Country Roads

Age limits
I love roller coasters. But, my idea of a roller coaster is the old wooden one that used to tower over San Francisco’s Playland At The Beach in the 1940s, perhaps early 50s. It truly “coasted.”
Last week, some of our family visited Disneyland. For me, it had been 20 years since my last Splash Mountain soaking. In the 90s the Thunder Mountain ride was a happy memory of cute coyotes and spiny saguaro cactus landscaping flitting by while we amused coasters enjoyed the rush of perhaps 40 mph? Maybe?
Once before I overestimated my abilities – in the Cascade Mountains of Washington when I was in college skiing. At my best, I was an able beginner and a mediocre intermediate on extra long wooden skiis that I inherited from my older sister. I met an old friend on the slopes from high school and he said, “Irene, you are good enough to come up on the lift to a high run.”
Flattered, I jumped onto the lift. Everything was fine until I jumped off at the top and looked down. I had made a terrible decision and it didn’t get any better as I took three times as long as it should have to get down to the bottom without breaking my leg or my neck.
Now, 58 years later, I made another poor decision. I rode California Screamin’ – a roller coaster that propels the occupant at one point upside down, with speeds that felt like 100 mph and that was from the first thrust. Heaven only knows what speed we reached in those loops. Once the ride began, I knew I didn’t belong on it but there was no getting off.
“Wait, I am too old for this ride!” It was only a thought, soon overtaken by the next thought, that I needed to breathe in order to survive. The image of a limp, lifeless old lady strapped to the last seat in a roller coaster car, was one I fiercely rejected.
“Breathe deeply! Inhale! Exhale! Concentrate on just breathing and you shouldn’t faint,” was my fervent hope.
At one point my head was jammed down into my chest as though somebody powerful wasn’t allowing my head to assume a normal position. This is the upside down loop, I concluded, correctly, as I was able to straighten my neck a few seconds later.
The entire ride was over in probably two minutes, but that was two minutes too long. Returned to the platform where I had gotten on, I stepped out of the roller coaster car and staggered forward to ascend a stairway to return to my family. Hanging onto the railing and feeling really, really odd, I realized suddenly that my little sister, a woman also in her 70s, was somewhere behind me in a different roller coaster car.
From the level of the stairs I gazed over a small crowd who had just exited the next car after mine. Amongst all the happy, confident teenagers I spied a small gray haired lady walking as in a daze. I went back to be with her.
“Marty, that was quite a shock, wasn’t it?” I said.
She looked at me and shook her head slowly. “It was terrible!”
Later, our family was incredulous that we didn’t get out of line and refuse to participate in the ride.
My son, Dave, said, “I kept thinking that you and Marty would notice how the car is thrust forward with terrific force and that you wouldn’t want to be on it, but, you both didn’t seem to have any problem with that.”
He also shared that he couldn’t find any other little gray haired ladies boarding California Screamin’ other than his mother and his aunt and that concerned him.
In retrospect, like the steep slope in the Cascades, I had no idea how challenged and how ill-equipped I was to handle these two experiences.
My sister, Marty, suggested that Disneyland should have a sign on some of the rides to the effect that not only is there a height limit for the little kids, but that there should be an age limit for the elderly who don’t easily recognize their boundaries.
Happily, within my intermediate range of roller coasters, there is still enjoyment in the likes of the Cars Ride and Thunder Mountain where all the generations can ride together without fear of losing Granny.
Renee Kiff weeds and writes at her family farm in Alexander Valley.