Fastest, Tallest, Biggest!

We woke up early Sunday morning and drove 3 hours to Cedar Point, Ohio - a roller coaster and amusement park. The park has 17 roller coasters, including the worlds fastest, tallest and biggest roller coaster in the world - all rolled into one (The Dragster)!

An overall shot of the park - the tall ride you can see is the Dragster

We started off on a coaster called Mantis - one of the tallest and fastest stand up roller coasters in the world, sending us around 4 loops at about 60mph (nearly 97kph). It was a good ride to start off the day.

Next up was Mean Streak - one of the tallest and fastest wooden roller coasters in the world. With heights of 161 feet (50 meters), speeds of 65mph and almost a 1 mile track, it was a rough ride. Being all wood, it was rickety and threw us around big time. It done some damage to Ryan's shoulder and bruised Kristy's back and shin. We couldn't wait for this one to be over.

We hit a couple more coasters, working our courage up for the Dragster. As we got closer, we both got a little more nervous. Here are some facts about the Dragster:

Length: 2800 feet (853m)

Height: 420 feet (128m or 42 stories high)

Angle of lift: 90 degrees

Vertical drop: 400 feet (122m)

Angle of decent: 90 degrees

Launch Speed: 120mph in under 4 seconds (193kph)

Angle of twist on decent: 270 degrees

Drop speed: 120mph (193 kph)

This is the Dragster - you get at a 90 degree angle at 120mph up the LHS, go over the top, and come down at 120mph, at a 90 degree angle, twisting 270 degrees. All over in 16 seconds!

It was finally our turn, and the ride was really good, and no where near as bad as we thought it was going to be. Although we only had a lap belt holding us in, we felt very secure, and because you were going so fast, you didn't really have time to worry anyway! It was an awesome rush!

After a bite to eat, it was time to hit some water rides to cool down. We then lined up for the parks brand new ride - the Maverick. Maverick had only opened a matter of weeks before we arrived and we had to line up for 1.5 hours just to have a ride that lasted barely 2 minutes! Once again, we were locked in so tight and felt so secure that we were ready for anything. This ride topped all the other rides in the park - loops, twists, turns - it wasn't dull for one second! There was even a drop that actually inverted and was at an angle of 95 degrees sending us at speeds of 75mph! We absolutely loved it, and it has definitely cured Ryan's fear of roller coasters!

Click on the the link below to watch the actual ride! Its good.

http://maverick.cedarpoint.com/ride/video/?video_id=16

We went on one more coaster, then called it quits, leaving the park bruised and battered, but we still had a great time!

Bonjour!

Well, we have only about 4 weeks left in the USA and only a few more journeys to report back.
This weekend we drove 7.5 hours to Montreal, Canada. The drivers in this place are crazy! If you aren't doing 20km over the speed limit, then you will be left for dead! Approximately 67 percent of Montrealers speak French as a first language, and nearly 95% of the population speak French. We could have sworn we had just driven to France, not Canada.

This weekend we thought we would get some preparation in for Europe, and stay in a backpackers hostel, on recommendation from Luis who had stayed at this particular hostel before. Friday night we checked in and were shown to our fluro aqua and purple room. We walked to a road full of bars and cafes and hung around there for a while, before calling it a night.

No, it wasn't a dead body in our room!

Saturday morning we woke up excited - Luis had told us the hostel had a Hawaiian owner who cooked up a storm for brekkie. Kristy was picturing bacon and eggs with some pineapple cooked on a grill. We went downstairs and saw a box of cornflakes. Ryan went to ask the hostel manager which milk we should use while Kristy got the crockery and cutlery ready (there was still no Hawaiian man to be seen). The hostel manager told Ryan that there was in fact no milk for any cereal, that the only food they provide for (the included) breakfast was bread, butter and jam. Nice one Luis! To make matters worse, Kristy had the flu and it decided to hit the hardest that day! The good thing about the hostel was they let us use their bikes for free. Everyone in Montreal cycles - the infrastructure for this is excellent. After our toast, we set out for a cycle around the city. Our first stop was the Olympic Stadium built for the 1976 Olympics.

