Pulse: Check

My motto: every once in a while, its important to stop and check for a pulse.

That said, I checked mine yesterday.  Still tickin'.  Too often I-- probably like you-- get caught up in the muck of life for too long-- so long that I need something that tests my mortality just a bit.

If we are lucky, we get 80 or 85 revolutions around the sun on this big brown clod we call Earth.  Might as well make the most of them.  I could just as easily die of boredom, after all.

My pulse check happened yesterday as I took the family to Cedar Point, Ohio.  This place had been on our radar since we moved to Pittsburgh, but for whatever reason, we hadn't made it there until yesterday.

It puts all other amusement parks to shame, with the probable exception of Disney World.  Its my opinion.  I grew up in southern Idaho, so the closest thing to amusement parks was Lagoon in Farmington UT or the traveling carnival that came to the Mini-Cassia County Fair and Rodeo.  Cedar Point makes them all look like a ragtag heap of spare parts and junk metal.

Its not my intent to demean Lagoon.  I have a lot of good memories of that place.  I also have a lot of bad memories.  The dry Utah heat combined with too many sweaty bodies in too tight of quarters is one of them.  I know this can happen virtually everywhere, but its what comes to mind first when I think of Lagoon.

Cedar Point is like no other.  Its huge.  Every turn spawns a new roller coaster.  They have 16 coasters in all-- just one shy of sharing the world record.  I admit-- I like riding roller coasters.

Certainly, I would have my pulse checked many times before I left.  And, I was destined to require chiropractic help the next day, too.  There were too many chanced, however, of some mechanical issue happening that would send me into Lake Erie.  Rare, yes, but recall that I was the unintended catcher of a .22 bullet a month or so ago.  Odds are never in my favor.

With the family and one of Chrissa's friend in tow, we made the rounds in the park.  Perfect weather, moderate crowds... it was a lot of fun.  I managed to get on 11 of the 16 coasters there, but I admit I was well scrambled after the first 5 or 6.  At that point, I felt like I had spent the day in an industrial washing machine, without the water.

The best (my opinion): Millennium Force.  It used to hold the world record for height (300+ feet) and speed (93 MPH) and length (over a mile long).  Not any more.  But, it was awesome.  A pic of it is below (taken from their website):

The crowing jewel was Top Thrill Dragster.  The "Thrill" only started when you were actually on the ride... the 1+ hour line to get on was less than thrilling.  Its an intimidating structure, mind you, and its ominous presence could be seen from everywhere within the park.  I knew I had to get on it-- in fact, I had made fun of some people who didn't, but with each passing hour and the occasional glimpse at it from time to time throughout the day, I grew more weary of it.  Millennium Force didn't help either.  At its peak, you still had to look up to see the top of Dragster.  Still, while waiting in line to get on this thing, one could read that each "train" weighs 5.5 tons (without people) and has 72 moving wheels.  Considering the fact that I have a hard time keeping 4 good wheels on my own car, the possibility of catastrophic mechanical failure kept coming to mind.  Throw a wheel and how would I fair?  

Again, consider who's talking here.  Impossible, you say?  I'm probably the only person in the world that was knocked unconscious from a golf ball to the face... a golf ball that I hit with a #3 wood.  Had it not been for that 3 inch rock poking through the ground about 30 feet in front of me, I would likely had made it to the green instead being carried off on a gurney from Hole #16 to the awaiting ambulance at the Canyon Springs Golf Course in Twin Falls, Idaho.  Thus, I see a difference between cheating death (golf ball) and living on the edge... its a fine line, though, I admit.

Anyhow, Instead of me telling you about this monster which, incidentally, is the second tallest in the world (420 feet) and third fastest (0 to 120 MPH in 3.8 seconds), hear it from Bert the Conqueror-- the big dorky guy (which is why I feel a special kinship with him) from The Travel Channel.

Thankfully, I was able to get Chrissa and her friend's run on Dragster, about 20 minutes after I got off the thing.  The video is a bit shaky... I was still trying to squeeze blood into my hands after this ride drained it out of me.

And, our after photo shoot:

These rides have their benefit to their slower cousins, I think.  Being hit with puke isn't very likely.  The sheer speed of this thing prevents it.  It'd likely get caught up in the esophagus at least until we dropped below 80 MPH, thanks to the force this exerts on the body.  Plus, the take-off popped all of the joints in my spine and chest-- no need for a chiropractic visit after all.

I do my best to break in my kids whenever we go to places like this.  This year was Ethan's turn.  My first attempt was Millennium Force, and I did my best to shield the coaster from his view, hoping to get him on and get moving before he knew what was up.  But, the size of this thing was greater than I could manage to hide from him.  Halfway down the line, he noticed, freaked out, and I had to have him wait for us on the outside.  I can't say I blame him entirely.  Its against human nature to strap yourself to a piece of metal and flung into the air.  

