- including Fantasy Island --- even though it wasn't beside any of them. It was a weird model, clearly something that was rebranded as a Red Roof Inn rather than built as one. And the rooms were subtly old-fashioned, like, the door handles were knobs rather than the much more accessible bent-lever handles of today. The sink was inside the bathroom, rather than outside, the way the current Red Roof Inn fashion has ... at least on our side of the hotel. During our stay I'd see the doors to other rooms open, for housekeeping, and see that some of them had the sink outside the bathroom. Something strange is going on there.

Also it was noisy. We heard a lot of whatever was going on in rooms on both sides of our floor. bunny_hugger was sure she couldn't sleep in such a noisy room. So, I went to the front desk to ask. They said there weren't any available rooms, other than smokers' rooms, if we wanted those. We didn't want a quieter room that badly. Also: there are still smoking rooms in New York state hotels? Wow. Possibly the clerk was brushing us off.

Where to eat? In or near Batavia, a town that is not one of your big cities like Cooperstown? ... There wasn't much that seemed interesting. One prospect came to us through a several-years-old report on a pinball maps web site, a pizza place which allegedly had a Gottleib Tee'd Off. It's an early-90s comic golf game, one of a couple of ``oh yeah, we don't have to license comedy golf from Caddyshack'' games made in the 90s. We don't have particular affection for the game, but it is rare to see (even rarer than Williams's No Good Gofers, their entry in this genre). And it was on location, and we like supporting places that have pinball on location.

Great, but ... what location? The restaurant's name was not in my satellite navigator, which got new maps just a month or two before. Neither was the street address. We drove along the part of the town that seemed like the address should have been in, and never saw it. We drove into the next town, supposing that there might have been some confusion between, like, the Town of Batavia versus the Township of Batavia. I don't know that there was any, but this sort of thing happens in Michigan and especially New Jersey all the time.

So with that failed we went to a family restaurant that had going for it that we could say with certainty it existed. And this was a pretty solid choice. They had several good vegetarian options, very cheese-based ones, including a plate of macaroni and cheese which was enormous enough bunny_hugger was not able to finish it unaided. (I have been unable to finish a restaurant meal maybe twice in my life.) Also a four(?)-cheese grilled cheese sandwich which was not as fantastic as its equivalent in Rennes, France, but which was a great thing to discover in Batavia, New York.

When we got back to our hotel room the place was basically quiet enough, apart from some dogs barking in the early morning hours. Nothing bad enough that moving would have really helped.

Trivia: In 1953 Pandit Nehru estimated that India had over thirty different calendar schemes simultaneously in use. Source: Ideas: A History from Fire to Freud, Peter Watson.

Currently Reading: Draft No. 4: On The Writing Process, John McPhee.

PS: Of course I'm not just done with the day, technically.

On the way back to the hotel from the Pyramid Cuicuilco there was a good-sized, fairly upscale shopping mall. I thought that would be a good spot to get something to drink and someplace air conditioned to rest, especially as I faced a long walk uphill. So here's some of what an upscale Mexico City shopping mall had to offer: frozen yoghurt and Starbucks.

Also the local Apple store licensee, the iShop. Yes, I stopped in and doodled some quick casual nothing on the iPad and the picture came out with a fresh liveliness I can never do when I'm trying to draw on purpose.

I mean, this place was fancy enough it still supported a RadioShack, see? ... Also, the Cafebrería in the upper right corner was the dedicated bookstore, in a tiny space yet still able to support a small, overcrowded cafe.

We heard something going on in the Old West section of the park. It was their 3 pm gunslinging show. Or, at that point actually, the pre-show. This involved several of the park performers, including the guy who'd play the hapless sheriff in the show, doing small bits of clowning around. Like the guy who'd play sheriff holding out a collapsible chess board, to have it collapse, and need help tidying things up. That sort of silly comedy.

