Sunday

Sunday started out like any other day would start, except that we were going to church first. When we got to the parking lot, something that struck me as odd happened. Everyone split up. Parents went one direction, Talle's sister went another, and Talle and I went yet another. Strange, but stranger things had happened. At any rate, Talle's sister apparently goes to another church or another service or something, because Talle said that she likes to listen to the speaker who we listened to. He spoke on getting married and such things, and he said that getting married was in all truthful fact, giving up individuality! Imagine that! For some reason, people think that they can remain unchanged when they get married and do everything the way that they did it before they got married. Well, no. It doesn't work that way. He also said some other things about marriage that were more biblical and less "hey, try looking at what really happens and then you can talk," type of thing, but it was all very well done.

I can't imagine myself married, so enough of that. (that was a bizarre tangent) This is where the fun starts. Most of you might think: Nice quiet Sunday afternoon. Right? Wrong. Very wrong. We went and picked up a girl named Jenny with an unpronounceable, unrememberable, and very cool last name (much like mine). From there, we went to Six Flags Great America.

Once we got into the park, we went to the water park. Body slides, tube slides, gigantic funnels (we set some records I take it, eh Talle?) and even bigger funnels. Not to mention a lot of water. Somehow, even though I didn't put on any sunscreen, I didn't get burnt. With sunscreen I get fried. Without, not so much... connection? Mom would think not, but hey, sometimes people get funny ideas. Maybe titanium dioxide is a skin irritant. Who knows. And I have wandered off on another tangent.

Water slides! Fun! Wet! Fast! Whoever came up with the idea of building a gigantic tube that went in all sorts of strange directions to dump into a swimming pool and then pour water down them is a genius. I mean, how unintuitive is that? Its stark raving insanity, and I love it! Needless to say, Talle and his sister have it down to an art form. When we raced, and we had several opportunities, he always beat me. The slides that we raced on were the same length as well, so it wasn't just a matter of him getting on the shorter slide, it was that he knew all the ins and outs of all the rides and how to turn the corners and everything else. Very professional.
So once we had ridden all the water rides at least once, we went back to our locker and put on our shirts and shoes again and crashed the roller coasters. Our first ride of the day was this monstrosity of a ride called Raging Bull. That ride was so sweet it nearly had me in tears... Well, not really, but it was an amazing ride. The ride didn't have any inversions, but it was a modern coaster, very fast, very smooth, and utterly silent. Except for all the yelling. Which I was contributing to. I have never been one to scream on a ride, only yell. I yell. Roller coasters are such a fantastic excuse to open up and make as much noise as you want. Now all I need is a method to get my guitar and amp on board... But yet again, I tangentificate. We went the long route. The hard core route. We rode in the front row. It was perfect, because there were four of us, and there were four seats across on most of the rides on the park. Also, there was nothing in front of us anywhere, only the wide blue open, and a few horizons when we got to the top. One thing about America: The horizons are all buried in trees in all the places I have been. I miss my horizons. I really do. I might be getting claustrophobic, but whatever. Enough of this tangent.

Back on target. We then went on to ride all the serious coasters in the park except for one I think, and that was because it had a really long line, and it didn't look very cool. It went up really fast, and when it got out of the station it went straight up, stopped, fell, reversed through the station, and then backwards straight up and twisting around, to stop, and then twist straight back down and into the station again.

Iron Wolf was cool. Inversion after inversion, and violent! I got a good head rattling. Talle and I rode it because I really wanted to, so the girls went and got these awesome airbrush fake tattoo things. I don't think Talle liked that ride at all, but he endured it for the local madman. His sister wouldn't go anywhere near it. I think looking at it just might make my mother renew her no roller coaster vow...

Other rides were this gigantic thing that hauled us up about 300 meters. Maybe a bit more. and then dropped us down for about 200 of them. Maybe a little more. Very cool. I love free fall. The only way to enjoy it though is to yell. If you don't yell you wind up holding your breath and when you get to the bottom that hurts. Not sure why, it just does. So: when you ride free fall, yell. I am having tangent problems tonight.

We ate at one point in time, a foot long chili cheese hot dog which I bought with my debit card which I did not bother to put back into my wallet, and Talle bought nachos. We split both and made a horrid mess out of anything. It was a very good tasting horrid mess though. Very good tasting.

