I was shocked the other day when the news casually mentioned that Pittsburgh was #2 behind Los Angeles for most polluted city.

Could have fooled me.

I have been to LA and Phoenix and have seen the clouds of smog than linger over them. I was in Joshua Tree National Park and saw the huge cloud of smog that prevents us from seeing as far as we once were. I have been to Philadelphia, Cleveland, New York City etc, these cities are far more filthy. But this study article points out air pollution measurements, and the saddest thing to me comes from this statement.

Although much of the country may have a stereotype of Pittsburgh as a blue collar, steel mill town, Leikauf says that’s no longer the case. According to him, more than 80 percent of western Pennsylvania’s particulate matter actually drifts from Ohio power plants.

80% of our air pollution comes from another state. That pisses me off.

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I am listening to the Sirius Satellite Reggae channel and it is reminding me of our cruise vacation this year. What an outstanding trip. During the cruise I was starting to get a little claustrophobic in the evening and wanted to get home. But now with the weather dipping below 40° all I want to do is go back.

We snorkled in Hondorus, floated through giant caves down a river in a Belize rain forest (it actually rained a lot) and saw Mayan ruins in Mexico. Where else can you do all that and drink un-pasteurized Red Stripe?

I am a coaster geek, everyone who knows me knows this. I thought this old Gemini ad was awesome. Who saves this stuff, captures it and puts it on YouTube!? Awesome.

After some trouble with the local roads, and entering through one of the wierdest entrances to an amusement park ever I finally arrived at Lake Compounce. I paid my $5 for parking and found a spot in the gravel lot. You can’t really see the park from here which is pretty neat but once you go under the bridge/tunnel though you are greeted with a pretty unique looking midway.

I wanted to visit Lake Compounce because of Boulder Dash and while on my way to the ride I had huge smile on my face, I was really wishing Monica had been able to come. I stopped for a ride on Wildcat on my way and discovered how odd they run their coasters. I walked into an empty station after the train left and found a chain preventing me from walking up to my seat of choice with no ride operating giving me any direction at all. So like a good boy I waited at the chain and waited for the ride op to come and let me in when a gaggle of kids came running under all the queue railings. They were asked to return into the line and the op let us all in. I got into the front seat and found Wildcat to be a pretty fun ride. Much more fun than the video makes it out to be. I would have like to get a backseat ride, but by the time I came back I was exhausted and late for my trip back to Boston so I skipped it.

Boulder Dash was next up and it had a one train wait! Awesome. I got into the back car not knowing what I was getting myself into. Out of the station, up the steep mountain side lift and off I am! Slow, slow, slow then all hell breaks loose. I am getting pushed from side to side, kicked out of my seat and generally having a great time. Next thing I know I am at the turnaround thinking the train is going as fast as it can go. Man was I wrong. The turnaround hits and the train picks up even more speed. This is probably the most intense element on a wood coaster, comparable to anything Raven’s last section. Airtime, airtime and more airtime on the return trip and then the brakes. Damn, great ride. Its in my top ten, maybe my top five. Its great.

I ended up with six rides on Boulder Dash in various seats, but I think the back was my favorite. By the end of my sixth ride my neck and back had enough. I can’t even imagine what a night ride would be like and would have loved to stay for one, but I had to get back to Boston.

There are two sections of the ride that absolutely need work in the off season. They are during the out section and it felt as if the train hit a two ft. pot hole it jarred my back so bad. Other than those two rough spots the ride was as smooth as you can expect when running steel wheels on steel track at 65 mph.

The park as a whole was really nice, but there was something not quite right. I loved it, but it seemed more like a Conneaut lake than a Kennywood. I spent some time walking around, put my feet in the lake, enjoyed plenty of free soda and water and took it all in. Its a neat place. The skyride was really amazing too, I had no idea it was so long and that the view would be so great.

All in all, I would visit again with a point on enjoying the waterpark and getting some night time rides on Boulder Dash.

See all the photos from the trip

August 23, 2006

Monica and I had plans to camp at Hershey this weekend, but her company had other plans for our us and sent her to go to the ASAE conference in Boston. We decided to make the best out of it!

Six Flags New England

After a ton of trouble with Thrifty care rental, we got our car (an upgraded Jeep Liberty) and headed out to Six Flags New England early Saturday. This would be our second visit to the park. We paid our $15 for parking and drove to what was almost the very back of the lot. We could have waited for a tram, but the one that was loading as we walked up to it was packed and there wasn’t another in sight. In fact, we made it to the gate before the one tram that was running started making its trip back. How annoying it is to pay $15 for parking and not have a good parking amenities? No one guided us to a spot and we would have waited a long time for a tram!

