Blog writing duties have been handed back to Alan for today with special comments by Sarah in green.
This was one of those days when in hindsight, we should never have gotten out of bed. We began with our daily trip next door for a piece of cold toast and whilst trying our best to wash it down with a glass of juice we took a look over the restaurant's beverage menu. Milkshakes - chocolate, strawberry and sky blue. It looked as atrocious as it sounds. Needless to say we didn't sample a blue milk.
We had planned to visit Six Flags Magic Mountain, which is an amusement park about an hours drive north containing some of the worlds biggest, highest, fastest, most extreme rollercoasters. Just the sort of place I love and Sarah has nightmares about. We checked the directions on Google Earth and headed off for a day of excitement. Sarah had printed out the official directions from the Six Flags website, but of course we decided to follow our own Google Earth route thinking it looked much more straightforward. No, YOU decided to follow your own directions.
After battling the 20 mile traffic jam on the I-5 north, we branched off onto the 101 west, as per our instructions. We took exit 26b at Canoga and were somewhat surprised that there were no signs mentioning Magic Mountain. We passed by a golf course and took a couple of right turns eventually ending up on a tiny, very narrow mountainside road with a 10mph speed limit and hairpin bends. I said this can't be the road to Magic Mountain but Alan's comment was "maybe it's a back entrance." After driving this road for another few minutes we came to the conclusion that we were lost yet again.
So we turned around and headed back toward the highway and passed by a police officer sitting in a private driveway with his radar gun out. I pulled a U-turn, parked next to him and got out to ask for directions. He was most helpful, explaining that we had to head back on the 101 the way we'd come for 8 miles before turning north onto the 405 and going a further 40 miles or so. From there we can't miss the signs to the park. We weren't too far off course were we.
We arrived at 11.30am, only an hour later than we had planned. Not too impressed about the $15 parking fee! The carpark was close to empty and we had visions of Clark Griswold famously saying "first ones here, first ones here" from the movie National Lampoon's Vacation when he took his family across country to Walleyworld only to find it closed when they arrived. (The amusement park section of the movie was filmed at Magic Mountain). Those people who haven't seen it probably have no idea what the heck I'm on about.
We found a parking spot, as usual taking care to park much further away than we needed to and headed off toward the entrance. We were busy marvelling at the sheer size of what lay before us as we wandered across the parking lot when Sarah, being the clumsy oaf she is, somehow managed to trip over an imaginary crack in the pavement, ending up flat on her face. Well it would have been her face had it not been for her oversized boobs to act as airbags. And she reckons I'm accident prone! Excuse me!!! I'm walking along, minding my own business and Alan says "look, its just like the ride at Dreamworld". So, I look up at where he's pointing me and SPLAT. I had tripped over a concrete parking barrier. I'm lying there, on the ground and the next thing I see is Alan's smirking face in front of mine before he breaks into laughter!!
Anyway, into the park and never in our lives have we seen such a desrted amusement park. It was unbelieveable. There was absolutely no waiting to get on any rides at all. Even the roaming mexican gangs we had been warned about were at a minimum and we saw maybe only 2 or 3 all day. You simply cannot fathom the height and speed of some of these coasters until you stand below them looking up into the blue yonder.
Unfortunately after only 12 photos, our very expensive digital camera chucked a tantrum and refused to acknowledge it's own existence. As a result we were forced to buy a disposable camera from a store in the park to continue taking photos. Thus, some of our photos from today won't appear here until after we've found a Kodak processing lab. Hopefully tomorrow.
I went on numerous rollercoasters, some great, some good, some darn scary. Sarah, being the huge wuss she is, opted to go on only the sedate water rides. I never claimed I was going on more than I did. Unlike Alan who was going to go on everything, until he saw just how high some of them were. They are kind of fun on a hot day, I must say. I think the Deja Vu rollercoaster was probably the scariest one I went on. It was very smooth and very fast, with your legs dangling in the air and it went both backwards and forwards and dropped you from great heights. The water rides should actually say the wet rides, as we were very wet. Alan's shoes, after being wet for the entire day, have turned his feet a lovely shade of blue and it doesn't matter how much we scrub, they still remain blue.
After leaving the park, our camera decided to begin working again, so we quickly took a few more photos of the coasters from outside the park. How nice of it. Sarah managed to make it back to the car without another fall and we headed back to Anaheim. We realised halfway through the trip that we'd forgotten to buy a fridge magnet for Sarah's collection; we get one from everywhere we visit. If anyone's planning on visiting there, could you pick one up for her.
After a 2 hour perpetual traffic jam trip back to the hotel, we chose Tony Roma's for dinner. Apparently they're famous for ribs. We should have ordered them because the rest of their food certainly left us craving Denny's and indeed after leaving Tony Roma's, we went next door to Denny's for chocolate cake and fudge brownie dessert. Some of the staff are getting to know us quite well now, especially our friendly Mexican mate Jesus, although he refers to both of us as Alan.
Well that's about it for today I think. As for tomorrow, I'm sure we can manage to become well and truly lost while walking the 2 and a half minutes from our hotel to Disneyland.
Oh, and Alan forgot to mention, I wore this new blue shirt that I bought just before leaving Australia. Actually, this wasn't the first time I'd worn it. The first time it got dirty, somehow, in the first half hour. I washed it that night and put it on this morning. After my sudden trip to the pavement, it was again dirty. I'm now trying to decide whether to wash or to throw it away.
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