Riding around Montreal - This was before Ryan popped his tyre!

In front of the Olympic Stadium


And the winner is......

We continued cycling, but by this stage Kristy's nose would not stop running and she could barely see from the water pouring out of her eyes. When we found a chemist she almost cried with joy. It took about 10 minutes to locate cold and flu tablets as all the packaging was in French, then another 5 minutes to work out that if you turned the package over, the other side was in English! We also had to get air for Ryan's rear tyre, which he popped riding down the stairs at the Olympic stadium.

We rode over a huge bridge with awesome views to a little island which had the Biosphere, not sure what its purpose really is though.

Ryno at the Biosphere

We continued riding until we reached the historic downtown area and Old Port. The area was filled with cobblestone streets and old buildings, lots of cafes and live entertainment. It was a really nice area and the atmosphere was great. We stopped here for lunch.

We rode back to our hotel. We think in total we rode about 15km's. We freshened up, had some drinks at the hostel, then caught the Metro downtown to the Comedy Festival. The festival has 2 elements - indoor and outdoor. The indoor shows you need to buy tickets for, but the outdoor events are free. We decided to stick with the outdoor events. Despite the fact that it was raining, there were thousands of people out and about. There were strange large headed characters walking the streets, heaps of live entertainment and stacks of bars. We just wandered through the streets for a few hours. We think a lot of the outdoor comedy had been postponed due to the weather. When we got back to the hostel Ryan stayed up talking to other backpackers (including an Aussie) and Kristy went to bed.

Kristy in the streets with one of the characters walking around. This is where the Comedy Festival was held.

Despite the fact that almost everything was written in French, we could read this sign!

Sunday, we enjoyed more toast, checked out and caught the metro down to the Old Port area again. We walked through the cobbled streets and around the wharf, had some lunch in a nice cafe, caught the subway back to our car and headed off.

One of the old buildings down near the Old Port

Kristy at the port

On the way home, we went for a small detour through the Thousand Islands, where Thousand Island Dressing comes from.

Any of the Thousand Islands that were big enough, had houses built on them

We had to go through customs when entering back in to the USA. Way back when we arrived in the USA, Kristy had a special form stapled in her passport to say she was in the country as a visitor for 6 months (Ryan didn't need one as he is here on exchange). She had to rip this form out of her passport and send it to the US Consulate so it could be extended by one week, as it expired one week prior to us leaving the country for Europe. When the form was sent in, the Consulate issued a receipt to say that they had received the form. We rang the consulate before leaving for Montreal and they told us Kristy wouldn't have her new updated form prior to leaving for Europe (taking over 4 months for them to process the form), but should be OK to cross the boarder into Canada, as long as we had the receipt as proof of sending in the form. So, we are going through customs and the form obviously wasn't in Kristy's passport, but we had the receipt with us. Of course the officer wasn't convinced, so we had to go inside the customs office and wait while they investigated. This actually turned out to be a good move as they issued Kristy with a new form then and there on the spot for $6 and we were out of there within 20 minutes (as opposed to the $200 fee sending the form in to the Consulate and over a 4 month wait). They were also the nicest customs officers we had seen.

In summary, Montreal was beautiful and we are definitely ready to go to Euro now!

As promised, here is the pic of us with the Playboy Bunny at the Hugh Hefner Playboy Club, Las Vegas!

A Fairly Quiet One...

Not much excitement to report back this weekend. We spent the weekend chilling out after a fairly full one week in Vegas and Utah.

Saturday we got to sleep in - yay! We pretty much bummed around the entire morning. Lunch time we headed out to Presque Isle, which is a peninsula off Erie. We went and had a look at the 'beach' (and we use the word beach very loosely).

Can you believe that we were walking on this exact spot only a couple of months ago?

Erie 'Beach'

Kristy - Lake Erie. There was no wake boarding action happening either.

After a drive around, we went to the Erie Greek Festival. Well, that was a flop. They had been talking it up on the radio and TV. We go down there and there was crappy Greek music playing (not even live), and 3 food vendors who all sold the same food and drinks. The funny bit was you had to buy tickets, then exchange the tickets for food, which to us seemed a little backwards. There was no one there, and heaps of empty seats in the hot sun. We left fairly quickly, but not before a quick bite of some Greek food.

