You Know What I Love About Water Parks?

I love the rides, but water parks aren’t ALL about the rides for me. I love the easy access to junk food, because who doesn’t love instant access to dippin’ dots, or waffle cones oozing with frozen deliciousness. But it’s not just the ice cream either, and I can’t believe I just wrote that. I love ice cream. A lot.

It’s the people watching. I love people watching. And what’s great about going to a water park on a sunny day is that I can check out people all day long and nobody knows it because I am wearing sunglasses. Checking people out at an indoor water park is a lot harder. Nobody wears sunglasses at an indoor water park; I have to take care to keep my ogling subtle.

All day long at a water park I am surrounded by half naked people, and I am constantly fascinated at how each person I see has a unique shape. You could put two women in an identical bikini in the exact same size, and it will look different on each one. So, yes, I do stare at people at the water park. And it probably makes me look weird and pervy. But really, I am admiring the art of the human body and not only the sexual aspects of it.

Speaking of art, another thing I get to see at water parks on most of the half naked bodies are tattoos. Lots and lots of tattoos. Every time I go to a water park I am constantly amazed at what people were willing to permanently etch onto their skin.

At Schlitterbahn in San Antonio I saw a man with the Ford logo tattooed onto his back. This dude liked his truck so much he got the swirly Ford cursive name on the blue oval tattooed across is back. There was no registration or trade mark on it, so I wonder if the company can sue him now? I didn’t see anyone with a Toyota or Honda logo on their person, and really wish I had so I could see Toyota tatt man and Ford tatt man duke it out.

At Six Flags in New England I saw a man with the entire cast of the Simpsons tattooed on the small of his back. Dude liked the cartoon, so he got it inked in. Every single character too.

At Wet N Wild I saw a man with a Care Bear on his shoulder. Ooooh, manly!

At Kalahari I saw a man whose arms were covered in various tattoos. On his forearm he had a bottle of booze next to a naked woman. Beneath them a ribbon swirled, on which it said “Stewed and Screwed.” Classy! Dude will never regret that one, I’m sure.

Todd and I struck up a conversation with a man in a hot tub at a ski resort once. He had some Asian characters tattooed on his forearm. Todd asked the guy what the characters meant, and the guy rattled off a bunch of things like “Strength, wisdom, integrity… blah blah blah…”

“So, how do you know it doesn’t say ‘American asshole’ on it, or something?” I asked, not being able to contain my inner smartass. Who am I kidding? There is nothing inner about my smart ass. It’s out there in front, snickering at just about everything I see. But I am always suspicious of things written in languages I don’t know how to read. (When we bought Sabine, her name was Tara Vana. Supposedly that means “Crazy Man” in Tahitian. But I know it actually meant “Loser American Dickweed.” That is the only thing that “Tara Vana” could possibly mean.)

The man chuckled and said “Well, I looked it up on the Internet before I got them done.”

Todd and I looked at each other, and I could tell we were both thinking the exact same thing, my inner smartass shut her trap before saying,“Yeah, because everything on the Internet is true, right?”

Kalahari

In the last few years we’ve come to consider ourselves water park aficionados. We tacked on a week to our honeymoon so that we could go to San Antonio, TX to visit Schlitterbahn—the nation’s largest outdoor water park. (Then we visited Schlitterbahn’s sister park on South Padre Island, TX too.) We’ve been to Wet n Wild, Six Flags New England’s water park, Six Flags Atlanta’s water park, Aquatica, Discovery Cove, Blizzard Beach, Six Flags Great Escape Lodge in Lake George, NY, and a few more I can’t recall at the moment. Before I knew Todd, I’d been to Action Park in New Jersey as well.

At Christmas Todd surprised me with a trip to Kalahari, located in the booming metropolis of Sandusky, Ohio.  Kalahari is the largest indoor water park in the nation.  It has a dozen or so rides, one of which is a water roller coaster that was clearly designed to mimic Schlitterbahn’s Master Blaster. There were two funnel rides, one was a tube ride, the other was a slide that ended in a funnel. There were rides on which we had to ride a mat, and there were others that we just rode on our butt. The park also included a giant wave pool beach under a specially designed ceiling that allows UV rays to penetrate so that park visitors can get a suntan while playing in the waves.

