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Welcome to the first Happy Hour of 2009! Today’s topics include theme parks, after-school activities and inclement weather.
1. Almost two years ago, I wrote about the dangerous history of Action Park, a now-defunct New Jersey amusement park legendary for how unsafe it was. I still get the occasional email from someone wanting to share his or her near-death experiences. But I’m sure Vernon, New Jersey, did not have a monopoly on treacherous theme parks. Did you have one near you?
2. As a former co-president of the TV production club, I know a thing or two about nerdy after-school activities. What’s the best club on your resume?
3. A friend of mine was once interviewing someone for a job and asked the candidate what technological advance in the last five years had made the biggest impact on his life. “I’d have to say Microsoft Excel,” he answered. (This was in 2002. I would have said the yellow line first down marker. And I probably wouldn’t have gotten the job either.) So I’ll pose the same question to you – what technological advance in the last five years has made the biggest impact on your life?
4. I’ve just been informed that I’m under a winter storm watch, which does not bode well for our open house on Sunday (first the housing market collapses, now this). What’s the worst weather incident you lived through?
Comments (57)
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You could not have picked better topics for me. I live in Orlando and work in ‘the biz’ but won’t say where publicly. To answer your questions:
1. I once worked at Disney World. While they were doing technical tests on the Test Track attraction, a tech friend heard over the radio that they needed a new wheel for one of the cars. Not a new tire, mind you, but a wheel because it apparently broke off.
2. SADD
3. Blackberry – no question!
4. Does 3 hurricanes in 2 months count? That was Orlando in 2004.
posted by Joe on 1-9-2009 at 1:41 pm
4. I was at scout summer camp in Iowa back in ‘88 when tornadoes were coming our way. We took turns holding up a metal flag pole to see who would do it the longest before chickening out to avoid getting hit by lightning. I don’t remember who won but I know I took a turn. Those tornadoes tore up my home town a bit but no one I knew got hurt.
Sadly, several scouts died at that same scout camp last year due to weather.
posted by Merlin on 1-9-2009 at 1:52 pm
1: Lakeside Amusement Park in Denver CO- they still have a wooden roller coaster- WOOD!, Really, Really old Wood.
2: Sierra Club
3: TiVo- remember they days of flipping through the channels to avoid commercial? Not anymore!
4: 2003 March Snow Storm I was snowed in for four days.
posted by Ftssoad on 1-9-2009 at 1:59 pm
1. I went on one of those tower drop rides at Dorian park in Pennsylvania last year. The whole time, I couldn’t stop thinking about the girl whose foot was severed by a snapped cable on a similar ride in Kentucky. As if the sudden drop weren’t scary enough…
2. Math Counts. Yup, a math club. With competitions. I was also on various Academic Olympic teams.
3. Cell phones with qwerty keyboards. I can’t tell you how many friends I’ve reconnected with through texting.
4. Three hurricanes involving hospitals: one spent home alone because my mom was in the hospital for gall bladder surgery (Florida), another spent driving through the torrential downpour to take my mom to the hospital when she splashed pool acid in her eyes (also Florida), and a third at an ER where we stopped to get my mom a steroid shot to bring down the swelling in her ankle caused by a wasp sting (North Carolina, in the process of moving to Florida).
posted by Chelsea on 1-9-2009 at 2:00 pm
1. I don’t have a good story for this one.
2.Forestry Club- I know all the trees and their leaves.
3. IPOD has saved my life- I’m a music teacher and I’m so glad that now I don’t have to rifle through dozens of Cds to find a song I want. Now I can “press and go”.
4. Hurricane Ivan came through our town ….I think it was 2 years ago??? Lots of trees uprooted and debris evrywhere.
posted by lizhot on 1-9-2009 at 2:06 pm
I’m so happy that I can answer all the questions with interesting [well, maybe not to everyone] answers!
1. Carowinds in Charlotte, NC. The best rides were the ones that were the originals to the park — the Bill & Ted’s Adventure roller coaster was a lot of fun. A few years ago I remember the ride Drop Zone got stuck at the top with people on it for a very, very long time.
2. Beta Club. The Diploma Club I was also a part of, which was for students on the path to graduating high school in 4 years, I kid you not. They created a club so people could feel special and get benefits like free ice cream!
3. DVR. The amount of TV I watch, along with the amount of educational TV I watch, has grown exponentially. I’m starting to realize it’s probably not a good thing. But my stoorriieeesss!
4. Hands down, sophomore year of college, December 2003, the end of finals week. I’d had roughly 15 hours of sleep across 6 days, utterly exhausted, but was told to pack my sh!t and get in the car and start heading south. Does anyone else remember the nor’easter that went through, shutting down all of Pennsylvania and most of NY for 3 days before Christmas that year? I do. I didn’t get to the storm until northern Virginia. I witnessed 3 car accidents and drove roughly 50 miles in 3.5 hours. In a ‘96 Dodge Neon. Praise be to Jeebus that I didn’t die.
