Friday Oct 18th
Off to CP once more for another night of play. It was the typical crappy Friday Halloweekends weather, making me get yet another use out of my employee raingear. Jeff (UCISECBHJKIGYF) and I headed for Raptor. Tony (Tony) and Dave (Dodge em Dave) met up with us, Tony heading for his "baby" (MF) his goal was to hit his 300th MF ride, my goal of course to just ride Raptor as many times as I could. As night progressed it got colder and rained off and on. ANY of us GTTP’er who have gotten hit by ANY rain when riding ANY coaster can relate to the PAIN!! :) I saw Mr Skyward by entrance and told him to come ride with me, he happily did, grabbing my hand SEVERAL times! The on ride photo that Jeff and I took with him was classic but neither one of us was going to dish out the $8.01 for it. Jeff and Dave went off to play elsewhere and I stayed right where I was at. By 11 I had 17 flights in, that’s when Jeff and Dave met up with me once more. I talked them into1 more flight, and here is where the fun began. All night the crew kept asking me to "monitor" the block brake due to the high winds. I noticed for many flights the block wouldn’t even touch the train, other times it would and did notice my poor Raptor seemed to be running a tad slow all evening. We were in row 8, came around to the block brake and we stopped DEAD. I had that happen to me one other time in ‘00 during an AM test run, but was done purposely by our TL. Of course the guests in the train were freaking, Despite the wind and cold up there, Dave, Jeff and I thought it was the most awesome thing EVER! ;) I immediately looked back in station and saw ops running to controls and Wade (one of my fellow ride ops) running to us. I tried to tell the other guests we will find out in a minute what was wrong, and to stay calm it was probably nothing. This is where you can sit back and just listen to some of the stupid remarks people say. We heard, "I bet they did this on purpose" "I bet the rain stuck the brakes closed" "I wonder if I’m going to get a free ticket due to this inconvenience" "Isn’t that other train going to crash into us?" (The 2 other trains were SITTING in the station!!) Oh brother!!!! Wade eventually made his way up to spirals to the platform where he advised the train to calm down and we would be on our way in a moment. We spent maybe 10 minutes up there before we heard the well known "clear the Raptor tracks" buzzer and off we went. The amazing thing to me here was how from a dead stand still we managed to get back to the station, but "slow" would be an understatement. I sat there and wondered how cool it would be if we got a rollback right after that happened!!! Of course no such luck!! :( Jeff and Dave decided to head to MF to catch up with Tony so I followed them. 18 laps on my baby would have to due for now (putting me at 672 lifetime!! :)) We caught up with Tony and Alex (another MF Freak) just in time for Tony 300th. I have been sitting on 198 rides for MONTHS with no intention of worrying about my 200th but told all my riding partners I only needed 2 more for my 200th. So in the span of 20 minutes I got to join one of my CP buds in his 300th lap (Congrats Tony!! :)) and then I myself got my 200th lap. Park closed, walk back to parking lot all I wanted was some place warm and DRY!! As usual had a blast hanging with my buds, (put that pinkie away Dave!!) even soloing was a blast thanks to the Raptor crew (they rock!!! :)) and yet another fun filled evening at CP...and what’s life without Cedar Point?? POINTLESS!! :)
Off to Quarter Horse Congress once more for me......will get a (working) weekend TR posted as soon as I can!!!
Jo
2000/2002 Raptor Crew
Lifetime Raptor: 674 :)
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It's all about getting around the barrels, or over the fences, right leads, no faults, fastest time and looking pretty when done. What's so hard about that? :)
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