Old & Rickety

I'm not talking about the Coaster.

David and I ventured to Vancouver's Playland today. It's a cute little park - it means well - but at $29.95, every ride should come with space-age barf bags and personal attendants to clean you up. As David said, it's one step above a county fair, sans barn critters.

It's about as big as a Costco parking lot, with two tiny coasters, typical midway business and a half dozen puke-makers such as Hell's Gate, Breakdance, and Crazy Beach Party.

I wish I'd gotten photos of the murals in Crazy Beach Party - too much equipment and shadows in the way, but there was Hulk Hogan with a parrot on his shoulder, various muscle men in pose-down positions, babes in bikinis, and Arnold, our governor, in a t-shirt, in a beach shack ready to rent you a surfboard.

Now, why Arnold was working the shack and *not* on Muscle Beach a la Pumping Iron is anyone's guess. I don't remember Arnold being known for renting boards in Venice, but I wasn't there. But still, how is Hulk Hogan a better shirtless character than Arnold? Insanity!

The Coaster is great - a 50-year-old death trap that drops like a rickety little rocket and races down around and up and down its little course throwing you nearly clear out of the car as you crush your seat mate on every turn. That was our first stop and I totally OD'ed on adrenaline.

From there we went directly to the one other coaster, aptly named Corkscrew. Fairly harmless, but the spiraling started the stomach flipping. We tried another ride called Pirate! I'm putting exclamation marks on all the ride titles. Pirate! is that stupid ship that rocks back & forth. Looks harmless. It isn't. I did not feel OK after that.

Maybe I'm a little old for rides like Pirate! or Breakdance! (?), with little cars whipping around on arms that whip around a garishly painted "inner city" backdrop. That was the ride that turned mild nausea to full-blown I'm gonna hurl if this shit doesn't stop immediately. It could have been the murals...


Like an idiot, right after that, we got on another boot-maker, some crap called Enterprise. The cars look benign, like you'll just glide around in a nice, calm circle in your little pod. Nope.

The bitch goes up, sideways, down and the car rocks side-to-side. Jesus, please baby Jesus make it stop. Sitting directly in front of David, I dry-heaved cereal fumes. Had it not been several hours since breakfast, his hair would have been decorated with partially-digested shredded wheat. Delicious.

I thought I was a goner after that. I must have burped/almost-hurled fifty times and felt a flop sweat coming on. We made our way to the snack shack to get a soda. I thought it might help. What I really needed was a valium/dramamine cocktail. Next time.

Once I'd settled down a bit, we rode Corkscrew! and Coaster! a few more times, then tried the climbing wall. I thought it would be a cinch, but I got about halfway up and freaked out.

I kept thinking of the nightmares I've had where I'm climbing a steep rock face and it keeps getting steeper and steeper until I'm about to fall off. It wasn't the looking down that got me, it was the looking up.

After a last ride on the Coaster! I got a big slice of pizza, peeled off all the cheese and chowed that salty, doughy, soothing crust. If only they'd had corn dogs & funnel cake. Never too old for that.