Sitting at the Top of the Tower Would Be So Much Cooler If I Could Actualy See . . .

As I've noted before, my weekends in April and May are pretty booked, primarily with Singles stuff. Tomorrow it's an All-Singles day trip to Oklahoma City to eat at the excellent Mexican restaurant Ted's Cafe Escondido, followed by a visit to the OKC Memorial. As of right now I'm pretty sure I'm the only member of my class going, since the few others who had signed up have since called to let me know they were dropping out (which reminds me: Magic Pants, if you're reading this, Freezeout asked me to tell you "you're a wiener”), but that should give me a chance to mingle with the folks in the other class, and all you blog monkeys know just how well I do at mingling, right?

But that's what's coming up; as for last Saturday, it was Easter weekend, so a group of us did what all good Christians do on the Saturday before Easter: we went to Six Flags Over Texas.

Now, the decision to go to Six Flags the day before Easter isn't as random as it might seem; because it was Easter, it was also Christian Youth Weekend, which meant that in the evenings there were concerts with contemporary Christian artists. Although there were lots of folks interested in going to Six Flags in theory, there were only three of us who were able to go: Cap'n Cluck, who was excited about seeing MercyMe in concert; The Anti-Cap'n, who was excited about seeing Natalie Grant in concert; and myself, who was excited about having friends who (a) were willing to buy season passes (b) love riding roller coasters as much as I do, and (c) don't live over three hours away.

I was wanting to get on the road pretty early so that we could beat the rush to the lines for season passes and the Batman roller coaster. However, Cap'n Cluck is not an early riser, so we delayed my preferred departure time by about a half hour. I headed to Cluck's place, and then we headed over to pick up The Anti-Cap'n. As we were pulling up in front of his house, Cluck realized that she had forgotten to give him a wake-up call like he had requested, but she didn't think much of it, since the last time she was supposed to give him a wake-up call he really didn't need it.

Of course, since she forgot, this time he did.

Apparently, The Anti-Cap'n had woken up in time, but had promptly fallen back asleep; as a frequent perpetrator of the same offense, I can't really say much about that. After knocking on the door and ringing the bell for a while, Cluck actually had to go around the side of the house and tap on his bedroom window to get him up. Although we had to wait while he got ready, it did give me a chance to check out my new digs. Oh, yeah, don't think I've mentioned that upcoming change: at the end of May I'm moving in with Anti-Cap'n and Bizarro-Zinger; lots o' adjustment coming with that, since I haven't had a roomie since the Year of the Flunky. Could make for some interesting blogging material in the months to come . . .

Anyway, we finally got on the road, and then had to stop to get some gas, an endeavor that take an inordinate amount of time since the gas station we pulled in to wasn't as empty as it seemed; all of the unattended pumps were out of order, and the ones that were in use seemed to be taking forever. When Cluck started filling up, it became apparent why, as the machines were pumping something akin to molasses. By the time we finally got to Six Flags, it was almost noon, so we decided to go ahead and eat our picnic lunch there in the parking lot before heading inside.

Our first stop was the line to get Season Pass IDs printed; I already had mine, since I had just renewed the one I had last year, but the others were first timers. The line was nowhere near as bad as it had been the first time I had gotten one with the Core Four, but we still had to wait for a bit. Cap'n Cluck suggested I take the opportunity to get a new ID, which resulted in me once again brandishing what has to be the goofiest picture known to man to my friends' delight; if I had a scanner, I’d be sure to post it for everyone’s amusement, but darn the luck, I don’t. The Anti-Cap'n realized he hadn't filled out the information on the back of his paperwork, which lead us to bemoan the fact that Magic Pants wasn't around with her Magic Purse, a deceptively small bag that holds a near-infinite capacity, a good 3/4 of which is taken up with ink pens; the first time we witnessed Magic Pants pulling item after item out of the Magic Purse, Cap'n Cluck made a comment about Mary Poppins' bag. I, being the geek I am, instead thought to myself "It's like Doctor Who's TARDIS*." But I digress . . .

After securing our IDs, we then began our circuit of the park, first hitting The Conquistador (which is practically always the inaugural ride on any of my Six Flags visits) and then moving on to The Titan, Runaway Mountain, and the Flashback, each of which had a fairly short wait. We then moved towards The Batman ride, only to see a line that stretched all the way to the entrance, which is not a good sign; that's probably a good 2-3 hour wait, even more if you want to ride in the front row and, trust me, Batman's hardly worth riding if you don't ride in the front row. We headed in to Mr. Freeze instead, where I had one of the most unique line experiences ever, as we were followed directly by a crowd of approximately 15 very loud, very aggressive, very rowdy, and very profane teenagers.

Nonstop chanting, rapping, singing, taunting, and wall-banging began as soon as they entered the very enclosed and echo-chambery line. I could look around and see the disapproving looks on the faces all around them, but you could tell nobody wanted to be the one to say anything and get all of that rowdiness focused on themselves; what was particularly entertaining was to watch the faces as the group dropped f-bombs and sexual innuendos at the top of their lungs; don't forget, this was Christian Youth Weekend. After about an hour or so, the headache-inducing banging on the walls prompted a security guard to come and get on to them; I thought for sure we were going to have a small riot on our hands for a minute or so, but after the guard didn't back down from their back-talk they became much more subdued, and we spent the rest of the time in line actually being able to hear ourselves think.

After that experience, we were more than ready to rest our feet and get some grub, so we walked on over to Cheddars, where we cooled off and stuffed ourselves. Once back at the park we picked up our tickets for the concert (all in-park concerts being free with a Season Pass) and got in line for Superman: Tower of Power. The Anti-Cap'n was a bit nervous about it, not having ridden anything like it before, but Cap'n Cluck and I assured him of its awesomeness. As we progressed through the line, I regaled them with my comic geek knowledge of exactly why all of the Superman Family cut-outs were out of date: Supergirl being Kara Zor-El instead of Linda Danvers, Lex Luthor being a regular super-villain instead of a tycoon again, Superboy having just been killed off a week earlier, etc. I'm sure they were highly impressed. Since I was wearing my Alex Ross Justice League shirt we also spent some time with them trying to name as many characters as they could, and Cap'n Cluck quizzed me on the reasoning behind the garish coloring of most super-heroes. But the real fun in line came as we neared the end and were treated to a rare sight: a teenager on the ride had decided to ignore the numerous "no carry on items" warnings and had worn his hat, which was ripped off of his head as he was rocketed towards the sky and spirited out over the park. When the ride came back down, the kids were circling around the towers, looking for it, not quite seeming to grasp that it was long gone.

After the Superman ride we headed over to the amphitheater for the concert, discovering then exactly why the tickets we got were free; although in all fairness, while they were pretty high up, they were also in pretty good line-of-sight of the stage, which was nice. We were really enjoying the concert, too, until Cap'n Cluck made a little kid cry and we had to leave . . . but that's a story for another time . . .

*Time And Relative Dimensions In Space, in case you were wondering