Life is a roller coaster

When I was in seventh grade, one of the major school projects was the writing of an autobiography. Mine was entitled Life is a Roller Coaster, or at least I'm pretty sure it was; I don't have a physical copy and the computer file I have does not include the cover. But I can still picture in my mind the cover art I drew, a roller coaster with the train coming toward the reader and a cut-out photo of my face pasted onto the body of the front seat passenger.

Edit - thanks to my mother for sending me this picture:

This post is about both that autobiography and roller coasters.

I read the autobiography recently for the first time in many years and decided I'd like to share some of the more interesting tidbits. It's fascinating for me to be able to look back at how I viewed my life at the age of 12 and I'm really glad I still have all my old computer files from over the years.

So here are some noteworthy moments from my seventh grade autobiography:

• I listed a number of "firsts" from my very early life. "The first time I slept all night was August 13-14, 1983" (I was born June 20) and because August 13 is my dad's birthday I'm sure my parents probably said that it was a birthday present from me! "The first time I saw snow was November 4, 1983." I've always loved snow so I do think that was a significant first, funny because November 4 is also my dating anniversary with Cara.
• I mentioned that I didn't have any nicknames "unless you count Jeff" (the content of most of the book is clearly a series of responses to questions that were asked in the assignment prompt), but that my dad used to call me "Buddy" a lot (something I remembered) and that at one point my sister had even thought that was my name (that part I had forgotten until reading it)!
• Here's a story I've told to many people over the years: "My earliest memory is from when I was three.  My best friend was Joe Delphia, a kid who lives on our street.  He is only a few weeks younger than I but he's a grade below me.  We went to preschool together.  Anyway, I remember that we were always arguing about one subject.  It was actually quite humorous.  I said that we were "tree," while he said we were "free."  My mom finally told us that we were three.  I probably remember this because it was funny."
• My response to a prompt about what influenced me the most cracks me up: "Nothing really influences me a whole lot right now.  I am probably influenced by my peers more than anything else.  I am also influenced by my parents, teachers, and the media.  What really influences me the most is my own brain.  This is probably true because I am an intelligent person and I know, for the most part, what I should and shouldn't do." Okay, Mr. Smart Guy!
• I correctly foresaw my career path: "For my career I would like to be a scientist.  There are a lot of different kinds of scientists, and I don't know which one I would want to be.  I would want to be a scientist because I enjoy science in school and am very interested in science-related stuff.  I would probably want to be some kind of biologist.  I really enjoy observing animals.  Other organisms can be interesting, too." Looking back, I think ever since middle school I had a vague sense that I might become a biologist, but there was never any moment where I thought, That's definitely what I want to do! It was more that I never felt any other strong calling so I just continued on that path, perhaps due more to inertia than anything else. But it is work that I've come to enjoy.
• In one part of the book I was asked to look ahead to what my life might be like at the ages of 20 and 40. At 20 I of course thought I would be in college. At 40? "Since that's so far away, I really don't have a very good idea.  By that time, I would probably be married and have kids." I'm sure it would have been very difficult for me back then to comprehend the path my life would take, but 40 is still five years away and that married with kids part could still end up being true.
• Also from the age 40 prediction: "I would still like to use the computer.  I would probably be on the Internet." Probably.
• And this struck me: "I'll probably always still be a kid at heart." I think there was a lot of truth in that. Karyn has told me that she thinks I'm still like a kid in some ways (good ways, I think!). It's interesting that at the age of 12 I was able to see that about my future self. I suppose most everyone retains some element of still being a kid at heart, but I feel I have more than most.
• The last chapter is devoted to interviews with three relatives. One of the interviewees was my Great-Uncle Bob. The last question in the interview was clearly something along the lines of, "What major changes have you seen in your lifetime?" My summary of Bob's response: "He has seen that people have gotten meaner and more skeptical, and says that civility is disappearing from human intercourse.  He has also found that the revolution in communications is altering the entire planet, in both good and bad ways." I'm sure many would read these words from over two decades ago as prophetic, and I do think there is a lot of truth in those words, but I also think there's another aspect of the apparent decline in "civility" that a lot of people would rather not consider. Back in the days when society was more "civil," who was it more civil for? A lot of people would undoubtedly say there is less civility today than there was in the 1950s. What if you could go back in time and ask Emmett Till's family how "civil" society was back then? Our country has always been a place in which certain groups of people have not had the full set of human rights that others take for granted. The history of our country has been a long struggle to extend the principle of "equal justice under law" to more and more people, and inevitably when marginalized groups gain rights, there's a backlash from some in the more privileged group. We're seeing that right now and it's no coincidence that it's coming in the wake of the first non-white President and the first woman major party nominee. I think a lot of the reason society used to seem "more civil" was because the people to whom society was not civil had much less ability to make their voices heard. And now that those people are more able to speak loudly, the reactionary voices seeking to keep the underprivileged in their place have likewise become louder in response.