The only thing I didn’t like about this park was that the rides were all in complete darkness. The tubes were constructed of opaque fiberglass that didn’t allow light to penetrate. As a result we did not have a sense of where we were going as we slid down the tube. I’ve come to appreciate this variety at other parks, when only a few of the slides are in complete darkness. The innate thrill of not knowing which way the tube will bend, and whether I will be dropped down a steep incline at any given second, is an exciting change from sliding down the tube in the sunlight.

However, every single ride in complete darkness creates an unsettled queasy feeling, especially when riding backward. Toward the end of the first day I started feeling motion sick because my eyes could not detect motion in the dark, and conflicted with my body which clearly detected motion. I do not get motion sick. I am the kind of girl who can ride 7 different roller coasters in under 3 hours and still eat a funnel cake at the half way point. I am the kind of girl who remains at the helm, beer in hand, in 8-10 feet waves hollering at the heavens “Is this all you’ve got??” while my husband “feeds the fish” off the back of the boat. He gets motion sick. I do not. Yet, over the weekend I got my quease on while riding in complete darkness at Kalahari.

But there were other things going on a Kalahari that took the edge off the queasiness.  We headed over to the spa and took in a deep tissue couples massage.  We took advantage of the opportunity to play with a 9 week old Bengal tiger cub.  Twice.  We rubbed her belly while she tried out her baby tiger roar on us; the only response she received was 'Awwwwwww!'  We went to the hot tub bar, bellied up and received our fancy tropical drinks while soaking in a hot tub.  Then we carried the drinks outside--and that was the only time we'd been outdoors for the entire weekend.
But other than the complete darkness, I would totally do Kalahari again—maybe next winter to beat the February cabin fever.

It’s Like the Last Day of School

Tonight we are getting on a plane bound for Atlanta. Todd’s birthday is in a few weeks and as a surprise I bought us a dive excursion in the Georgia Aquarium. On Monday we’ll dive in an aquarium full of whale sharks. Whale sharks! Our suitcases are packed and they’re in the car, the dogs are also in the car waiting to go to kennel at lunch time.

I can’t concentrate on anything except the whale sharks that I’ll meet on Monday. I also cannot shake the feeling that I’ve forgotten something of critical importance at home. That feeling will pass once I figure out which travel site Todd used to book the tickets so I can print out the itinerary. At the moment I not only have no idea which airline we’re flying on, but I also have no idea when the plane leaves. Our departure time is set for, roughly, some time after work tonight.

:::

Last night, while distractedly lobbing random articles of clothing into the suitcase, I had the honor of participating in Mr. Taoist Biker’s blog radio show. We talked about our family’s Christmas tradition. He talked about the Southern Christmas, and I talked about what I like to call “A Very Polish Christmas.” It was a lot of fun, and I’d like to thank my blog pal Taoist Biker, a.k.a. Bitch Taoista, for a good time last night.

In the mean time, I watch the clock and try to convince myself that it hasn’t just run backward.

I Totally Feel like a Navy Seal

Saturday Todd and I went for a dive off of Gould Island in the middle of Narragansett Bay. Gould Island was a hot spot for torpedo development and testing before and during World War II. Todd and I have recently developed a bit of an obsession with the island, and often speculate about the goings on at Gould Island as we sail by it on the way to Newport and other ports in the southern part of the Bay.

On the northern half of this small island there is a pier and a building from which the Navy used to fire and observe the torpedoes while testing them. They put buoys in the water to mark off the torpedo testing range, though I don’t know that I’ve seen them test anything there recently. (But then, most of my sailing is done on the weekends and at night, when torpedo testing is less likely to occur.) The island has a bit of an eerie feeling to it. Kind of like it’s been abandoned, but you’re not sure if it’s actually been abandoned. Has it been abandoned, or does it just appear to have been abandoned? There are still a few other buildings on the island, along with a large smoke stack. The buildings are vacant now, as far as we know. However the building at the firing pier on the north tip of the island has a security light on 24x7 (Even in the daytime. Waste of energy and tax dollars, anyone?)

