Skycoaster!
First and foremost,
Along the way I found a cool tool at fonts.com that lets you identify a font based on its characteristics, sort of like a big typographical game of 20 Questions. Unfortunately, my little onomatopoeia graphic doesn't have a broad enough sampling of letters for it to come to an authoritative diagnosis, so it wasn't very helpful in this case, but in a situation where you have a fair representation of both capital and lowercase letters, it seems pretty accurate (I tested it after I'd found my font).
Anyway, the font is Tempus Sans ITC, so now I can write myself a little colophon should I choose to do so, or, more importantly, make other site graphics with the same font.
So, onto a more interesting topic than the font, I woke up this morning listening to the Christian radio DJs* talking about eating corn dogs at the State Fair. "It's too bad I've never gone," I thought to myself, and proceeded to embark upon my morning routine of checking email, taking a shower, checking with my job people about an update, and so on. About midway through the morning it occurred to me, "Why *don't* I go to the state fair? I mean what's to stop me? What else would I have done today? And, if I'm moving, when else will I get the chance?"
* I wake up to Christian radio sometimes, not out of preference, but rather because setting the radio alarm to music I'm especially fond of often results in my lying in bed listening to it until I'm completely acclimated to the extra sound, and fully asleep again. Generally, within about 10 minutes of the Christian station coming on, one of the radio personalities will so offend one of my principles of tolerance, compassion, acceptance, or non-violence (ironically enough) that my mind will wake itself up thinking of arguments about it.
So, after Kelley came by to check her email, and to discover along with me that the refrigerator is not working again, and I related to her my State Fair experience from the morning. "Wanna go?" she asked, sort of smirking.
"You want to? That's kind of why I told you — thought it would be more fun to go with someone else."
So, after an unsuccessful wait on the refrigerator man to call back, and then a call to the repair company to tell him to call Kelley's cell phone instead (which he, incidentally, never called either — we're convinced he's afraid to face us after not fixing it correctly the first time), we were off to the State Fair. And then . . . we were back to check something online. And then . . . we were off to the State Fair.
Within a short time, I'd gotten a corn dog, we'd seen the baby potbelly pigs, the kittens ("I bet they're aslee. . . . Yeah, they are."), the venomous snake exhibit, a craft pavilion which was a frighteningly accurate flashback to a Chinese mall (except with little blue and pink wooden folk art in some of the booths, of course), and we'd ridden one of the rides, from which all the change in my pocket sprayed out in a 40 foot fan across the rooftops of all the surrounding ticket kiosks and pavilions.
"What next?"
We rode the giant Texas Star Ferris wheel, which I now know to be the largest in the US. We talked to Big Tex. We walked down the International Promenade, upon which the only thing even remotely international was a booth selling Belgian waffles. We looked at the art and craft awards.
"What next?"
"I want to ride the Skycoaster."
The suggestion soon became the focal point of an hour long recurring discussion, which otherwise included going to the Monkey Maze to find the bathrooms, buying a cheese on a stick and some "spicy fried olive bites", and watching some other people ride the Skycoaster to determine whether this was really for us.
After a little more wandering around, our mind was made up, and we purchased the wad of tickets necessary to get on it. "Think about it this way," I told myself. "Once we ride this, we won't really need to get on any other rides, so it's really not all that expensive, considering."
They had us sign a sheet (which we later joked probably had a hidden waiver somewhere behind it) and marked our hands so they knew we'd paid. We got suited up in the harnesses. Meanwhile, we watched the couple ahead of us get attached to a pair of giant steel cables, get hoisted up to a height of 110 feet by a third cable, and, to the sound of what I swear was an unbroken three-and-a-half-minute no-inhale scream, plummet at over 70 miles per hour toward the ground, swinging up nearly as high the other way, and, still screaming, swing like a pendulum back and forth until wind resistance and friction had brought them to a near halt.
"If I lose all bladder control on this, you'll still be my friend right?" I said.
"Tell my parents I love them?" she answered.
"It's okay if you scream like that," I responded.
No answer.
"Which of you will be pulling the ripcord?" the girl who helped us into our harnesses asked.
"He will!" came Kelley's immediate response.
By this point, the attendants had used what looked like a giant pool loop to snag the swinging couple and bring them to a stop. They were released from the cables onto the wheeled staircase that had been rolled back beneath them (graciously rolled away previously, I might add, so that they didn't scrape their screaming lips off as they swung back and forth), and they walked toward us, red-faced, and with this look like we were absolutely crazy for doing this after watching them.
