Despite weak stomach, trip was wonderful stress reliever
From the editor ...
As the “Dragon” roller coaster lurched and moved out, I knew I was in big trouble last Thursday. It was then that Noah, my precocious 8-year-old informed me that “this is the ride where you go upside down.”
If there had been anyway to pull an emergency brake, trust me, I would have done it. Instead, I closed my eyes and said a little prayer. “Please God, don't let me get sick.”
I have to tell you, I pretty much kept my eyes shut and kept praying the whole time, with one notable exception. On one of the “loops,” Noah yelled at me to open my eyes because “it is so cool.” I did and here's the picture I saw. There's me, holding onto the harness with a death grip. There's Noah, hands up in the air, smiling and laughing.
I quickly returned to the eyes-closed-praying mode and somehow made it through that ride.
I'm glad I did; in fact, I believe that last Thursday will be the defining moment of summer 2008. For almost 10 hours, I tagged along with my boys as they crisscrossed Adventureland - occasionally summoning the guts to ride some rides but mostly I just enjoyed watching them.
For more than a month, we had scrapped and saved to go on this little trip, one that included watching an Iowa Cubs baseball game on Wednesday and a trip to the amusement park on Thursday. Along the way, we spent a couple of nights at one of my very best friend's home.
The baseball fan in me loved the Cubs game as Iowa won the game in the bottom of the ninth inning after preserving a tie in the top of the frame when it threw out a Salt Lake runner at the plate. The friend in me was overjoyed to spend a couple of nights talking sports, politics and newspapering with Mike Kilen, a features writer at the Des Moines Register who long, long ago helped me get my first real job at the Globe Gazette.
But it was at the amusement park that will remain seared into my brain for years to come.
Let's get one thing out of the way: I'm a wimp when it comes to rides. I'm the guy who still thinks bumper cars are the coolest amusement park attraction. I'm the guy who gets sick by merely looking at a Ferris wheel. I'm the guy who hates waiting in line for more than two minutes.
The beauty of this trip was this: The boys are now tall enough to ride on every attraction at the amusement park without me.
So what in God's name was I doing on that “Dragon” I mentioned above? Noah begged me to go. “I want to ride it once with my dad,” he kept saying over and over. Sentimentality got the better of sense so there I was on that roller coaster.
To see that look on his face for that brief second in time made the queasiness I felt for the next two hours worth it. To see the look on the faces of both Josh and Noah as they came roaring down on something called the “Outlaw” made all the waiting and walking worth it. To see the picture of us going down the log ride made the 25-minute wait worth it.
Elsewhere in this newspaper, reporter Chris Todd has a story on dealing with stress, and like many of you, we've had a stressful summer, albeit for different reasons. In that story, Chris talked with Connie Bleile, a social worker and therapist at Mercy Medical Center-North Iowa in Mason City
“Just taking the family to Adventureland or on a short trip can help,” she said. “And the good news is that time has a way of sorting difficulties out.”
Amen to that.
As I watched my boys fly through the air - spinning, twisting, racing and turning - the stress was gone. Sure, by the time we awoke Friday morning, some of it had returned.
But over the weekend, when the stress level has risen, I have closed my eyes and seen that once-in-a-lifetime look on Noah's face as he with his hands in the air and his dad with his hands practically clawing the safety harness flew upside down on something called the Dragon.
Bob Fenske is the editor of the Forest City Summit. He can be reached by phone at 585-2112 or by e-mail at editor@forestcitysummit.com.
Story created Aug 12, 2008 - 09:35:15 CDT.
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