This was fun!
posted by Amanda on 1-9-2009 at 2:12 pm
1. Only park near me is Six Flags over GA, I’ve heard a couple of stories of people getting hurt, but it was usually because they weren’t where they were supposed to be.
2. The Golf Club — and I was Miss Golf Club for homecoming
3.Smart Phones and On-Demand — I never miss a beat or a movie.
4. A hurricane hit downtown Atlanta last year and I happened to be riding with a friend when it decided to touch ground. The winds rocked the car back and forth, and we ducked. Her car was pretty damaged, and now we get a little uncomfortable when there are strong winds.
posted by Tiff on 1-9-2009 at 2:23 pm
2. In college I signed up with the Clowns Club. We did things like visit orphans homes and went to churches. We did not do it for the money, we were just weird. (and I was crushing on one of the girls involved, but that is another story.)
4. Hurricane Ike!!!!! Apparently it was also bad for my insurance company. Most of their customers were in Houston, they had bonds to back them up, but Hurricane Ike and the financial crisis hit at the same time. The state has shut down my insurance company (now in liquidation), and the check for my new roof bounced.
posted by Witty Nickname on 1-9-2009 at 2:23 pm
4. When I was 22, I drove home for Christmas with my brother and sister when the windchill was -85. Pretty stupid, no? We stopped at a gas station, not too far from home, but the pumps were frozen, so we left. A few miles down the highway — with a ground blizzard blowing snow across the 2-lane, rural highway, two pickup trucks roared up. One got in front of us and slowed down then stopped, the other was beside us so we couldn’t pass the first truck. They thought we had pumped $17 worth of gas into the car and taken off without paying. Geez! These guys were risking their freaking lives in a blizzard and 85-below windchill for $17?!? That’s job dedication. And that’s the last time I’ve driven anywhere in weather that cold.
posted by Rachel on 1-9-2009 at 2:28 pm
1. In Rochester, NY there is Darian Lake. While its not totally and compleatly dangerous, certian rollercoasters are considered dangerous. The Superman rollercoaster had to get new straps because an overweight man fell out. Now I cant ride it anymore because I’m bigger. Its sad.
2. I think this only makes me neardy because Im a girl, but I was in the fishing club and our dorm floors unofficial tattoo club.
4. Back in ‘91, when I was too young to know exactly what was going on, but still old enough to remember, there was a huge ice storm. I remember we had no power, but my grandma did and my whole extended family ended up there. That was crazy and over 300,000 people ended up with no power for about 2 days.
posted by Cassandra on 1-9-2009 at 2:29 pm
3. Definitely wikipedia. My college career would have been much different if it weren’t for that site. Granted I would have wasted a lot less time on wikitangents.
4. I lived in Nigeria for two monsoon seasons. The sky turned orange (think dark macaroni and cheese) and it rained for 4 or 5 days straight.
posted by Alex on 1-9-2009 at 2:29 pm
Chelsea,
Were those hurricanes each named “Mom?” Sounds like she needs a bubble!
For me the greatest tech advance was Inport. I love music so I had accumulated over 300 cassettes. I never had money to buy CDs so I copied everything from friends. No longer able to lug around boxes of cassettes when I moved I bought Inport and converted them all to CDs. Now they all fit neatly into one big CD binder.Much more convenient than searching through boxes!!
I also remember Adventurer’s Inn in Queens, NY, was a pretty scary place to go. I ahve memory of accidents ocurring, but the rides were decrepit looking long before the park closed down.
posted by jeff on 1-9-2009 at 2:29 pm
1. Drawing a blank.
2. This is a college club, but the Kutztown University Medieval Renaissance club changed my life in truly bizarre and not as dorktastic as you might expect ways. I even me my wife there.
3. I think the dramatic rise in “virtual training” and web based learning has majorly affected my day job, but the tech I use in my real life all has roots prior to the last five years.
4. Worst weather? That would have to be Pennsic XXVI (1997). Bearing in mind that this is a 100% camping based event, we got hit by one of the worst storms I have ever encountered: torrential rains, pebble-sized hail 20-40 mph winds. At one point, I had the unique experience of looking at the sky and seeing three funnel clouds playing tug of war against one another. If any of those three weren’t there, one of them would have dropped down as a severe tornado.
posted by EMStoveken on 1-9-2009 at 2:33 pm
3 – This is so sad but I have to say MMORPG (World of Warcraft). Lvl 80 holy paladin, not bad for a 40 year old mom of teens! Been playing 2.5 years and have so much fun with the people I’ve met! It’s definitely had a huge impact, nothing like chatting strategies with the hubby before we head to a dungeon….LOLOLOL!
posted by Bethy on 1-9-2009 at 2:42 pm
1. Great Adventure had(s) some pretty scary stuff- rickety rides, broken stuff, but the worst was the haunted house attraction tht burned down with people in it.