"The woman we talked to a minute ago said she was really glad she did it," Kelley reminded me.
We walked out to the platform. I watched attentively as the attendant secured us to the cables. Kelley refused to watch. "I trust that you're a professional who knows exactly what she's doing," she said.
"I'll wave to you when it's okay to pull the cord," said the other girl.
The platform pulled away. We both stared down about 8 feet to the ground.
"Wow, even this is a little scary," Kelley said.
"Did I ever tell you I don't do well with heights?" I answered. The look I received in response told me this was not the best time to divulge this information.
The cable at our backs tensed up and started pulling us upward. At about 20 feet the ground started looking really far away. At about 30 feet we could already see the entire park. A little while after that we were pulled beyond the fence over the parking lot, staring straight down at a hard asphalt surface. I thought surely this must be near the top, but we kept going. We were higher than Big Tex. We were higher than the Cotton Bowl. Soon, the only thing taller was the Texas Star. The cable stopped, and we swung around a little. The distance between us and the ground seemed incomprehensible, especially not having the feeling of standing on anything or really being supported by anything.
"You ready?" I asked.
"Gggggblrughugh," Kelley muttered, sort of.
I reached back to where I thought the ripcord handle was, but couldn't find it. I looked over my shoulder to find it, and the view over South Dallas from this height was dizzying. I grabbed the handle and pulled. Immediately following a gentle "Thunk" sound was the feeling I'd just been thumped into the sky.
"Holy shit!" I said, in an exclamation which seemed to last forever, but which Kelley claims was instantaneous and totally deadpan. Triggered by my odd utterance, she began laughing immediately as we fell.
And did we fall. We flew past the people on the ground and swung up the other side, faced with a breathtaking view of the downtown Dallas skyline and uptown and Deep Ellum, then before we could take it all in falling again, swinging back at freefall speeds toward South Dallas once more, and back toward downtown, and swinging, flying, slicing through the air.
Kelley's laughter increased with each pendulum swing, and my smile broadened as I took in the bird's eye view of the city to which I'll be so soon saying goodbye. Such a great way to end seven years in a place.
Along the way I found a cool tool at fonts.com that lets you identify a font based on its characteristics, sort of like a big typographical game of 20 Questions. Unfortunately, my little onomatopoeia graphic doesn't have a broad enough sampling of letters for it to come to an authoritative diagnosis, so it wasn't very helpful in this case, but in a situation where you have a fair representation of both capital and lowercase letters, it seems pretty accurate (I tested it after I'd found my font).
Anyway, the font is Tempus Sans ITC, so now I can write myself a little colophon should I choose to do so, or, more importantly, make other site graphics with the same font.
So, onto a more interesting topic than the font, I woke up this morning listening to the Christian radio DJs* talking about eating corn dogs at the State Fair. "It's too bad I've never gone," I thought to myself, and proceeded to embark upon my morning routine of checking email, taking a shower, checking with my job people about an update, and so on. About midway through the morning it occurred to me, "Why *don't* I go to the state fair? I mean what's to stop me? What else would I have done today? And, if I'm moving, when else will I get the chance?"
* I wake up to Christian radio sometimes, not out of preference, but rather because setting the radio alarm to music I'm especially fond of often results in my lying in bed listening to it until I'm completely acclimated to the extra sound, and fully asleep again. Generally, within about 10 minutes of the Christian station coming on, one of the radio personalities will so offend one of my principles of tolerance, compassion, acceptance, or non-violence (ironically enough) that my mind will wake itself up thinking of arguments about it.
So, after Kelley came by to check her email, and to discover along with me that the refrigerator is not working again, and I related to her my State Fair experience from the morning. "Wanna go?" she asked, sort of smirking.
"You want to? That's kind of why I told you — thought it would be more fun to go with someone else."
So, after an unsuccessful wait on the refrigerator man to call back, and then a call to the repair company to tell him to call Kelley's cell phone instead (which he, incidentally, never called either — we're convinced he's afraid to face us after not fixing it correctly the first time), we were off to the State Fair. And then . . . we were back to check something online. And then . . . we were off to the State Fair.
