That's Not in the Handbook

When I tell people I worked at the Park's Bungee Tower, one of their first questions is always, "So, how many people died on that ride?" When I tell them none, and that there were rarely even any injuries on the ride, they are both dubious and, dare I say it? Disappointed.

We would often assure nervous patrons that they were at one of the safest rides in the Park. Which isn't necessarily the most comforting thing they could hear, based on the Park's reputation, but it was the truth.

Over the course of my tenure at the Park, I worked in 6 different departments. The only time I ever received any real training when I worked at the tower. It was certainly the only time I ever received a 20-page manual detailing standard operating and emergency procedures. Everything on the tower was checked and double checked every morning before we opened. Three people checked each patron's harness before they jumped. We kept logs on cord use and retired them promptly. There were rules, and we knew them. Which isn't to say that we always followed them ourselves:

To be fair, the manual didn't specify that you COULDN'T jump from the tower strapped into your snowboard, but it's probably safe to assume that it would have been frowned upon.

Tequila Shoes

The First Aid Department had a tradition of throwing an end-of-season party in late August that was held after hours at the Park. Most years this was a fairly tame affair where you brought a pot-luck dish and hung around smoking cigarettes in the sticky summer evening, waiting until you figured you could duck out and head up to Highland Lakes or wherever the parties were before everyone went back to college. But you know there's always one year. One year that is so completely different from the utter mundane of tradition that you don't think anyone- even yourself given the passage of time- would believe that you didn't just make this shit up to tell a funny story.

But first we must start with Frank. Or Frankie. Frank was in his mid-forties, had been an EMT for about three years, and was enjoying his first summer working at the Park. He was a pretty colorful character, had been from Brooklyn or something, and had a whole gaggle of kids. The Bosses loved him, so they called him Frankie and gave him all the cush assignments. He never spent time down in the rings of Dante's hell that were Motor World. But Frank was a cool cat, so you didn't spite him for his fortune of getting assigned to the MR-10 (Mobile Rescue-10, an electric golf cart retrofitted with a litter and light bar) or the ambulance jobs. Frank worked hard, and he played hard. For the end of season party, he signed on to bring the refreshments.

The Bosses had worked out a deal with security on this particular year to let us throw our party a little later at night than usual, and let us park down at the dumpsters behind the gates. I brought little egg rolls. Frank brought several cases of beer and a few bottles of tequila. The whole thing started off innocently enough- some beers, some snacks, some spilled beers and snacks. Frank started pouring shots and daring the youngsters (that's me) to go shot-for-shot with him. The Bosses, who had also been drinking, wholeheartedly approved, and started announcing that "Reverend Frankie" was going to save our souls with his holy water. Much drinking and many drinking games ensued, with liquor flowing from urinal bottles and drunken EMTs slipping and falling all over the orange-painted concrete floor.

Frank grinned a mischievous smile, exposing his missing eyetooth on the left. He matter-of-factly stated it was time to take the MR-10 and Cushman (another retro-fitted bone wagon for unfortunate patrons) up to the wave pool for a swim. It was probably 10:30 at night. The Bosses approved.

Doug and Frank fired up the vehicles. The Bosses seat belted themselves in. The rest of us dumped black duffel bags loaded with life-saving equipment out of the vehicles and into the parking lot. We loaded the rest of the beer onto a stretcher and fastened it down with backboard straps.

We packed ourselves into the trailer of the Cushman, and grabbed onto whatever we could as Frank tore out of the base area, up the concrete ramp, and onto the cobbles in front of the lodge. It was pitch-dark, save for the lights of the vehicles, as we swerved leftward up the hill towards Water World. We narrowly missed sliding into the chain-link fence at the Bumper Boats as we veered off the macadam and into the grass. Tony took a tumble off the back of the MR-10, and rolled into the evening dew-covered lawn that led into the gully before Roaring Springs. We didn't wait for him. "You're gonna hafta hike your ass up the hill," Frank yelled, joyously drunken as he recovered the Cushman from swerving around him, speeding onward to the top of the hill.

The MR-10 slid to a stop on the asphalt patio in front of the Tiki Bar. The Cushman was not far behind. When the drivers killed the engines, the silence of a Vernon Night back in the mid-nineties prevailed. No Bob Marley discs on repeat mode blaring from the Tiki Bar. The usual multi-lingual chorus of voices around the Wave Pool Snack Bar was absent. The white shadow of the back wall of the Wave Pool lie ahead, and once my eyes adjusted, I could make out the silhouette of the “ACTION PARK” logo facing out into the dark, still water.

The Bosses waded into the shallow end. Tony made it to the top of the hill and started helping us unload the beers. Frankie ran to the end of the concrete sidewalk alongside the pool, and started climbing up the ladder to the top of the Wave Pool wall. From the top, it was probably a 20 foot drop into the water below. The Reverend jumped.

