The Best Ride

For excitement, fear, thrills, and fun nothing beats the basic midway ride, The Zipper. The Paris Fair always has it, as does the Ottawa Exhibition, which I visited tonight with some friends. What adds to the fear is knowing how many times the ride has been assembled and dissembled each year, and how far all its pieces travel and who exactly puts it together each time.

In Paris, guys in my high school would just hang around the fair grounds a couple days before it all opened and help set things up. Safety regulations? You're held into the cages by a simple strip of metal. The chance of accident seems greater then in the streamlined amusement park rides, with their many locking safety bars and straps.

The impracticability of The Zipper is also amazing, there is no track to help you know when your going to go upside down or flip, it could happen at anytime and in a number of different ways. I rode it twice and may try to get back to ride it some more this week.