#oh and when we went to one park my cousin and i rode this spinning ride 6x and the guy after the 3rd time stopped asking if we wanted

[bunnyb34r]

Thinking ab my middle school special interest (one of many) which was roller coaster and water slide pov videos shdhdhdhdh like I would spend hours watching them and learning ab how fast they go, where they are, what their copys of

Like "Patriot" at Worlds of Fun is just "Raptor" from Cedar Point with a red white and blue color scheme and theme where as Raptor is green and black/purple with a raptor/beast theme. They're both owned by Cedar Fair. There's MANY clones in cedar fair parks and they will sometimes just remove an attraction from a park and move it to another, sometimes rebranding it.

Also sometimes they will just repaint an old ride and completely rebrand it by changing one thing. Like the Mantis ride was a stand up coaster at cedar point and it is now Rougaru (idk if that's the spelling) and I think they only changed the color (yellow to orange) and the seats bc it's no longer a standing one :( which I'm sad ab bc I wanted to ride it but was too scared to.

Oh! And the little tips ab the rides like Gemini (a duel track coaster where one track has a red car and the other is blue and you "race") and how the red one is usually the one that wins

And like when people point out stuff like "at the top of [coaster] if you look to the left right before the drop you can see [attraction/place]."

I really liked watching those before a trip to the waterpark or amusement park sgdgdg and then when I'd go on the rides I would know what would happen which was exciting like ahh here it comes!

Anyway agdgdgdg I just had a big memory of that and had to info dump ab it real quick 😅

#marquilla #info dump #and i would info dump ab what i learned before our trip or during it like hey did you know that this coaster is one of the biggest in the #world? (not dragster thats a well known fact here) or like oh yeah that coaster goes really fast and through tunnels! no i dont wanna go on #it why would i? #i really miss going to amusement parks 🥺 my fibro is so bad that i know i couldnt do it at least in one day/without my chair #we used to go like once a year and one year we got platinum passes which let you go to any cedar fair park and we went to #the waterpark like 7x that summer and then cedar point AND worlds of fun it was awesome sggdgdgdg #roller coasters were something i could connect with my cousins ab bc theyre adrenaline junkies #and it felt so good to be able to info dump and have them add more fun facts and shit #oh and when we went to one park my cousin and i rode this spinning ride 6x and the guy after the 3rd time stopped asking if we wanted #to go again and just told us to tell him when we wanted off agdgdggd bc there was like no one in line but us we would've gone more but out #moms were like no its 110 degrees you need to stop sgdgdggdgd #ill probably delete this but i just needed to get this out #and my family doubts im autistic lmao

[easyfoodnetwork]

Mushroom Hunting at the End of the World

Getty Images

While the rest of the country focused on something other than the forest floor, I started foraging for chanterelles

I’d been staring at the ground too long. That’s most of what foraging is, by the way. It’s ignoring the blue sky and the trees to focus your gaze on the dirt. I was walking through cobwebs, surveying the woodland floor for almost an hour, when I finally saw one: a tiny, pale chanterelle mushroom sticking up near the trail’s edge. It looked sickly, or at the very least elderly. Perhaps it was a sign that this section of the woods was untraveled, or maybe nobody had ever thought to pluck it from its habitat.

I peeled it from the ground with my paring knife and placed it into my netted, purple sack, which once housed grocery-store red onions. This lonely mushroom wasn’t the haul, mind you, but rather an indicator. When one chanterelle appears, more will follow. A few steps off the trail and they emerged in droves. Soon, my bag was filled with corpulent, spore-bearing fungi — big chanterelles with deep-orange hues and fantastical shapes, like something a Nintendo animator might draw.

Walking back with my giant bag of wild mushrooms, I ran into a couple, the first people I’d seen that day. We all scrambled to put on our masks at the distant sight of one another. “You get some chanties?” the man said in his familiar, spectacularly unusual Pittsburgh accent. “It’s a gold mine out there,” I said, trying unconsciously to disguise any hints of that same Pennsylvanian elocution. After they disappeared back into the woods, I put my mask in my pocket, where it stayed for the rest of the hike. For about 30 seconds, I was reminded that the rest of the world was focused on something other than the forest floor.

For about 30 seconds, I was reminded that the rest of the world was focused on something other than the forest floor.

A few years back I had tasted some wild mushroom conserva courtesy of my cousin, Andy, during a trip to my hometown in Pennsylvania. Andy is a budding locavore, a self-taught forager, and a mad scientist in the kitchen. His passion is infectious. Eighty percent of the meat he consumes, he hunts himself. He cures venison and butchers whole pigs in his garage.

That first spoonful of Andy’s mushrooms, meaty chanterelles salted in a strainer, then simmered in white vinegar with gothic-looking thyme and peppercorns, is preserved in my mind, so much so that I can access that memory whenever I want. The dim lighting in my parents’ dining room, Andy standing in the kitchen with his arms confidently folded, the sound of the Mason jar lid spinning loose, and the immense joy of my first bite — stocky chanterelle mushrooms, piquant vinegar, gentle aromatics, and then the brilliant opulence of olive oil, used to preserve the mixture.

