One cab ride in the dark hours of Saturday morning, one overly complicated trip through airport security, three flights and two lay-overs (and one cup of very over priced airport coffee), and…And so it is that I end up in Daytona. You know, Florida? Where it’s supposed to be warm?
hmph
The one year I decide to be a snowbird for a few weeks is the year that Florida is having a remarkable spat of cold weather, which – considering I packed for sun – might prove to be a bit of an inconvenience, but hey, it’s not raining! And I’m Canadian, so “the cold never bothered me anyway” and all that.
Daytona is a remarkably friendly place, not at all what I expected. It has an unusual feel to it in some places, as it’s currently off-season and some of the buildings have a strangely abandoned feel to them. One in particular kept pulling me back, even though there was nothing at all there to look at except a closed door. Either there is a story there wanting me to tell it or something else, I’m not sure yet, I suspect I will find myself staring at that door again in the coming weeks.
The place we’re staying is directly on the beach, so I can still hear “home”, in fact the breakers rolling in are like nothing I’ve ever seen before at home…if it wasn’t so cold out I’d be trying my hand at boogie boarding, as it is, I’m content to watch from afar.
We spent the afternoon ambling through downtown, and were about to turn onto the shopping street when I pulled at Amras’ hand
Rollercoaster!
And it was, a rickety looking thing, that looked remarkably like it wasn’t even running, standing by the boardwalk under a sign that proudly announced “Joyland Amusement Park”.
A boardwalk, they have an actual board walk.
Allow me to explain, we don’t have boardwalks at home, not in what you’d call the traditional sense. We have promenades. We do not have rides, and ice cream and arcades.
Let’s go ride the rollercaster!
You want to?
Yeah! Have you ever said no to a rollercoaster
No
So we made our way across the street. Up close the placed still had that off-season slightly abandoned feel to it, almost as if it was…somewhere else. We wandered through the arcade first, but didn’t find anything that we wanted particularly to play (the Daytona racing game was out of order), before actually going back and working up the nerve to get onto the coaster that had drawn us there in the first place. Up close, it looked even more like a rickety old beast than it had from far away, but we were determined, so we handed over our cash and climbed into the equally rickety looking cars.
In true old-style rollercoaster fashion, the cars did not sport shoulder braces, they had a single seatbelt that functions as a lapbar – and Amras is considerably bigger than I am, so these kinds of cars are always nailbiters for me as the lapbars do not truly reach my lap. The attendants literally had to give us a running start (seriously, the cars had to be pushed into the first turn of the track), and we started the climb upwards. This was when I made the mistake of looking down
If I die today…raced through my mind I should probably tell Amras I still love him
It was a very very long way up
This was a terrible idea! I never should have talked us into this!
The first drop was a lot steeper than it had looked from the ground. I was half screaming, and half laughing, but by the time we actually got off the coaster (yes we survived) I was laughing so hard I was having trouble catching my breath. Perhaps it’s been a little while since I properly laughed? Don’t know, but something about it struck me as completely hilarious.
So I can now say I’ve ridden a ride on a proper amusement pier. I even played skeeball (badly, I think my score was 160)
One more thing off the random bucket list that is my life!
And tomorrow? Universal Studios! (HARRY POTTER!!!!!!! Er, not that I’m excited)