2.Forensic Society- no, not the cool CSI kind of forensics, but the public speaking,debate,drama kind of foresnics. NERD central.
3.um……..
4.Blizzards and hurricanes and tornadoes I guess.
posted by qt314159265 on 1-9-2009 at 2:43 pm
1. Fantasy Island, just north of Buffalo, NY. I remember hearing of many an injury happening on their variety of death-traps.
2. Well…I was in Chess Club, and Master Minds. MM was a quiz-show type thing, where we would go around to area schools and compete against their teams. One time I even got to compete on local public access television!
3. FoxTrax Glowing Puck.
4. Recently, actually. I was driving home from work at 7p or so on a Sunday night. Western New York had been getting pounded with snowfall all weekend, and this night was no different. On at least 4 seperate occassions, I felt as though I was going to either:
A) Lose control of my vehicle
B) Crash into other vehicles based on zero visibility.
It’s a miracle I made it home in one piece.
reCaptcha: Goulet Dooley. haha, Goulet.
posted by Michael on 1-9-2009 at 2:55 pm
2. I am, as an adult, in the Doctor Who fanclub in San Antonio, Texas. I think this trumps Mathcounts (which I was in in Jr High), Quiz Bowl (state champs 3 of my 4 high school years), AND chess club (also high school).
3. Second Life
posted by Adri on 1-9-2009 at 3:14 pm
1. Action Park is close enough to me that the only closer, more dangerous were the Haunted House fire at Six Flags Great Adventure and when Kid’s World in Long Branch burned down. The latter park actually had some semi-dangerous run-on-rolling-logs-and=spinning-discs-above-a-pool, which cause minor injuries to my 8-year-old self.
2. Please tell me these are not actually on your resumes… That said, I had math team (yes, we competed), SNN (our school’s TV station), ecology club. Does surf club balance those out?
3. DVR. TV schedules no longer matter. Commercials are non-existent. TV now waits for YOU.
4. Worst weather? We had some bad hurricanes in NJ when I was a kid, bout our winter Nor’Easters were the worst. We had one that closed the bridges down — I couldn’t get home from school. All kids who lives on the island were told to stay at school as a shelter. A friend and I got a ride from school to the bridge and walked (4+ miles across) home. 40+MPH winds, snow, rain, sleet, etc. We were frozen when we got to my house, only to find that my parents had gone to the mainland. (I suppose cellphones would have been nice at that times…)
posted by Josh on 1-9-2009 at 3:15 pm
2. Phi Kappa Literary Society – With meetings once a week which last from around 7 until the wee hours of the morning. The schedule of events was: 1)Planned debate, 2) “Creative Writings and Orations” (which could include everything from original poems to talking about something random that happened to you that day), and 3)Auxiliary debate, off the cuff and usually very silly.
posted by Amelia on 1-9-2009 at 3:15 pm
1. I went to pretty safe amusement parks, but at Busch Gardens in Williamsburg they had a ride called Drachen Fire that closed because of low ridership due to the ride being too rough. My mom claims it was the reason for her needing neck surgery. I loved it though!
2. Model UN
3. iPod
4. Hurricane Isabel hit the East Coast and I was in Richmond, Va going to school. I didn’t have power for a week and a half, which sucked. However, my friend lived out in the country and she didn’t have power for a month.
posted by Milly on 1-9-2009 at 3:19 pm
1. Dollywood…there was some sort of slow water ride, and rumor had it that the water was toxic. Don’t know if that was true or not.
2. Ditto on the Forensics. I’m a certified member of the NFL…National Forensics League. Triple Ruby even. (translation – HUGE dork)
3. Crackberry!
4. Blizzard of ‘93 in Tennessee. We lost power for 5 days and had to move in with a neighbor because we had no heat.
posted by Kat on 1-9-2009 at 3:21 pm
1. Bell’s Amusement Park in Tulsa. I never had any trouble there, but one kid did die in a roller coaster accident.
2. Captain of the Quiz Bowl Team. State champs in 07.
3. Affordable high-speed internet.
4. When I was 12, my family of 13 (including my new-born brother) went 19 days without power after a huge ice storm. The weight of the ice caused trees to literally explode under the force, so we kids were not allowed to go outside (we lived on wooded 20 acres in eastern Oklahoma). We all slept in the living room with the mattresses pushed together because we could see our breath in the bedrooms. When we finally got power back it was because people from the bordering states came to help, as our own linemen were spread so thin. Even so, I had friends who were without electricity for a month. Fortunately our pipes hadn’t frozen, so we could boil water to take very short baths.