Bargain - $11 for a case of beer!

We finished up the night with a 'grill' on our back veranda.

Grillin

Sunday we went to Buffalo with Louis (from Ryan's work) and his girlfriend Katherine. The Taste of Buffalo festival was on. This festival beat the Erie one hands down. Heaps of live music, every restaurant in Buffalo had a stall it seemed and heaps of people. We spent a few hours wandering through all the stalls and sampling different food from each of the vendors. We tried things like: Catfish nuggets, Cajun shrimp, Pot stickers (dumplings), but we steered away from the Dogfish burger!

With Louis and Katherine at the Taste of Buffalo

With a drink and catfish nuggets

We had another grill at home and that was our weekend.

Tis a lazy nation. They don't even push their own mowers.....

...... Drive through banks.......

Not to mention drive thru pharmacies, post office boxes and drive thru beer (only) shops.

Erie News Just In..

A 15 month old girl was recently stabbed in the face. Her father and another man were having an altercation. The father got in the car, and the other man swiped at him through the window, only to miss and hit the little girl.

Also...

Alice from the Brady Bunch is from Erie! There you go!

The next blog will not be posted for another week due to us being in Vegas/Utah on 'vacation'.

Stay tuned!

PS. I forgot the funniest part in the last blog - when our hotel gave us the wrong key to our room twice, the third time they sent the Bell hop (who is from Timbuktu. Really!) up to check that our room was vacant. He knocked on the door with no answer, so opened the door only to see 2 men going for it (the gay pride parade was on that weekend). Lets just say he shut that door very quickly!

Utah

Monday morning we left Ian and Brian behind to battle their own way to the airport, while we headed for Utah. Whats in Utah??? Well, if you can imagine a rich red desert, with massive rock formations, spires and hoodoos (more rocks), with white water rafting rivers , then that is Utah. The scenery in this place is absolutely amazing. We had never seen anything like it ever!

Monday morning we collected our rental car (A Ford Focus - which was slightly better than the last car we hired) and drove 4.5 hours to Bryce Canyon. The canyon is famous for their rock formations and deep canyons. We will let the photos tell the story.

Ryno overlooking the canyon

Kristy @ Bryce Canyon

Us with rock formations at the canyon

This was a natural tunnel that had formed in the stone (Bryce Canyon)

We then drove another 4.5 hours to our destination of Moab, not before driving through more mountains and rock formations, which seemed like was leading us nowhere, because they seemed to stretch on forever. Every time you drove over another crest, the scenery seemed to change. There were also heaps of mountains with motorbike tracks all over them - you could have some serious fun if you had a moto out here!

Moto tracks on the side of a mountain

Tuesday

Today we drove to Arches National Park. This park is renowned for its natural arch formations in the rocks. The pictures below are larger so you can actually see us in the pictures - the rocks are that large it is hard to spot us!

Balanced rock - looks like only a matter of time til the rock falls

Delicate Arch - we could have done a 3 mile walk out to the arch, but it was just too hot. We took the 1/2 mile walk to the lookout instead (where we still managed to get burnt!)

Ryan overlooking one of the gorges - dont look down!

We also wanted to go rafting although we didn't have much time to spare, so we drove back to town and made a rafting trip with about 5 minutes to spare. They took us in a bus along the second most scenic road in the USA, where films like Thelma and Louise, City Slickers 2 and John Wayne movies had been filmed. They dropped us at the Colorado River, where we boarded our raft. We actually had someone doing the paddling for us! There were only a couple of sets of rapids (the biggest about a class III, most being I or II), one which we got to get out of the boat and float down ourselves! We also got to do a fair bit of swimming, which was refreshing because it was so hot!

After rafting we went back to Arches NP, where we contemplated a 3 mile sunset walk out to the Delicate Arch. It was still so hot, so we passed on that idea and instead walked out to the Windows formation, then we drove down to Pine and Tunnel Arch, which we also had to walk to. Ryan was taking some photos and was swooped by what sounded like a small jet plane, but was actually a large black bird that had a nest on top of one of the arches! It was so loud and quick!

