The day-by-day play-by-play

Day 1 - Block Party
Day 2 - Kennewick, Man
Day 3 - Loafing
Day 4 - Watering the Dogs
Day 5 - In Flight
Day 6 - Epcot
Day 7 - Get in Line
Day 8 - MGM Disney
Day 9 - At Rest
Day 10 - Not George, Anheuser
Day 11 - In Flight (reprise)
Day 12 - In Sanity
Day 12.5 - In Sickness
Day 15 - On the Road
Day 16 - Oregon Caves
Day 17 - Sam Clam's Disco
Day 18 - Dead Man Walking
Day 19 - Will He Hurl?
Day 20 - Traveling
Day 21 - Six Flags, Long Lines
Day 22 - Tied Up in Knott's
Day 23 - Something Goofy
Day 24 - Sacra-Mentos
Day 25 - Ashland
Day 26 - 10,000 Smiles
Day 27 - At the Movies
Day 28 - Dream Homes

Sabbatical 1998 - Day 10

Not George, Anheuser.

The Lost KingThis was field trip day.  We drove about 100 miles down the road to Tampa Bay (home of some famous sports team) so that we could visit Busch Gardens.

The Gardens (or The Busch) is set up like some sort of tropical rain forest kinda deal with regions of Africa represented.  There are all kinds (300 kinds, actually) of exotic animals such as elephants and lions and flamingos and impalas and fairlanes and lemurs and zebras and fruit bats and orangutans and breakfast cereals... but who really cares, right?  I mean, I came for the rides.  Feed the stupid things and keep them from pooping on the path because I want to know where is the end of the line for the big roller coasters. 

The roller coasters are big.  A couple of them are really big.   Scorpion and Python or okay coasters.  They each have at least one loop, but neither really got me fired up.  They also had an area marked "Kiddie Rides," but I stayed away because, well, I'm pretty heavy and I probably hurt them.   Seems cruel to have people riding kiddies.

Montu!Kumba, said to be one of the biggest steel roller coasters in the Southeast United States, got my attention BIG TIME (I'm on my way, I'm making it...).  This thing has at least five (I lost count) loops in it.  Definitely an religious experience.  I went back for more several times. 

Montu rocked my world!  Here are the official vital statistics.   Total Length: 3,983 feet; Speed: greater than 60 MPH; Max Drop: 128 feet; Max G-Force: 3.85; Duration: 3 minutes.  It features a 104 foot vertical loop and the coaster is the "inverted" variety -- that is, you "hang" under the track with your feet dangling in (or sticking up into) the air. Rode in the middle most of the time, but I stood in the front row line once to see what that was like. The line was pretty boring, but riding in the front seat of the ride was something akin to running a car off of a cliff.  I'm fairly certain that some of my brains are still sitting at the bottom of the attraction.  The parts of my brain that would normally tell me not to ride these things never developed properly.

I'll be doing something even more dangerous on Day 11... stay tuned.