We arrived at the gate and there are huge lines to get through the metal detectors, we get through that and there is a line for the FlashPass! The park is packed. There were lines for the bathrooms it was so busy. We wandered over to Mr. Six’s Pandemonium and saw a two hour line. There is a single rider line, so we walked up and both of us were on within five minutes. Mr. Six’s Pandemonium is one fun ride, I would have liked to ride it with Monica, but that line was just too much to handle.

I saw Catapault had what seemed like a short line, but as Monica would tell me, it was a 1/2 hour for me to wait two cycles of the ride. The ride was pretty fun, but there was way too much pressure on my head at the bottom. I don’t think I will ride it again.

We left this area of the park leaving behind the poorly maintained and run Cyclone, only one train!?, past the hour line for Thunderbolt, only one train!?, past the two hour line for Superman…it was really busy.

Walking through the park we remembered why I liked it so much. There is tons of charm, I love the layout and all the themeing. The only issue I have with the park, besides the fact that it is run like a Six Flags, is capacity.

We arrived at Batman and saw an hour wait and said, screw it, we are going to have to wait at some point and got into line. They were meeting their intervals fairly well, but could have been faster and the people in line were fairly well behaived even though the line is hidden from anyone of authority. We got into the train after a slightly longer than an hour wait and had a good ride. I see what people say about the vibration, but I don’t think it took away from the ride at all, good times, but probably my least favorite floorless. We were planning on seeing the parade and got off Batman five minutes after it started…and it was over. A five minute parade? Is this really worth advertising?

I am honestly not sure what we did next but we ended up at the beer counter and enjoyed the pricey adult beverage at the games midway outdoor food court area. The whole area was disgusting, seriously. No one was around in the 20 minutes to pick up any mess, and the customers certainly didn’t help any by cleaning up after themselves.

I was hoping to get more than one ride on Superman, but the two hour line was way too long for us. After dealing with just a few line jumpers and minimal security to enforce the rules we made it into the station. I was excited. We got a seat in I think the third car, second seat. From the second we went over the first drop I had a smile on my face and couldn’t stop laughing. Superman did not disapoint at all after two years. There is just so much airtime, speed and laterals to not love it.

We made Superman our final ride for the night and made our long walk back to our rental. Monica had a long day ahead of her on Sunday and I had Lake Compounce and Boulderdash to look forward to. More on the rest of the trip in another post!

View all the photos from the trip

I have a busy couple of weeks coming up! I will be going to Boston for four days where Monica has a conference to attend. We are going to Six Flags New England on Saturday to ride one of the best steel coasters in the world, and I will be driving to Lake Compounce to ride Boulder Dash on my own while she is at her conference. I will then be working from the hotel room Monday and Tuesday, enjoying the city at night.

The following weekend we will be going to Geauga Lake’s bring a friend for free day on Saturday. and have a Pittsburgh Pug Fest planning meeting on Sunday. We are then off to Florida starting Wednesday morning where Mo has another conference to attend. I am going to go to Bush Gardens Africa while she is working, then we are driving to Orlando to stay at Port Orleans for the weekend. We are planning on visiting Animal Kingdom and Blizzard Beach for the first time as well as just relaxing at the resort.

It feels like my summer is just starting and its almost over!

Monica and I drove to Washington DC this weekend to see She Wants Revenge at the Black Cat. Their live show didn’t dissapoint. The singer had great stage presence and seemed to act out each song while singing or playing guitar. I can’t say the same for the guitar and bass players as they both seemed a little bored. The show was well worth the five hour drive and $100 hotel room to see. They will be in Pittsburgh in April I think.

Before the show we spent a few hours at the National Zoo which was pretty fun, the pandas were really cool and seemed more active than your average sad zoo bear. Not bad for free, but I still love the Pittsburgh Zoo and Busch Gardens Tampa.

Qdoba Vs. Chipoltle

I had my first Chipotle burrito this weekend as well. The comparison to Qdoba has to be made since the two restaraunts are the same concept. Fresh Big Burrito Action. So, how was it? Pretty good. Was it as good as Qdoba? In my opinion, no. I prefer Qdoba’s rice, beans and sour cream to Chipotle’s. But would eat either any day of the week.

Footers are in and a building has been constructed for the air compressors.

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The Phoenix Phall Phunfest is a halloween event held at Knoebels Amusement park in Elysburg, PA in conjunction with the Covered Bridge Festival.