I asked Andy if I could take a jar of them back home to Los Angeles, and he obliged. Every so often, I unscrewed the lid for a small bite. I would close my eyes and feel the cold air in my hometown. If I listened carefully, I could hear the train whistles in the distance. Those mushrooms became a portal to my hometown, a culinary object so emotionally resonant, so distinct from the food I bought at my grocery store in California, that I always longed to forage and conserve a jar of my own.

I began to miss rural Pennsylvania as the pandemic encroached into summer. Like a lot of people, I felt trapped in the big city, and so in June, I went home. In Pennsylvania, everybody’s houses are set at a distance, but everyone barters home provisions, ranging from venison pastrami to crooked cucumbers to gargantuan zucchini. The summer is when the Amish sell sweet corn, and when the berry farms open their orchards. The old-timey ice cream shops end their winter break, and people start roasting whole pigs and marinated legs of lamb. It was also not lost on me that a hot, wet climate is the ideal condition for chanterelles, and that this would be the perfect time to chase that dragon: the jar of preserved mushrooms.

Once I began mushroom hunting, the calm followed. I embraced foraging, an oft-maligned word after the chef-bro boom of the 2010s. If your reaction is to recoil, you’re not alone. Before my mushroom-hunting days, I usually laughed when I saw the word “foraged” on a menu or in a magazine. Oh, did you really go out foraging, m’Lord?

The first time I went, I rode in the passenger seat of Andy’s car, down the winding rural roads of Amish country. To be honest, I didn’t immediately connect with foraging; the experience felt educational. Of course, when you’re dealing with something that can be either good in a stir-fry, consciousness-expanding, or deadly, education is important. Poisonous mushrooms actually look evil, though, an offer of good faith from Mother Nature. They often have a sinister gray or red color, with warts and scales reminiscent of the toxic fungi in fairy-tale illustrations. Andy made sure to teach me enough that I didn’t end up hallucinating through the woods — or, worse yet, dead.

People in my hometown definitely don’t fall into the stereotype of knuckle-tatted, beanie-wearing “foragers,” but they’re pretty keen on the good mushroom spots. There’s an old Polish woman, for instance, whose stiff, territorial energy I can feel whenever I show up to Gaston Park the day after a rain. Because I didn’t want to move in on another gang’s turf, I had Andy show me a few of his favorite areas. Still, it didn’t feel right: These were his discoveries, not mine. I wanted to make my own way. I wanted that excitement of stumbling across a rare mushroom, of encountering a field of freshly sprouted chanterelles. I wanted to find my own mushroom haven, and so I went to Hell’s Hollow.

daveynin/Flickr

A view from the Hell’s Hollow Trail in McConnells Mill State Park, Pennsylvania

Hell’s Hollow is a national park and trail in New Castle, Pennsylvania, about a mile down the road from my childhood home. Apparently, it’s called Hell’s Hollow because some time ago a man fell asleep in those woods, and when he woke up, he was convinced that the place he was in was actually Hell. Are the woods deep and dark? Sure. Spooky at night? Yeah, of course. But, Hell? As in the place where sinners go and are tormented for eternity? Like, Satan-owned and -operated Hell? I scoff at the idea whenever I pass the old wooden sign for the trail. What kind of idiot would think that the woods is Hell? It’s beautiful out here. I mean look, there’s a flowing river. Why would the Devil keep a freshwater source in an eternity of suffering? Rule No. 1 of Hell must be to stay hydrated. Rule No. 2? No running.

Hell’s Hollow has been a constant throughout my life. When I was a kid, my mom and dad let me splash around the creek trying to catch minnows and small crabs. When I was 10, I gleefully collected rocks and declared that I was going to be a geologist (my family would be disappointed). As teens, my friends and I smoked shag weed and smashed cans of Mountain Dew together like Stone Cold Steve Austin there. The point is, I’ve been wandering around Hell’s Hollow my whole life, and it never dawned on me that I would ever find myself foraging there. But sure enough, it was my spot.

I did not expect hunting for mushrooms to clear my head the way it did. People say that about prep work, by the way. They say that peeling potatoes and kneading dough lets the mind wander and alleviates stress. But, to me, prep work is just that: work. Dicing onions pierces the eyes, lemon juice stings, and I will always associate chopping parsley with the incoming threat of a dinner rush at one of my restaurant jobs. When people say that cooking soothes the mind, they’re not taking into account all the people who do this shit for a living. What are those people supposed to do to get away from themselves? For me, I found that wandering in the woods alone with a sense of purpose was exactly the thing I needed to weather the fire tornado of anxiety the pandemic had produced.

The act of foraging, a completely unchanged activity in a pandemic, possesses the acute ability to make me forget about the state of things entirely. Specifically, it was easy to forget about a global virus. Hunting for mushrooms in the woods alone is already distanced; there are no guidelines to follow. Walk down the street in Los Angeles and you’re immediately reminded that restaurants are shut down and live performance spaces are shuttered. But in the woods? Go ahead — sneeze full force in any direction you please. Let off some steam, pal. You’ve earned it. Sure, I had a mask, but it stayed in my pocket on the off chance that I ran into another human being, though I was more likely to spot a deer.

When I’m hunting for mushrooms it feels like I’m achieving something tangible.