Batman. Very cool ride, brilliantly themed. We went through Gotham Park, a Sewer system, by a police car wrecked into a water hydrant, A vent system, and several other things that escape my memory at the moment. Brilliantly Gothic. Once we made it onto the ride though, all thoughts of theming disappeared though, and only thoughts of "YEAAAAAH!!!" remained. Fantastic ride. One or two inversions, I don't really remember the ride all that much, it was less memorable, even though Batman is such a cool super hero. No powers, only technology. Hard core, right there. Now I have tangents about super heroes in my posts. Somebody wake me up.
At any rate, we went back to get our airbrush tattoos at this stage, but there were all these low brow types standing in line and grunting at each other while they scratch their bellies. One of them was carefully positioning a stencil with a good deal more deliberation than was necessary, so Talle and I abandoned ship and got in line for the Superman ride. Which I was not allowed to look at. I think that is the hardest thing I have done all summer: Not look at a ride that I am about to go on, and I can hear people all around me talking about, and have heard about many times in the hard core coaster boy circles.

At any rate, the girls thought Talle was nuts for not letting me look at the ride, and they thought I was nuts for agreeing and not looking. Talle's sister made some funny comments about how I looked like some social drop out who couldn't look a girl in the eye, but had to examine their shoes. When we finally made it to the top, we got in to a line of seats, only to find that there was a piece of permanent equipment in one seat on the line of seats that we had chosen. Talle's sister was very generous and got into another seat so there were three of us across and then a piece of thrice confounded equipment. The thing made me wonder though: what was this ride that I was now sitting in, not allowed to look at, and that once the technician came along, you couldn't move at all in? I had never been so locked into a ride in all my born days. I could turn my head a little, and I could move my arms forwards slightly, but that was it. I was locked in.

Then my world upended. Literally, if not completely. I'm dead serious about this! The entire seat rolls backwards so that you are facing the ground. I now understood why we were locked in as good as we were. I was also just a little surprised.
That ride surpasses all others in coolness. I had never done an upside down loop before in my life. That was the strangest sensation. Bizarre. Very, very, very cool though. Coolness of an unprecedented degree. The whole ride was one unintuitive twist, bend or inversion after another, and the entire thing was executed in the smoothest fashion. Truly a pleasure to ride. I saw several things disappear out of my pockets during the course of the ride, but somehow it only made it more amazing. That was the first ride that had the nerve to shake anything out of my pockets, and I respected it for that. Incredible. If you ever ride it though, just remember that you can't put your hands in your pockets to keep stuff in, because your arms are locked in place, so put everything you have on you in a zippered pocket or in the bin to the left of the coaster so you don't lose it. At any rate, I lost 100% of the contents of my pockets on this ride, but I recovered my wallet on the platform where it had fallen out at the very end of the ride.

By the time we got off of the ride, it was about an hour after closing time, and people were starting to file towards the exits. Talle and I sprinted back to see if the airbrush tattoo people were still open, but they weren't. Major bummer. I wanted a batman shirt as well, so I wandered through three gift shops and found an amazing batman shirt. Very elegant if you ask me. Simple and clean cut. I went to the check out line and realized that when I had lost everything out of my pockets and only recovered my wallet, that didn't include my debit card. I had neglected to put my debit card back into my wallet when I bought the hot dog, and so it was lost to the superman ride, not the batman ride as Relient K would have you believe in their song "Chap stick and Chapped lips and things like Chemistry" which has been going through my head as a result of this incident. Only he lost his phone not his wallet.

I managed to get it cancelled when we got back though, and no transactions had been made on it. It is God's providence that I found out as soon as I did though, because I never would have noticed if I hadn't gone to buy that shirt, and that shirt is the first suvineer I have purchased in my life. It was also good that my wallet fell on the platform and not over some lake or something, because my wallet had my social security card in it at the time, and its not laminated or anything, its sort of this recycled compressed cardboard or something, so yeah.
At any rate, we dropped Jenny off at her house on the way back to the Weirich's at something like 1:45 in the morning and got back to the Weirich's by 2. Which evidently scandalized the Weirich's neighbor, which I can understand. The perfectly proper, good citizens Weirich get a guest who wears sunglasses and lugs a guitar, and they all of a sudden stay out until two in the morning. Now you and I know that we were doing nothing improper, but its funny to think that I look like some evil rock god type.

This post is long enough. There is only a little more story left to the Weekend at the Weirich's Saga, so don't write this off as just some nut case story that just doesn't want to end. The next one has some information that Talle might not be familiar with as well. Sorry to drag you through what you lived through man, but I had so much fun I was not unbloggable.