The show, when it started, presented itself as the deputy (the lone woman performing) grumbling, out in the street, about the sheriff. And trying to coax him out of his office. Here we got to wondering just how much of this was scripted. It was comic, of course. But parts of it sounded improvised. The sheriff started talking about how he couldn't come out because he was having trouble putting on his pants. He said something about how he needed the help of two horses to put his pants on. The deputy asked him exactly how. He started saying how they would stand him on his head, and the deputy asked for more details and you could hear where the sheriff didn't know where he was going with this. It was fascinating to listen to. Later, after the sheriff came out for a few moments, he said he had to go across the street (from the Sheriff's office to the Golden Nugget, a restaurant) to put on some pants. ``Why do you need to change your pants?'' asked the deputy. ``Didn't say I was changing my pants. I'm just putting another pair on.'' With this weird, possibly improvised line, the performance made bunny_hugger burst out laughing and she never stopped liking it. She's still, weeks later, occasionally grinning about the line.

Pants would become a bit of a recurring theme for the show. The premise leading up to the gunfight was that a trio of bank robbers were coming into town, figuring they could easily take things over considering the deputy was a woman and the sheriff was, well, the guy with the collapsing chess board. Catch is near the end of the first at, one of the bank robbers squatted down and ripped his pants in what did not seem to be a scripted wardrobe problem. Can't blame the performers coming to the brink of cracking up there.

So, I noticed before the show that there was a heap of mattresses near one of the buildings, with a 'PLEASE KEEP OFF THE MAT!' sign that one of the performers removed from the top just before the show started. But when the first act reached its conclusion, with surprisingly loud caps being fired --- very near in our direction, because of where bunny_hugger and I stood compared to the actors --- I forgot about that and took the bank robbers' retreat to be the conclusion of the show.

So after a few minutes, many of which seemed to be spent with the robbers working out whether the torn pants needed particular action, they went to the second half. Here the robbers beat up the hapless sheriff. The deputy tries to bring them in. The sheriff comes back in costume as a grizzled old miner or something. And they get to the dramatic shootout. This includes --- just like you see in old books about amusement parks with Wild West shootouts --- one of the robbers climbing up to the roof of the Golden Nugget, and, as the final robber shot, twisting and falling off the roof, onto the mattress. Good stunt, and a fun show all around.

While the many amused kids gathered around to take an oath of behaving like good kids from the sheriff we walked through, over to the kiddieland area. The park had a bunch of props with fairytale or fairytale-adjacent themes. The Yellow Brick Road, mentioned earlier. A Jack and the Beanstalk figure. An Alice in Wonderland prop where Alice is outgrowing the house she's in. A whale's head that we thought at first was another weird amusement park appearance of Moby Dick (as seen at Storybook Land in New Jersey). No; this was Pinocchio, with the wooden man, Geppetto, and the cat inside the whale's mouth, behind a plexiglass screen so the photographs are lousy.

And we got to see the park's newest roller coaster, Dragon's Flight. So new a coaster that it's not even installed yet. It's on the park's maps and their brochures as the new ride for 2019, but they didn't have any of the track or the loading station installed. That's all right. It's a small roller coaster, a Dragon Wagon such as you see at many carnivals and small amusement parks. It's designed to be set up in, like, twenty minutes. They just hadn't finished installing yet. This is two years in a row that we've been to a park with a roller coaster too new to have installed. (Lakeside Park in Denver last year had a Pinfari Zyklon assembled but not ready to ride when we visited. That ride, remarkably, still isn't running, or apparently even named, so we don't have to feel bad about not waiting two weeks last year to visit when the roller coaster would be open.)

The Roller Coaster Database, citing some promotional video, thinks this ride is the Dragon Wagon which had been at Indiana Beach, which we had seen and wasn't running last time we were at that park. This is possible. Plausible, even, since Indiana Beach and Fantasy Island are both owned by Apex Park Group. What has me skeptical is that we could see the train at Fantasy Island. It's a dragon with red scales, and the back of the ride says 'Beauce Carnaval'. The Roller Coaster Database's pictures of the Indiana Beach Dragon Wagon show it having green scales. And while it's possible the Dragon Wagon was at Indiana Beach for years without its former owner's name being taken off the back --- especially as Indiana Beach was for years owned by people who had no interest in or ability to run an amusement park --- it seems ... weird. (On the other hand, Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, New Jersey, had a ride with the Cypress Gardens logo on it for years.) So what is the truth? There is no way to know. I suppose we have to pop in to Indiana Beach and check if they still have their Dragon Wagon.

