If it isn’t sad enough being a blogger, I have to be a baldy blogger to boot. Compound that with the fact that I rarely leave the house and you’ll realise what a lucky chap I am to have me a wife.

But that isn’t the gist of my post. Being hunched over a computer screen all day never seeing said light of day tends to lead to extreme sensitivity to what is known as sunlight. We’ve all seen those nature specials where they send a sub to the bottom of the ocean until the lens just picks up bits of floating fish crap and they come across an albino stingray looking more startled and pasty than Pete Doherty.

Well that’s me in the sun that is; and on Tuesday I had the fortune of spending seven hours getting myself baked at Cedar Point – our local amusement park that many claim to be the best in America. I just know it has some exceptionally big, scary rides. I mean, you’ll never catch me atop a big one screaming and waving. But Cedar Point makes Blackpool Pleasure Beach look like a kiddies’ fun park. For example, check out the Top Thrill Dragster:


First coaster over 400 ft and first to go 120mph. It also gets stuck once in a while.

Is it really that astonishing after cricking my neck all day staring up at things like this I caught a bit of sun? I’ve been oozing plasma for the past two days and my head currently resembles a badly egg-washed pie that’s suffered at the hand of an overly zealous oven.

Anyway, ehough of that. Do you think things have stooped so low that I’ve nothing else better to do than regale you with tales of talking a Tuesday off to get sunburnt?

Obviously I’m going to try and suggest some kind of open source steel roller coaster project. Especially after seeing how this guy has thrown one together in his back garden:

Now then, all you need to do is get a basic grounding of the physics and engineering of how roller coasters work, design it, then build it.

Who’s with me? You know Boing Boing will lap it up.