This wasn’t just a way to pass time, mind you. These weren’t nature walks I was taking. There’s a sense of ambition at the core of mushroom hunting. Purpose, the thing so many of us have felt without this year, I suddenly possessed. When there’s purpose, there’s a sense of reward, and when I’m hunting for mushrooms it feels like I’m achieving something tangible. All my energy is focused, my aim clear. Instead of staring at the ceiling in my studio apartment, I found myself scanning the ground for edible treasure. The dopamine you receive from finding a cluster of chanterelle mushrooms in the damp woods is immense, somehow both frivolous and survivalist. There’s a real sense of childlike treasure-hunting tied to foraging.

Take the elusive cauliflower mushroom, Sparassis, which is as rare as mushrooms come. They grow sporadically; their appearance is psychedelic and aquatic. It looks coral in a way, like a living, breathing self-sustaining organism that belongs at the bottom of the ocean. Jarring, then, to find one surrounded by leaves and mossy logs. The mushroom itself is wavy and ethereal, with petals like a flower. It’s so rare that when Andy and I found one, he jumped in the air with excitement. For seven years he had been hunting for a cauliflower mushroom, and he finally got it. His triumph felt like my triumph, and in a way, it was. Later, I fried the petals of the cauliflower mushroom in oil and ate them salted. The texture was outstanding and the flavor delicate, like a homemade noodle but with the specific earthiness of a fungus. “How many people are eating a cauliflower mushroom right now?” I thought.

I felt like jumping in the air like Andy when I spotted that lone, feeble chanterelle in Hell’s Hollow. To reach that first chantie was a hero’s journey, past a path that leads to a dazzling waterfall, down a steep hill, across a stream, and through a tunnel of decaying trees. The air starts to cool down and a trained nose can begin to smell the faint notes of mushrooms in the air. Clusters of chanterelles appear like small towns; they are golden trumpets that politely announce their presence with colorful glee. Oyster mushrooms grow shelf-like on the sides of trees, and chicken of the woods, these endlessly useful and tasty orange half-moons, light up your eyes like a gorgeous sunset. That’s the thing about wild mushrooms — once you see them, you can’t unsee them. After an education in foraging, you’ll be forever scanning your surroundings, trying to manifest treasure.

As I carried back my sack of mushrooms that first time, I thought about that man who woke up in Hell’s Hollow in the night. How must he have felt? Aimless, one would assume. Probably searching for a way out of the darkness. Disoriented, without a clue where he might be in relation to the outside world. Maybe that’s what Hell is. Maybe it’s quite simply feeling lost and alone. The pandemic can feel like that, as though you’re traversing an endless dark wilderness hoping to catch a light in the distance that’ll guide you back to society. But is that a new feeling? Hasn’t it always been that way? Maybe all of life has just been wandering in the dark.

Anyway, I’m glad to be walking through the woods with a purpose.

Danny Palumbo is a comedian and writer living in Los Angeles.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2JUbLZq https://ift.tt/3korg8w

Getty Images

While the rest of the country focused on something other than the forest floor, I started foraging for chanterelles

I’d been staring at the ground too long. That’s most of what foraging is, by the way. It’s ignoring the blue sky and the trees to focus your gaze on the dirt. I was walking through cobwebs, surveying the woodland floor for almost an hour, when I finally saw one: a tiny, pale chanterelle mushroom sticking up near the trail’s edge. It looked sickly, or at the very least elderly. Perhaps it was a sign that this section of the woods was untraveled, or maybe nobody had ever thought to pluck it from its habitat.

I peeled it from the ground with my paring knife and placed it into my netted, purple sack, which once housed grocery-store red onions. This lonely mushroom wasn’t the haul, mind you, but rather an indicator. When one chanterelle appears, more will follow. A few steps off the trail and they emerged in droves. Soon, my bag was filled with corpulent, spore-bearing fungi — big chanterelles with deep-orange hues and fantastical shapes, like something a Nintendo animator might draw.

Walking back with my giant bag of wild mushrooms, I ran into a couple, the first people I’d seen that day. We all scrambled to put on our masks at the distant sight of one another. “You get some chanties?” the man said in his familiar, spectacularly unusual Pittsburgh accent. “It’s a gold mine out there,” I said, trying unconsciously to disguise any hints of that same Pennsylvanian elocution. After they disappeared back into the woods, I put my mask in my pocket, where it stayed for the rest of the hike. For about 30 seconds, I was reminded that the rest of the world was focused on something other than the forest floor.

For about 30 seconds, I was reminded that the rest of the world was focused on something other than the forest floor.

A few years back I had tasted some wild mushroom conserva courtesy of my cousin, Andy, during a trip to my hometown in Pennsylvania. Andy is a budding locavore, a self-taught forager, and a mad scientist in the kitchen. His passion is infectious. Eighty percent of the meat he consumes, he hunts himself. He cures venison and butchers whole pigs in his garage.

That first spoonful of Andy’s mushrooms, meaty chanterelles salted in a strainer, then simmered in white vinegar with gothic-looking thyme and peppercorns, is preserved in my mind, so much so that I can access that memory whenever I want. The dim lighting in my parents’ dining room, Andy standing in the kitchen with his arms confidently folded, the sound of the Mason jar lid spinning loose, and the immense joy of my first bite — stocky chanterelle mushrooms, piquant vinegar, gentle aromatics, and then the brilliant opulence of olive oil, used to preserve the mixture.