Far and away that is the worst weather I have experienced.
posted by Tony on 1-9-2009 at 3:24 pm
1. At the Puyallup Fair in WA state, I wanted to go on the ‘Star Trek’ ride, but my dad was afraid of heights. You need 2 people to a car, so they matched an 11 year-old me with a pale, 40-ish, thin guy with acne scars and a thin (pedophile-like) mustache. I had to sit between this guy’s legs for the entire ride. Scariest thing ever.
2. Future Business Leaders of America (went to state in Impromptu Speaking 2 years in a row)
3. On-Demand
4. The great (at least here) Inauguration Day storm of 1993. I was in 4th Grade and had to stay at school until 6:30 PM because both my parents were working and they wouldn’t take the busses out (they might blow over), or let us walk home (falling trees). Boring, but I got to break into my “Emergency Pack” (Beef Jerky and chocolate).
posted by Sean O. on 1-9-2009 at 3:26 pm
1. I live in NJ and have been to Traction Park. During the line waiting for the Alpine Slide they used to have pictures of all of the people with their skin scrapped off from crashing on the ride.
2. no clubs to speak of.
3. it’s a toss up between DVR and the internet in general.
4. Blizzard of 1994. Nor’easter that dumped 30 inches of snow on northern NJ. my boss called me at 6am and told me not to come to work since the store had 6 foot snowdrrifts near the door.
And 6 foot drifts right on Bloomfield Avenue Jason.
posted by Bill on 1-9-2009 at 3:32 pm
2) Drama club. Not really nerdy, but you know those theatre kids. . .
3) New and improved methods of storing things digitally. Totally changes the way I archive things.
4) I spent the night in a fireproof building while a particularly violent wildfire fueled by hurricane force Santa Ana winds raged twenty feet away from the door. It was an intense night, to say the least.
posted by andrea on 1-9-2009 at 3:33 pm
1) Peony Park, Omaha, NE. A friend of the family received a bone deep gash from ankle to knee when the floor of the Tilt-a-Whirl came unbolted and kept jumping up as they went around the course. The ride operator misinterpreted their screams to stop and gave them a longer ride. There was a huge uproar when they closed this “landmark” and sold it a few years back.
2) Academic Decathlon – I got the highest score in my division in Arts and I think 2nd overall. A lot of pop culture questions as I remember.
3) I know it’s not from the last 5 years, but the cell phone. I can’t hide out anymore. Someone can always find me.
4) December 2007, 6 am, I was on my way to work and the road was suddenly covered in fog. No fog warnings had been issued and it was just a sudden wall. I slowed clear down but had to slam on my brakes to keep from running into a three car accident. The person behind me almost rear-ended me as you could not see the accident until you were right on it. We were on a two-lane highway with no way to get the wrecked cars off the road, no way to go around the wreck and cars going through and screaching their tires as they tried to avoid the accident. I called 911 and told them we had an accident, what the weather was doing and that we needed to get the highway shut down before we had more wrecks. Before the rescue folks got there, we heard another wreck up further and someone screaming. 911 did not relay my message to the fire/ambulance squad so then we had a fire truck and ambulance that no one could see in the road as well. I looked at one of the guys on the squad when they arrived and told him to shut the road down because we still had traffic going through. He looked at me, his eyes wide and his mouth dropped open as he realized the situation. He screamed to the guy in the firetruck to get the road shut down. Bottom line is that it was the scariest thing I’ve ever been through. Sitting in the middle of the road and hearing vehicles coming from each direction, knowing that they had no idea what lay in their path and knowing we were sitting ducks if they couldn’t stop in time.
posted by bzzyb on 1-9-2009 at 3:35 pm
Actually the blizzard that I spoke of in the post above was in January of 1995, not 1994.
posted by Bill on 1-9-2009 at 3:38 pm
1. Clementon Lake Park – although I was not involved in the accident my school went here every year for a school trip and I rode this roller coaster many times! But the Jack Rabbit (RIP) had been the oldest wooden roller coaster on the East Coast. It sat next to the park’s administration building. Once the Jack Rabbit came around a curve, ran off the track and flew into the admin building. The entire first car went into the building!
2. I was on the school newspaper.
3. ipod. I listen to it almost everyday and can’t imagine my life without one now!
