MAN WHAT A DAY!!! :D

The day started off at a sprint...

I had set my alarm for 9:00 am so I could get up and get ready by the time Traci and her step-brother, Steven, got here.

Brian woke me up, tapping on my door at 9:47 am, my alarm blaring but having failed to wake me, lol.

I hopped in the shower and threw on some clothes. Traci and Steven were chatting with Brian in the living room as I got out of the shower.

Brian didn't get to go. :( He gets migranes sometimes, and this morning he still had one after having one all day yesterday. So he stayed home.

I didn't have time to eat -- and amusement park food is always hella-expensive -- so I swung by Jack In The Box for a Crissant Sandwich and a Big Breakfast Burrito, which I ate as I drove.

The conversation on the way to San Antonio was fun. Steven turns out to be a thoroughly wierd and fun cat! (This is the first time I've ever spent any real time with him, so we were getting to know each other.) And Traci's always fun to hang with.

The first REAL TREAT of the day came when we were about 20 minutes away from Fiesta Texas...

MY BABY CALLED ME!!!

It was SO COOL! My phone rang a little after noon and I'm all "Who on Earth could be calling me at this hour" (because I'm usually well asleep at noon) and a look at the Caller ID and IT'S MY GNOMEY GODDESS!!! She sounded good and in good spirits and was just ringing to make sure I was good and let me know she was getting off from work.

It turns out she hadn't been able to check her emails and she didn't know that I was going to be in San Antonio today, bless her.

But it was SOOOOOOOO GREAT to hear her voice!!!

What an AMAZING start to my day!!!

The only thing better would have been if she could have been with us!

And if Brian had been feeling better and was there, too! How cool would THAT have been!

The first thing we did, before we even got into the park, was to locate a large family in the parking lot and see if they needed a ticket. Traci didn't want a free ticket to go to waste. They actually did need one for their youngest daughter, so that was quick and easy. :)

Inside the park, we went to the closest roller coaster: The Boomerang.

This bad-boy shoots you up a ramp backwards, then drops you forward through 3 loops, then shoots you backwards through those 3 loops and back into the starting position.

BRILLIANT!!!

An EXCELLENT way to reintroduce me to the bliss and terror of roller coasters!!!

I laughed so hard that my stomach was hurting before the ride was through!

I was genuinely surprised to discover that at 36, I just had NO anxiety about these rides! As a teen I didn't have the courage to try every ride at a carnival or amusement park. And I was bolder as a teen than as a kid. But in my 20s I could ride just about anything, but I remember have a bit of anxiety before attempting some of the more outrageous rides.

So it was interesting to discover that I no longer seem to have any reservations. I suspect it's my long absence for amusement parks. It's been so long since my body and mind got to experience such intense and unnatural sensations that it must crave them on some level.

Maybe. I dunno. Doesn't matter, really, lol.

The next ride, I think, was the Superman Krypton Coaster!

(This is not, I'd like to note, the ride on which a patron lost his/her legs recently. That was a different state and a different ride. It was called the Superman something-or-other, but not the same type of ride. It might not have even been a coaster.)

This baby was FAST and WILD!!! Fiesta Texas Online says that "The only floorless coaster in the south west, Superman treats riders to six inversions and a 170 foot drop that barely misses the quarry walls."

That sounds right to me. :)

We rode it twice!

Not consecutively... We rode it, then rode a bunch of other stuff, then came back to ride it again before the day was over.

We also roade the Road Runner Express a couple of times. (It's one of the ones that doesn't do loops, but it's FAST and exciting!)

There's this ridiculously insane ride call the Poltergeist!!! Good lord! It starts off at 0-60 miles an hour in under 3 seconds and just HURLS you through this super-tight maze of loops and twists and turns!!! I think US Air Force fighter pilots ride this thing as part of their training, lol! ;)

We didn't get to go on the newest coaster, Tony Hawk's Big Spin. :( The line was just ridiculously long.

Traci had told me that since her 20s, amusement park lines had dropped considerably. I found this to be true. I remember that every time I had been to Six Flags in Fort Worth we would wait a couple of hours to get on any given ride. Today we could wait as little as 3 minutes to get on some rides.

Tony Hawk's Big Spin would have been easily an hour wait. (The sign said "approximately 45 minutes from this point" but I suspect they fudge the time on those signs so as not to discourage the patrons.)

The Rattler was the only coaster we didn't go on. It's the wooden one that sways from side to side when you ride it, and Traci assured me that something about the way it vibrates you ensures you a headache for the next day and a half. A headache (granted, a rather intense one) was the reason Brian wasn't with us today, so I had no interest in risking it.

It was super hot today, so we HAD TO go on a couple of the water rides! :)

The first one we went on was the Gully Washer. Fiesta Texas Online says this is a 2-minute ride, but fails to mention that on a hot Summer day -- even a weekday -- you're going to wait an hour to get on it.

Which will not stop you from getting in line, because the promise of getting splashed is SO ENTICING at that point!

Plus, it's a fun 2 minutes! You're in this large plastic cylinder with a tube bottom, and you just go sloshing around the rapids, casually bumping into walls and spinning, and every once in a while you go under a waterfall and get cooled off, hehe.

Then more fast rides, then we hit the Power Surge for a proper drenching. This thing just drops you down a shoot, creating an ENORMOUS splash! There is an observation bridge above the point of impact, and spectators waiting to cool themselves off with that splash, lol!

It's really groovy!

After the ride, Steven felt the need to get thoroughly soaked, so he went and stood on the bridge through 2 more rides, lol.

Traci and I were happy with the rather thorough drenching the ride had provided us with, lol.

If you haven't just observed a hu-normous spalsh recently, I recommend it! There's just something really groovy about watching a gigantic amount of displaced water crashing over stuff that's really quite satisfying! :)

Let's see...

We rode the Wagon Wheel, these swing thingies -- that you hang from and it spins you around really high and really fast, so you get to imagine you're Criss Angel levitating... really fast -- and also Scooby Doo Ghostblasters.

The Scooby Doo one is cute... You ride in these cars through this black-lit maze done up like a cartoon haunted mansion, and your car has this gun thingy that you use to shoot targets with.

But the coolest part is that it's a really long wait INDOORS, IN AIR CONDITIONING, lol!!!

The wait was brilliant! I think my core temperature dropped down to almost-normal in there! (Did I mention it was a hot day today?)

We left around 6:00 pm, and the ride back to Austin was around 2 hours long, because of traffic.

It was GREAT day!!!

When got home Brian was in good spirits! His headache had persisted until Tommy stopped by. But during the course of hanging with Tommy the headache abated. He said "It feels like I removed the nail from my brain yesterday," which is an improvement, since the "nail" in his head had actually only been "removed" a few hours before, lol.

ALSO...

Brian informed me that TNMT came out on dvd today!!!

I still hadn't sen it!

So I rushed to Walmart, and discovered that THE SIMPSONS: SEASON 10 is out also!!! So bought them both and Brian and I watched TNMT!

GOOD flick!!! They did a great job with it, and I can't wait to see if there's a sequel! This was more like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I remember from the original comics, back when the series first came out!

After the movie, Brian crashed and I discovered that I was in need of some sleep, too, hehe.

I slept until 4:00 am, then hopped online to see if my baby was going to log on before work. It's now 7:20 am, so she's been working for at least 20 minutes. Maybe more, though, because she might have had to go in early.

I'm hungry, so I think I'm gonna cook a small pizza and watch me some SIMPSONS, heehee!

Hope your day is full of fun!

And Gnomey: I LOVE YOU!!! x o x o x o :D