Windows

Kristy in the North Window

Ryan at the South window - the cliff behind him is so steep, it is impossible to climb without equipment (or hurting yourself badly!)


Kristy at Pine Arch (this is where Ryan was swooped)

That night we had dinner back in Moab, then drove 1 hour to the Green River where we spent the night.

Wednesday - 4TH JULY!

Happy Independence Day!

We hit the road at about 9am. The main interstate roads are 75mph (120kph), which are the fastest we had ever seen. To reach our next destination, Salt Lake City, we had to drive on the interstate for a short while, before turning off on to another major highway. After turning off, Ryan resumed the speed of about 81mph. We then noticed that we were very quickly approaching what looked like a cop car! Sure enough, the car in front pulls over to the side of the road and turns on his lights, signalling for us to pull over. He asked for Ryan's license and insurance papers, as well as what we were up to, where we were going, etc. Kristy made some really good small talk with the officer about where the best fireworks would be in Salt Lake City (SLC) for the 4th of July celebrations. He then explained that we were doing 81mph in a 65mph zone (or 130kph in a 105kph zone). We explained that we assumed it was the same speed and it was an honest mistake (although he claimed we had passed 2 signs with the speed limit on it). He then went back to his car to process the ticket and returned with only a warning!! YAY! There was no fine, loss of points, etc. Small talk always helps out in situations like that! :)

The Great Salt Lake - you can see some of the salt in the foreground

After 3.5 hours on the road we reached SLC, but decided to drive another 100 miles to the famous Bonneville Salt Flats raceway! We drove past the Great Salt Lake along the way and just over an hour later, we reached the speedway, which is 44,000 acres of salt flats.

Ryan at Bonneville Salt Flat International Speedway

On the salt lake - there actually used to be a lake here a long time ago, however it dried up and left massive deposits of salt

The land speed record (the fastest speed achieved by any wheeled vehicle on land) was achieved here. It is standardized as the speed over a course of fixed length, averaged over two runs in opposite directions. The current absolute (or unlimited) record holder is ThrustSSC, a twin turbofan jet-powered car which has achieved a whopping 763 mph (slightly under 1228 km/h) over one mile, breaking the sound barrier.

We couldn't drive all the way out there without taking the rental car for a small thrashing. So we both had a turn of doing donuts and racing along the flats (we only reached speeds of about 75mph, which was definitely fast enough!).

The Focus on the Salt Lake - about to cop a hard time (we have it on vid cam!) If you look closely, you can see salt spraying out from the tyres

We dropped our car back to SLC airport and caught our hotel shuttle to our hotel and checked in. It was then time for us to celebrate Independence Day, which we didn't care about, but was more an excuse to drink! We went to the closest bar, but we had to pay a membership to get in (that's the rules in Utah, which has a strong Mormon population and the headquarters is based here too). The bar was empty and so was the city - we think everyone must have flocked to the beaches for the vacation period. We spent all night at the bar, then walked in to town where we were told we could get a good view of the fireworks. It couldn't have been a worse view, so we ran back to our hotel and watched them from our balcony. They were fairly lame. Can you believe that there was still snow on the mountain tops, despite the extremely hot weather? People told us they still snowboard in July!

Thursday - Phoenix, AZ

We had to get up early this morning to make our 710am flight. Our original flight was supposed to be SLC to Phoenix, Arizona to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Cleveland, Ohio where our car was. The lady checking us in at the airport found a quicker flight route - SLC to Phoenix to Cleveland, which she booked us on. Although we got home 1 hour quicker, and didn't have to stop start so many times, we did have a 4 hour delay in Phoenix, so we took the opportunity to explore the city for a few hours. We can tell you there is absolutely nothing to do in the city of Phoenix. We had a coffee and a bite to eat, walked around the city for a while, then back to the airport for our flight home.

About the only thing for us to do in Phoenix was take photos of us with cacti (which we had been hanging to do since we were in the desert!)