It's True: America IS Great

So for Cliff's birthday, I got us a bus-and-park-admission package to Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey. I admitted right away that this was partially because I had the ulterior motive of then getting to spend the day with him riding roller coasters. He didn't seem to mind much though.

The New Jersey transit dude recommended that we get to the Port Authority Bus Terminal by 7 am to ensure a spot on the 9:30 bus. I am saying this to shamelessly impress those who know how much I dislike mornings. I actually left my apartment voluntarily around 6:15 in the morning. Somehow it feels so, so much different to wake up and do something fun versus to do something that you have to. And then at the bus station I got a delicious muffin and bought The Week and relished the fact that now, not being in school, I actually have time to read for pleasure. (Cliff had me write him a list of all the books I've read in the past year, and I am proud to say that it worked out to about 42 or something, so almost a book a week. Not bad!)

The bus actually left about half an hour early, so we got to the park before it was even open. Cliff was excited to recognize Bob Katz, a famous audio recording engineer. (I readily admit to borrowing the descriptor "audio recording engineer" from Wikipedia, where I read about him after I got home.)

I realized that I probably hadn't been to a theme park not-with-children-to-supervise in probably close to 10 years. This did not, however, keep us from riding the carousel.



The harried mother in front of us in line pointed us out to her carousel-objecting daughter to say, "See? It's not a baby ride! These people don't even have a kid with them, and they're just going because they like the ride!" We were friendly and agreed that yes, we think carousels are awesome. So I do feel like we served some practical purpose to society and didn't just get in the way of the actual children.

Because we got to the park so early, we were able to ride a bunch of roller coasters with almost no line, including Superman, Nitro, The Dark Knight, Bizarro, and Batman. We also went to go see dolphin show which made me revert back to childhood ambitions to become a dolphin trainer/princess/cowgirl/movie star, and we saw one of the supposedly spooky Halloween shows which was tacky but had flame-throwers as pre-show entertainment. When the park got dark, park employees dressed like ghouls came out to try to scare people for Fright Fest. I really wanted to see Cliff get caught hilariously off-guard, but it didn't happen. We did however observe some obnoxious teenagers get their comeuppance, and an awesome dad jump out at his kids and basically scare the pants off them.

The weather was perfect and I found $20 on the ground (actually), which paid for lunch at Panda Express, so all in all an exceptional day.

It amuses me how prominently and accidentally Panda Express is featured in this photo, so it seems appropriate that I post it here:




Also we got to ride over the park in one of those sky tram things, which is where this photo was taken:

I am mentioning things about the bus to emphasize that it is a super easy day trip to make from New York, except for getting up early. Also, the great thing about riding the bus is that you can sleep on the way home! Sleeping while driving, on the other hand, is heartily discouraged by the Surgeon General.

We had such an awesome time that we are thinking about getting season tickets next year, which are surprisingly inexpensive, especially if you get a group rate for at least 4 people. I overheard the middle-aged man behind us on the bus on the way there that he had been there 11 times already this year!

BYE DUDES

PS If you were wondering, the most awesome ride in my opinion was the Superman ride, because it puts you in this weird position where you sorta really do feel like Superman. So in other words, I fulfilled my goal in life.