Oh, and there was one more roller coaster. A kiddie coaster, a Wacky Worm-style little one designed to batter the knees of adult riders. This one's called Max's Doggy Dog Coaster, and the front car has a Dalmation's head on it rather than a worm. We were a bit hesitant to ride, unaccompanied by kids as we were. But the ride operator didn't mind. The ride operator might have been a little bored waiting through the slender crowd and occasional rain. We got two circuits, enough to appreciate things like the flower-bell-shaped ride lights and how close the ride comes to the trees in some parts. And the giant daisy props outside the ride's enclosure. It's a fun ride, and it didn't smash our knees too badly.

And of course it was raining again. Not enough to close the park, but enough to make us feel cold and a bit lousy, after not quite two hours there. So we figured to go out to the car and get our rain jackets. Well, my rain jacket and bunny_hugger's poncho. bunny_hugger asked if maybe we should stop in the gift shop first, before we go out, and buy any souvenirs we wanted. I said nah, there'd be time for that near the end of our day.

Bonus fun activity: see if you can spot the single dumbest thing that I said during our parks trip.

Trivia: The now-standard telephone number keypad, named ``right-reading 3-by-3 plus one'' during tests in the 1950s, was neither the fastest nor the most preferred of touch-tone dial arrangements Bell Labs experimented with. (It was the layout that best fit available space and electric circuits in the phone case.) Source: Small Things Considered: Why There Is No Perfect Design, Henry Petroski.

Currently Reading: Space Shuttle Challenger: Ten Journeys Into The Unknown, Ben Evans.

PS: Reading the Comics, July 2, 2019: Back On Schedule Edition, wrapping up a slow week's worth of comic strips.

PPS: more looking around the pyramid. I still find it all gorgeous to look back on.

The channel cut in the top of the pyramid as it leads to the altar area. The sun angle really helps make it look like the place is filled with void. I don't know what those white mountain-peak structures in the middle background on the right are.

Looking again at the altar area, this time from an angle that showcases how there's several levels to that.

A longer view of the channel, including the spots that look like they're insets to make it possible for people to scrunch against the all and let someone pass? Hard to say. The channel is maybe four feet wide most of its length.

Our Toronto-area hotel had a check-out time of noon, and in view of the weather we were looking to go to a small park near Buffalo, maybe an hour and a half away, that shouldn't need a full day. We went to sleep confident that we could sleep in through 10:30, maybe 11 am, and still have plenty of time to WHAT IS THAT GOING OFF AT 7:30 IN THE MORNING?

So you maybe remember that when we checked in we saw the wedding rehearsal and all for an Indian family. As we left for Canada's Wonderland we passed people dressed in wedding-class garb, looking dazzling and in that mood of happy-but-stressed-out. Well, I infer that the wedding itself was on Saturday, and that they planned on an outdoor reception, and that the DJ decided he had to test his sound equipment and that's why he started blazing music at top volume at 7:30 am on a Saturday. I stumbled out toward the elevator trying to figure what kind of complaint I could make to the front desk, or if it would be enough to just show up looking like I'd been rattled out of bed at 7:30. The elevator wasn't responding, though, and the one time an elevator did open at my floor it was already full of people dressed for the wedding. And by that time the music had dropped down to a sane level, or cut out altogether, so I went back to our room. I accomplished nothing but the important thing is that I had a plan and acted on it.

When we woke up again, only this time meaning it, and more tired and cranky than we wanted, we had the breakfast question. Tim Horton's it was, then, for a fresh round of the BeyondMeat sandwiches. It turned out these had only just been rolled out from test market to nationwide that week. Also that by ``nationwide'' they mean ``the nation of Canada, of course''. There's no telling whether it will come to the mid-Michigan Tim Horton's world. We have a similar frustration with A&W Canada, which apparently has Impossible Burgers that we haven't seen here. Still, it's good to have at all and we did our best to encourage Tim Horton's in doing more of this.