Within a short time, I'd gotten a corn dog, we'd seen the baby potbelly pigs, the kittens ("I bet they're aslee. . . . Yeah, they are."), the venomous snake exhibit, a craft pavilion which was a frighteningly accurate flashback to a Chinese mall (except with little blue and pink wooden folk art in some of the booths, of course), and we'd ridden one of the rides, from which all the change in my pocket sprayed out in a 40 foot fan across the rooftops of all the surrounding ticket kiosks and pavilions.
"What next?"
We rode the giant Texas Star Ferris wheel, which I now know to be the largest in the US. We talked to Big Tex. We walked down the International Promenade, upon which the only thing even remotely international was a booth selling Belgian waffles. We looked at the art and craft awards.
"What next?"
"I want to ride the Skycoaster."
The suggestion soon became the focal point of an hour long recurring discussion, which otherwise included going to the Monkey Maze to find the bathrooms, buying a cheese on a stick and some "spicy fried olive bites", and watching some other people ride the Skycoaster to determine whether this was really for us.
After a little more wandering around, our mind was made up, and we purchased the wad of tickets necessary to get on it. "Think about it this way," I told myself. "Once we ride this, we won't really need to get on any other rides, so it's really not all that expensive, considering."
They had us sign a sheet (which we later joked probably had a hidden waiver somewhere behind it) and marked our hands so they knew we'd paid. We got suited up in the harnesses. Meanwhile, we watched the couple ahead of us get attached to a pair of giant steel cables, get hoisted up to a height of 110 feet by a third cable, and, to the sound of what I swear was an unbroken three-and-a-half-minute no-inhale scream, plummet at over 70 miles per hour toward the ground, swinging up nearly as high the other way, and, still screaming, swing like a pendulum back and forth until wind resistance and friction had brought them to a near halt.
"If I lose all bladder control on this, you'll still be my friend right?" I said.
"Tell my parents I love them?" she answered.
"It's okay if you scream like that," I responded.
No answer.
"Which of you will be pulling the ripcord?" the girl who helped us into our harnesses asked.
"He will!" came Kelley's immediate response.
By this point, the attendants had used what looked like a giant pool loop to snag the swinging couple and bring them to a stop. They were released from the cables onto the wheeled staircase that had been rolled back beneath them (graciously rolled away previously, I might add, so that they didn't scrape their screaming lips off as they swung back and forth), and they walked toward us, red-faced, and with this look like we were absolutely crazy for doing this after watching them.
"The woman we talked to a minute ago said she was really glad she did it," Kelley reminded me.
We walked out to the platform. I watched attentively as the attendant secured us to the cables. Kelley refused to watch. "I trust that you're a professional who knows exactly what she's doing," she said.
"I'll wave to you when it's okay to pull the cord," said the other girl.
The platform pulled away. We both stared down about 8 feet to the ground.
"Wow, even this is a little scary," Kelley said.
"Did I ever tell you I don't do well with heights?" I answered. The look I received in response told me this was not the best time to divulge this information.
The cable at our backs tensed up and started pulling us upward. At about 20 feet the ground started looking really far away. At about 30 feet we could already see the entire park. A little while after that we were pulled beyond the fence over the parking lot, staring straight down at a hard asphalt surface. I thought surely this must be near the top, but we kept going. We were higher than Big Tex. We were higher than the Cotton Bowl. Soon, the only thing taller was the Texas Star. The cable stopped, and we swung around a little. The distance between us and the ground seemed incomprehensible, especially not having the feeling of standing on anything or really being supported by anything.
"You ready?" I asked.
"Gggggblrughugh," Kelley muttered, sort of.
I reached back to where I thought the ripcord handle was, but couldn't find it. I looked over my shoulder to find it, and the view over South Dallas from this height was dizzying. I grabbed the handle and pulled. Immediately following a gentle "Thunk" sound was the feeling I'd just been thumped into the sky.
"Holy shit!" I said, in an exclamation which seemed to last forever, but which Kelley claims was instantaneous and totally deadpan. Triggered by my odd utterance, she began laughing immediately as we fell.
And did we fall. We flew past the people on the ground and swung up the other side, faced with a breathtaking view of the downtown Dallas skyline and uptown and Deep Ellum, then before we could take it all in falling again, swinging back at freefall speeds toward South Dallas once more, and back toward downtown, and swinging, flying, slicing through the air.
Kelley's laughter increased with each pendulum swing, and my smile broadened as I took in the bird's eye view of the city to which I'll be so soon saying goodbye. Such a great way to end seven years in a place.