4. A blizzard hit in Feb 2004 and I was still in college at the time and was at home when the storm started. I was also supposed to leave for Maui in 4 days. I had to drive back to school to finish all of my work and hand it in before I left, but the school declared an emergency and didn’t re-open before I left. Also, the airport was closed with no indication of when it would re-open. I didn’t care if I had to dig the plane out myself! Luckily the airport re-opened the day before I was to leave and I still graduated from college even though I handed in all my assignments late!
posted by Mavis on 1-9-2009 at 3:41 pm
1. Kings Island near Cincinnati, OH. Grew up very close to it and spent every summer there until it became uncool around age 13. There was an old ride named flight commander where, essentially, these capsules that dangled from arms that revolved around a central post about 80 feet up had space for two. Inside there was a small joystick with which the rider could control the “spin factor” i.e. spinning side-to-side in a full 360 degree span. Pretty cool until a woman died by falling out of her capsule. Not a rumor either: Riepenhoff, Jill (1991-06-11). “KINGS ISLAND DEATHS BAFFLE PARK OFFICIALS”. The Columbus Dispatch
That’s right, death + plural. I need to find that article…
2. I think this might have category two wrapped up. I was a part of the JOINT chess/Scrabble club in high school. My chem teacher led both and would frequently play Flaming Lips and Beastie Boys, and all other assortment of great late 80s/early 90s artists that didn’t help to overshadow the nerdiness of the whole ordeal. This is also the chem teacher who had a poster of tupac pasted on the inside of the door to his supply closet and in class played Kriss Kross to iterate a technique by which you can figure out the notation for two elements combining to create a compound. What really puts all this musical soundtracking he did into perspective is that I was in high school from 2000-2004 and most all of the students understood 0% of his pop culture referencing.
He also compelled me to learn every two-letter word acceptable in Scrabble and play competitively.
posted by Dane on 1-9-2009 at 4:14 pm
1) I was at Carowinds in Charlotte, NC and I saw a girl riding in the emergency golf cart with her fingers bent all the way back. I think it was from not keeping her hands inside her cart on Wayne’s World.
2)I was on Yearbook staff for 3 years.
3)GPS, it has made driving to other places so much less stressful
4) I was in first grade when Hugo hit. We did not have power for awhile and a lot of trees were down. It gained speed over land?!!
posted by StephW on 1-9-2009 at 4:37 pm
1. Kings Dominion in Richmond, VA–just a few years ago a girl got her foot chopped off on the Drop Zone, a car on the Volcano ride became detached and started going backwards during the ride, and (so I’ve been told by my aunt who has a season pass) some guy got decapitated when he tried to stand up on the Flight of Fear ride.
2. I was in both Social Studies AND Latin honor societies. I don’t claim that often.
3. Has to be the IPhone. I’m in love with mine.
4. I was in college in NC when Isabel hit and blew the roof off of my dorm. School was closed for two weeks and we got to live in the Holiday Inn Express for an entire semester. Maid service and continental breakfast every day!
posted by KerriH on 1-9-2009 at 5:22 pm
1. nothing for that
2. in eigth grade we stayed after school to see if we could get enough petitions for no homework
3. the DVR, Ti-Vo thingy is pretty cool
4. May 8, ‘00 or ‘01, tornado season. we had 5 twisters within a few miles of our house. thankfully we didn’t get hit but towns around us no longer exsted.
posted by Sam on 1-9-2009 at 5:24 pm
2. Magic club. We had a professional magician on staff as adrafting teacher.
3. Wireless internet, without a doubt.
4. Five weeks of -35 degrees, and that doesn’t include the wind chill.
posted by Mike on 1-9-2009 at 5:44 pm
1. Lakeside Amusement Park Denver Colorado- The Wild Chipmunk a roller coaster so violent I shattered a watch crystal riding on it.
2. ROTC Drill Team
3. DVR I can watch Family Guy anytime I want.
4. 2003 Bilzzard and the 2007 blizzard
posted by Anthony on 1-9-2009 at 5:48 pm
1. Playland, Vancouver – it still has a wooden coaster (ain’t getting me on that thing!) AND several people got munched by the Monster Mouse mini coaster in the 70s and 80s
2. I was a Juvenile Hooker!
afterschool rug hooking club when I was seven years old. Never did finish my rug.
3. Facebook is the ultimate connectivity knowledge share device – Telephone, Telegram, Telegraph, Tell a woman, it’ll get around just as fast. Thanks to FB I know the real scoop on certain medical technologies and other noteworthy things. Plus I recon’d with best friend from 35 years ago! Awe-SUM!
4. Almost got blown off a sundeck during a windstorm in the 70s, have ice skated to school, and enjoy watching the city grind to a screaming halt when it snows. The worst was traveling to Bellingham and seeing four cars overturned on the median… didn’t check for survivors.
posted by Marion on 1-9-2009 at 7:06 pm
1. There is a water park a few miles from where I live where a girl flew off one of the slides (it went straight down). The slide itself was named “Kilimanjaro” and after the death, I made a few very morbid jokes about that.