I asked Andy if I could take a jar of them back home to Los Angeles, and he obliged. Every so often, I unscrewed the lid for a small bite. I would close my eyes and feel the cold air in my hometown. If I listened carefully, I could hear the train whistles in the distance. Those mushrooms became a portal to my hometown, a culinary object so emotionally resonant, so distinct from the food I bought at my grocery store in California, that I always longed to forage and conserve a jar of my own.

I began to miss rural Pennsylvania as the pandemic encroached into summer. Like a lot of people, I felt trapped in the big city, and so in June, I went home. In Pennsylvania, everybody’s houses are set at a distance, but everyone barters home provisions, ranging from venison pastrami to crooked cucumbers to gargantuan zucchini. The summer is when the Amish sell sweet corn, and when the berry farms open their orchards. The old-timey ice cream shops end their winter break, and people start roasting whole pigs and marinated legs of lamb. It was also not lost on me that a hot, wet climate is the ideal condition for chanterelles, and that this would be the perfect time to chase that dragon: the jar of preserved mushrooms.

Once I began mushroom hunting, the calm followed. I embraced foraging, an oft-maligned word after the chef-bro boom of the 2010s. If your reaction is to recoil, you’re not alone. Before my mushroom-hunting days, I usually laughed when I saw the word “foraged” on a menu or in a magazine. Oh, did you really go out foraging, m’Lord?

The first time I went, I rode in the passenger seat of Andy’s car, down the winding rural roads of Amish country. To be honest, I didn’t immediately connect with foraging; the experience felt educational. Of course, when you’re dealing with something that can be either good in a stir-fry, consciousness-expanding, or deadly, education is important. Poisonous mushrooms actually look evil, though, an offer of good faith from Mother Nature. They often have a sinister gray or red color, with warts and scales reminiscent of the toxic fungi in fairy-tale illustrations. Andy made sure to teach me enough that I didn’t end up hallucinating through the woods — or, worse yet, dead.

People in my hometown definitely don’t fall into the stereotype of knuckle-tatted, beanie-wearing “foragers,” but they’re pretty keen on the good mushroom spots. There’s an old Polish woman, for instance, whose stiff, territorial energy I can feel whenever I show up to Gaston Park the day after a rain. Because I didn’t want to move in on another gang’s turf, I had Andy show me a few of his favorite areas. Still, it didn’t feel right: These were his discoveries, not mine. I wanted to make my own way. I wanted that excitement of stumbling across a rare mushroom, of encountering a field of freshly sprouted chanterelles. I wanted to find my own mushroom haven, and so I went to Hell’s Hollow.

daveynin/Flickr

A view from the Hell’s Hollow Trail in McConnells Mill State Park, Pennsylvania

Hell’s Hollow is a national park and trail in New Castle, Pennsylvania, about a mile down the road from my childhood home. Apparently, it’s called Hell’s Hollow because some time ago a man fell asleep in those woods, and when he woke up, he was convinced that the place he was in was actually Hell. Are the woods deep and dark? Sure. Spooky at night? Yeah, of course. But, Hell? As in the place where sinners go and are tormented for eternity? Like, Satan-owned and -operated Hell? I scoff at the idea whenever I pass the old wooden sign for the trail. What kind of idiot would think that the woods is Hell? It’s beautiful out here. I mean look, there’s a flowing river. Why would the Devil keep a freshwater source in an eternity of suffering? Rule No. 1 of Hell must be to stay hydrated. Rule No. 2? No running.

Hell’s Hollow has been a constant throughout my life. When I was a kid, my mom and dad let me splash around the creek trying to catch minnows and small crabs. When I was 10, I gleefully collected rocks and declared that I was going to be a geologist (my family would be disappointed). As teens, my friends and I smoked shag weed and smashed cans of Mountain Dew together like Stone Cold Steve Austin there. The point is, I’ve been wandering around Hell’s Hollow my whole life, and it never dawned on me that I would ever find myself foraging there. But sure enough, it was my spot.

I did not expect hunting for mushrooms to clear my head the way it did. People say that about prep work, by the way. They say that peeling potatoes and kneading dough lets the mind wander and alleviates stress. But, to me, prep work is just that: work. Dicing onions pierces the eyes, lemon juice stings, and I will always associate chopping parsley with the incoming threat of a dinner rush at one of my restaurant jobs. When people say that cooking soothes the mind, they’re not taking into account all the people who do this shit for a living. What are those people supposed to do to get away from themselves? For me, I found that wandering in the woods alone with a sense of purpose was exactly the thing I needed to weather the fire tornado of anxiety the pandemic had produced.

The act of foraging, a completely unchanged activity in a pandemic, possesses the acute ability to make me forget about the state of things entirely. Specifically, it was easy to forget about a global virus. Hunting for mushrooms in the woods alone is already distanced; there are no guidelines to follow. Walk down the street in Los Angeles and you’re immediately reminded that restaurants are shut down and live performance spaces are shuttered. But in the woods? Go ahead — sneeze full force in any direction you please. Let off some steam, pal. You’ve earned it. Sure, I had a mask, but it stayed in my pocket on the off chance that I ran into another human being, though I was more likely to spot a deer.

