Holy Rollercoaster

Went to Santa Cruz yesterday. First time I'd been there since 1975.

I'll never forget. My old pal John and I were 14 years old, and our friend Mike had just turned 16, so he could drive.

He disabled the odometer in his car, so his dad wouldn't know we'd driven all over hell's half acre, and we took highway 17 over the mountain to Santa Cruz.

Now my mom had made me vow years before that I would never go on The Big Dipper, the ancient rickety ruin of a wooden roller coaster that my grandma could remember riding on and which, defying the laws of physics and common sense, continued to operate.

Well, first thing we get to Santa Cruz, and John and Mike decide we have to ride on The Big Dipper. Naturally, following the teenager's creed of "Death before Dishonor," I gave in to peer pressure and embarked upon this conveyance of doom.

What followed was one and a half minutes of the starkest terror I have ever known, and in that one and a half minutes, I prayed with the fervor of a First Century martyr facing a pack of hungry carnivores.

Had I followed through on all the promises I made to my Lord and Savior in that one and a half minutes, I would have grown up to be the Mother Theresa of my generation. I was going to comfort the lepers, feed the orphans, bring modern plumbing to Bangladesh, anything to get off that roller coaster alive!

Well, this trip wasn't nearly as exciting, but we did have a nice lunch out on the pier, and we scoped out Roaring Camp Railroad in Felton, which is where we're taking the kid on the 24th for the big Day Out with Thomas.

Hey, Lord, maybe i didn't feed the orphans, but at least I'm showing my nephew a good time. And I'm sure I'll buy him a corn dog.

Kurt "big daddy" True
11 july 2004