It’s difficult for me to express exactly what happened to me today in words.
I went to Magic Mountain with some friends. This isn’t a particularly groundbreaking event in itself. It’s a theme park. That’s the sort of things friends do, is go to theme parks together. In particular we went to celebrate Ben Sweaney’s birthday. 27 years old. He drove down from Phoenix, AZ last night, crashed on my couch, and we drove to the park together this morning.
One of the observations I’d made during the day was that while California does have some rather impressive mountains in it, there’s a lot of flat land – particularly around Magic Mountain. Having been to a theme park in England relatively recently, where the rollercoasters were surrounded by waterfalls and rockfaces and the like, riding the rollercoasters at Magic Mountain seemed a very different experience. Imagine a flat, desolate desert. Now imagine a rollercoaster in the middle of it.
This didn’t really bother me much during the day – I overcaqme my fear of rollercoasters at this very park some ten years ago. But something very strange happened on the last ride we went on.
In the ten years since I last went to the park, various new rides have popped up. Amongst them is Tatsu, a dragon-themed rollercoaster that, like Air at Alton Towers in England, rotates the seats 90 degrees before the ride begins, meaning that you face downwards as it takes off.
Unlike some of the other roller coasters I went on that day, I jumped onto Tatsu with ease and excitement. I’ve done this before, I reasoned. This is a doddle. But as the ride began its ascent, my tune began to change.
The thing about Magic Mountain is that it’s not just a fanciful name. Despite the vast amount of flat space surrounding the park, much of it is located at the foot of an actual mountain, meaning that some roller coasters begin at a high point and overlook large areas of the park. As we climbed up the ramp for that first drop, I became very aware of this fact.
Fuck, I thought. This is pretty high.
The ascent seemed to take forever, and we seemed to be moving further and further away from the ground. I started to seize up, my mind overrun with panic, fear, anxiety.
What if the support on my seat breaks? I asked myself. What if I fall? Oh, fuck.
The ascent began to slow, the angle of the cart began to level out. We were approaching that first big drop. Not wanting to close my eyes, I decided to fix my gaze at the shoes of the person in the seats in front of me.
And then we dropped.
The scenery, so much of it so very far away, whizzed below me as we rushed downwards. it whizzed around me as we looped, and flipped, and dived. It spun, and shook, and twisted, and wound, and after what felt like a millenia of my heart stopping, freezing, hoping that the ride would be over, I suddenly came over with a feeling of remarkably tranquility.
If I fall, I will die, I thought. But if I’m going to die, I might as well enjoy the view.
Suddenly my eyes wanted to be everywhere but locked on those shoes, and I looked. No, I didn’t just look. I’d looked while I was on other rides. On Tatsu, I saw. Mountains, trees, an artificial but otherwise impressive river. Nature. All of it below me. What a spectacle it was! What an incredible world we live in!
Now, I know that experts design roller coasters, and more experts test them to death before they’ll even let people so much as look at the inside of the station. But if the worst should have happened, if the safety gear had failed and I’d fallen from my seat tonight, I would have been content knowing that this was the last thing I saw, that this was the last thing I felt. I mean, obviously the last thing I would have really felt would be the concrete as my body slammed full-force into the ground, but even still. Seeing what I saw, and feeling what I felt… I reckon I would’ve been content.
All too soon the ride was over. I stepped onto the platform a little relieved but mostly disappointed – I wish I could have seen from the start. I wish I could have taken it all in. We should go on it again, my brain conspired, but it wasn’t to be – our group moved away from the ride, ultimately leaving the park entirely.
It was a very bizarre feeling, and a strange way to experience it. I’m sure that there are people out there who would say it was God, but I don’t believe that. I believe it was something else. Something more. Something human.
I’m broke, I’m unemployed, and I’m alone. But I’m alive, and I’m alive in this world of all palces. Of all the unlikely things to happen, this is me and this is where I am. Call me corny, call me soft-hearted, call me whatever you like, but I absolutely love this.
Because I’m scared that I’ll lose my glasses if I wear them on a rollercoaster, I always take them off, meaning I never get the scenery bit. I haven’t been on a rollercoaster for years, but still, they’ve always been something of a blurry experience for me, with bits of G-force and my legs pulling away from my body, and not much else.