Fahrenheit

Well, a weekend work marathon is forthcoming. With 2 double shifts in the mix and a couple of days for recovery after that, I figured I'd better get some blogging in while I can.

It has been hot Hot HOT here. We hit 103 twice this week, which is quite rare for Philly. In fact, I think we set heat records on both those days. Plus we have humidity here. That makes it feel even hotter. It was crazy. Luckily I got to be at my air conditioned work for both of those afternoons, so it worked out for me. Zack also stayed at work late and did homework those days to avoid running the air conditioner at home so much. I think we fared pretty well all things considered. Please note that I would take a 103 degree humid Philadelphia day over a mildly cold one any day, so this is not complaining in the least. I hope we have an extra long summer here.

Despite that we are both working full time (and opposite schedules) and Zack is carrying a full time load of classes, we are finding some time to squeeze in some summer fun. Last weekend, we decided to make a trip up to Hersheypark, which is about 2 hours from here. We went in the winter of 2008 for the Christmas thing that they do, but none of the roller coasters were open at that time of year, so we knew we'd have to go back. They do this excellent thing where you can enter that park after a certain time on the day before you bought your ticket for and preview the park. In this case, we bought tickets for Saturday, so we drove up there Friday and went into the park at 7:30. We stayed until the park closed at 10 and in that time, we rode all the major roller coasters. It was also nice because it was evening so it was cooler than being there midday, plus it was less crowded than it was on Saturday, so the lines were shorter. On Saturday, we went back for some more fun, and we ended up being really glad that we went on Friday night. We rode some coasters but decided to spend a while in the water park in the heat of the day and by 4 PM, we were both just pooped so we decided to head home. If we hadn't gotten to go to the park on Friday night, we wouldn't have gotten to ride everything probably, so it was really nice. Our (my?) favorite ride was Fahrenheit, which starts out like this:

except this isn't the kind of ride where they shoot you over that hill suddenly. Nope- they drag you straight up that hill slowly. You have to just sit there basically flat on your back in the seat, staring at the sky, waiting to finally make it to the top, and then you go flying straight down toward the ground, like THIS. Thrilling. It was also very smooth-- doesn't jerk your head around too much or scramble your brains out. That's important to me, the girl who spends her amusement park days in a dramamine drowsy haze just to be able to bear going on any of the rides without puking my guts out. Here's a video about a minute long of the whole ride from the point of view of the rider if you're interested. Fun fun. There were other great rides too, but I know I've already bored you with my overly long description of this one. Anyway, we had a good time and were glad that we had the chance to make it up there for that.