Day Forty-One: Vacation of Fear
This is the first day that was spent entirely on fun. And it would never have happened if not for an early birthday present from my Aunt and Uncle: Tickets to Dorney Park.
We woke up early yesterday, piled in the Adventure Jeep, and spent nearly eight hours at the combination amusement/water park.
It…was…amazing.
I can’t remember the last time I went to an amusement park. OK, I went to Disney World when my son was two but we all kinda hated it. A bit too much overload. Sorry, Mickey.
Julius barely made the minimum height requirements for some of the more thrilling rides, but those he did make he loved. Including some pretty crazy steep water slides and even one roller coaster (I think he may have regretted that one until it was over when he said: “THAT WAS AWESOME!”)
The park also has a “Snoopy” section filled with tyke rides. And Julius was so proud to take his little sister on the helicopter, Charlie’s swing and those cars that are on a track but still have a steering wheel.
We even managed to escape without buying any lame plastic toys.
Us humans are so strange. As Johannes explained, “We are like penguins who like to slide down ice just for the thrill of it.”
I don’t know what kind of evolutionary advantage “thrill seeking” includes but it’s certainly a real part of human nature. One ride in particular called “The Dominator” underscored that fact. It was one of those “thrill drops” where you are strapped into a chair and taken up like a gazillion feet. And then you free-fall.
I’ve never screamed so loud in my life.
Not much of a “heights fan” anyway, dropping from a peak where it seemed I was gazing across the entire expanse of three states was not comfortable. I was shaking so much I could barely unbuckle myself when we landed.
Maybe we pay big bucks to scare the pants off of ourselves just to prove for a moment that we can face our fears. Maybe we do it for bragging rights. Maybe it’s just the adrenaline. But thrill rides seem somehow to take all the terror we have throughout our lives, not the least of which is the fear of death (people should not hang upside down in a corkscrew pattern that is so violent that the ride operators recommend you remove shades and shoes before riding), and make it fun.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned throughout this trip, it’s to have fun. In both the good and bad times. Whether we are camping in paradise, or barely catching our Zs in a seedy motel. Whether we are dodging bison or Manhattan rush-hour. If we are driving East or West.
Tomorrow we start heading West again. It seems only fitting that our last stop on this coast was fear-inducing. Fear is not a bad thing. Whether it’s free falling from a metal tower or leaving the comforts of home for an undefined season of “nomadism.”
It’s what we do with it that matters.
