Offbeat

Mind Blowing Thrill Rides

Markozen.com Offbeat

Below are a few totally extreme thrill rides that allow the brave at heart to push it to the limit.  These rides are extremely high up.  These are not for people who suffer from a fear of heights.

The first three are situated on the top of the Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The tower is 1,149 feet tall.  It is part of a complex that includes a hotel and various casinos. 

The first ride is a free fall contraption called The “Big Shot,” a thing that shoots you up about 10 stories above the top of the tower and then drops you in a sickening bouncy movement (sort of a reverse bungee-jump).

The next is a completely crazy heart stopper called Insanity, a thing that hangs you out over the edge of the tower and spins you around at 40 miles and hour (See Below).  This is a ride where you really hope the maintenance people are doing their jobs correctly.  If this ride screws up you will have a thousand foot free fall that will last seconds.  You will have a bit of time to reflect on your transgressions in life before you splatter into a thousand pieces.

This next one is for only the bravest fool idiot thrill riders.  If this thing malfunctions it is a thousand foot head first dive into the pavement of the Las Vegas Strip.  The “X-Scream,” an open-air car that launches you on a teeter-totter style track over the side of the building.  The cart goes back as the track teeters with the front up.  As the track teeters with the front going downward the cart rolls rapidly right to the front before stopping abruptly.  You have got to be out of your mind to do this without a parachute.

The next mind bender is the tallest roller coaster in the world.  Kingda Ka is a roller coaster located at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey, USA. It is the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world. The train is launched by a hydraulic launch mechanism to 128 miles per hour (206 km/h) in 3.5 seconds.   At the end of the launch track, the train climbs the main top hat tower, reaching a height of 456 feet (139 meters).

Now if this thing doesn’t make you wet or crap yourself nothing will.

There is no way I would even attempt to go on any of these rides unless I was highly medicated on fear reducing substances.  The people that go on these rides are brave.  No two ways around that.  They also have to be a bit crazy.  These thrill riders must also be people that don’t contemplate the what ifs.  What if a bolt slips off, what if a goose shits on the track causing a slippage of a wheel, what if a maintenance guy was drunk and forgot to grease the undercarriage.  Too many what ifs for me.

The most extreme thrill ride thing I ever did was a Zipper ride at a country fair in rural Manitoba a few years ago.  My friend and I got on the ride in the middle of the afternoon.  There was nobody else on the ride at that time of day.  So the ride operator asked us if we had strong stomachs, feeling macho we both said hell yes.  As soon as we were airborne the operator gunned the machine for all it was worth and kept it pumped for 12 minutes.  I think he was testing the ride to see what its limits were. 

I was convinced that our cage was going to break off and we were going to fly 500 meters into the air and land in a farmer’s field.  When I got off the ride I was ghost white, my stomach was in my upper shoulder area, my ass was where my stomach used to be and my head felt like it was coming off a  Extra Old Stock twelve beer hang over.  I took a deep breath as I walked away from that Zipper and deeply appreciated my second chance at life.

United Customers

Markozen.com Aviation, Offbeat

Some people have issues with the airline.

On the evening of April 9, 2017, a revenue passenger was forcibly removed by law enforcement from United Airlines flight 3411 at Chicago-O’Hare, bound for Louisville. United announced that it needed four seats for airline staff on the sold-out flight. When no passengers volunteered after being offered vouchers worth $800, United staff selected four passengers to leave. Three of them did so, but the fourth, a doctor named David Dao, declined as he said that he had patients to treat the following morning. He was pulled from his seat by Chicago Department of Aviation security officers and dragged by his arms down the aisle. Dao sustained a concussion, broken teeth, a broken nose, and other injuries. The incident was captured on smartphone cameras and posted on social media, triggering an angry public backlash. Afterwards, United’s chief executive officer, Oscar Munoz, described Dao as “disruptive and belligerent”, apologized for “re-accommodating” the paying customers, and defended and praised staff for “following established procedures”. He was widely criticized as “tone-deaf”. Munoz later issued a second statement calling what happened a “truly horrific event” and accepting “full responsibility” for it. After a lawsuit, Dao reached an undisclosed settlement with United and airport police. In the aftermath, United’s board of directors decided that Munoz would not become its chairman and that executive compensation would be tied to customer satisfaction. Following this incident, passenger complaints increased by 70 percent.

This bear couldn’t break into a pot shop’s dumpster — so it took the whole thing

Markozen.com Animals, Offbeat

Bud Depot employee nicknames the bear Cheeseburger ‘because of all the good food he’s been trying to get’

When a Colorado black bear was unable to pry open a dumpster behind a cannabis shop, the animal made off with the whole thing instead.

Surveillance footage from The Bud Depot in Lyons., Colo., caught the hungry creature bursting through a locked fence door to access the garbage bin.

After trying in vain to get through the dumpster’s metal locks, the bear stands up on its hind legs and carefully drags it through the fence door and out into the alley for several metres before finally giving up.

“Seeing the video of that definitely blew my mind,” Bud Shop employee Nikko Garza told As It Happens guest host Megan Williams.

Garza says he’s seen the bear — or at least one like it — around the area a few times in the small mountain town.

Usually, he said, it goes for the nearby restaurant dumpster, because The Bud Depot keeps its trash behind a locked fence.

But this time, he said, the bear burst through the door like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. 

“But I imagine he’s a lot friendlier,” he said. “Instead of running toward you, he’ll run away.”

Garza has nicknamed the bear Cheeseburger “just because of all the good food he’s been trying to get.”

“He loves this grease trap back there,” Garza said, referring to the restaurant’s dumpster. “He loves just rubbing up against that.”

And it’s a snack the bear was after at the Bud Depot too. Garza confirmed it wasn’t trying to score the shop’s weed supply.

“I imagine he could probably smell something from the shop, but as far as the dumpster goes, we don’t have any cannabis products in there.”

The animal ran off, but Garza says he’s spotted another bear, or possibly the same one, once more since the dumpster incident.

Local wildlife officials say they are keeping an eye out for more.