Those are the main observations I wanted to share about my autobiography, save one, which is that the main thing that comes across from the autobiography is that I really loved roller coasters. There are several places where I mentioned my love for roller coasters, and the chapter "The Best Day of My Life" describes my family's visit to the Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio. My passion for, and knowledge about, the thrill rides is very evident from the way I wrote about them (it's also evident to me that my writing in this section was influenced by posts on the Usenet group rec.roller-coaster that I avidly read in those days). Here's a description of my ride on the Magnum XL-200: "After climbing 205 feet we dropped 196 at a 60 degree angle.  The top speed at the bottom is 72 miles per hour, and it seems faster because of all the wind you create.  The next hill is taller than most first hills at 150 or so feet.  The second drop goes into a tunnel before going over another hill and then into a pretzel-like turn around.  After another tunnel you turn and go over the return hills.  As you fly over them the only thing stopping you from being ejected from the train is your lap bar.  After another tunnel you finally hit the brakes before slowly coasting to the station.  It's a pretty intense ride!"

One of my predictions of my life at age 40 was "I would still be into roller coasters then." So it's interesting that, although my passion for roller coasters continued through high school and college, at some point I just... stopped going to amusement parks. At some point early in my getting to know Cara I told her that I really liked roller coasters and she told me they gave her motion sickness, and because we did most everything together, trips to amusement parks just didn't happen. It's not like Cara made me stop. I remember her encouraging me to go to Cedar Point with another friend some time. I just never did. It's funny how without me even really thinking about it, something that was once my very favorite thing to do gradually just ceased to be a part of my life. People's interests can change over time, of course, but that's not really what this was, because I never actually stopped liking roller coasters. I guess I let myself forget how much I liked them.

Two months after Cara died I took a trip to Denver for a Belle and Sebastian concert at Red Rocks and while there I went to Lakeside Amusement Park and rode its classic Cyclone roller coaster, my first ride on a coaster in many, many years. It was fun, but for whatever reason it didn't spark a resurgence of my roller coaster fanaticism. (I also remember it giving me a mild backache.)

This past summer, the weekend before my family's Adirondack vacation started, Karyn suggested we take a little getaway to visit Pymatuning Lake on the Ohio/Pennsylvania border, a place she'd been many times with her family. She mentioned that if she had a tent we could camp on the trip, which surprised me, because I remembered her saying early in our relationship that she wasn't into camping. I was glad to hear she now wanted to try it! "I have a tent," I said. Then Karyn looked up campgrounds in the area of our trip and decided on a place called Camperland in Conneaut Lake, PA, which was very fortuitous. I didn't realize until we arrived that the campground was across the street from the old Conneaut Lake amusement park, home of the classic Blue Streak wooden roller coaster that I remembered reading about in my old Usenet browsing days. I also didn't realize that the amusement park was open; I thought I had remembered it shutting down and I found out later that it had shut down for a year earlier this decade but it had since been brought back to operation.

The whole trip was great. Karyn was surprised at how much it turned out she actually liked camping. We also did a little bicycling and hiking. And since the amusement park and the Blue Streak were right there, I decided I wanted to make a stop there before we drove home, and Karyn agreed. At $10 for an unlimited rides pass, it was an affordable little afternoon excursion. Karyn did not go on the Blue Streak because some roller coasters, especially old wooden ones, are painful for her, but we did enjoy a few other rides and mini golf together. For my first ride on the Blue Streak I got in the back seat, which I remembered very well from my coaster enthusiast past would provide the most "airtime," and settled in for the ride.