2. Since I attended two different colleges, I was in two different incarcerations of future teachers’ clubs, and was even the President of one. After I left the first school, my friend tried to start a dead languages club.
3. I have to agree with the cell phones with qwerty keyboards. I text pretty much constantly now, and it is my main mode of communication to my friends.
4. I’ve been through both a blizzard and a “microbust.” I think the latter was more damaging; it blew the roof off of quite a few houses.
posted by Marial on 1-9-2009 at 7:31 pm
1. Riverside/6 Flags New England. While open as Riverside one of the circular raft rides flipped over and several people couldn’t get unbuckeled and some hit their heads on the cement bottomed and drowned. The park was then sold to 6 Flags and they opened Superman Ride of Steel. Well, at least 2 people have flown off of the ride, the trains crashed injuring many people and the ONLY time I ever went there the ride was closed due to the trains crashing again because they allowed the ride to operate during unsafe conditions, aka pouring rain.
2. I was in Book Club WAY before book clubs became popular Oprah. Yeah, that long ago.
3. Couldn’t live without imdb.com or wikipedia. It’s a toss-up.
4. We had a hail storm in the middle of summer while I was at work. We lost all power with no back-up generator (it was a small convient store for rich people and their bratty children) and our boss refused to closed despite being 9pm. We had to work by candle-light and used change out of our own purses to make change since the registers wouldn’t open. The owners lost almost $100 worth of alcohol that the teenagers were stealing since we couldn’t see more than 5 feet in front of us so we never saw them leave with bottles in their sweatshirts. To top it all off, it destroyed the roof in the kitchen area and it was never fixed so if you ever had to make the meatballs or chicken for sandwiches and it was raining, be prepared to get wet.
posted by Kara on 1-9-2009 at 9:51 pm
1. Growing up in Wisconsin there was a gentleman who owned an old amusement park near Necedah. All that was left back then was a few rides, an old wooden roller coaster being one of them. My mother thought it would be neat to put us on this roller coaster she had rode as a child. 30 years later I can still remember the damn thing shaking apart underneath us!
2. North Patoka Volunteer Fire Department (closest to a club I have)
3. Cell phones and GPS we have to go to the other side of Chicago this weekend, and mapquest just doesn’t do it.
4. Many tornados. The final one before we moved I was on my phone talking with my husband (he was at work) letting him know we were fine and giving him a damage report. (Honey, I think I just lost my car, a tree just landed on it. Now our lawn furniture is bouncing across the highway, want to bet if the glass top is broke?)
My hubby was going to visit family and was caught in the Blizzard of ‘78. Think driving down the road and the whole interstate stops due to a sudden ice storm
posted by Lorelei on 1-9-2009 at 9:53 pm
1. Not really a theme park, but a traveling carnival. Ancient rides operated by toothless ex-cons and we get at the top of the Salt-N-Pepper and there’s a metallic “THUNK.” The operator didn’t notice and every time we reached the top of the ride, it was “THUNK.”
2. The Unification Church. Yup, the Moonies. A reporter friend of mine at a local television station asked me to go undercover and attend the first weekend orientation of the Reverend Moon’s ministry of succeeding where Moses and Jesus failed. One gal who was there for her first experience with the Moonies was later kidnapped and deprogrammed.
3. Netflix. I forget about my queue a lot and get these red surprise packages in the mail of films that might have seemed mildly interesting 3 months ago. Last week I got “The Maltese Falcon” and “Satan was a Lady” on the same disk. Same source material, same characters, same plot… really different movies. Surprise!
4. A tropical storm in Beaumont, Texas. Not strong enough to come ashore completely, just this mass of weather stalled halfway over land and halfway over water. It was a classic example of the storm sucking up water from the Gulf and dumping it on land — at the rate of 1-inch of rain per hour for 27 straight hours.
I woke up, it was raining. I went to work, it was raining. I got off work, it was raining. I came home, it was raining. I ate supper and watched TV, it was raining. I went to bed, it was raining. I woke up it was raining. I went to work, it was raining.
3.
posted by Monkeyhawk on 1-9-2009 at 11:40 pm
4. In 2000, there was a huge snow storm in Northwest Indiana. My family and I were snowed in for 5 days with no power. Oh, and I had shingles. It was not enjoyable.
posted by Marie on 1-10-2009 at 12:47 am
1. a small amusement park in northern Japan that had a roller coaster with a curve that extended out over the edge of a cliff.
4. I drove thru the only winter storm I’ve ever heard of that has it’s own name. Residents of North Carolina called this storm Cold Hugo because it did almost as much damage as Hurricane Huge.
posted by PartiallyDeflected on 1-10-2009 at 1:17 am
1. Zoom Flume water park in Catskill, NY. They have cement water slides that you ride down on with a foam mat. My friend lost the mat and slid down the slide, scraping all of the skin off of her pelvis!
