West Coasters

It would be a colossal stretch to call myself a thrill seeker, but truth be told I do love it when I get the rare opportunity to experience a physical event out of my normal comfort zone. I'm pretty sure this would explain why I have always loved riding roller coasters.

In fact, for years I have dreamed of planning a vacation centered solely around traveling to different amusement parks, where I would ride the biggest, fastest, and most physically thrilling coasters the country had to offer. Forget lying on a beach for a week with a cold drink in my hand (however, this would come in an extremely close second) to me, this would be the ultimate way to spend a couple of weeks off from work.

The problem is that there has been one fairly substantial obstacle to my fulfilling this dream vacation.

Mrs. LIAYF.

My lovely wife, as fun loving as she is, has a slight issue with motion sickness. Ok, truth be told it's not at all slight and it precludes her from joining me on all but the mildest of these rides meant to bring thrills to the masses. How bad is it? I remember one occasion shortly after we were dating where we rode a super twister at a Kentucky amusement park we were visiting. Perhaps to impress me, girlfriend LIAYF agreed to ride with me on this super coaster, which took the riders on several 360 degree loops before depositing us suddenly back where we had started.

I yelled at the top of my lungs with excitement the whole ride, cherishing every twist and turn that it offered. Then, a couple of minutes later upon exiting I, with a huge smile on my face, turned to see her reaction. Nothing short of a ghostly apparition stared back at me! I instinctively reached to put a hand on her shoulder to see how she was doing, and was greeted with a firm "DON'T TOUCH ME!" as she made her way to the nearest bench for the next several minutes.

Needless to say, that was the end of my dream of a joint Mega Coaster vacation with my lovely, soon to be bride. Since then, I had almost completely given up the notion of such a fun-filled getaway. That was until Monday. On Monday Mrs. LIAYF, Lukas, and I visited a local kid centered farm and amusement park just outside Seattle.

And even though it was only a coaster geared towards the under 10 set, it was a super coaster to Lukas, and it was there that my dream of someday conquering the countries biggest coasters was given brand new life.