Michelle got lots of great photos of the kids.  With her general lack of roller coaster enthusiasm, she's usually the babysitter while I'm off being Braveheart.  Here's a few:

Lost

One thousand two hundred and sixty seven days ago (or so), I left Idaho Falls en route to Pittsburgh.  I had a truck full of miscellaneous things to keep me alive while I waited for my family and my belongings to catch up with me 3 weeks later—a table, a TV, clothes and shoes, something to shave with, a toothbrush, enough propane/gasoline/camping fuel to burn down Nebraska (the movers wouldn’t move it), and so on.  I’m also remembering a cooler full of frozen chicken.  I won't bother trying to explain the chicken.

My stuff, all in the back of my truck and covered with a tarp, drove with me and my parents across 2,000 miles of US dirt.  Arriving in Pittsburgh on Thanksgiving 2008, I unpacked my few things and waited for my family and the rest of my house to catch up.  Oh yeah, and I started my new job.

Somewhere before, during, or after this move, I lost my wedding band.  Why wasn’t it on my finger, you ask?  No, it was not what you think… the ring had shrunk over the years.  I’m certain my fingers have stayed the same size since I was younger and leaner, so the only explanation is the shrinking ring theory.  Who knew 14k gold could do that?  The only finger it would fit on was my pinky, and I didn’t want to be known as a pinky finger ring guy.

So, for the 1,267 days (or so) since I lost it, I had been running around town ringless, up until about a year ago when I gave up hope that I’d find it and purchased a cheaper ring made of tungsten as a suitable replacement.  No one can buy gold these days without a second mortgage on the house and a lien on your firstborn.  Being ringless is not what you think, though.  I didn’t get one date out of it.

At first, I blamed the movers.  A sketchy bunch, I envisioned them rummaging through our boxes and pulling out anything of value to subsidize their expenses—jewelry, collectables, clothes.  Fortunately, we didn’t have much that was worth anything—at least anything that could be easily stolen.  This theory kinda fell apart when items of significantly more value showed up unharmed and intact—oh, say, my Seinfeld DVDs.

Yet, without another plausible explanation (such as me simply dropping it somewhere), I was without a valid explanation for its disappearance.  I think I even blamed my kids at one point, which is something I rarely do.

Anyway, time went by.  Favoring my tungsten ring over my gold ring (hey, it was a better fit), I forgot about the gold ring altogether.

This morning prior to leaving for work, I was going through my coin box to find quarters for the vending machine (its Monday, after all) and, after not finding the requisite number needed to buy something of high sugar content for later consumption, I decided to look in less obvious places.  One such place was my truck—the same vehicle that took me and my crap clear across the country 1,267 days ago.  I didn’t do a hard search, but I did check the usual coin locations.  One such location is the little vinyl boot that resides at the base of the 4-wheel-drive shifter.  I drop coins there from time to time simply because I have no other place to put them, and I still haven’t gotten to the point of telling the kids in the drive-up windows to keep the pennies.

This location is accessible on 3 sides: the front, the back, and the passenger side.  The driver side is inaccessible—at least 95% of it is inaccessible—due to the shifter’s proximity to that side of the box in which it resides.  However, I had located a coin—a dime, I think—that was part way in this little location.  Grabbing it, my finger brushed up against another coin further buried in the inaccessible part of the boot.  So I went for it, too.

Instead of a quarter, I pulled out my wedding band.  Yeah, the 14k gold one that had shrunk and then lost itself 1,267 days ago.  Dirty, but still in good condition.  To anyone watching me, removing it from the shifter boot must have looked like Sméagol pulling the One Ring out of Shire Creek in Lord of the Rings.

Yeah, there it had sat for 3.5 years, the only thing between it and the roadway below being a thin piece of synthetic leather.  I had turned the house upside down a while ago looking for this ring (this is about the same time that gold was selling for $1,500 an ounce, but my intentions were honest, I swear), only to come to the realization today that it had been within a foot of me this whole time whenever I was driving to and from work, church, errands, whatever.  I had even thought about selling the truck at one point in the recent past… the ring would have gone with it for sure.  In other words, a freebie for the new buyer.  But, I held on to the truck.

I have only one idea on how the ring got there: I had to put it somewhere since I couldn’t put it on my finger and probably because my luggage had already been packed for my move out east.  So, I put it there… only to completely forget about it.

Moral of the story: don’t buy gold.  So, when you put it in a dumb spot and forget about it, you won’t be out $1500 an ounce (or $500 for 14k gold items).