And I would walk 500 more

Sunday at Halloweekends started with our getting up early, to meet the checkout time. It was harder than I expected as Top Thrill Dragster's silence left the park unusually quiet in the mornings. We got everything organized and out just a little past check-out time, and spent enough time in the lobby to confirm at least one of the skeletal carousel horses on display would quiver a bit, occasionally. We hadn't seen them moving earlier times in the lobby and we wondered if that bit of theming had broken or not been turned on. Also we discovered they had park maps because I saw someone walking out with one and we snagged a bunch. The clerk also suggested we could take a picture of the park map just inside the park, which would be a fine idea.

Getting into the park had a bit of a hiccough; bunny_hugger had a blister forming and we had to go back to my car for bandaging. I'd moved the car close to the Magnum gate so as to save our poor sore feet at the end of the day, and this helped us for this quick chore. And for the end of the night too. But our feet would suffer mightily during the day, nevertheless.

This because a distressing amount of the day amounted to walking back and forth. We started from the back of the park, but --- following advice a ride op on Magnum(?) had given, that sounded like building some in-joke --- thought of getting breakfast/lunch at the French Quarter, way up at the front of the park. Which was packed and which did not have coffee, a killer for bunny_hugger's spirits. So with not much to drink or anything to eat without an unreasonable wait we went back up to the grease trucks, where half the trucks had vanished since the day before and half the remainder hadn't opened yet. This changed while we debated what to do.

Anyway we made a really, spectacularly, inefficient way around the park, criss-crossing the whole length. Some of this was for good reasons. We wanted to stop in the petting zoo, for example. The turkey was hiding away, eating, so there wasn't any real hope of talking him into allowing some head-pets. We walked back to Gemini, in the back of the park, hoping to get a ride and discovered that, even though both red and blue trains were running earlier, when we entered the park, now? Only the red train was running. So I got to claim being technically right that the roller coaster would open again on Sunday, but the important thing of racing against another train was out and, so far as we ever saw, never reappeared. bunny_hugger cursed our once again having put off something for later, although the only chance we had to ride it was when we were just in the park and looking for anything to eat. (Well, we could have got fries or cheese-on-a-stick, right nearby Gemini, but there wouldn't have been a hope of getting coffee or anything hot then.)

And even more walking. Somehow we never thought to use any of the back-and-forth wandering as the daily half-hour walk bunny_hugger never misses and that I never mean to miss so much as I do. So that would be another front-to-back hike of ours. At one point we thought we might save our poor feet some and take the train from the back of the park to the front. But we just missed the departing train, and it turned out that only one train was running the full loop, so it was a good half-hour lost waiting for the return. We might have used that time to something more fun, even if we'd lost the chance to take a load off our feet.

And now, I close out pictures from our September visit to Cedar Point.

In the GateKeeper gift shop is this robot, left over from Disaster Transport. The robot, which had not always worked when it was theming for the ride replaced by GateKeeper, has been steadily working in its new gift shop home.

The dot-matrix eyes aren't always turned on.

Early evening sky, with the Giant Wheel illuminated and MaxAir nice and birght up front. You can see the silhouette of the Boardwalk restaurant under construction.

Outside the park they've moved the Peanuts topiary from along the Causeway drive to sitting right out front. Somehow this is the first time I've really photographed them, and it's not the right lighting for that. I should get them in the afternoon instead.

Here's a quick image from the little-known Peanuts special So That's Why You Shouldn't Stare At The Gorgon, Charlie Brown.

And from my car a look back at Cedar Point, not yet closed for the night --- we had to get home for midnight, or as close as possible --- but illuminated brilliantly against the dark sky.

Trivia: Benjamin Franklin's father Josiah died in January 1745, at the age of 87. Benjamin did not hear about the death until it was far too late to attend the funeral; but, the death is unmentioned in his surviving correspondence. Source: The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin, H W Brands. (The most we have, apparently, is a note to his sister about his love for her care of their father in his illness.)

Currently Reading: Circling The Globe: Stories of Meridians, Parallels, and the International Date Line, Avraham Ariel, Nora Ariel Berger. OK, so, when you start a paragraph like this:

In the not-too-distant future, scholars and laymen alike will be amazed and amused at the anxiety that clutched the world, mainly the enlightened Western countries, toward the end of the twentieth century. They will laugh at the ``Y2K bug'' --- the greatest con job successfully pulled since Laban conned Jacob into marrying the hated Leah (Genesis 29). It is only natural that that unprecedented exercise in intimidation and marketing was followed by another greedy deception that brought us the millennium festivities 366 days earlier than they ought to have taken place. One can only reflect with astonishment on how the whole world fell --- hook, line, an sinker --- for Y2K and the early millennium.

... you do realize, you sound like the nutter here, and it fatally wounds the argument you're trying to make about the International Date Line not having any actual existence in international law, right? Especially when you go on to be snide at Kiribati for the clearly political choice to move itself to the other side of the dateline in advance of the year 2000? And I don't know the story of Laban but I also know the only people I ever see talking about it encourage the UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT Information, so ...

Also, hey, free tip for anyone talking about how there was no Year Zero? You know, there was also no Year One, AD. It's all completely proleptic through to what we call the 6th century and wasn't strongly established for ages after that. So it's no fault or failing of the Julian (or Gregorian) calendar that it hasn't got a Year 0 on it.