A series of hollers and “whoops!” followed as EMTs ran toward the ladder and made the ascent to the top deck. What followed can only be described as the absurdity that comes with the suspension of your own mortality, as drunken EMTs dove into the 12-foot-deep water. No lifeguards, no security, not a sober soul in Water World.

The rest of the night was a blur. Spilled food slicking the first aid floor. Wet clothes. A ride home from Shelley. I awoke to my alarm at 7:30 in the morning with a dried mouth, head pounding, but still unbelievably drunk. A knock at the door- Shelley had offered to come pick me up for work (this I somehow remembered). I got dressed, but couldn’t find my white sneakers (First Aid regulation) anywhere, so I put on my water sandals- it was Sunday, so the Bosses wouldn’t be in anyway.

When we got to work that morning, First Aid was a disaster. Doug was already there, mopping. I got bathroom detail. As I cleaned, I vomited. 8:30 am. The Park was opening in 30 minutes and there was still food on the floor, beer cans stacked on the treatment tables and counters, and staff either hungover or still drunk.

I came out of the bathroom and went into the back room, where the kitchenette was. It was under the spare gurney that I spotted my white sneakers, still damp and stinking like beer, soles caked with salsa dip. It seems I had left my shoes at work and went home barefoot. That was the last time I drank Tequila- it was 1995.

Lost!

Stacey M had a second job at a bar called Sheridan's Lodge. It was at least 30 minutes from the Park, but Stacey lived within stumbling distance, so was a popular hang out for the Alpine Center crowd.

And when I say stumbling distance, I mean that literally. One night as Stacey M, Stacy G, Melissa and I were leaving the bar, Stacey M announced that she knew a shortcut. We trusted her because we were in her neighborhood. And because we were drunk. Well, Melissa was sober, but she humored us because she's a good sport.

"There's a path," Stacey M said, with a vague gesture at the wooded area across the street. "It leads right to my house."

So into the woods we went. There was a short, but steep, hill to conquer. It was tough going. I was wearing wooden-soled, platform shoes. Stacey M had to give me a push. Stacy G stopped to pee, and then looked to Melissa for help up the hill.

"I love you, Melissa!" she declared, as Melissa grasped her hand and hauled her up to the top. "I think I peed on my hand."

I take back what I said about Melissa being a good sport. Melissa is a SAINT.

We walked on. And on. And on. Stacey M stumbled, fell to the ground and just laid there. Almost immediately after that, I stepped into a hole and found myself up to my waist in brush. At this point, I realized that the shortcut was a colossally bad idea.

Despite my unforgiving footwear, I managed to get myself out. Stacey M got up off the ground, took a bleary look around, and slurred, "I don't know where the fuck I am." That made four of us.

Luckily, there's only so lost you can get in an acre or two of woods. Especially if those woods are between a county highway and a residential neigborhood on a clear and moonlit summer night.

Home Alone

If you worked at the Park and your parents were foolish enough to leave you at home while they went on vacation and you, in turn, were foolish enough to let your co-workers know, you could expect anywhere from 10 to 100 people to show up at your house every night for the duration of your parents' absence.

When it happened to me, I made the mistake of going grocery shopping BEFORE my home was invaded and as a result was hungry for the rest of the week.

A guy named John (or was it Brian? I always got those two confused.) who had two fish tanks in his family room woke up in the morning to find that the small fish had all been transferred out of their tank and into the other where they had been devoured by the larger fish kept there.

And then there was Dave. Dave's mom went away for a week and our entire department moved in. His neighbors had a motion sensor light on the side of their house closest to Dave's deck. We amused ourselves for hours each trying to see who could make it the farthest without tripping the sensor. You had to moooove verrrrry sloooowly and precisely to make any progress at all, and as this game coincided with beer drinking, most of us would only make it a foot or two before flooding the neighbor's yard with light. (Why they didn't call the cops on us, I'll never know.) Jamie made it all the way to the neighbor's house and most of the way back to Dave's deck before someone jumped into the sensor's field and sabotaged him. Very unsportsmanlike!

This is John.

John was an exchange student. He was known as John-the-Irish-Guy, John-I-Heard-He's-An-Underwear-Model, or, my favorite, Eurotrash. (That was Therese's pet name for him.) John didn't mind any of the nicknames. John didn't mind anything at all really. He was a laid-back guy.

However, one day, as John was jumping down to take his lunch break, he said something that one of the jumpmasters didn't like. I don't know what it was, but she decided to put him in his place. His place was, apparently, in mid-air. At the time I snapped this photo, he'd been hanging there for a little under 10 minutes. Then the radio started squawking; our supervisor was furious. It seems that some guests had noticed that there was this guy just hanging there from the bungee tower and they thought he was really stuck.

