Second tallest and fastest wooden roller coaster ride in the world, El Toro was amazing yesterday. Several friends of mine converged on Six Flag's Great Adventure, which is located halfway down the NJ Turnpike. As the typical New Yorker, most of us don't own a car so we rented a Chevy from Budget and fortunately my friend Q had her VW Passat to take the other half of the 9. Not surprisingly, Korea time is unavoidable, even though we had great intentions to leave NYC by 8:15 AM on a Saturday; we ended up leaving Manhattan around 9:20 and arrived at GA a little before 11. Had I trusted my instincts that Korean time invariably happens, I wouldn’t have been so diligent with waking up. I grew up in Philly so Great Adventure isn't new and I had been there as recent as 2 years ago, but it was fun to go to GA and get out of NYC's concrete jungle. Large groups inherently are difficult to move in one direction, but we managed successfully to get to most rides and please everyone's tastes. Btw, there's this EZ Pass system and the name escapes my memory, but it's worth the upgrade over your tickets b/c it makes your day efficient and reduces your time waiting in lines. So we started with Nitro and repeated it 3x in a matter of 20 minutes because there were no lines. We had a great start to our day but in slowed down as we proceeded to the secondary and tertiary level rides such as the aging free fall and really slow bumper cars. The day's surprise and highlight was El Toro, which had a 2 hour plus wait but with our EZ pass thingamajig, we were able to check out other rides and return when our reservation was ready. In between all the rides there was a lot of great conversation, with folks I really don't know that well. I enjoyed getting to know the group and their real personalities. I explained to someone in the group that going to an amusement park on a first or second date isn't a bad idea because a dinner is too artificial and can be brief. Going to an amusement park reveals more of the person's personality -- are they daring or timid. And besides, when you're stuck in long lines waiting to board a ride, you're forced to have conversation without gesturing to your food for those awkward pauses on a restaurant date. Anyway, so getting back to the group, time and time again the 2 degrees of separation theory amongst Koreans or Asians is always validated. Take for instance my Chinese female friend who came to GA with us and who had never left San Francisco her whole life, well, most of her life. She grew up there, went to undergrad there as well as her grad school. She happens to know people in different parts of my life that go way back to HS and she knew many mutual people with another person in our group. She said to me that she wouldn't have realized how closely connected she was to people had she not left SF. I'll write about that later, but the other event I want to share is my continued domination at Whack-a-mole. That old time boardwalk game has always intrigued me and in my earlier days as a budding whack-a-moler, I had a winning percentage above .750. I had commented to a friend earlier that since I passed the age of 30, I'm a step slower... my defense on basketball which was always my forte has now eroded as twenty somethings now whisk by me. Anyway, I walked up to the whack-a-mole and scouted out the competition. Two kids under the age of 8 with their dad, so I figured I had a good advantage over those 3. The only other person was this large black women who stepped up and dropped to the side 5 very large dolls; prizes she had won from other parts of the park. OK, I figured I have one real competitor. In the end, I increased my lifetime winning percentage to .800 as I barely beat her by the score of 150 to 140, separated by one mole. Though I will admit I was lucky because that one mole was probably the first one because it happened to raise up on the hammer, thus giving me a quick hit/credit. Thanks to PJ for rounding up the troupes and getting us to Jackson, NJ safely.
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