Let's go for a ride
Rollercoasters, pool food, summer cocktails, indie rock, classic comedy and more round out another ACBN Friday Newsletter.
I love rollercoasters. I always have.
When I was a kid growing up in Northeast Ohio, summer wasn’t complete without a family trek to Cedar Point, a fabulous amusement park on the shores of Lake Erie that’s one of the premier destinations for rollercoaster enthusiasts in the world.
I’d thrill just poring over the cartoon map of the park, looking at all the intimidating names. Gemini. The Iron Dragon. Disaster Transport. The Raptor. Mantis. These coasters were like superheroes to me, and I felt like a superhero myself when I was big enough to ride them.
Well, I hit a long lull in my coastering career.
I moved to New York City for a decade, and then had a couple of kids as soon as I’d moved back to the middle of the country. There just weren’t opportunities for thrill rides. As the kids grew larger, I eagerly tracked their heights, openly anticipating a day when they might be tall enough to go on rides with me.
Now, growing up an hour’s drive from a world-class amusement park fostered a love of coasters in me, but it also turned me into a bit of a snob.
Like a native New Yorker who can’t imagine a respectable bagel being made anywhere outside of the Tri-State, I’d come to a sneering belief that rollercoasters anywhere that wasn’t America’s Roller Coast simply weren’t up to par. Our first few efforts in riding as a family were encouraging—the kids enjoyed the rides at LegoLand and Universal Hollywood—but the thrill level of those rides did little to disabuse me of my bias.
Last weekend, we took the kids to Holiday World, an amusement park in Santa Claus, Indiana, a little more than an hour’s drive west of Louisville. The trip was the fulfillment of a promise made at the beginning of the summer, a reward for the kids doing summer workbooks and reading, and my expectations for the attractions weren’t especially high. We spent most of the day in the “Splashin’ Safari” waterpark portion of the park, and had a nice time before decamping to the main park in the late afternoon.
After a few spins on carnival-style rides, my daughter asked if I’d go on a rollercoaster with her. I readily agreed, and we confirmed that she was a mere hairstyle’s width in compliance with the ride’s 48” minimum height. My wife and son headed off to play midway games, and I was so eager to get in line that I didn’t take a good look at the coaster itself.
It was only on the first lift hill that I realized I might’ve miscalculated my daughter’s ambitions.
Now, I’m still enough of a snob to say there’s plenty bigger at Cedar Point, but that’s an entirely respectable coaster right there—faster, taller, rougher and louder by far than anything we’d been on together before. My daughter was white as a sheet and trembling when we got off, and I was outwardly profusely apologetic while inwardly deeply grateful it had not been my suggestion to ride it.
(“I would’ve had to get her a kitten if it were my idea,” I remarked my wife after.)
There’s no real moral to this story, and it’ll be a long time before we know how this childhood memory will play for her as an adult. Hopefully, she looks back on it as fondly as I do riding coasters with my dad1 when I was her age, and it feeds an eventual lifelong love of thrill rides for her, too.
And if not, I just hope she remembers it was her idea.
Friends, it’s Friday at The Action Cookbook Newsletter.
School’s back in session for us, but it’s still sort of summer, and I’m not going to give up on these last few weekends easily.
Today, I’ve got a dish perfect for sneaking into the pool, a lovely classic cocktail, some great new indie rock, a delightful audiobook, a discussion of biopics, pets, and more!
Keep your hands and feet entirely inside the newsletter, and enjoy the ride.
Instructions unclear, sent noods
Every once in a while, I have an idea for a recipe name before I know what the recipe is actually going to be, and I find myself working backwards from there.
That happened this week, when the phrase “Pool Noodles” lodged itself in my brain.
It would have to be a summer pasta dish—that much is easy.
Our neighborhood pool has cracked down on people bringing in outside food this summer, and though I never really had done so before, I’m resentful enough of the concept of pool-bag searches that now I really want to smuggle food in.
That hypothetical situation would influence this dish, by setting a few parameters:
It would be have to taste good when served cold or at room temperature.
It would, ideally, be made of things that wouldn’t spoil quickly.