So the supervisor flipped out on all of us for making the only safe ride in the Park look dangerous. The jumpmaster reluctantly lowered John to the airbag. His legs were numb and he had missed half his lunch break, but you know what? John didn't mind.

Boredom: A Photo Essay

One day, Brett decided to put on every harness he could find. Roger approved.

He then decided to clip in backwards.

And away he went.

Shake it off

One afternoon, I was working an Alpine Slide mid-station. Located near the bottom of the slide, the main purpose of the position was to assist riders who crashed on the way down. Radio traffic was slow for the day but that was about to change.

One of our special needs employees was working at another mid-station higher up the slide. He called over the open channel for the slide and shouted that he had witnessed a park patron urinating off of the chair lift which carried people to the top of the slide. (Bear in mind that the slide ran UNDER the lift.) Brett, the ride supervisor, asked, "did you actually see him going?" To which he answered, "No, I saw him shaking it off!"

The patron was confronted at the top of the slide, he response was that he needed to relive himself but neglected to do so before boarding the chair lift. The top ride attendants were dumbfounded by the man's honesty.

How not to ride a chair lift.

Radio, Radio

While most rides at the Park would only close during electrical storms, the Alpine Slide would close at the first sign of precipitation. Even the slightest bit of water would send carts careening of the tracks. Not that people didn't careen off the tracks when they were dry, but that's another matter.

Most of the time, the attendants would stay in the ride area and wait for the rain to stop. If you were at the top of the Slide, you were basically stuck there. If you were at the bottom, you had more options. Which brings me to the following exchange, heard over the Park's Channel 9 one afternoon, after a rain delay:

"Alpine top to Alpine bottom, copy?"
"Alpine Pizza to Alpine top, go ahead."
"Hey Brett, what time do you think we'll be able to open.... Wait, whuuuuut?"

Luckily, they brought pizza back for the top attendants, thus averting a mutiny.

A Steve By Any Other Name

I worked with a lot of dudes named Steve at the Park. So many that we had to add qualifiers to their names. One such Steve was dubbed Big Steve. Because he was, literally, big. Well, tall anyway. And he liked to work out. A lot. In contrast to the longer, baggier style of the early 90's, Big Steve had curly hair and liked his shorts short and his shirts tight. He resembled nothing so much as a he did a 70s porn star.

Since Big Steve didn't drink, he rarely hung out. Or maybe he just didn't like us. One memorable exception was Slidestock, held in a girl named Brooke's backyard on the same weekend as Woodstock '94, but with less mud and corporate sponsorship.

Around midnight, we ran out of booze. Steve was the only sober one there and he and I were both over 21, so we were nominated to go on a beer run. After taking orders (mostly beer, with one exception, which I'll get to in a minute) and collecting money, we got into Steve's red Mazda sports car (See! Porny.) and drove to the 24-hour Mobil Mart in Warwick, NY. We loaded up the counter and when the cashier asked us is we needed anything else I remembered that my friend Jason had asked me to buy him condoms.

"Yeah, I need a box of Trojan ribbed, lubricated...." I went on and on. Jason had been very specific about the brand & type he wanted, and I was very drunk. The cashier looked at me with confusion and I finally slammed my hand down on the counter and yelled, "Condoms! I need condoms!"

The cashier looked at me, then looked at Big Steve who was standing behind me in his short shorts and tight sweatshirt. She smiled and pointed- "They're over there. Help yourself."

It was hard to tell who was more horrified by her assumption, me or Steve. Probably Steve. Despite his appearance, he was really uptight and I don't think he appreciated being likened to a porn star. Which probably explains why, by the next summer, he was sporting a shaved head and weird (even by 90s standards) facial hair. Luckily, he still wore the short shorts. But it wasn't the same.

$71 Well Spent

I just got back a wedding in Puerto Vallarta. I had a really great time drinking cervezas y margaritas and making the locals laugh with my poor command of their language and currency. Don't know why it was so hard to grasp the fact that 10 pesos equaled roughly one dollar, but it was.

Anyway, my friend Catherine and our new friend Holly and I decided to go on a Canopy Tour. This entailed us getting into a rickety truck (which began its life as a Russian military vehicle) and riding miles and miles up into the mountains via a one lane dirt road. I don't recommend doing it with a hangover, but I managed to survive without vomiting over the side. Yay, me!

After we arrived at the site and got into our harnesses, we we trekked up the mountain to the first zip cord. As you can see, I enjoyed it:

About halfway through the tour, I realized that this was like Mexico's version of the Park. The banter between the staff, the wacky antics of the video guy, the guides showing off for the cute girls... Then one of our guides broke out a Park classic- he dropped a bolt, which he had surreptitiously hidden in his pocket, as he was buckling the middle-aged lady from South Dakota onto the zip cord. He was all, "Where'd that come from? Ah, you'll probably be fine! Off you go!"