When I’m hunting for mushrooms it feels like I’m achieving something tangible.

This wasn’t just a way to pass time, mind you. These weren’t nature walks I was taking. There’s a sense of ambition at the core of mushroom hunting. Purpose, the thing so many of us have felt without this year, I suddenly possessed. When there’s purpose, there’s a sense of reward, and when I’m hunting for mushrooms it feels like I’m achieving something tangible. All my energy is focused, my aim clear. Instead of staring at the ceiling in my studio apartment, I found myself scanning the ground for edible treasure. The dopamine you receive from finding a cluster of chanterelle mushrooms in the damp woods is immense, somehow both frivolous and survivalist. There’s a real sense of childlike treasure-hunting tied to foraging.

Take the elusive cauliflower mushroom, Sparassis, which is as rare as mushrooms come. They grow sporadically; their appearance is psychedelic and aquatic. It looks coral in a way, like a living, breathing self-sustaining organism that belongs at the bottom of the ocean. Jarring, then, to find one surrounded by leaves and mossy logs. The mushroom itself is wavy and ethereal, with petals like a flower. It’s so rare that when Andy and I found one, he jumped in the air with excitement. For seven years he had been hunting for a cauliflower mushroom, and he finally got it. His triumph felt like my triumph, and in a way, it was. Later, I fried the petals of the cauliflower mushroom in oil and ate them salted. The texture was outstanding and the flavor delicate, like a homemade noodle but with the specific earthiness of a fungus. “How many people are eating a cauliflower mushroom right now?” I thought.

I felt like jumping in the air like Andy when I spotted that lone, feeble chanterelle in Hell’s Hollow. To reach that first chantie was a hero’s journey, past a path that leads to a dazzling waterfall, down a steep hill, across a stream, and through a tunnel of decaying trees. The air starts to cool down and a trained nose can begin to smell the faint notes of mushrooms in the air. Clusters of chanterelles appear like small towns; they are golden trumpets that politely announce their presence with colorful glee. Oyster mushrooms grow shelf-like on the sides of trees, and chicken of the woods, these endlessly useful and tasty orange half-moons, light up your eyes like a gorgeous sunset. That’s the thing about wild mushrooms — once you see them, you can’t unsee them. After an education in foraging, you’ll be forever scanning your surroundings, trying to manifest treasure.

As I carried back my sack of mushrooms that first time, I thought about that man who woke up in Hell’s Hollow in the night. How must he have felt? Aimless, one would assume. Probably searching for a way out of the darkness. Disoriented, without a clue where he might be in relation to the outside world. Maybe that’s what Hell is. Maybe it’s quite simply feeling lost and alone. The pandemic can feel like that, as though you’re traversing an endless dark wilderness hoping to catch a light in the distance that’ll guide you back to society. But is that a new feeling? Hasn’t it always been that way? Maybe all of life has just been wandering in the dark.

Anyway, I’m glad to be walking through the woods with a purpose.

Danny Palumbo is a comedian and writer living in Los Angeles.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2JUbLZq via Blogger https://ift.tt/38Dk0DK

#Blogger #cooking #Eater #food #recipes

[egsreactions]

Single Riders Will Be Paired

Idea for this one came from this prompt. Definitely an AU, wherein Susan and Diane met earlier than in canon.

Diane’s date shrank away a little. “Oh, come on. It sounds like a better idea than puking our guts out all day, doesn’t it?”

“First off - if all it takes to get you to throw up for eight hours straight is riding one thrill ride... ew. Second, I’m not going to neck on Pirates of Lake Michigan.”

“Why not? It’s dark, there’s plenty of room between the boats...” He tried to sidle up to her again. Diane stepped back.

“There are security cameras over every square inch of the ride.”

“They won’t see-”

“Infrared cameras. Second, do you really get turned on around the smell of water that probably hasn’t been changed since this park opened?!”

“I-”

“Look, you want to ride that, feel free. I’m going on something else.”

“O-okay? Uh - where should we meet up?”

“School. Maybe. Later.” She stormed off, pulling her phone out of her bag. The Midwestern Kingdom was a weird park - it had started out as a blatant ripoff of Disneyland, a la Nara Dreamland, and had grown into its own thing in the seventies. The odd ‘WE CAN’T SAY DISNEY BUT THINK DISNEY’ elements were interspersed through thrill rides that were too odd to be picked up by King’s Island or Cedar Point. And while it was normally just open in the summer, it did open its doors for a ‘spring preview’ one week a year. 

Naturally, two thirds of her school was there, despite the lingering chill in the air. 

NoBottleBlonde: Did you make it out here?

