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The Adventure Continues


Keeping my word in not posting regularly... I missed a whole day!
During that day I was participating in an annual Campton tradition: going somewhere and giving people a lot of money to shake me about and flip me head over heels in the name of entertainment. Two years ago it was Disneyland Paris. Last year it was Port Aventura, on the Costa Dorada in Spain... This year it was Michigan's Adventure... And a jolly nice adventure was had by all.

Every theme park has its own characteristics: Disney in Florida is cloyingly saccharine, whilst Disneyland Paris is delivered with a certain Gallic shrug and "Boff!" Port Aventura is as well themed as any American park... And a good deal more so than Michigan's Adventure, which has a tenuous tie in with Charlie Brown, Snoopy and all the Peanuts gang, although you would never notice that inside (apart from in the gift shop). But that didn't stop it from being a thoroughly good day out.

The water rides got me as wet as I have ever been with my clothes on... And the wooden coasters are the longest and fastest I have ever been on. Indeed Shivering Timbers is in the world's top ten on both counts... Which pleased my daredevil 7 year old son no end when he got to go on it through stretching every sinue of his body to make the 48inch limit. While he was wooping and hollering his way along the backstraight , I was wondering whether Deb DeVaux, the physiotherapist at Faith UMC, wouldn't mind addressing the damage it was doing to my aging spine... Then thought I was having a heart attack... Just imagine the ignominy of dying on a rollercoaster beside your 7 year old son.

Anyway I survived that and most of the other death-defying coasters in the park... and some great flumes in the attached waterpark...

All in all a serious day of fun.

But today it occured to me that our day at the amusement park is a perfect metaphor for life in the western world today... We pay out heaps of money to be entertained... to escape the world outside... Turning fear into fun, by delivering it in closely controlled doses... Around every corner there must be new attractions to distract us from the hum-drum nature of life... Because God forbid that we should ever be bored... Or be forced to find something interesting or useful to do!
I'm not being a grouch... Let's face it, I think I enjoy the amusement parks more than the kids do! But once a year is enough...
The problem is, I think the western world is amusing itself to death...
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