Magic Mountain in L.A.

The Magic Mountain photopost First, I think “majic” looks more magical than plain old “magic.” Second, These were all taken by Pastor Allen, since I let him borrow my camera. We left at 9:00pm from Payson and arrive in LA at the park at about 8:00am Saturday morning. I awoke about every 30 minutes on the whole bus ride over just to shift positions and make sure the kinks were evenly distributed. I did a pretty good job. I felt like a bad skeleton day by morning. At least the charter bus was clean. We were the first to ever ride it. The Magic Mountain people finally let us in at 10:00. There were a lot of rollercoasters there. Which makes sense since that’s the point of the place. I rode the white one you can see in this picture. The Revolution was (and is) the world’s first looping rollercoaster with tubular steel construction. So it was historical (1976), and felt rather bicentennial too. One whole carefully planned and prepared loop, as you can see. Fun ride. The orange Tatsu behind it is insane, so I didn’t ride it. Especially in light of the 2.5 hour wait. Here I am waiting in line for the Gold Rusher with (left to right) Sarah, Peter, and Chris. They were great. They had all graduated highschool in the last year so they were more mature and I could hold a normal conversation with them without reminding myself of Mr. Schrader when he’s forced to ‘discuss’ things. I also took the Ninja with them. That was the best ride I went on: incredible. No loops, but it took turns seriously - and fast. Many G’s. We also toured a haunted house with them. It was hilarious. There was this one area that was this maze of mirrors that have blinking lights so you saw yourself moving in pitiful animation. Haha. Here we are at the Gold Rusher. This is Katie (L) and Nneka (R - AZ). I particularly wanted to show you Nneka, the girl from the coffeeshop who introduced me to Joe and convinced us to go on the trip. Apparently they visited one of the candy shops. Sitting, waiting, hoping for lunch. Left to right: Chelsea, Mrs. Katie’s Mom (from above), Faas, Amber (who goes to the Monday night Truth Project study also), and Taylor’s Right Shoulder (a funny kid who could get annoying). Chelsea was probably the most normal (meaning mature) student on the trip (not counting the above mentioned trio of grads). Her parents were chaperons also, and great folks. Chelsea was good to have around, like a shot-‘o-normal in the midst of some of the highschool crazy (out of my comfort zone). Here I am doing bumper cars with Eric. This kids was really likeable and had a deep desire to spend a lot of money fast. He had this habit of wondering off in search of ways to discard cash. He needs love and attention, I tried to give him some. It was a fun trip. Different than I’m used to. What’s considered normal by public schooled kids is quite abnormal for me. Some of it was shocking, particularly the actions of some of the other youth groups (ours if good because we have an awesome leader). Pastor Allen is great. I enjoyed hanging out with him a ton last weekend. And he sort of reminds me of Mr. Schrader. It’s a good thing. I hope you like the pictures. I’m actually in a few this time since I didn’t have to take them! =   =   =   =   =   =   = I now own a purple shirt. I thought it was navy blue. But it’s not. Apparently the sleeves are navy, but the torso is purple. I thought it was a single color. Color blindness strikes again. At least it’s only a long sleeve t-shirt that I bought to wear under other stuff during these cold winter months. Or maybe Faas is just saying it’s purple… =   =   =   =   =   =   = Faas brought a really flimsy can-opener with him when he came to Payson. I mean, it was junk. It was all I could do to get my spaghetti-O’s open. So I did what every concerned citizen would do - I complained. Faas rightfully accused me of ungratefulness. But that didn’t fix the can-opener. Then Faas tried to open his tuna fish. He couldn’t. So I had to operate the can-opener for him. Today I controlled the maiden voyage of our new, state-of-the-art can-opener. It was the most expensive can-opener at Wal*Mart. It was \$6. It was worth it. Now the flimsy one is for emergencies* only. Ryan * I have no idea how that asterisk got there. Originally posted at classicalRyan.xanga.com