All Right, Get on the Bus!

This is one of my favorite Park memories of all time:

This guy here? This is Jamie. He's one of my absolute faves. I stopped by to see him one day and we found this bus in a storage room. It was originally used as a display in one of the retail shops. I don't know who came up with the idea of getting into the display, but Jamie seized on it. It took some wriggling, but he managed to get in relatively easily. Getting him out was more difficult, but I'm pleased to say that both he and the bus survived.

Fruit as Projectile.

I don't want to give anyone the impression that all anyone ever did while working at the Park was act like a responsibility-shirking jerk, but, since most of the job involved sitting around waiting for something to happen, you made your own fun. And that fun was mostly of the Jackass variety.

Watching Michael & Dwight throw a watermelon off the roof of Dunder-Mifflin on the Office last night reminded me of one of those times. For a few seasons in the mid-90s, the Park featured a ride called the Sling Shot. It was billed as "Reverse Bungee Jumping." Two people were strapped into a pod, which was suspended by thick rubber cords between two metal poles. Increase the tension on the cords and boom! The pod goes flying upward. And then downward. And then upward again. (See this similar, but somehow safer-looking, ride in Reno, NV.) It was fantastically scary-- not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.

One night, just after the Park closed, the attendants decided to see what would happen if they launched a watermelon. Pretty much exactly what you'd expect. (As long as what you expected was a watermelon-sized crater at the base of the ride and an impressive pattern of fruit splatter. Oh, and MOD Al's apoplectic episode when he discovered the damage the next morning.)

Water World Wars

Most of my Park days were spent working in Water World. Someone paid me to stand around in a bathing suit and get a tan. It's what I would have done all summer anyway so why not collect a pay check? Of course, I took my life guard class and test, and I passed (Thank God my brother DJ was one of the instructors) but I worked as a "ride attendant". I spent my days watching people ride the tube ride and, one year, sliding down Surf Hill. I also gave a lot of "Hello good morning and welcome to the Park..." speeches. Water World was a cush job regardless of which ride you worked.

Every summer we had Water World Wars. All of the employees in water world came to the park one hour before it opened, broke into 2 teams divided by the rides we worked on and competed in the most absurd events you can imagine. We essentially rode every single ride in water world in a way the ride was not intended to be used and in ways that we would have kicked people out of the park for. Of course I don't actually recall there being a prize for the winning team. Maybe there was, but more likely not.

So in my first year as a ride attendant I competed in Water World Wars. In the midst of a tough race we came to the 21-man chain. Here every member of the team sat behind one another on the Green Water Slides, grabbed the person in front of them by the shoulders and the entire team raced down the water slide. There were 2 slides so it was a race to the bottom. The first team down and out of the pool at the bottom won. In true Jersey style, I had absurdly long nails (not elegantly long and manicured--long like talons). As my team got to the bottom of the slide and hit the small pool, the impact made me jump a little and I grabbed the shoulders of the guy in front of me harder. My nails dug into him and he jumped. His shoulder hit my nose and it broke-I immediately passed out. As everyone in my team ran out of the pool to win the race, I lay face down, passed out, with a broken and bleeding nose--someone actually had to come in and get me out. My team lost the race.

Truly a shining moment--I had 2 black eyes for weeks--my nose has never recovered.

A tale that is tangentially related to the Park

I'm having trouble with my Cannonball Loop post, so here's a little something to tide you over until I tell the story of the scariest ride ever:

One summer night, some of my Park friends and I decided to go to the Warwick Drive-in.* On the way, we stopped for provisions at Gary's, a popular bar and and packaged goods establishment. After paying for my six-pack, I stopped to say hello to a Park acquaintance named Charlie, who was seated in his usual spot. Charlie was my favorite drunk. It was rumored that he lived above the bar. At an All-Night Ski Party, I saw him slide headfirst down Surf Hill, through a fetid puddle of muck and leaves, and into a wall.

As we were chatting, a small man came out of the kitchen. He was sporting a Yosemite Sam moustache and in his hand were several sticks of dynamite- taped together, fuses braided, the works. Instead of cowering in terror, or trying to disarm Yosemite Sam, the majority of the bar's patrons started chasing him with their cigarette lighters.

I turned to Charlie, "Do you think that's real dynamite?"

"Probably," he replied. With that, I took my leave. The bar is still standing, so either Yosemite Sam was faster than all the drunks, or someone came to their senses and stopped the madness.

*Which is still in operation and currently showing Quentin Tarantino & Robert Rodriguez's Grindhouse. You should go. For reals.

Much Better Than A Snow Angel

I've been going through old photos lately, hoping to find blog gold. Like this. This is Joe. He sculpted a scale model of his VW Golf out of snow, proving that A) he really, really liked his car, and B) the Triple Chair is seriously underused.