Good Wednesday morning.
Lately life has felt like a roller coaster. There have been a lot of really big ups, and then some fairly signifiant downs. Sometimes these highs and lows occur within very close proximity of one another – so fast that it feels like things are hovering at the edge of out-of-control.
It’s that space between in and out of control – the part of the ride where you’re upside down and lifted out of your seat and held in place just with some mechanical seat belt thing that maybe, possibly, will fail and send you hurtling to a painful death – that makes roller coasters (the rides, we’re talking about here, not the metaphor for life) so exciting to those who enjoy them.
I am not one of those people.
As we have established time and again, I am one of those people who prefer to keep my two feet firmly planted on the ground, thanks very much – unless I am driving while steering with my knee and sending texts one-handed, which only happens when I am very, VERY pressed on deadline. Honest.
Otherwise, no upside down or round-and-round rides for me. I wasn’t always this much of a chicken, but I really never could get a taste for racing around corners at high speeds in a car that seemed about to fly off the tracks at any moment.
But roller coasters are popular. In fact, they are America’s favorite amusement park ride, preferred by 35 percent of individuals polled in a 2021 survey. The next favorite ride – the bumper cars – were a far second at 13 percent, and the ferris wheel and log ride (whatever the heck THAT is) were tied at 10 percent.
At the same time, between 21 and 29 percent of poll respondents said they were either “very” or “somewhat” concerned about the safety of amusement park rides. The truth is, though, the roller coasters on the whole are very safe, regulated and inspected with some regularity.
The International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) says that there are 0.9 injuries per million rides and in a typical year, more than 385 million guests take more than 1.7 billion rides at about 400 North American fixed-site facilities.
The problem is that when something DOES go wrong, it’s big and sensational news, which feeds into the fear that people like me have about getting on a ride in the first place.
For those of you who are roller coaster fans, bully for you. Also, today is a big day, because it was on this day in 1898 that a man named Edwin Prescott was awarded a patent for the first-ever vertical loop roller coaster located at none other than New York’s own Coney Island.
Happy National Roller Coaster Day!
Coney Island, of course, is home to the famous Cyclone, the second-steepest wooden roller coaster in the world and regarded by many as the mother of roller coaster enthusiast culture.
It is not the world’s tallest coaster, though. That award goes to Kingda Ka at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson Township, NJ. It’s also the fastest coaster in North America, reaching speeds of 128 miles per hour. (I feel queasy just writing that sentence).
Some people love roller coasters so much that they make a habit of riding them over and over and over.
The record for marathon coaster riding – 405 hours and 40 minutes on two coasters – was set in 2007 by a Brooklyn native named Richard Rodriguez. (He actually won back the record that year, which he had previously held for 30 years until it was stolen by a German named Frank Rossler). Why does someone feel compelled to do this? This is a question for the ages.
There are a lot more mosts and biggests and fastests and other such records in the coaster world.
Another sort of yuck day is on tap – definitely NOT one favorable to roller coaster riding, in my opinion. There will be considerable cloudiness and occasional rain showers, with temperatures in the low 80s.
In the headlines…
President Joe Biden said he will travel to Hawaii as soon as possible to assess recovery efforts from the deadliest U.S. wildfires in more than a century.
The president said he hadn’t yet visited because of concerns that doing so would divert resources and attention from the humanitarian response. First Lady Jill Biden will accompany him to Hawaii.
“I don’t want to get in the way – I’ve been to too many disaster areas,” the president said. “But I want to go and make sure we got everything they need. I want to be sure we don’t disrupt the ongoing recovery efforts.”
DNA specialists and anthropologists are among the experts who have been arriving in Maui this week to join the painstaking process of recovering and identifying more than 100 people who perished last week in the historic Hawaii town of Lahaina.
Donald Trump, in a video posted between attacks on the prosecutor who indicted him on Monday, released a two-minute video criticizing Biden’s response to the fires.
On the heels of a fourth indictment for Trump, Biden focused on manufacturing jobs in a speech at a Wisconsin factory — putting his ideas for growth up against his Republican rivals in a bid to win over voters in a key state in next year’s presidential election.
Biden hailed “Bidenomics” as the path to strengthening the middle class and boosting the American economy during his visit to a state that will likely play a critical role in his reelection chances in just 15 months’ time.
As he promoted his economic agenda in Milwaukee, the president took several jabs at Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, in what served as a stand-in for an attack on Trump.
At this week’s summit between the leaders of Japan, South Korea and the United States, Washington is hoping to permanently blunt with a show of unity that Chinese advantage on the geopolitical chessboard.
The lawyer who represented Hunter Biden in plea negotiations to end a five-year Justice Department investigation into tax and gun offenses stepped down early yesterday, saying that he intends to testify as a witness on behalf of the president’s son.
