The Annual Play Hooky Day
Aug. 7th, 2009 08:29 amWell, yesterday we went to the local water park, Wild Waves, and spent too much money on food and admission and hung out with friends and fellow geeks and had a good time.
After two weeks of scorching heat, this was the day that the weather decided to turn nasty. It started out in the low 60's, and never reached higher than 72°F all day. It was overcast until almost 3:00pm.
We hit the park early, and our party of 14 headed in. It was nice to see FallenPegasus, but he's lost so much weight I expressed concern over his health. He admitted that he'd had a bit of a stressful year somewhere upon hitting 40, and he joked that maybe his 20 year old girlfriend was another symptom of that. (On the other hand, she was adorable and smart, and seemed good for him.)
The Wild Thing We did the dry things first since the day was cold and expected to be that way through lunch. First we hit the "Wild Thing," a pretty standard roller coaster with both a loop-the-loop and a corkscrew. Sorry the photo's out of focus; my camera's not the best when it's being rattled and thrown around. And that's not an error; I really was at 90° to the ground when the photo was taken.
There was a really stupid sign that read, "The Wild Thing regrets..." The Wild Thing regrets nothing; it's a machine, and a rather dumb one at that. The park's owners, I doubt, regret avoiding liability.
We also hit the ring of fire, where Kouryou-chan said she would not go but another little girl about her age in our party said she would, and wanted to go with me. She was tall enough to meet the requirements, but so small I kept being afraid she'd slip out of restraint, so I put my arm on her shoulder and held her down. She was appreciative, later telling her mom, "I was glad Elf was there! If I slipped out and died, you would have been so mad you'd have yelled at him all day!"
I also rode the Timberhawk, this time with Lisakit. She didn't look like she enjoyed herself; it was more like an S&M kind of thing, where she basically did it to convince herself she could do it, and was happy when it was over. We rode the bumper cars, talked a lot of geek, and then made our way over to the log flume. I got soaked, along with the kids and a number of the adults.
I can't believe I spent $13 for a cheap burger and a Coke. That was unreasonable, as was every expense at the park. Lockers, which go for 25¢ at the local swimming pool, were $21.
After that, we hit the wet rides. Somewhat grimly, as the weather still wasn't warm. The river, a loop of water around two of the largest slides, was warm enough that Omaha and I enjoyed it, and then we hit the hot tubs until the sun finally broke through, around 3 in the afternoon.
That was much better. For the next three hours I was very dad-- I took Kouryou-chan down the very tall slides and the "river rapids" ride. The slide, I discovered, must be done lying down because otherwise my weight wasn't distributed enough and I stopped in the tube, and believe me, my ass isn't that big. The rapids were more interesting, being a series of concrete slides down into pools in a stepped fashion, and Kouryou-chan and I had a lot of fun in those.
There were lifeguards everywhere. This sounds good, and it is, but compared to the previous year there were twice as many. I wondered if the safety laws had changed, if the park had had a liability moment, or if there were some other explanation, like a jobs package, that explained the overwhelming presence of red-suited blondes.
I hung out at the edge of the kiddie pool with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
littleone66 while our respective children tromped and played, enjoying these "kiddie" slides just as much as they did the huge ones we had ridden earlier. After that, we all retreated to the wave pool, and eventually the hot tubs, until it was time to leave.
We assembled at the abandoned pizza porch above the main administration building, and then made it to the Olive Garden (It's the Paul & Storm song; very cute), where we had dinner and discussed the relative merits of MySQL vs. NoSQL implementations, shared tiramasu with the already excessively sugared children, and eventually broke up and headed home.
Altogether a good day.
After two weeks of scorching heat, this was the day that the weather decided to turn nasty. It started out in the low 60's, and never reached higher than 72°F all day. It was overcast until almost 3:00pm.
We hit the park early, and our party of 14 headed in. It was nice to see FallenPegasus, but he's lost so much weight I expressed concern over his health. He admitted that he'd had a bit of a stressful year somewhere upon hitting 40, and he joked that maybe his 20 year old girlfriend was another symptom of that. (On the other hand, she was adorable and smart, and seemed good for him.)
The Wild Thing
There was a really stupid sign that read, "The Wild Thing regrets..." The Wild Thing regrets nothing; it's a machine, and a rather dumb one at that. The park's owners, I doubt, regret avoiding liability.
We also hit the ring of fire, where Kouryou-chan said she would not go but another little girl about her age in our party said she would, and wanted to go with me. She was tall enough to meet the requirements, but so small I kept being afraid she'd slip out of restraint, so I put my arm on her shoulder and held her down. She was appreciative, later telling her mom, "I was glad Elf was there! If I slipped out and died, you would have been so mad you'd have yelled at him all day!"
I also rode the Timberhawk, this time with Lisakit. She didn't look like she enjoyed herself; it was more like an S&M kind of thing, where she basically did it to convince herself she could do it, and was happy when it was over. We rode the bumper cars, talked a lot of geek, and then made our way over to the log flume. I got soaked, along with the kids and a number of the adults.
I can't believe I spent $13 for a cheap burger and a Coke. That was unreasonable, as was every expense at the park. Lockers, which go for 25¢ at the local swimming pool, were $21.
After that, we hit the wet rides. Somewhat grimly, as the weather still wasn't warm. The river, a loop of water around two of the largest slides, was warm enough that Omaha and I enjoyed it, and then we hit the hot tubs until the sun finally broke through, around 3 in the afternoon.
That was much better. For the next three hours I was very dad-- I took Kouryou-chan down the very tall slides and the "river rapids" ride. The slide, I discovered, must be done lying down because otherwise my weight wasn't distributed enough and I stopped in the tube, and believe me, my ass isn't that big. The rapids were more interesting, being a series of concrete slides down into pools in a stepped fashion, and Kouryou-chan and I had a lot of fun in those.
There were lifeguards everywhere. This sounds good, and it is, but compared to the previous year there were twice as many. I wondered if the safety laws had changed, if the park had had a liability moment, or if there were some other explanation, like a jobs package, that explained the overwhelming presence of red-suited blondes.
I hung out at the edge of the kiddie pool with
littleone66 while our respective children tromped and played, enjoying these "kiddie" slides just as much as they did the huge ones we had ridden earlier. After that, we all retreated to the wave pool, and eventually the hot tubs, until it was time to leave.We assembled at the abandoned pizza porch above the main administration building, and then made it to the Olive Garden (It's the Paul & Storm song; very cute), where we had dinner and discussed the relative merits of MySQL vs. NoSQL implementations, shared tiramasu with the already excessively sugared children, and eventually broke up and headed home.
Altogether a good day.
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