Some news out of Cedar Point. Top Thrill Dragster is scheduled to spend the year closed. Ohio's Department of Agriculture, which inspects amusement park rides (don't snicker; this is a common thing in states because so many amusement rides operate adjacent to county and state fairs), finished its investigation of the ride accident that injured someone in line last August. (A piece fell off a coaster train and hit a woman.) The investigation didn't find evidence to blame the park's maintenance. But there's no word on what Cedar Point is going to do with the ride.
Tearing it down would make a certain sense: the ride has always been high-maintenance. It's extremely vulnerable to the weather. We joke about the rare times we see it running during Halloweekends, Cedar Point's busiest time. On the other hand, it's an extremely popular ride even as it nears 20 years of age; the only time we can even consider riding it is on early-admission, and that if we hurry right there. It's the park's tallest ride, and tallest roller coaster, and it draws focus from everywhere. Putting some cover over the ride queue would prevent a repeat of this accident. And maybe make the queue more pleasant, during the most direct summer sun.
So I don't know what to expect there. I suspect if I were in charge I'd be trying to build a queue shelter, but I wouldn't expect that to take the whole year. But Cedar Point, knowing far more about the ride's status than I would, may have a harder time deciding what to do with it.
A couple more pictures here as we wend our way back down the Turner-Dodge House, getting ready to leave.
I couldn't resist the lighting challenge here, and it defeated me. But there's this little cubby-hole here, underneath the stairs. Maybe it's for a dumbwaiter. Maybe it's just a cubby-hole where you could sit and strap on your boot before heading out? Not positive.
Back in the living room. The book here is listed as Abby Turner's Music Book; she married Frank Dodge in November 1855.
Peeking out at the front porch and the long sidewalk to the street.
And under the category of ``do as I say, not as I do'' we have this sign.
The little tree and the coffee and tea service in the dining room. Also some of their many plates set up on that railing in a way that you normally only see in old cartoons where a mouse pushes them off so the cat has to catch every one of them and that makes me nervous to look at too directly.
Oh yeah, the house also had those old-style push-button switches for the lights, like you normally see only in old cartoons where people can't walk down the stairs if someone switches the light off.
Trivia: The Soviet Union and East German teams dominated the 1988 Winter Olympics. Neither nation existed for the 1992 Albertville and Savoie Games. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle. (Though the ``Unified Team'' represented athletes from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, wearing Yugoslav-manufactured Soviet Union team uniforms ordered before the dissolution, with arm patches representing the actual countries.)
Currently Reading: Heavenly Intrigue: Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, and the Murder Behind One of History's Greatest Scientific Discoveries, Joshua Gilder, Anne-Lee Gilder.