Tickticktickticktickticktickticktickticktickticktick… As the ThunderHawk slowly ascends the track, I’m scared out of my mind, but also kind of awed because from this height the whole park is laid out beneath me like a board game.

Tick… Tick… Tick… “AAAAHHHH!!!” Everybody screams with delight or terror as the ThunderHawk dives like, well, like a hawk. With the track above me, it feels like I’m in a fighter plane in a dogfight but without the plane part. Just as it feels like we are going to become splats on the pavement, the ride curls up, straight at the sky in an insane loop-barrel roll, and when I look down the sun glares in my eyes, blinding me for an instant. I’m trying so hard not to look down when the ride takes another epic plunge.

All the time, I am screaming my lungs out, having more fun than I have ever had. Hurtling along at seventy-five miles per hour, it looks like a bright yellow steel support beam or the blood red tracks are going to take my legs off any second. As we corkscrew around the track I’m thinking: This is the most awesome ride ever!

And then the ride was over: We HAVE to do that again!

Tickticktickticktickticktickticktickticktickticktick…