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"Looks like you get to ride it this time!"
My employer, Capital University, does not pay me as well as some other companies might. They are, however, very generous in doing very meaningful things that don't necessarily cost them a whole lot, but that are very meaningful to me. The vacation time allotment, for instance, is quite generous, and they supply me with the server space and bandwidth for my web site. In recent years, they have begun a new tradition, one of completely closing down the University for the week between Christmas and New Years Day. This year, because both of those holidays happened on Monday (and for other reasons I won't go into here) they threw in a couple of extra days. So my office completely shut down from Thursday, December 21, through Tuesday, January 2. This gave me an opportunity too good to pass up: I booked a trip to Southern California from December 23, returning on January 3. That's (including travel days) twelve days in Southern California visiting with my parents (who moved out there this summer) at a cost of only one vacation day. And that only because return flights were significantly cheaper on January 3 than on January 2!
As if that wasn't enough, I then learned that my girlfriend April (er, we've been dating since about May. I realize that this fact may come as a surprise to many readers.) would be able to join us for the holidays. What an opportunity to revisit some of the Southern California amusement parks!
Well, the first few days of the trip were occupied with Christmas-related activities. So the park visits began in earnest on the 26th. The four of us...me, April, my Mom and my Dad...had spent the day doing non-coaster stuff, and finished with a twilight sight-seeing trip down the Pacific Coast Highway into Santa Monica. Dad made the same mistake I had made back in June, and we parked the car in a parking lot on the beach below the pier. We then made our way topside.
The Santa Monica Pier is really multiple piers all connected together. The main pier extends well out into the Pacific, and it provides public fishing access, offices for the Coast Guard and Santa Monica Police, and several restaurants and shops. It is also a popular place for buskers to ply their trades. To the left (as viewed from shore) of the main pier is the Amusement Pier. Originally built by Charles I. D. Loof it now houses a small, modern amusement park. That park is then subdivided into three general areas. The area closest to the shore holds kiddie rides, the seaward end has a few adult rides, including the roller coaster, and the side facing the main pier is a small food court and a grand entrance to the park's diminutive midway. While Mom and Dad walked the main pier, April and I made the mistake of buying a few tickets to ride the roller coaster and the Giant Wheel.
April had visited the pier before, but had not ridden the roller coaster. I had, of course, visited the pier and ridden the coaster back in June although this was my first visit to the pier after dark. We made for the roller coaster, riding in the back seat, and getting quite a decent ride. The coaster is not very big. It's one of Morgan Manufacturing's first steel coasters, and it is severely limited because its footprint does not extend beyond the boundaries of Pacific Park (it does not leave the pier, and it remains entirely within the park fence line on the pier) and because it has to remain above the midway and other park attractions. The only place the coaster track can actually come all the way down to the pier decking is just after it circles the Giant Wheel, just before it comes up into the station. So with the mechanical limitations of the ride in mind, while the West Coaster is not a particularly large or exciting coaster, it fits in nicely with the Santa Monica Pier. The ride climbs out of the station and immediately up its lift, then through a series of short dips on either side of the turnaround over the kiddie rides. It's kind of like the ending sequence on the Knoebels Phoenix only not nearly so violent. The last of these dips is followed by a cruise around the Ferris wheel reminiscent of the Hoosier Hurricane at Indiana Beach, and a quick, tight helix to bring us back into the station. Each ride is two circuits around the track.
I mentioned that it had been a mistake to buy four tickets each. I say that because we then rode the Scrambler, then bought more tickets to ride the Giant Wheel and to take another ride on the coaster. The eight-ticket mark (what we spent) is exactly the break-even point for buying a POP wristband. Oh, well, I guess next time we will know better. Our second ride on the coaster was in the front seat, which actually gave a little bit of airtime going over the short hills in the middle of the ride. Then I walked through the park shooting photos, then met up with the rest of the group in the food court, where Mom and Dad were just finishing a funnel cake, which of course meant that I had to buy one to share with April.
We walked on out to the end of the pier, then April and I went down to the beach where she stuck her toes in the Pacific ocean. She had swum in the Atlantic earlier this year, so it seemed fitting that she should make it to both coasts. I tried to see if the coaster support columns extend through the pier to the beach and into the water, but couldn't see that part of the pier from below. Finally, we re-grouped at the car, and Dad took us on a mini-tour, driving Wilshire Drive into Beverly Hills and then taking the freeways back to his apartment.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
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