Having learned from yesterday’s mistakes, Joe, Whit and I arrived at Great Adventure before the park opened.  I was stymied by the security person who found my knife/carabiner I use as a keychain to pose an unacceptable risk to the park patrons despite yesterday it being fine.

Me: It’s a letter opener.
Security Guard:  *opens it* It’s a knife.
Me: it’s a keychain that happens to have a sharp letter opener in it.
Security Guard: It’s a knife.
Me: Ok, it’s at worst diet knife that is apparently only harmful on Sundays as I got in without complaint yesterday.
Security Guard: How do you close it?
Me: You’re the security expert so sayeth your badge.
Security Guard: Sir, how do you close the knife?
Me: I only know how to close my letter opener.
Joe: Terry, stop.
Me: Like this. *closes carabiner/knife*
(I was being a dick at that point)

There are lockers both inside and outside the park.  Those on the inside cost a $1.00 for the day.  Those in the outside cost $8.00 for the day, or more than my carabiner cost me.  So, I removed the keys and put carabiner into my shoe like a reasonable person would.  I passed through the x-ray machine on the second try but had to gimp-slide my leg through.

Once we were in, we made a mad dash for Nitro which we got to go on twice in a row.  Then we went on Batman: The Ride and The Dark Knight ride all in less than about 30 minutes.  We knocked out three more rides in under 90 minutes and I was happy with our success.  The final ride for the day was going to be El Toro, the wooden coaster where the impossible happened. Joe, Whit, and I queued up and entered two different sections of cart and sat down.  I secured myself in place as did they and before the ride started, the lead operator indicated a seat wasn’t fully engaged and he began walking down the line of cars toward me.  “Oh great” I thought, “looks like ‘don’t get kicked off of a ride for being too big’ won’t be removed from my ‘why I don’t want to be fat list’ today.” as I thought that, the operator stopped at Joe’s cart.  Joe is at least 40 lbs lighter than me yet was ejected.  He walked past me and we exchanged the “what just god would allow this?” look.  Whit looked at me and gave the “That was a twist ending worthy of M. Night Shyamalan” look and the operator strode back to his station.  He gave the hand signal marking all clear, then stopped, saw there was still another engagement issue and promptly kicked me off the ride too.  The universe was again in order.

We walked to Bizarro, saw it was closed, and left the park for the day after going on Houdini’s Great Escape.  This was the pedometer chart for today:

A slightly more intense pace.