Two weeks ago, after riding twice on the Yankee Cannonball roller coaster at Canobie Lake Park and discovering that all of my rickety old body parts still were intact, I decided to be brave and go on another coaster there, the Canobie Corkscrew.
The Corkscrew was a new addition since I’d last been to the park, so I wasn’t familiar with it or how it operated. Unlike most of the other rides, however, there was no long line of people waiting to board it on the night we were there. In retrospect, that probably should have been a warning to me.
I rushed up the ramp and jumped right into one of the seats on the Corkscrew. An attendant came by and pulled down a padded harness-like bar over my head and locked it into place. I thought I heard her mention something about removing my earrings, which were thick hoops with posts, but I figured I must have misunderstood. I mean, I honestly couldn’t think of one good reason why I’d have to take off my earrings just to ride on a roller coaster. If anything, I thought, the earrings would be a lot safer attached to my ears than they would if they were floating around loose in my pocket somewhere.
As the ride kicked into gear and the car began to make its way up the first hill, I looked down and for the first time, caught a glimpse of the rest of the track. I suddenly understood why it was called the Corkscrew. It made two twisting loops…steep, twisting, nose-diving loops. Believe me, if there’s anything that terrifies me, it’s being on a ride where I look up and see the ground instead of the sky.
Panicking, I shouted, “I’ve changed my mind! I want to get off!”
Everyone else on the ride, thinking I was joking, began to laugh. The trouble was, I was serious.
I honestly don’t remember much about the ride other than it really was rough…and painful. As the car slammed me from side to side, the padded harness that came down on both sides of my head whacked against my ears and drove my earring posts like rivets into my skin. Had the ride lasted any longer, I’d have been able to wear my earrings in my neck.
“No way did you go on that thing!” my husband said when I walked back over to the bench in Kiddie Land where he had planted himself for the evening. “I thought you hated rides that turn you upside down!”
“Still do,” I said, rubbing my earlobes. “In fact, even more now.”
My husband then mentioned that he was so hungry, his stomach thought his throat had been cut, so I told him to stay put and I’d go find some burgers. In the time it would have taken him, alias “Snail Man,” to walk to a concession stand, I could have ordered a three-course meal, eaten it and taken a nap.
I found a burger place on the other side of Kiddie Land and ordered three cheeseburgers, a small order of fries, and two small sodas. “That’ll be $21.50,” the employee said after he rang up my tray of food.
I just stared at him, my mouth falling open. “Are you serious?”
He nodded.
Thinking of my starving husband, I paid the man.
“These are like those burgers we used to get at the drive-in movies,” my husband said as he bit into one. “You know, the kind that used to sit in those foil bags under a light bulb all night and get all dried out and chewy. How much did they soak you for all of this anyway?”
“Twelve bucks,” I lied.
“Boy, they really saw you coming!”
We finished our food in a few gulps because we wanted to head over to the Dance Hall Theater, where a band that was advertised as looking and sounding exactly like the Beatles was going to be performing in ten minutes. One of my earliest childhood crushes, Bozo the Clown, also was supposed to be appearing somewhere in the park that night, but I figured I’d look for him later.
Musically, the Beatles impersonators were good, but they sounded more like a band playing Beatles’ songs rather than like the Beatles themselves. They also were so loud, my already abused ears began to hurt again.
Visually, the band members looked nothing like the Beatles…not in height nor weight, and especially not in the bad wigs a couple of them were wearing. The guy who was supposed to be George had Ringo’s nose, and the guy who was supposed to be Paul was wearing so much makeup, his eyebrows looked like black versions of McDonald’s golden arches, and his cheeks like two big red sunsets.
“I think the guy who’s portraying Paul also doubles as Bozo to save the park some money,” my husband whispered to me, making me dissolve into giggles and causing the woman in front of me to turn around and glare at me.
By the time the concert ended, my husband was ready to head home. “But I’ve been on only two rides!” I protested. “Let me go on just one more, okay?”
He nodded, found another bench and plopped down on it. I bolted off to the log flume ride. I stood and watched it for a few minutes so I could judge exactly where to sit so I wouldn’t be drowned when the log-car splashed into the water, then I headed up the ramp and waited in line.
The log-cars were in constant motion, so passengers had to board them by hopping into them as they floated past. There was no time to select a seat, so I just jumped in and sat down…right in a big puddle of cold water.
The feeling of icy water being absorbed into my underwear on a chilly night had a way of taking some of the joy out of the ride. And having more water splash into the car and soak my hair and the entire front of my jeans didn’t help much either. When I, my hair limp and soggy and my jeans drenched, walked back to my husband’s bench, he laughed and said, “Having fun, dear?”
“I think I’m ready to leave now,” I said, shivering.
By the time we got home, I was chilled to the bone, my ears were sore and my stomach was feeling the effects of that prime-rib-priced burger.
It was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. I can’t wait to go back again.
