We gone show you how it go

And a happy Charles M Schulz centennial to you all!

So to close out Halloweekends. This is the least happy part to write about an for not the usual reasons. The thing is, Cedar Point was busier than we expected. Not as busy as Saturday but somehow, since we'd expected Saturday to be packed and Sunday pretty clear, the Sunday seemed worse. Too-long lines for us on too many things. That we spent so much time walking back and forth without doing things was also bad, and we were getting cranky. Some of this is straight-up my fault: I failed to understand that when bunny_hugger mentioned the guy doing a live reading of The Tell-Tale Heart we should make sure to get to a show. Some was our joint fault, deciding to wait to ride Gemini when we saw both trains running (we were hungry!) and getting back when it was only one side running again. Much more of blame is Cedar Point's fault, or just circumstance. That somehow they had only the one place selling fries or cheese-on-a-stick, for example, or nobody selling coffee but the Starbucks up front. Some are my former employer's fault for laying me off: I still haven't gotten new shoes made to actually fit my feet, a thing I postponed when they took away my job. My old loafers are getting so bad I'm starting to think I need to buy the new shoes even though I can only pay for it with credit card debt.

But to return to something unmistakably Cedar Point's fault: outright lies on the estimated-wait-time signs. In our last hours we went for a ride on Maverick that the sign said would be about an hour's wait. That's about normal for the ride so, all right. And the line seemed about that length so we could take it. But the line kept slowing down, getting into longer and longer stretches of just not moving, while the Fast Lane Plus line-cutters got to go ahead. Rumor is that the operator at the gate is not supposed to let the ride be more than 50% line-cutters, but they went ahead and did anyway.

There were some moments of joy in this long, long wait. The queue TVs revealing the existence of a new made-for-Apple-TV Peanuts movie. (And here I learned that bunny_hugger didn't know there was a made-for-Apple Peanuts series.) Or, as we finally reached the stairs up to the launch station, the TVs turning on the Cupid Shuffle (that ``to the right, to the right, to the right, to the right/to the left, to the left, to the left, to the left'' song) and everyone getting into it, singing along and dancing with. And then there was more waiting.

Anyway. We eventually, finally, after double the sign's time estimate, got to the station, and got a ride. And we couldn't do that without another insult. I was clumsy putting my camera in my pocket and notice the strap hanging out of it. I was trying to stuff the strap in my pocket when the operator came around to check my restraints. He asked what it was and I told him, my camera strap, I just need to get it in my pocket. He told me I couldn't ride with it. You're not allowed loose objects on rides, especially not roller coasters, but these cargo pants pockets with velcro tops and I pointed that out. He said that didn't matter, since it was a full camera I had to put it in the bin. Fine, I snapped, let me up and I'll put it away. He asked if I was deciding not to ride.

While bunny_hugger cringed I --- starting to yell and trying to dial it back so as not to get thrown off the ride --- said, Yes, I want to ride, I've been waiting two hours to ride. He said all right, well, if I had my camera to the other ride attendant he'd put it in the bin. I did, and fine, we got a ride that was otherwise nice --- fast, twisty, at sunset, with the lights in the ride tunnel midway through working --- but, boy, was it swallowing hard to think of this as fun.

Postgaming this bunny_hugger and I concluded there was probably a string of misunderstandings in this lousy situation. The strap hanging loose was obviously nothing they could accept and the ride op must have figured he couldn't be confident it wouldn't come loose again, and worse than a loose strap is a loose strap at 70 miles per hour. When the operator asked if I wanted to ride, he probably misunderstood my wanting to be let up. I just wanted the restraints open so I could put the camera away; I didn't expect anyone else to take my camera anywhere. I'm not sure what could have made this go more smoothly, other than having my camera closed up sooner, but trying to tell us something about how since I had a full-size camera (it's a consumer point-and-shoot, albeit a good one) it couldn't ride was obvious nonsense and only agitated me.

Well, that was as low as we needed to get. And we had less than a half-hour left in the park day, and season. Rather than try for ValRavn (the last non-kiddie roller coaster we hadn't been on) I suggested we go to SkyHawk, the giant pendulum swing ride that we always enjoy and that was a walk-on. In hindsight we'd have had a better evening had we skipped the big roller coasters and tried riding flat rides instead. If the sign had been close to the correct queue time, we would have.

To close the night we hurried over to Monster, an octopus-type ride, the sort with free-spinning cars on axles that swing up and down as well as around. And this would be the mood lift we'd needed. The operators were talking about how this was going to be the last ride of the season --- they asked half the people on the ride already if they wanted a second go-round, saving them from having to do restraint checks for that half of the ride --- and talking about the hour and a half of putting the ride to bed they'd have to do. (bunny_hugger joked that it was unfair the half of the riders before us got a re-ride but we didn't, and the operator gave us a sincere answer why they weren't.) Now here in this still-warm evening we could spin around, leaping up and down, not quite spinning as much as we'd hoped, but having a really good time.

And that's how our night ended, with the last ride on Monster for the season, and getting fist-bumps from one of the operators for that accomplishment. We wished them a good off-season and they did the same for us and our poor sore feet could look ahead to relief, and the drive home was nothing bad along the way besides the Speedway in Maumee not having the pepperjack cheese tornados on the roller grill. We went get home not long after midnight, in reasonable time for bunny_hugger to get to bed, and to work the next too-early morning.

How about miscellaneous pictures from October, since we're through the miscellaneous September stuff? Thought you would like that.

The Sisters-City celebration getting organized. There were gatherings in all the towns and was (as you'd expect) dominated by talking to the sister cities in France and Spain.

Sister-city photograph contest winners lining up, some holding up their certificates.

And then here's stuff from the evening five-kilometer race we walked in Leslie, last month. The Halloween-themed one a couple weeks early. That's the tent for getting your snacks after the thing ends.

This is bizarre but this is somehow one of only two pictures I have showing costumes which ... I don't know how this happened. Or failed to happen, I suppose, because it's not like nobody was taking pictures of people dressed as Minions or whatnot.

Here's the other picture of people in costume that I got. The Start/Finish lines marked where the sensors were to pick up your microchip and give your recorded time.

And here's bunny_hugger, after the race, showing off her medal as we got done for the night.

Trivia: Around 1860 Belgium, with a population of about 4.7 million, had 60,000 voters. Source: The Age of Capital, 1848 - 1875, Eric Hobsbawm.

Currently Reading: Our Space Environment: Opportunities, Stakes, and Dangers, Editors Claude Nicollier, Volker Gass.