Special counsel Jack Smith obtained an extraordinary array of data from Twitter about Trump’s account — from direct messages to draft tweets to location data — newly unsealed court filings reveal.
But it took a bruising battle with Twitter’s attorneys in January and February — punctuated by a blistering analysis by a federal judge, who wondered whether Elon Musk was trying to “cozy up” to Trump by resisting the special counsel’s demands.
The nature of the messages or who exactly wrote them remained unclear, but it was a revelation that such messages were associated with the former president’s account.
Trump and the 18 other individuals indicted by a Georgia grand jury on Monday night over their alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election are set to be booked at the Fulton County jail, according to multiple reports.
Rudy Giuliani — once the most feared federal prosecutor in America for using RICO laws to take down Mafia bigs — just got indicted under the same statutes in Georgia for alleged election tampering.
Trump blasted Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis as “corrupt” and vowed to release an “irrefutable report” countering his sprawling Georgia election interference indictment.
The filing of House financial disclosure reports each year is usually considered a routine affair. But for Rep. George Santos of New York, who is facing 13 felony charges related to his finances, the matter has the potential to become yet another soap opera.
Air Force veteran and lawyer Greg Hach announced he is mounting a primary challenge against the embattled Santos in New York’s 3rd Congressional District, saying he’s running for the seat to “restore integrity” to its office. Six Republicans are now in the fray.
As New York state works to expand high-tech manufacturing, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced $40 million to fund sites and attract large employers.
State and local lawmakers rallied with public health advocates in White Plains to demand that Hochul end her silence on legislation that was passed in June to prohibit the dumping of radioactive waste into the Hudson River.
The Anti-Defamation League has tracked 26 calls threatening violence at synagogues from New York to California over the last month.
The state made convicted weed dealers the first legal sellers. Those left out sued, and a judge has paused the program.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said that he does not anticipate holding a special session to revive New York’s fledgling legal cannabis industry, which is now stalled by a court injunction.
More than half a million New York and New Jersey residents have already been afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease — with an estimated 70,000 more expected to be diagnosed with the disease in the next two years.
Mayor Eric Adams slammed the Biden administration again for continuing to delay work permits for tens of thousands of migrants entering the city.
Adams doubled down on his repeated cries for more federal assistance and funds to help stem the migrant crisis plaguing the city — arguing that the Big Apple had been unfairly saddled with a national emergency.
Prominent New York City restaurateur Danny Meyer — who founded the wildly popular Shake Shack chain — is closing two of his eateries after the historic hotel they’re housed in became a migrant shelter.
Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group said in a statement that they were “disappointed” to announce that Marta and Maialino (vicino) would be closing their locations Aug. 25.
While in the Capital Region, Heastie expressed concerns about how the crisis has been handled.
The Albany County Legislature voted down one of two Republican-backed proposals Monday related to the recent arrival of migrants from New York City.
Biden and Congress should send the influx of migrants to the National Mall in Washington, DC, and not the former Fort Wadsworth military base on Staten Island, Borough President Vito Fossella said.
The Big Apple’s latest mass “tent city” shelter opened its doors on the grounds of the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, as the city struggles daily to house the sheer number of migrants flooding in.
Shoplifters in Queens may now also get slapped with trespassing notices as part of a new law enforcement initiative that aims to crack down on repeat offenders terrorizing local businesses.
Retail workers in New York who try to stop shoplifters would not be at risk of losing their jobs or being punished by their bosses under legislation proposed by a Long Island state lawmaker.
NYPD brass has warned rank-and-file cops last week to think twice about high-speed pursuits in the wake of recent incidents that left civilians injured.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation is objecting to a request by Delaware County to lead the review of New York City’s land-buying program in the Catskills as the state attempts to renew the program for the next decade.
Janeen DiGuiseppi, the FBI’s top agent in Albany and the first woman to permanently lead the field office covering 32 upstate counties and Vermont, is leaving the Capital Region for a bureau post in Washington D.C.
Three libraries – Troy, Waterford and Watervliet – will receive state construction funds to support work at their buildings, it was announced yesterday at the Watervliet Public Library.
A delivery truck driver from Troy relying on Google maps to get to his destination is the latest motorist to smack into the Glenridge Road span at the railroad overpass, according to Glenville police.
A colt by Practical Joke from the mare Awesome Again and a colt by Violence from the mare Liam’s Map each brought $380,000 at the recently concluded record-setting Fasig-Tipton sale of New York-bred yearlings at Humphrey S. Finney Pavilion.
The 2023 Altamont Fair is open.
Sorry Swifties, Tay Tay is not moving to Kinderhook.
