ROLLERCOASTERS

I had an absolutely wonderful New Year's holiday with my family but they refuse to let me write about them here so I'll have to talk about something else...like my trip to Magic Mountain with Mike. Boy, the park was crowded! I'm in the picture above...can you see me? I'm the one with the pimple behind my ear.

'Just kidding. I got this picture off the net.

I didn't get many photos. I was too distracted by all the girls wearing yoga pants. This girl (above) stood out by wearing a one piece, skin tight, yoga body suit...or so I thought. The camera picked up what my eyes couldn't...that it was actually a two piece outfit. Oh, well. 

I'm grateful to Mike for gallantly shielding the girl from my intrusive camera. By doing so he inadvertently gave us an opportunity to study his nails which I'm happy to report are spotlessly clean but are curiously pointed on the top edges.

Anyway, if you live in LA you know that Magic Mountain is primarily a roller coaster park. The roller coaster biz is highly competitive and MM does everything it can do to provide the most terrifying, grueling, gut wrenching rides possible.

You have to wonder where this competition is going to end. How steep will the slides get  before they're deemed too steep?

Yikes!

I guess the only limit is how much G-force the human body can take.

We must be inching up to that limit now.

Or maybe not.

The amazing thing is that we become blase to speed after a while. You get used to it.

The same ride that had us screaming for mercy the first time invariably seems tame a few rides later. 

Maybe that's why coaster designers are always chasing bigger and better thrills.

I can't imagine what kind of coasters my kids will see.

The real game changer will come when computers can guarantee that fast moving vehicles won't crash or hit anyone and noisy vehicles will operate at a tolerable decibel level. When problems like that are overcome then expect to see roller coasters and even airplanes planes operate in the city. Expect to see low-flying gondolas and jets race through city streets and sidewalks, sometimes a few feet off the ground.

On a slightly different topic: my own belief is that 50 years from now about 1% of the population will live for months at a time in rented mobile houses strung together like trains. Live-in cruise ships built for that purpose are on the drawing boards right now.

One day your house/train might be slowly threading through exotic urban centers (above)...

...and another day it might be winding around Rocky Mountain trails.

Interesting, eh?