Ian Gibbs, the benevolent ruler of the IPA children’s theatre company that I worked for this past year, kindly invited me and everyone else from the company to spend a celebratory end-of-school-year day at Port Aventura – a dandy amusement park just south of Barcelona. You may remember that this was where Derek brought me for my bachelor party last year. The only difference this time was that, instead of two nuts running around the park, this time there were 26 of us!
I spent most of the day with the “big kids”. We sprinted to all of the rides that refused to allow vertically challenged individuals (see: midgets) to ride. The “little kids” didn’t want to go on any scary rides without their mommies so we left them to tackle the Tea Cups.
And it was a scorcher! The Spanish summer sun forced us to strategically alternate between rides that would soak us to the bone and then fling us through the air till we were dry. If the Dragon Kahn hadn’t broken down at the end of the day, our ride planning would have been flawless and we would have enjoyed the train ride home with dry shorts. Oh well.
I was elected by Sophia to wheel her and her sprained foot around the entire park. Not right away, mind you. After discovering that Oriol pops too many wheelies, Mau hits too many pedestrians, and Mar seems to always let go of the wheelchair when they’re on a downhill slope, Sophie requested that I man the driving for the remainder of the day. The physical labor was definitely a pain in the ass, but when we found out that we could jump to the head of every line in the entire park via the handicapped entrance and ride as many times as we liked, I shut my trap and pushed like the wind.
Another highlight of the day was adding to my collection of cheapskate photo grabs. Have a gander at some of our completely natural and not-at-all-staged photos of us on rides:
click to enlarge the stolen souvenirs
And finally, since I’ve really enjoyed uploading video to the internet recently, here’s a snippet of us (unnecessarily) going crazy on the El Diablo roller coaster in the Mexico section of the park.
El Diablo – Tren de la Mina
It really wasn’t all that scary.
I felt like I was really there – aaaaaahhhh! Love your blog (though I feel like a stalker reading it, despite the tenuous connection to you via Garry)
I felt like I was really there – aaaaaahhhh! Love your blog (though I feel like a stalker reading it, despite the tenuous connection to you via Garry)
Trish, if everyone whose blog I read knew that I was lurking… I don’t know what I was going to say. Welcome, I guess. We’ve got more of a connection than Defective Yeti and I will ever have.
wow. those rides all look like they’re 100 yrs old and ready to break. awesome.
Yeah, well Josh looks all cool there in those pics, but I remember he cried like a baby that first time on the Hurakan Condor.
What am I doing going to Mets games?? While you are on roller coasters?!?!? 🙂 Wifey is doing fine, she is due in a couple of weeks, but we are both so impatient that we are hoping mini-me is gonna come join us sooner. My wife, as with yours, is quite a thin lady, so she is ALL belly right now…otherwise, not much news on the pregnancy front – I will let you know when the balloon pops!!! 🙂 How is your little lady holding up?
How did you manage to steal those photos?