When we anchored the dinghy by the firing building, and we could hear a loud hum coming from the building. I am assuming the loud hum is an HVAC unit in the building. The loud hum has launched a fantasy about how the inside of the dilapidated building is really super high-tech, with the most sophisticated computers and surveillance equipment the world has to offer. Why else would the US Navy need to run an HVAC unit on a dilapidated building on a seemingly abandoned island in the middle of Narragansett Bay just a short boat ride away from the Naval Underwater War College in Newport? I am reminded of that scene in the movie “Spies Like Us” where the missile defense station is located in a seemingly abandoned drive in movie theatre. I know that this totally exists on Gould Island. (And if it doesn’t, then I’ll just fantasize about crazy espionage things going on at Gould Island, and it’ll be fun.)

We did the dive, and I actually had a bad gear dive. I couldn’t stay down for some reason, my mask wouldn’t seal. Once I got over my gear hiccups, I actually had a good time. The viz was crap, there weren’t any fish at all. But whatever, I don’t care what I see, so long as I am underwater.

We ended our dive and got back into the boat. We decided that we’d check out the Island while we were there. I had visions of looking in windows of the abandoned buildings on the south side, and discovering some of the crazy espionage-y things that surely are going on there.

We didn’t have any clothes on us, just our wetsuits. We beached the dinghy and hopped out onto the shore, with a loud “squish” of the water trapped in my wetsuit boots.

“It’s like we’re Navy seals! Check us out! We’re infiltrating an island by sea!” Todd exclaimed, laughing.

“Yeah, but Navy seals don’t make this slurpy sound when they walk around in wetsuits,” I laughed.

We walked up from the beach and onto a concrete pad. There was a ramp leading into the water from the concrete pad. Images of helicopters once landing there filled my head. Secret helicopters, containing people carrying briefcases handcuffed to their wrists. Images of people exchanging code words necessary for passage filled my mind, and knowing nods, glances, and secret handshakes of officers departing the choppers. Now there are roughly 463605497 seagulls that have made the island home. Though I suspect even the gulls were squawking in secret code “The squawk squawks at midnight…” or something like that. They were flying around us overhead, circling and circling—making me feel like I was inside some crazy seagull tornado.

“I wonder if the gulls are waiting for us to die here, so they can peck at our carcasses,” I said as I looked up at the gulls, circling like vultures over prey in the desert. We walked onto a path that led into thick bush. Then we heard what sounded like a motorcycle.

“WOW, did they send someone over here on a 4-wheeler to make us leave?” Todd asked. We walked back out to the concrete pad, to see if there was anyone there. Of course there was nobody there; we were on an abandoned island, for crying out loud. The noise was coming from a jet ski that was traveling by the island.

We went back onto the trail, and crawled under the brush to continue on the trail. There were briars, thorns, etc. The brush was way too thick to get to the buildings on the island, which led us to wonder if the briars were actually planted there to keep intruders out of the buildings. You know, to keep the secret goings-on there a secret. We declared the brush impassable, and made our way back to the dinghy on the beach.

I read up on the island later on and discovered that the southern half of the island, where we were, is actually a bird sanctuary, and has nothing to do with the Navy. So, there’s a nice little buzz kill for my little Gould Island fantasy. However what is up with that torpedo firing building on the north tip of the island? What’s up with the loud hum coming from the building, and the always-on security lights? In that building the fantasy lives on.

This is what Gould Island looked like back then. The concrete pad we walked on was actually for seaplanes that were launched from the island. The buildings just behind and to the left of the hangar still stand, the hangar does not exist anymore. The brush is now so thick and it began at the backside of the foundation of the hangar. We could not get through the bush to the buildings that are still there. It is not a far distance to walk, if the brush was not there, it would probably have taken only a few minutes to walk from the hangar to the buildings on the left. The building on the left with the smoke stack is entirely unaccessible from the beach, as it is surrounded by thick brush as well. The buildings are all slightly visible through the trees and prickers. I do not know if the buildings on the right were there or not.

The planes dropped the torpedos in the torpedo testing range at the time. In its heyday, 65,000 torpedo firings have been conducted on this island. In the month of December 1944 alone, some 2,575 torpedos were fired from the island.*

*Source "A Gould Island Chronology" Captain Frank Snyder