If Lucy was there, she could get a ride home with her. Odds were slim, given what she’d said, but-

XenaWasRight: Nope. XenaWasRight: Car’s still broken down.  XenaWasRight: And I never knew fixing it would be this fun.  NoBottleBlonde: Fun? Seriously?  XenaWasRight: Hey, what can I say, the company makes the activity. XenaWasRight: Gotta go. We’re lifting the engine out.  NoBottleBlonde: What? What company? NoBottleBlonde: Lucy? NoBottleBlonde: I WANT DEETS LATER. Well. Crap. Good that Lucy was having a date she was enjoying for once, even if ‘fixing her car’ wasn’t technically a date, but... that left her alone in the park. Unlesssss... NoBottleBlonde: Hey, are you and your dork friends here? TrillHitchhiker: I choose to take that term as a compliment. And yes.  NoBottleBlonde: YES. Okay, my date turned out to be a real creep. Mind if I hang with you guys?  TrillHitchhiker: Oh no. I am terribly offended. How dare you suggest such a thing. Gasp. I think I have a case of the vapors.  NoBottleBlonde: :P  TrillHitchhiker: We’re split up at the moment. Most of us are in one line or another, but we’re meeting in 30 minutes at the entrance to El Torqueno.  NoBottleBlonde: I’m heading there now. Can’t believe that guy was too wimpy to even try riding it... TrillHitchhiker: ...the vast majority of our party is too.  NoBottleBlonde: PFFT. I’m trying it. See you there soon.  She closed down the phone and headed for the new ride. It was an intimidating coaster. A bright orange steel thing that wound in and out of ambiguously-industrial theming. Each pair of seats were also able to rotate around end over end. It was fast. It was intense. And - yes, if you had a weak stomach... but she was made of sterner stuff. She could manage it.  Right? Right.  The line wasn’t especially interesting. She did enjoy the fact that they were at least trying to build suspense, letting the line cut past several stretches of track, so you could hear the screams and roar of the ride and really soak in what was going to happen. She didn’t notice the sign until she was in sight of the boarding platform.  Single riders will be paired.  Oh. Great.  

She looked around rapidly, trying to make sure the creep wasn’t there. No. No, he hadn’t been clever enough to try to pull that. Good. So she had to ride with a stranger, but that wouldn’t matter much. It was just one ride, and then she’d be with her... estranged niece  Cousin by blood friend and her friend’s friends. God. So much easier to ignore the blood relation. The last few minutes of wait were short, and then she was there, waiting on the platform alone as the operator herded her to a seat right at the back, and - then waved over another girl about her age. Shorter. More pear shaped, though she definitely made it work. Also blonde. She said something, though it was drowned out by the sound of the ride and the music over the PA. Diane just shrugged in return. The other girl grinned, rolled her eyes, and gestured to the seat. In they went, and the harnesses clicked into place... and that was it. A minute passed. Two. And then they were heading for the lift hill. The girl next to Diane let out a whoop.  “AWESOME! I’ve been waiting for this for a YEAR!”  “Seriously? Are you that much of a coaster junkie?”  “Maybe? I dunno. I mean, I only ever go here...” Diane craned her head around. The other girl gave a hapless shrug,  barely visible in the harness, still grinning. Diane just laughed once. Eh, what the hell. She could drop the thin veneer of self control and just enjoy this for once. Her enthusiasm was infectious. They crested the lift hill, and for a moment they were all screaming, and then - DOWN. The speed was everything, plunging them through a canyon of rust and gray, before it twisted to the side, and then they were flipping backwards, making it impossible to see where they were going - and the disorientation, the shock, the sheer adrenaline was so good, so pure, so cleansing, that Diane found herself screaming along with everyone else, venting her nerves and her delight and the sheer sensory overload of it.  Somewhere around the cobra roll, she found herself grabbing the other girl’s hand. She had been sort of flailing, and - wow, she had a HELL of a grip, and - she barely registered that for the rest of the ride. Not until they lurched to a stop in front of the station, and everyone started cheering. They were not quite upright, and the cars took a moment to spin them slowly into place before they advanced to the platform to unload with a loud hiss.  The bars were lifted. They stumbled out, dizzy and laughing and flushed, and staggered towards the exit.  “Oh. My. Fuzzy. GOD. That was amazing!” The shorter girl blurted. “That... that was better than I hoped for!”  “I KNOW, RIGHT?” Diane was trying not to gush. “I swear, I - I nearly blacked out for a second. I - holy - frick I can’t even think straight right now.” She stumbled, and nearly fell, only to slump over on the shorter girl, who burst into giggles again - as someone cleared their throat nearby.  “Well. I was going to tell you that we were waiting for Diane, but you found her. Ah - Diane, Sarah. Sarah, Diane.” Susan was standing at the bottom of the ramp, next to Justin, Elliot, and... well... the whole rest of Susan’s little crew. A curvy black girl (Grace, that - that was her name, right?) gave her a MASSIVE smile, grabbing the arm of another girl with a mop of purple hair. She was squeeing in an almost inaudible pitch. “Yeah, yeah, we rode together. You... you don’t know what you’re missing. I swear, I’m still high off the vertigo.” Sarah nudged Diane upright, and - that was when both of them realized they were still holding hands. And that they had been clutching each other so hard that they probably had bruises from each other’s fingertips.  Oh.  Oh.  That... probably shouldn’t have gotten a blush out of Diane, but- “So which ride’s next? We gotta pick something a little tamer for these guys, but - we all up for the Steel Noodle?” Sarah didn’t let go. If anything, she gave her hand another squeeze before pulling her towards the next ride.  She really had to send that creep a thank you letter. A severely passive aggressive thank you letter, but a thank you all the same. (A/N: The roller coaster type in question is probably nonexistent, but is based on the same concept as a ‘4th Dimension’ roller coaster, albeit with more traditional coaster elements.) Fic by Mod Zee. 

