Monthly Archives: August 2012

Denise and the girls are travelling to Lake Tahoe tomorrow, so we decided to take a family afternoon out at the beach.  We had not yet been to the famous Venice Beach, which is only a forty-five minute drive from our house, so after church, we headed there.

Venice Beach is famous for many reasons. One such reason is the bodybuilding era of the early 1970’s where people such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and many other famous bodybuilders used to regularly work out at the area known as ‘Muscle Beach Venice’.

We arrived at Venice beach but once we saw the twenty-five dollar charge to park near the beach, we decided a walk would be nice, so we drove a few miles away from the beach until we found a free park on the side of the road.  This took some time as Venice beach is obviously a popular place to spend Sunday afternoon as there were cars and people everywhere.  Almost every possible parking space was taken and many more were trying to find a space to park.

After grabbing some lunch at the beach and taking in some outdoor basketball, we walked a few miles up and down the Ocean Front Walk, which was interesting.  The atmosphere was definitely carnival-like and packed with a broad variety of stores, street performers, artists and musicians.  While the experience was interesting, there were some elements along the promenade that made my girls a little uncomfortable.  One such element was the existence of several ‘clinics’ where you could legally buy marijuana for medicinal purposes.  From what I could understand, you would visit one of the clinics, pay a fee to get a consultation with one of the Venice Beach marijuana doctors in order to get approval to buy some marijuana as treatment for whatever ailment or chronic condition you might have.  Like I said, some of what we saw was interesting.

After taking in the sights along the Ocean Front Walk, we spent some time on the beach before heading home.

Earlier, I wrote briefly about my recent ‘battle’ with New Testament Greek grammar.  Before I took this class, I promised my girls we would go to Magic Mountain after the class was done to celebrate. So, two days after Gladiator Greek was finished, I took my girls and two of their cousins to Magic Mountain.

Magic Mountain is a predominately roller coaster theme park located in Valencia, CA, a very handy five mile drive from our house.  By all accounts, it has the most roller coasters out of any park in the world.  Some of the rides are of the very extreme variety, so if you are into fast and down-right frightening thrill rides, then Magic Mountain is the place for you.  Certainly, the roller coasters at Magic Mountain elicit superlatives, such as: fastest, tallest, biggest and freakiest.

We chose a good late afternoon/evening because even though the day was still warm (approx 100 degrees Fahrenheit), the local schools had just returned back from their summer break which meant that the park was not crowded and the lines were minimal.  Having said that, I am a bit indifferent about very short lines as while I don’t like to wait an hour for a ride, the waiting allows an enforced break between rides.

The rides at Magic Mountain are classified by ‘thrill’, so we warmed up on a couple of the ‘moderate thrill’ rides before jumping on the ‘maximum thrill’ rides. We started on ‘Ninja’ before heading to ‘Colossus’ and ‘Goliath’, which features a 255 feet drop and several steep banking turns. Next was ‘Scream!’, a maximum-thrill ride which has seven inversions at a very fast pace.  We then headed to the DC Comics area (my favorite comics brand as a kid, as I found Marvel just too far-reaching) and onto ‘Batman’ which had several steep banking turns and five inversions.  Next was ‘Riddler’s Revenge’ which features six upside-down turns – but in the standing position.

All the time we were at the park, I checked on the health of the kids and encouraged them to let me know if they wanted to sit a ride out.  While my concern for them was genuine, at this point of the day, it was also under the guise of my own self-preservation and dignity.

We then moved on to two of the easier paced rides, ‘Gold Rusher’ and ‘Jet Stream’, before ending the day with ‘Superman’ and ‘Tatsu’.  ‘Superman’ was a very short ride but quite thrilling as we were suddenly thrust backwards over 100 miles per hour then up a height of 415 feet, and back down again.  To get an idea, check out this video.  All the kids were nervous about this ride, but enjoyed it immensely.

As we were driving to the park, my nephew Caleb was apprehensive and excited at the same time.  He commented that the day at Magic Mountain was either going to be the best day of his life or the worst day of his life.  In the end, it turned out to be close to one of his best days and I am glad that my girls could share the day with him and Erin.  It was a fun day out, but very exhausting.