The train exited the station, dipped slightly into a dark, winding tunnel, and then started its climb up the lift hill and out from among the trees. At 78 feet high, the ride isn't a terribly imposing structure compared to some of the behemoths at Cedar Point, but it still provides its share of thrills! I tend to scream on roller coasters, but it's usually not because I can't help myself - it just makes it more fun. The speed of the Blue Streak's first drop took me by surprise, though, and I let out an involuntary yelp as we plummeted downward and I felt myself lifted from my seat. As the train traversed its out-and-back circuit, that familiar old giddy feeling washed over me. I ended up going on the ride three times (the line was quite short), and Karyn said she liked seeing how excited I was about the roller coaster.

I guess I had a little epiphany that day. I still really like roller coasters. In fact, in certain ways the thrill of my newest favorite pastime, mountain biking, can be similar to the thrill of riding a roller coaster. For all those years I had left behind 12-year-old me's most favorite thing, but there was no reason it couldn't still be part of my life.

The next week I left for the Adirondack family vacation. Going to the Adirondacks with my family was another thing I wrote about in my autobiography. And in addition to swimming and canoeing and hiking in the mountains, one of my favorite parts of those trips was going to the Great Escape amusement park in Lake George: "On another day, which was one of the best days of my life, we went to the Great Escape amusement park.  I rode the Comet roller coaster five times."

I'd been to the Great Escape several other times in high school and college, but despite my family's near annual trips to the Adirondacks, it had been over a decade since I last visited the amusement park. On this latest trip, my rides on the Blue Streak fresh in my memory, I decided I'd return to one of those favorite places from my childhood. The Comet is a fantastic ride. Like the Blue Streak, it's a classic wooden coaster, but taller and longer and faster and filled with more thrills. With typical waits of less than five minutes, I rode the Comet sixteen times that day (I'm pretty sure my all-time record was eighteen) and it really did make me feel like a kid again.

I also rode the Great Escape's other four operating coasters once each (the Alpine Bobsled was shut down that day) and quite frankly none of them were at all remarkable, but to me the Comet alone makes admission to the park worth it. As a bonus there's a water park included in the same admission, so I spent a little time there. Water slides were another thing I loved as a kid and had not experienced (beyond fairly small slides at swimming pools) in many years. There has been some great innovation in water slide design since I had last visited a water park. In a new style of slide called a "drop slide," riders stand upright in an enclosed chamber, and then after a countdown the floor drops away and you plummet straight downward into the slide. Not for the faint of heart, but I absolutely loved it.

Not long after I returned from vacation, Karyn and I took a day trip to the water park at Cedar Point, Cedar Point Shores (although I still think of it as Soak City). We had a great time. When I was growing up, I loved going to the large water park called Wyandot Lake (now Zoombezi Bay) near Columbus. This took me back to those days in a wonderful way.

During the drive across the causeway to the park, the sight of the roller coasters looming in the distance recalled in my mind the incredible excitement I felt early in the morning on August 2, 1995, "the best day of my life" up to that point. And as we enjoyed the water park I also enjoyed watching the trains on the Magnum roar past and those of other coasters cresting hills and traversing loops in the distance. And I knew I wanted to go there again too. Luckily, I was able to get an incredible discount from work, only $25 for admission plus parking. Two weeks ago Karyn and I went on another camping trip, this time to East Harbor State Park. It was an all around great weekend that included a nice day riding our bikes and seeing various attractions at Put-in-Bay. My favorite? Crystal Cave, the largest known geode in the world. I'd had no idea such a thing existed until I read about it on a Put-in-Bay tourism website that day. It was magical to be able to stand in that little underground cavern surrounded by crystals on all sides.

And on Sunday we went to Cedar Point, and although going to Cedar Point no longer merits "best day of my life" status, I had a great time again. Despite the fact that I lost one of the earpieces from my glasses on Top Thrill Dragster. It's a bit of a complicated story; ask me if you want the details.

Roller coasters aren't my most favorite thing in the world anymore, but that's more because there are other things I've become even more passionate about rather than me liking roller coasters less. I'm very happy that I was able to reconnect with my childhood in this way - with help from Karyn.

Life is a roller coaster. I'm struck by the fact that when I used that phrase as the title of my seventh grade autobiography, I had no real idea of what was signified by that comparison. I had no idea what a roller coaster my life would be. It's been quite a ride so far, and I don't know where that ride is going in the future, but I'm glad I'm taking it.