2. Ski Club
3. Cellphones
4. Blizzard of ‘93. The Weather Channel actually said snow accumulation of 1 to 3 feet. School was closed for 3 days. There were 8-10ft drifts next to the house. We were jumping off of the roof.
posted by T~Dizzle on 1-10-2009 at 7:47 am
2. Science Olympiad: I remember events like a. who can build a mousetrap powered car and have it travel the furthest, b. cloud type identification, and c. given a map, compass and set of directions, who could find out where you would end up first? I think I still have the medals and ribbons which were awarded as prizes.
posted by the I-man on 1-10-2009 at 9:06 am
1. Pittsburgh’s Kennywood Park isn’t really “treacherous”, per se, but has the famed “Jackrabbit” wooden coaster. Patrons that sit in the back car of the coaster (used to be, at least) treated to failed seatbelts and a car that repeated lost touch with the track during the ride.
2. The Toshiba Science Contest Club. To this day I’m not quite sure what the hell the point of the club was, other than free publicity for an electronics company. There was no “contest”…as you completed a 14 page science project, wrote a report, mailed it in and received a pair of sunglasses with the Toshiba logo on them.
3. Cellphone technology.
4. Pittsburgh’s Blizzard of (insert year between 1990-1999 here). Also, when hurricane Ivan rolled through Atlanta, it took me 5 hours to go 40 miles. City streets were flooding so fast that I spent 3 of those 5 hours trying to get OUT of the city limits.
posted by Drew on 1-10-2009 at 10:13 am
I was reported killed in a tornado. In 1970 the small west Texas town I lived in was hit by a tornado during the senior play. Two hundred of us were in the audience, and had to crawl to safety in the hallways when softball-sized hail started crashing the big windows in the auditorium. Luckily, other than scratches and cuts, no one was seriously hurt by the flying glass. However, we heard later that a Chicago television station reported that “two hundred people were killed” in the tornado.
posted by Kyle on 1-10-2009 at 1:26 pm
I’ve seen a lot of comments on the weather one and I think I have the most interesting weather story.
I was living in Yuba City in Northern California and I decided to run out to the neighboring town of Sutter and back as a workout. While I was running, storm clouds came down off the Sutter Buttes and passed over my route. So I ran from a beautiful sunny day into the middle of a very small storm where the temperature dropped 20+ degrees and hail fell from the skies. I kept running, reached the outskirts of Sutter and turned back. Before too long I had exited back out of the small storm the same way I had entered, the hail stopped, temperature rose, sun came back out, and everything. To top it all off, I saw a beautiful rainbow on the way home.
posted by Adam on 1-10-2009 at 1:41 pm
3. Minimally Invasive Heart Surgery. One of the valves inside my heart failed. The surgeon was able to remove the valve and insert a replacement by using robotic arms and instruments inserted between my ribs. This meant that the breastbone did not have to be split, leading to a much faster, less painful recovery.
posted by Old Geezer on 1-10-2009 at 2:14 pm
1. I’m pretty that the park isn’t dangerous but that the operator let me go down the slide wrong, but at the water park in my hometown I went down the long, windy slide feet first and on my stomach. I ended up with paint from the slide embedded under my toenail. Ouch.
2. Probably Quiz Bowl.
3. Facebook, definitely… I’ve kept up with so many more people than I would have and even got a job because of continuing one of those connections.
4. Well, I live in Baton Rouge and was working at one of the local tv stations during Katrina and Rita. We were some of the first people to really see the damage the storm caused. Our parent company sent helicopters over the city and we fed the video out to CNN, etc., as we played it raw with no idea of what we going to see on that tape. What we saw was 80% of New Orleans underwater and people trapped.
Last September, I was essential state government personnel when Hurricane Gustav roared through Baton Rouge. No power for 8 days, but luckily, since I had to work, I rode out the storm in a very secure building and had power/ac/tv/internet/hot food during the aftermath. Gustav was a bad boy here — multiple friends lost roofs, entire rooms when trees came crashing down, cars, etc.
posted by Lindsey on 1-10-2009 at 2:48 pm
1. Not really. People have died at Disneyland. But sixflags magic mountain is pretty legit.
2. No contest. Sucker up to the king of the nerds boys.
Section Leader Marching Band
Section Leader Winterline
Founder/President Chess Club
MVP Academic Decathelon Team
Captain Knowledge Bowl Team
and I was in Dance
Yeah, give it up.
3. RSS feeds
4. It’s california. We don’t have weather.
posted by Nathan on 1-10-2009 at 4:14 pm
2. In high school, a friend and I started The Library Forum. He and I realized that there were plenty of people in our school who wrote poetry and short stories but had nowhere to showcase their work. He worked on an online forum on which students could post their writing and art as well as discuss books and movies. I organized events like murder mysteries and An Evening at the Forum, where people could read their works, perform skits, show their films and sing songs they had written. It was the coolest club ever, and five years later, it’s still up and running.
