Thrills

A group of twenty-seven youth and five adults traveled from St. Stephen's to Busch Gardens last Sunday. Most of the kids (and two brave adults) rode a rollercoaster called "Griffon." The cars are 10 seats wide and only three rows deep, so it looks a bit like a section of a movie theater flying through the sky.

Griffon's steepest descent covers 205 feet, straight down. At the top, the car brakes for six seconds, holding the riders suspended at a 90-degree angle, over the abyss. Then the brakes release and the car hits 70 miles per hour as it falls in a vertical line towards the earth.

Most of the kids thought that looked thrilling enough, but one boy - a slight sixth grader with an insatiable appetite for adrenaline - decided that he'd wait in a line four times longer to get a front row seat on Griffon.

I guess Sam wanted to be right on the very edge. Clearly he's not alone. After all, the front row line was four times longer. And at the same moment, on the edge of space, a man named Felix Baumgartner was preparing to break the speed of sound in a twenty-four mile free fall to Earth. (On a related note, how do you prepare for that? A couple of deep breaths?)

Meanwhile, back at Busch Gardens, Sam was tiring of the rollercoasters. So he, another boy, and I went on the "Rhine River Cruise." The antithesis of Griffon, it's a ride so relaxing it borders on boring (even by my standards). If the boat went any slower, you'd be tempted to help paddle.

When Sam noticed a turtle - sunning itself on a nearby log - his excitement, his shriek of joy, exceeded anything I'd witnessed all day. It was as if he'd just seen the earth from space.

Even as we humans make astounding advances in the field of self-induced adrenaline rushes, God's technology still manages to keep pace. While the world held its breath for Felix's four-minute free fall, Sam marveled at the simple, surprising appearance of a turtle.