We planned to camp Friday and Saturday night, enjoying the festival Saturday but our plans were spoiled by the weather. We arrived Friday evening at around 7:30 to find the rain coming down just as hard here as it had been all the way accross PA. After arranging to upgrade to a platform site we began setting up our tent in the rain. Its making cold just thinking about it. We got the tent up and attempted to throw a tarp over the top, but our new for 2005 tent was too big for it to cover completlely. This worked out to be the biggest mistake of the trip besides not cancelling the Friday portion of the trip. After some beers and boredom we tried to sleep but awoke to wet pillows, wet shirts and spoiled spirits. Our tent had puddles along the sides and every non water friendly piece of clothing or blanket was wet. Yuck!

After a long, wet night, we awoke and dicussed our options and luckily found a Hampton Inn 14 miles from the park. The hotel was clean, easy to find and had a good continental breakfast in the morning.

So we took our tent down, cleaned up and headed out to Cracker Barrel for breakfast. Mmmm.

We wanted to check out the Covered Bridge Festival before the Phunphest and had about…8 hours to kill. Hmm. Monica wanted to get a water wicking shirt to go along with her new pants and had convinced me to do the same so we headed out to find a sporting goods store. After digging around a mall and finding nothing we moved along to Insert town name and found an outdoor store. We both found what we wanted, thermal drying underware. These things are great! With the new thermals, hiking socks and rain coat I was dry and warm the entire rainy evening.

A movie was on our list of things to do, and we saw Flightplan. Good thriller movie that kept us both guessing.

After the movie we checked into the hotel to clean up and change into our new clothes. While changing Monica commented on the opening at the front of my pants and reffered to it as a “cute hole for your little pee pee.” I had a laugh and said, little is not a word any man wants used to describe that. Anyways, we changed and headed to the event.

The Phun Phest

After roaming the booths at the Covered Bridge Festival we purchased our tickets and headed into the park for Phun!

Phoenix

Our first ride of the evening was Phoenix. I was really curious what my opinion would be this time after riding four world class woodies this summer, and it hasn’t changed. Phoenix is still my favorite wooden coaster. While the rides all evening were not as out of control as they were last summer they were still a blast.

The tunnel had a number of black light graffiti paintings, strobe lights and fog early in the evening. Touches like this made this event really special and put a smile on our faces all night.

The ride itself was dark, and the out section over the Antique Cars had fog at the bottom of the hills leftover from the Haunted car ride. The ride is so smooth from the middle bench it almost feels like a B&M! Airtime was mild, but the smiles were extreme.

Haunted Mansion

We wanted to get on the Haunted Mansion before it closed for the evening, so we headed there next and had a fun ride. The Haunted Mansion is sensory overload from the second you go in till you are done. Lots of scares and good times.

After the Haunted Mansion we wanted to use our free pizza coupons. This was our first time eating at Cesari’s and I have to say the hype was warrented. The cheese slices were really good, the sauce was sweet, very similar to NYC style and the crust was fresh.

Twister

The Twister queue was all done up as well, including a ride op dressed as Michael Myers walking slowly around the platform checking restraints and never coming out of character as well as Halloween music playing from underneath the platform.

The ride itself again was not as out of control as I recall, but still was really great. The first drop, turn around, drop, double helix was as intenseas it was smooth. Great!

Heading down the exit ramp held another surprise, a garbage can had a trigger that would cause the lid to pop open with lots of noise and light. It really scared the crap out of Monica and I. Details like this made the night really special and worth the suffering we were put through the night before.

Bumper Cars

I have heard the stories, knew that these were the #1 rated bumper cars and knew they packed a punch. Holy crap were they fun. Monica and I have never had as much fun, nor been as scared as we were on these bumper cars.

Our ride cycle was stopped as soon as we started, the ride operator, whom everyone seemed to know, said “You have all done this before, turn around and go the other way” and started up the ride again. Lots of big hits, spin outs and laughter insued. Everyone in queue was cheering when a big hit was given. All in all, great times.

Haunted Antique Cars

The amount of work they put into this was staggering, it was an entire dark ride outdoors with numerous scares throughout the ride. While the line was long, it was well worth it. A number of the ride operators were in costume and character, including this guy who struck up a vampire conversation with Monica.

Final Thoughts

While the camping wash out was really dissapointing, the Phun Phest was worth all the cold and wetness we suffered through the previous night. The attention to detail was great, and made the event so much fun. After one PPP, we are planning on making it an annual trip.

See all photos from PPP 2005