3. Microsoft Word and the cell phone.
4. Our county was declared a disaster zone after the flooding this summer.
posted by Kieran on 1-10-2009 at 7:06 pm
2. In high school, a friend and I started The Library Forum. He and I realized that there were plenty of people in our school who wrote poetry and short stories but had nowhere to showcase their work. He worked on an online forum on which students could post their writing and art as well as discuss books and movies. I organized events like murder mysteries and An Evening at the Forum, where people could read their works, perform skits, show their films and sing songs they had written. It was the coolest club ever, and five years later, it’s still up and running.
Oh, and I was in WYSE too. World Youth for Science and Engineering. Yay standardized tests and Gregor Mendel!
3. Microsoft Word and the cell phone.
4. Our county was declared a disaster zone after the flooding this summer.
posted by Kieran on 1-10-2009 at 7:15 pm
1. I grew up about an hour away from Action Park, and have the scars to prove it!
2. I was President (for 2 yrs!) of our Parchisi Club (which changed to the Games Club when we introduced Trivial Pursuit and Risk in my senior year). I also was on the Editorial Board of the school newspaper, as well as on the staff of the Literary magazine. Oh yeah, and I was in the Science club too. We used to take (after-school, voluntary!) science tests and compete with other schools for the highest marks. If that doesn’t scream geek, nothing does!
3. Streaming news via the Internet. I hate TV, and now I can watch newsworthy things as they happen, without having to have an idiot box in the house.
4. When I was 3 yrs old, my family was on vacation in the Catskills. We drove through a terrible storm; I remember huddling on the floor in the back of my grandfather’s old Chevy at my grandmother’s feet, scared to death. My grandfather did not feel up to driving in the storm, so my mother took the wheel. I remember there was a terrible screeching sound and a flash of light, and my parents and grandparents were very upset. (Nana was screaming something like “We’re all gonna die!” IIRC) I later found out the front quarter panel had been struck by lightning. It rode down the driver’s side of the car (the area would never hold paint afterwards, it would just flake off any time a touch-up was attempted). We later found out that what my mom had driven through was the tail end of a tornado.
posted by Sue on 1-10-2009 at 7:32 pm
1. Drawing a blank here.
2. Can you say nerdy?
Academic Decathalon
National English Honors Society National Math Honors Society
Drama Club
International Thespian Society
3. iPod
4. Ivan. It hit us way up here in North Georgia. Imagine that. Tornadoes and debris everywhere.
posted by Taylor on 1-10-2009 at 8:36 pm
1. you usually have these travelling circus/park when the annual fiesta come. the last incident was when a child fell from the top of the ferris wheel.
2. high school drama guild.
3. wireless connectivity/ small memory card that could put big memory
4. when mount pinatubo exploded. it was kinda weird. it was day but it so dark because of the dark clouds and the ash from the volcano. my elder cousins tried to shovel off the ash from the roof because it almost gave in. plus after shocks every now and then because of volcanic activity. several days later, us bases gone home.
posted by bandol on 1-11-2009 at 8:48 pm
1) When my mom was little, there was a miniature roller coaster at the city park. According to Mom’s stories, about three times a week the cars would fall off the tracks with kids in them. It was only about 4 ft high & i don’t think anyone got hurt, but one would think that even in the late 60’s – early 70’s someone would see that as a lawsuit waiting to happen.
2)I am in the science club. Not because i’m particularly interested in science, but because my boyfriend is.
4)About 5 or 6 years ago, there were about 5 ice storms in 2 months. That wouldn’t ba a big deal in, say, Wisconsin, but i live in North Carolina – everything shuts down if we get more than an inch of snow.
posted by Sam on 1-11-2009 at 8:58 pm
1. Ever been on a roller coaster in a developing country? Think zero safety standards and few seat belts. Yeah…I don’t recommend it.
2. This is also a college one but it was the Residence Hall Association. Oh boy, my school has so little spirit that WE were the ones cheering at basketball games. How embarrassing.
3. teh interweb, I would say.
4. It must’ve been in ‘04 or so. I had been in high school in Bangladesh and the worst flooding seen in years happened to hit the country. There were boats floating about, transporting people in business suits on the street in front of my apartment in the Diplomatic Zone.
posted by Rosette on 1-12-2009 at 6:14 am
1.We don’t have one in our country
2. Science club, Computer club
3.Faster Internet
4.I live in the desert, during summer (Nov – Feb) temperatures average between 35 C and 42 C. But have experienced 50 C a few times
posted by Cynthia on 1-12-2009 at 6:27 am