#El Goonish Shive #EGS Flashfic Week #Diane #Sarah Brown #Susan Pompoms #Lucy #Roller coasters #AU #Flashfic #Fanfic

[tricraftbeer]

Recap of the tri-fecta

Over the weekend, I completed my third race in as many weeks. I started the trifecta with the Des Moines Escape Triathlon, an Olympic distance race in the new Escape series. From there, I came home for a few days, then drove with Gloria and my parents up to Santa Cruz for IM 70.3 Santa Cruz. Then home for the week before the Nautica Malibu Triathlon on Saturday, another Olympic distance race. 

Training between each race was necessarily limited a bit, so it actually made for some easy weeks with extra time to spend with Gloria and friends. And now that I’m taking a full week off before a final push to Los Cabos 70.3 in November, I weirdly feel lazy. Triathlon is a strange sport and I’m a strange person.

Escape Des Moines

The trip to Des Moines started to go downhill when I locked myself into the Nursing Room at LAX at 5am to use my breast pump and realized I’d forgotten all the pump parts on the drying rack at home. I wasn’t scheduled to land in Des Moines until 2pm. Oh boy. The discomfort got pretty extreme, but luckily I had a sweatshirt to hide any unsightly leaks. On landing in Des Moines and meeting my Dad, who amazingly flew out to meet me and hang out, we drove directly to Target to purchase some pump parts to I could relieve myself on the parking lot. 

That done, I could think and breath again, so we found our hotel downtown, and the trip continued the downhill slide. I was racing with my brand-new Liv Avow 0 bike, after about 3.5 hours of ride time. The mechanic at my shop, Giant Santa Monica, helped me pack it. But there were some surprises when I tried to assemble, just due to growing pains with a new bike, and my ineptitude. So we used FaceTime on and off for about 2 hours trying to troubleshoot. Once that stress was done, Dad and I then went to find some beer. Downtown Des Moines was surprisingly great and there were lots of places to drink local beer and get some good food. 

The following day we went to the nearby race site and I took the fully functioning bike out for a little spin. And as a bonus, my wonderful friend from college Brooke was driving to NY from South Dakota and managed to meet us at this park in Des Moines to a quick visit with her and her daughter. The trip definitely took a sharp uphill swing at that point, and stayed up! The rest of the day was easy, as we went downtown again to the finish site to register and attend the pro meeting. I met Sarah Haskins, the other lactating mama on the start list, and was able to tell her how helpful her blog was to me throughout pregnancy and during the beginning of my comeback training. Dad and I found some more good food and beer and set the alarms for a somewhat early day. 

Another great surprise was in store as my cousin Melissa, who just took a teaching job at nearby Iowa State, was able to meet us for race day! Who knew Des Moines would host two great reunions?! Race morning was chill, as the lake was an easy trip from downtown. I managed time well, getting in a good warmup jog and swim before the start. 

The swim was in warm water on a chilly morning. No wetsuits! And with a field of good swimmers, I was soon alone looking at feet splashing in the distance. I came out of the water a disappointing 5 mins back from the lead pack of 4 who swam together. But, that did make the rest of the race pretty simple.

It was an individual time trial bike ride on my brand new Viserion the Ice Dragon to try and make up time. I ended up with the fastest bike time (but only by about 20 seconds over Sarah Haskins, Lauren Goss and Heather Lendway)

Then, a chase on foot to see how much time I could make up. It wasn’t enough to move up any places, and I had to be satisfied with 5th place, the final spot for some money.

But, looking at the results, I was happy with my bike time and the power I sustained. I was also happy with my run, the third fastest of the day, after a good effort on the bike. The swim was about what I figured it would be, as my elbow is still healing, and I’ve cut most of my swim workouts short. And also, those athletes are just better swimmers than me anyway!

After happy post-race musings with Dad and Melissa, we got ready to repack my bike (much easier than building it) and head to the airport. I was able to fit in three more local beers before boarding my flight home to Artie and Gloria. It was a great trip!

Santa Cruz 70.3

My parents arrived Wednesday so they were around to help out for my last couple pre-race shake-out workouts. We picked up a minivan Thursday afternoon and packed it up for an early Friday morning departure. We made it up to Santa Cruz in about 7.5 hours. Not bad with a baby! Thank goodness my Mom sat in the back to entertain G the whole way. Our arrival in Santa Cruz was not without drama, as our reservation for a large enough room for three adults and a baby was nowhere to be found. But after some cajoling, almost tears, and a 60 minute walk around the boardwalk, the room was located, cleaned and inhabited. Exhausted from the day, we opted to use the hotel kitchen to heat up some Trader Joe’s meals. The following day I got in a ride on the beginning of the bike course and a jog. I opted to stay out of the water because it’s cold, I’m lazy, and there was a vague warning about blooming red algae. Gloria cried through her nap time, so I put her in the baby carrier so she would fall asleep. While I kept up the constant bouncing and jiggling, she slept on me through registration and the pro meeting. After lunch Gloria and I met up on the beach with a friend who was there for his first ever triathlon. The rest of the day was a sleepy blur and we ended up eating some more fine Trader Joe’s meals for dinner.

