Fairgoers be warned: the ride "Get Twisted" may seem like oodles of scream-inducing fun.
It's not.
In fact, the seemingly innocent little fellow tucked into the farthest corner of the state fairgrounds produces the same effect as banging your noggin against a metal wall and suspending yourself by the ankles for 12 hours.
But let's back up a few steps before we get down to the dirty and dizzy.
I was on official assignment from the Raleigh News and Observer to review nine rides at the North Carolina State Fair. Thinking I had hit the journalistic jackpot (yes, they were paying me to do it), I woke up bright and early and hit the fair grounds with a media pass fashionably slung around my neck and a childish grin carved into my face.
There's nothing quite like the smell of fried dough and turkey legs on a fall morning. Skipping like a five-year-old giddy on Pixy Stix, I made my way past the gaudy ads of food vendors, through the territory of cheap polyester monstrosities and past tents broadcasting tales of bearded women and three-eyed dwarfs. It wasn't long until I reached "The Fireball," a whirling, twirling, rotating bundle of machinery that flung from side to side like a colossal pendulum.
Perhaps it was the cool breeze in my hair, or maybe it was the sight of the 40-year-old man across from me squealing and frantically clutching the handle bars, but my day was off to a pleasant start. In no time, I cleaned off seven more rides and hustled a few woozy children for quotations until they were forced to say something beside the ever popular, "It was fun."
I practically tackled 10-year-old Karen Hamlett in an effort to record her quote when I heard her comment to her mother, "It feels like all your insides are coming out."
But no sooner had I pocketed my notebook and sidestepped the man passing out "Jesus Loves You" pamphlets when I saw it: the lord of all mobile rides and the source of every acrophobe's irrepressible knee quivering. With four swinging seats at each lonesome end of an infinitely long mechanical arm, the ride looked like the malicious baton of a grotesque-spirited giantess. After gawking in a panic-induced stupor, I ambled up to one of the ride operators who smirked at me with his sleek shades and slicked-back mullet.
"It's 150 feet tall and four G's. Y'all know what G's are?" he said with a drawl and a slight tip of his head to the ride he identified fondly as "Turbo Force."
Quelling my urge to ask him if he knew what G's were, I inquired as to the lack of riders partaking in this low-budget death trap-though maybe not in those exact words. Turns out the operators were testing the device and it wasn't long before the ride was up and running and a crowd of teeny boppers jostled me aside.
When no one plummeted to their untimely death, I felt it was safe to give the ride a whirl even if it did cost me 10 whole tickets. It suddenly occurred to me on my 150-feet ascent why none of the newspaper's full-time staffers had taken up this gig for themselves. But I didn't have long to contemplate it before I felt every last one of those G's. Props to you, mullet man.
A bit loopy but nonetheless maniacally overjoyed, it was time for one more ride. Little did I know that the finale to my day at the fair would cost me 75 percent of my functioning brain cells and resilience to all motion for the next 48 hours.
I still don't know what it was about "Get Twisted" that did me over. Maybe it was the eight rides preceding it. Maybe it was the hot dog that seemed a bit pink around the edges, or the cotton candy and candy apple that functioned as my breakfast. Or maybe it's the fact that I get dizzy on the deck of 2,000-ton ferry boats if I'm not loaded up with Dramamine.
But after being chucked forward and sideways, rolled backwards and suspended upside down to the chorus of "How come every time you come around, My London, London bridge, wanna go down," it was everything I could do to maintain my reporterly composure. Without getting into details, let's just say tailgate the next morning was like a sick joke.
In the midst of my discombobulation, I realized that my escapade into this quintessential American celebration of rurality and recreation had allowed me a metaphorical jaunt into the heart of western living-where consumption reigns in the form of paper tickets and jumbo stuffed dogs.
The thought still makes me dizzy.
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