Roller Coaster Time!

Sometimes the simplest things could amuse us while driving along, how some of these activities or traditions got started are often more interesting than the events themselves, becoming more legend than actual history. With the passage of time past events are mostly forgotten or exaggerated changing the original event into something that can never be found again and repeated.

It was the first year of the trip, with me, Mom and Dad. We were driving through the desert on a beautiful Summer day through what I believe to be Nevada, or somewhere like that, all I can really be sure of was that it was the scenic route, a favorite path of travel for Dad in any circumstance. So the road itself was narrow, winding and hilly, it was also desolate and I barely remember seeing another car during this part of the trip. Now when I say hilly, I mean that the road had many small peaks and dips, which made for a roller coaster ride in the car. Dad took full advantage of this and would accelerate at certain points in the dips to get maximum roller coaster effect. I was delighted with this and this roller coaster time became one of my favorite parts of the trip.

I would sit up in the back seat ready and anticipating the next roller coaster section of the road, Dad would announce "roller coaster time!" and maneuver the car to get the best performance, coming up to the first apex and accelerating just at the right moment at the dip which would send the car flying off the second apex. Sitting up and leaning forward to get a good position and look out the front windshield I would ready myself and at the right moment and would let myself go free, letting the car perform physics on my body. The sensation that occurred was pleasurable and exciting, giving the body a brief moment of weightlessness that could be felt most noticeably in the crotch. This sensation was the closest a 4 year old boy could come to experiencing sexual pleasure and I announced to Mom and Dad that it made a "tickle in my tail". This amused Mom and Dad thoroughly but I think they didn't quite understand exactly what I meant. They laughed for days about this and it further encouraged the roller coaster time activity.

This particular roller coaster time was the longest and most intense on any of the trips, in fact it made all the other roller coaster times pale in comparison. This stretch of road offered miles of roller coaster opportunities, some of them a bit too extreme for the car causing us to bottom out, or the speed required to travel to achieve roller coaster meant that the off chance that we might encounter another car going the other way would probably result in collision. Dad seemed to ignore this possibility and focused his energies on driving with the most roller coaster efficiency.

Most of the roller coaster times that we encountered after this were merely one or maybe two dips in the road. Dad would still announce "Roller coaster time!" giving us a chance to position ourselves and he would attempt to get the car slightly airborne. Most of the time the results were disappointing, but every so often Dad would be able to get just the right momentum and that pretty sensation between my legs would occur. That first roller coaster time became legendary and was the point of comparison for all other roller coaster times. A few years later Dad attempted to find that stretch of road again, he had always thought it was a certain "out of the way" scenic route that there was no real reason to take except for the superior roller coaster time, but on one of the trips Dad purposely went out of the way to drive this stretch of road again and experience the roller coaster time from the past. We got on what we thought was the road and found it to be not like we remembered. If I didn't know better I would think we were on the wrong road, (in fact I think we were) but given my Dad's superior map navigation skills and his meticulous way of recording the past routes we took, Dad was certain this was the road. However, this road wasn't nearly as roller coaster-like as I remembered and the experience was totally disappointing. Dad thought that over the years the road had been re-paved and straightened, which might be true since many of the roads of days gone by have been replaced or eliminated in favor of the big Interstate highways, Roads like the famous "Route 66" are now history and no longer exist the way it did when times were simpler and more patient. There's a good chance this is what happened to this road.

It's almost like that roller coaster time was only a dream and only happened in my imagination, that this particular road never existed and that we somehow stumbled upon some supernatural event, a ghost road, a one time event and a road that will never be traveled again.