And so we drove mostly south, driving for the western border between Ontario and New York. US Customs asked what we were bringing into the country and we realized ... gosh, we hadn't really picked up anything. Oh, this stuffed doll, and I pointed to the Behemoth plush that was our big Canada's Wonderland souvenir. It seemed odd that we hadn't had more. Still, this brought us on another toll road, a spur of the New York Thruway. This was another toll road that ... didn't ... have any toll booths. Just a warning that we needed to text some number to arrange payment which, yeah, good luck. I've never successfully sent a text message to a strange number with my phone. I'm not much better at sending text messages to people I know. I think all my exchanges have been with people who texted me first and I just hit reply. Granting, my cell phone is about 840 years old --- its company logo is Mergenthaler --- but still. Anyway I haven't been called into Toll Road Jail so that's that.

Our goal was a park on Grand Island, which is a good-sized island in the Niagara River, basically just across the river from the cities of Niagara Falls and of North Tonawanda.

Fantasy Island was, until 2017, known as Martin's Fantasy Island, for its then-owner Martin DiPietro. There's still one or two things that say Martin's on it, but now, the park's owned by Apex Parks Group, the company that saved Indiana Beach. Before 1994 the park was known as Two Flags Over Niagara Fun Park. It was only known as this for two years. And apparently, they changed the name because of Martin DiPietro's buyout. It seems to have come before Six Flags could file a writ of srsly in trademark court. Before 1993 it was called Fantasy Island and that's as much intrigue as there is in the park's name history. Wikipedia mentions some of the slight cryptic weirdness in ownership you expect from a small park, like that it went bankrupt in 1982, was bought by Charles Wood, sold to International Broadcasting Corporation, and then re-bought by Wood after IBM went bankrupt. There's mysteries here. I refer to the Wikipedia site claim that the kiddie ride Bugs ``was in storage behind the wave pool [ from its 2011 removal ] until end of 2016 season when Martin DiPietro took it with him as he departed from the park''. Let that sentence roll on your head a while.

But this we expected to be a half-day park, something we could explore fully in like four hours. The park was scheduled to close at 7 pm. It has three roller coasters, only one of which was of particular interest. The weather was cool and rainy, and threatening worse rains. Which is why we chose to go to Fantasy Island on Saturday. Sunday looked likely to be better. Monday better still. So if we had to lose time in a park because of rain, Fantasy Island looked like the one we'd least regret having rained out.

And it was threatening to be rained out. We got to the park about 1:30, to overcast skies that kept looking ready to be rainy overcast skies. I put some sunscreen on my face and neck, and that was all I'd need. I had a t-shirt, regular shirt, and my Blackpool Pleasure Beach hoodie, plus the GateKeeper rain jacket I always keep in the car. bunny_hugger similarly had several layers ready plus the d'Efteling rain poncho. The day might be short. That's all right. Few people were there. We might be able to ride everything in two hours, weather permitting.

Trivia: The first Bose-Einstein Condensate made, in 1995, was made with two thousand atoms of rubidium. Source: Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide To The Elements, John Emsley.

Currently Reading: Space Shuttle Challenger: Ten Journeys Into The Unknown, Ben Evans.

PS: Finally! Cuicuilco Pyramid, climbed! A tiny little bit.

Looking back down the first stretch of the ramp's slope. They're volcanic rocks gathered to make most of this base and it felt weird and a little unsettling walking up this after seeing that portrait of the area enveloped by a volcanic flow.

A close-up of something that's been in the background of many of the north-facing pictures: Six Flags Mexico is very visible from the pyramid. The roller coaster is Superman: El Último Escape, and the other tall structures are drop towers or reverse bungee rides or the like.

Part of the first tier of the pyramid, roped off just enough to ensure that you only go there if you're really confident in your footing. I had the sense this was a new and maybe temporary restriction.