Thrill jockey

by RAF KATIGBAK

Right now I am shitting bricks. Tomorrow morning I will be travelling a total of 689 metres at 90 kilometres/hour suspended from twisted metal railings spaced only four feet apart. During the 136-second experience, I will reach a height of 109 feet and I will flip upside down a total of five times—I will also most likely soil myself in the process. I’m not sure why I accepted an invitation to try out the new Ednör ride at La Ronde, but I did, and now I have that strange mix of fear and excitement in my stomach, not unlike the time I inexplicably arrived at airport security with a raging boner.

I’m pretty sure I’m going to die. Not because I think the wheels will snap off the train and send the cart full of media types hurtling into Lac des Dauphins. After all, this thing is supported by over 169 concrete foundations using over 3,500 cubic metres of concrete, so it’s not going anywhere (mind you, the prospect of being trapped next to 40 screaming journalists is perhaps even more frightening than the ride itself). No, I think I’ll just have a heart attack, plain and simple.

Not so when I was a kid. In fact, I LOVED roller-coasters. I would beg my family to take me to La Ronde and was obsessed with trying out as many different rides as I was allowed on. As I got older (and taller), my hunger grew and only the bigger and crazier rides would satisfy me. When the Boomerang first came to La Ronde, I was so amped that I was happy to do the insane line-up just to try it out. Eventually something stopped the obsession: I discovered girls. I soon found out that I didn’t need to wait an hour and a half in line to be spun around and dizzied with confusion while constantly throwing up, I just had to talk to Lisa, my elementary school crush.

Even though I was a bit of a roller-coaster junky back then, and would reliably hork after every ride only to happily line up again for another round, I wouldn’t be able to compete with the thrill-ride nerds that exist now. Take, for example, sites like coasterbuzz.com, where enthusiasts can post everything from personal reviews of rides to endless debates about jargony roller-coaster minutiae like “the best riding positions for an SLC or a B&M Invert,” to the personal horror stories of obese enthusiasts doing “the walk of shame” because the seatbelts wouldn’t fit. I recently met a girl, C., who was a part of an international roller-coaster club. Aside from getting newsletters and quarterly magazines, members would travel all over the world for get-togethers that granted special access to theme parks on off days. The group would have the run of the place and just go from one ride to the other all day, unfettered by the non-coaster-loving rabble. An idea that might have sounded appealing to me as a child, but right now sounds like a living hell.

It’s been over a decade and a half since I set foot in La Ronde. And I imagine things have changed. Forget the classic rides I knew and loved that have since been retired (RIP the Rotor—a spinning drum that used centrifugal force to pin riders to the wall, much like a giant washing machine on spin cycle except you were guaranteed to yak your guts out after using it), replaced now with fancy new multimedia attractions like Terminator X (based on the sci-fi film and not on the Public Enemy DJ, although, how awesome would that be?!). Things have advanced such that there is now a system called a “flash pass” that holds your place in line and alerts you as to when your time to ride is coming up, allowing you to wander to other attractions and whatnot.

But some things will never change: the dizzying wonderment of the movement, the sounds and colours, the childlike giddiness of deciding which attraction to see first, the smell of beaver tails wafting through the park, the tense anticipation of waiting in line knowing that, for a few minutes, you will be strapped into a hunk of metal and wheels, going upside down faster than a human being should ever be allowed to. And finally, at the end of the day, that exhausted, satisfied feeling, when you know you have survived some crazy shit and all you had to do was hold on tight and scream your guts out.

Tune in next week to see if Ednör was worth having crazy anxiety dreams and waking up screaming every night.