Monday started as late as we could, because for a day of driving home we aren't going to get started later than we must. In this case ``must'' was driven by the need to pick up Columbo from 
bunny_hugger's parents at a reasonable hour and getting home so she could get to bed, for teaching the next day. But it was still our usual leaving-the-hotel-at-checkout-time thing.
If there's a highway rest stop on the way back from Conneaut Lake that has pinball in it we're not aware of the place. We did stop in Cedar Point as a fantastically sensible halfway point. It was a healthily busy Labor Day crowd. The virtual reality Iron Dragon, I think, wasn't running anymore. In any case we wouldn't have time to ride it; we did have that loose but unignorable time constraint. We did ride Cedar Downs, the big racing carousel (the horses move forward and back relative the others in their row) and maybe went to Blue Streak. We typically do, anyway.
Our big goal was getting something to eat, and with the dozens of grease trucks added to the park we went to the same Korean-noodles truck we'd eaten at on Friday. Got the same tofu dish, only spicier this time around. We did idly wonder if the guy working there pondered this pair who he saw exactly twice, three days apart, but not seriously.
And that was our Labor Day trip, the next-to-last of our amusement park expeditions for the year.
Trivia: When a crack was discovered in Big Ben a century and a quarter ago, its clapper was replaced with a smaller one in order to allow it to keep ringing the quarter-hours. The replacement clapper strikes a less vulnerable spot. Source: To Engineer Is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design, Henry Petroski.
Currently Reading: Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason, Russell Shorto.
PS: Reading the Comics, January 6, 2018: Terms Edition, wrapping up last week's comics.
PPS: Six Flags over Texas, some more.
And the most dangerous job in the park: wearing the mascot costumes while it's more than 80 degrees out.
J J Abrams shot of Pandemonium, a spinning coaster that was our first ride after the big milestone one.
So ... we can wait, then? The Joker free-spin coaster about two months away from being ready to open. That's the danger of getting to the park so early in the year, I guess.