Race morning logistics were easy since my Mom found a hotel directly across the street from transition. I was able to use the breast pump in the hotel room before heading down, set up transition, and make it to the water in time for a swim warmup and final snacks. But then, fog rolled in, no one could see, and the start was delayed at least an hour. Kudos to the organizers for figuring out how to move forward with a swim. They condensed the course to 750 meters on one side of the pier and lined the course with paddlers. It was impossible to see beyond the paddler right in front of your face, but they had enough that we could navigate the course without too much difficulty. The shortened course helped my elbow a lot, and also got me out of the water before I got too cold. I was grateful for that as well.  The chilly water and air were causing me some terrible Santa Rosa flashbacks of shivering for 2 hours on the bike. I spent some extra time in transition putting on arm warmers and socks, so I was comfortable the entire bike ride with no shivering. Hurrah. I did feel gypped of the spectacular coastal views though! 

I moved into 8th position off the bike with a solid effort that I was happy with. Right before leaving for the race, Willie at Giant Santa Monica fiddled with my fit a tiny bit, and I was even more comfortable on Viserion. I went a little hard for the first hour, wanting to break free of the athletes I was nearby so I wouldn’t have to deal with jockeying for position with the narrow bike course and passing cars. Once I felt solidly in 8th place, I backed off the effort to a more sustainable one and cruised about a minute behind Ceclia in front of me for the rest of the course. It was fun having zero flats, just constant rollers out and back on PCH. It felt similar to riding on PCH outside of LA, except way less populated and way prettier.

Heading out of transition I heard the announcer say I was in 8th, but that most of the athletes ahead were fairly close together. With the shortened swim we all stayed together more, which made the race really fun. I knew I had a chance to run into a money position, so that was the goal. My legs were feeling good, so I just tried to hit a pace and settle in without surges. The steady pace was enough to get me into 6th place by mile 5, so then I just tried to keep my shit together. I’d lost some gels off the bike and managed to miss handoffs for more at aid stations. Then, I lost a gel running too somehow. I was afraid to take a new kind of gel, since I’ve had stomach troubles in the past doing that. I tried to make up for it with coke at aid stations, but still started feeling woozy and light headed around mile 8-9. It was a battle of wills from then on to not F up and lose my spot. I kept chugging coke and kept trying to keep the pace steady. Happily it worked out and I stumbled through the sandy finish happy with another payday and happy to see my baby and parents!

We finally ate at a restaurant that wasn’t Trader Joe’s post-race and found some race local IPA. And cookies. Those were delicious cookies.

Nautica Malibu Olympic 

Malibu is always on the race schedule, except last year when I was pregnant. I was excited to go back and try to regain my crown this year, even when I found out it would be my third race in three weeks. But at least Des Moines and Malibu were Olympics, so it worked out. I didn’t train that much in the week leading up to Malibu, and still woke up race morning feeling tired. But on a positive note, Artie and Gloria were both coming to the race! We got up there in plenty of time to park, get situated, get in a swim warm-up and be on the start line with a minute to spare. There were no nerves race morning, as I had spent the while morning chatting with friends. I absolutely love this race for that. The race started with pro women, men and a large wave of age group men, so the trip out to the first buoy was rough. After the right turn we all spread out and settled down. I came out of the water close to Madi and with a good swim time (for me), happy the my elbow hadn’t hurt at all. 

Vision felt great again, and I am starting to feel more and more comfortable on my new ride. My legs didn’t have much power, so I rode only a tiny bit above 70.3 watts for the course. That was ok by me, and enough to move me into 1st place with a decent time. I wanted to break 40 minutes on the run, so I didn’t want to overextend, just push hard enough to feel like I did some work.

I got to race with Coach Dusty cheering me on in person for the first time!

Heading onto the run course, I was pleasantly surprised with my legs feeling not-terrible. A run (and Olympic distance PR) were in play. It was fun to be at the front of the field, see the leading elite men run by on the out and back sections, and be able to cheer for friends. The cheers from friends who were spectating were awesome, and made the run feel a lot easier than it was. I didn’t have to dig as deep for motivation during this run as I often do. I knew that upon finishing I’d be starting a full week of zero activity and lots of beers. And, I knew Gloria was there. What more motivation could a mama need?! I squeaked across the line just under my sub-40 goal with a 39:30 run time for the 6.2 mile course. And, I think, a PR for the distance! I’d gone faster in Des Moines, but the course was a little short. Here, in photos, are two really great feelings:

I’m now on day 5 of zero activity and many beers. You might think I’d be going a little bonkers, but I’m vacationing hard. At least as hard as I train. I know that the 6 week block of training that’s incoming will be challenging, so I’m really enjoying this time with family, friends, beers, and sleeps.

Thanks for the continuing support family and friends! And among those I consider family and friends, my sponsors. Thanks to Skechers, Roka, Champion System, Bonk Breaker, RipLaces, ISM, Profile Design, and Triple C, I’m able to pursue this passion. And, huge thanks to Giant Santa Monica for all their work and help getting me aboard Viserion and getting him ready to race in such a short time frame. 

Three more days off until the work starts again!

#skechersperformance #hadafastday #championsystem #roka #findfaster #fuelyourjourney #riplaces #rideliv #ridegiant #giantsantamonica #ISM #ProfileDesign