Roger Pires Sept 16, 2010
When he's not offering his take on daily life, Roger Pires spends his days as a computer systems analyst. It's not exactly a glamorous calling but hey, it pays the bills. He enjoys hockey, canoeing, snowshoeing, and spending as much time as he possibly can outdoors. He lives in Udora with his wife and two kids, who are his prime inspiration for Ravenshoe Ramblings.
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The Wild Bunch
It’s the highlight of summer. A final, brazen, devil-may-care act of defiance before backpacks are emptied of Nerf guns and re-filled with textbooks. Every year, in the twilight of August, my wife stuffs the minivan with coolers, kids, and pandemonium and points it in the direction of Canada’s Wonderland. And every year I manage to avoid it. The first couple of years I had to scramble for excuses. I relied on the old chestnuts: I can’t get time off work; I have a dentist’s appointment; it’s Kraft Dinner night. But when I began inventing sick relatives and obscure tropical diseases, they were onto me. The only thing I was suffering from was yellow fever. Yellow, as in too scared to go on the roller coasters. OK, perhaps “scared” is pushing it. Terrified is more like it.
I’ve even tried to swing the agenda in my favour. Why can’t we do something a little more low-key this year? Maybe haul off to the sunny shores of Simcoe for a day at the beach. OK, you want excitement? Let’s toss the canoe onto the roof rack and brave the rapids of the Pefferlaw Brook. My ideas are shot down like clay pigeons. The seething mob suggests I go along with them and just chill on a picnic table with the other old farts while all those sporting a backbone try their luck on the coasters. Well, this invertebrate believes a day at a theme park is to relaxation what the funnel cake is to Weight Watchers.
I’m at the stage in my life where “thrill” and “ride” never appear in the same sentence. The thought of lining up for two hours in temperatures that would make a camel faint only to be launched into space on something called The Behemoth is no grounds for taking a day off work.
Alas, I’m the bedrock of sanity in a household that’s gone completely mad. Or, as my beloved offspring are fond of saying, I’m a “first-class wimp”. I mean, how can you not enjoy sacrificing your body to the midway gods? With neck veins bulging and eyes popping, the band of thrill seekers rhyme off the names of their favourite roller coasters. The Minebuster. The Bat. Vortex. Wild Beast. Dragon Fire. The list reads like a compendium of medieval torture methods. And then there is something called Drop Zone where willing victims pay actual money to experience the joys of freefall without – hopefully – being separated from the corn dog they finished just moments before.
I don’t know at what point I developed a fear of extreme fun. There is no hard evidence, no smoking gun. But if there were an Exhibit A, it’d be the Spanish Galleon. This ride at the Ex consisted of about fifty lost souls boarding a torture chamber in the form of an old boat. It swung on a pendulum for two or three horrifying minutes before coming to a merciful stop. According to the experts, a facsimile still exists but it is known by another name now – probably to distract would-be riders from its murderous past. Many hot, humid summers ago, I was waiting to board this amusement park Hindenburg when the unthinkable happened. A well-lubricated passenger in the back row lost her lunch on the upswing, coating the poor devils on the downswing in a stream of aerial protein. My friends and I narrowly escaped the shrapnel but this near miss was the beginning of the end.
In reality, I never salivated at the thought of speed and thrills. Not like my brood. They crave it. You would think genetics had taken a holiday until you meet my wife - the ringleader of the Wild Bunch. She’s the first in line to get on The Separator or The Dismantler or whatever. She’s taught them to ride with no hands, to scream like you saw grandpa naked, and to sit in the front row for maximum g-force. Worst – or perhaps best – of all, she’s responsible for ensuring that the summer’s last hurrah isn’t spent floating on a lazy river where the greatest thrill is dodging stray bits of driftwood.
