Day 10 - Monday - Magic Mountain

For those of you reading this from a cold place, let me begin with a quick explanation. Magic Mountain is not a 14,000 peak that Salina and I climbed clinging to our very lives through ice and snow. No, it's a theme park outside of L.A. famous for some of the best roller coasters anywhere. This day would provide a different kind of adrenaline rush than what we'd experienced on the trip so far.

I'll keep this one short and sweet...

On the bright side, we rode on some awesome roller coasters. In particular, the last ride of the night was the best roller coaster I've ever been on. It's called, "X2" and they market it as "The world's first 5th dimension thrill ride." We're not sure what that means, except that it was awesome. Not often that I say this, but it was worth the 1 1/2 hour wait in line.

Greg clearly enjoying his first bumper car ride in YEARS!

Which brings me to the downside. The lines were ridic! I guess it's to be expected at a major amusement park, but dang! It was only made worse by the even greater frustration for the day: two of the best roller coasters were closed. One, "Batman," is a roller coaster that makes you feel like you're flying, or so I'm told. The other, "Goliath," features a 255 foot drop with speeds reaching 85 mph. Would've been fun, but so it goes. Wah.

As we stood in line for our last ride of the day, our bodies were cold and our stomachs began grumbling. Plans were made for dinner. Nothing, and I mean nothing, is better at warming you up than a piping hot bowl of soup. Our favorite is a Japanese style, called ramen. No, not the stuff you buy 10 for $1 at the grocery store, but the real stuff you get at a Japanese restaurant. From the moment that decision was made and a destination was found, neither of us thought of anything else. I guess I'll admit I wasn't thinking about ramen during the ride, but besides that it was ramen, ramen, ramen.

Let me just say that it was delicious and it warmed us up from the inside out. So good.

On to our hotel for the night, which would be the Best Western in Ventura. This was not to be the nicest place we would stay this trip, but it seemed decent enough, and in most respects it was. In one very important respect, however, it was not. That being the train tracks that ran seemingly through our bathroom. Luckily they didn't run through the night, but at 7:26 the next morning our room felt like it was being shaken by an earthquake. For those who haven't experienced an earthquake, imagine a train going through your living room. Pretty crazy. And the good news is we get to stay here another night!