Hold on...it's going to be a bumpy ride!

While I anxiously await the new "bowel-inspired" lyrics to Journey's "Hold On" song (yes, I know the title is "Don't Stop Believing" but it's not as pertinent if I pointed that out) - penned by the fine folks over at "We Work For Cheese", don't forget to check out the other blog entries and then mock them shamelessly whilst I gloat endlessly about mine.

The mind works in mysterious ways...and, in my case, doesn't work in mysterious ways more times than I dare admit. Case in point, my friend and I were talking about the "Industrial Age" and how much money everyone who made all the money...made. We talked about Tesla and his lovely white pigeon, his fondness of threes, and his oscillating earthquake machine. We also delved into the behind the scenes goings-on with Edison and Westinghouse and their vying for total electrical control, and then that manifested into the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago...and, more specifically, the "Great Ferris Wheel" (also known as "the original Ferris Wheel") which was built for the event.

After talking about Frank Lloyd Wright and "Fallingwater'...and how I typically don't like much of what he's done...I brought up I.M. Pei...and before you knew it...we were at the World's Fair again comparing statistics from the "Great Ferris Wheel" to the one I was more familiar with: the Ferris Wheel at Great Adventure Park in Jackson, New Jersey.

The known statistics:

1893 Chicago World's Fair Ferris Wheel: Designed and constructed by George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. Opened to the public June 21st, 1893. It was 80.4 meters (264 ft) in height with 36 cars capable of holding up to 60 people; 2160 people total.

1974 Great Adventure Park, NJ, Ferris Wheel: Opened July 1974. 45 meters (147 ft) tall. Purchased used from the Holland Tullip Festival in the Netherlands where it was featured as their fair's centerpiece only to be dismantled and reassembled to serve as Great Adventure's centerpiece. Locking doors and additional safety bars were added to the ride in 1988 (about ten years after I could have really appreciated it). Six people can sit inside one "cabin" at a time in each of its 36 cars.

The unknown statistics: Two 17-year-old girls with a yearly pass to Great Adventure meet a couple of good looking guys at the park, or as we used to call them "Babes in the Woods". As this was the late 1970s, these "babes" often times were in the woods because alcohol and "perfumed cigarettes" were frowned down upon in the open areas. These two 17-year-old girls were known to dabble in certain substances which would elicit feelings of giddiness, bravery, paranoia, and "the munchies"...so, naturally, letting nature take its course we all wound up rather high. No, no - we were on the Ferris Wheel, and as luck would have it, the cars all stopped and we were left dangling at about the 11 o'clock position with two boys we had met only minutes before. Boys who might have been ingesting all sorts of things in those woods and without a toxicology work-up kit, it was anyone's guess just what those things were.

Minutes whizzed by at a snail's space while the guys "bravery" portion of their ride kicked in...so they started standing up and rocking the gondola back and forth. This escalated into them opening the little door thinking this must indeed be the height of hilarity (and sexual machismo) needed to impress two 17-year-old girls who were clearly holding on for dear life. Then to kick it up a notch, they decided it was time to play "let's pretend to toss each other out at 140 feet". Legs and arms dangled out...screams came from surrounding gondolas -- screams came from inside ours -- screams came from the ground...then squeals of delight echoed in the nite sky high above Jackson, New Jersey, when they finally kick-started that thing back into gear...and ratcheted us, one by one, back to terra firma.

When it finally came to rest and I managed to peel my clenched white knuckles open...I bolted like horse for the open field...and never went off searching for babes in the woods again...my paranoia never allowed me.

I've revisited that memory many times since 1978...chances are I'll hold on to it the rest of my life.

(Off-the-wall trivial tie in:  The Great Adventure Ferris Wheel originally had 27,000 lights all around the spokes and inside the cars...many of these were swiped as keepsakes or vandalized throughout the years...in a strange way I'm sure Tesla, Edison, and Westinghouse all would have been amused and possibly perplexed by this practice.)