BuzzOff

 

Yesterday involved skipping out of work for the day and travelling to the delightful wonders that is Six Flags w/ Laura & the girls.  This is 2 years in a row now that I went to Six Flags only days before leaving on my bike trip... (Why does everything in my head seem to relate to the trip? I am so obsessed.)  Anyway, it was hot beautiful day and we had a blast.

 

Right before we were to board the Mind Eraser rollercoaster - I mean right before- the gates opened and Sam & I walked to our seats - the woman and her son from the ride before us that were to surrender their seats to us were slow to get off, and the woman called over the attendant.  It seems her son's head was jostled about a bit much on the ride and he managed to smash his nose on the restraint that comes down over your head.  This in turn opened up a slight passageway to his blood stream somewhere within his nasal cavity, which then caused 3 very small drops of blood to land on the seat restraint...

 

Business as usual in the boarding and riding of the Mind Eraser at that point ground to a halt for everyone involved (excluding of course the little brat that accidentally caused this problem- he quickly disappeard to no doubt enjoy another ride that was still operating)  The heat was baking the entire park, and our wait had already exceeded a half hour or more.  This was just an added bonus.  You could tell there was a strict protocol for such things, and they began to follow them.  The attendand announced to everyone else that had hoped on and buckled in already to unbuckle and return to the line.  Then they got on the phone and called up the chain of command.  Surely the bottom rung of the employment ladder could not be left responsible for such attrocities as a few drops of blood.  After a 10 minute wait, a man arrived that looked Very Important, as he had a light colored- button up shirt and a clipboard with him, as opposed to the attendants on scene with the bright blue t-shirts, and no clipboards.  First he gave the seat a quick inspection, and then got on his walkie-talkie to notify his superiors that he could handle this one.  Then from under the control station (ie already there from the start), he produced a container which he first poured over the offending seat.  The contents that came out were some sort of magical powder. Fairy dust?  Then he put a black hefty bag into the scooper part of a pooper-scooper type contraption, placed it under the seat (on this ride the seats hang down from the track above), and proceeded to use a normal house broom to brush the now bloody fairy dust into the trash bin, only half of which made it in.  Then they produced a large aerisol can no doubt entitled Germ Death or some other name which sounds grisly to invisible life and sprayed the seat off (I think I heard thousands of tiny screams in the distance).  After this code red response was then taken care of, they made the car go around w/out passengers, allowing us to take the seats of the second car whose occupants had been dangling, waiting to be let off for the past 20 minutes.  I wondered if blood causes parts to come loose and they wanted to be sure that the car was still track worthy.  Apparently nothing came apart, as we then boarded the other car and had an uneventful 37 second ride around the track.

 

Toward the end of the evening Sam and I got on a more tame (in my opinion) ride called the BuzzSaw because there was no line, and we were at it.  The ride could hold probably 50 people or so, and there were a total of 5 of us on it.  After the ride ended, we asked if we could stay on.  The attendant informed us that we would have to get off and circle back around to the line...

...that had no one at all in it.

 

What a fucked up world.