Josh takes a fall

On Saturday, I took one for the team. The team consisted of Geneil and our friends Scott and Michele, and Nick and Stacy (and their little girl). Scott works for the gas company, and he got us free tickets to go to Six Flags Magic Mountain with him on his company's employee appreciation day or something to that effect.

For those of you who haven't been there, Six Flags is a wonder world of roller coasters. They have at least 4 or 5 coasters that at one time or another set a world record in terms of drops, speed, loops, or some combination of the three. The last time I was on a roller coaster was probably when I was 16 or so, and we went to Six Flags in Atlanta after a youth temple trip. On Saturday, it took a few rides to get my "coaster legs" back.

Anyway, at about 9 PM, we were getting ready to go home, but Scott really wanted to go on one last coaster--Goliath, which features, among other things, a 255-foot, 61-degree drop and a top speed of 85 mph. At the time of its debut 8 years ago, it was the largest drop and the fastest coaster in the world. Scott asked if anyone would come with him. His wife is having a baby in 4 months, so she wasn't going to go. Stacy was taking care of her increasingly cranky and wiggling toddler, while her husband Nick complained of stomach pains from the fast food we had eaten a little while earlier. My wife is an admitted chicken when it comes to scary roller coasters (albeit a very good looking chicken, if I do say so myself). So that left me. And since Scott was the one who had gotten us the free tickets to the park, I couldn't really say no, could I?

Anyway, it was definitely a heck of a drop. The seats don't have any grips or anything (I think they expect the true fanatics to keep their arms up the whole time). I held on to the headrest of the seat in front of me. After you do the first drop (the equivalent of two SWKTs stacked on top of each other, for those who know Provo), you twist around a bit, come to rest on a plateau, then drop down another 150 feet or so, then you corkscrew around a bunch and them come back to the station. During the corkscrew I found myself employing tactics I'd read about from World War II fighter pilots--I was tensing my legs to keep from blacking out as the blood rushed out of my head. I read later that Goliath pulls 4.5 G's, which is certainly respectable. All in all, it was a cool experience, at least after it was over.

On a related note, I have now crossed "dive bomber pilot" off my list of prospective careers after graduation...